Letters to the Editor
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J'accuse! Forces aligned under Bush executing a plan
I'm beginning to realize the Bush is merely the face of an organized entity that is scurrying to execute a vision before Bush leaves office. Bush himself is just not this smart to conceive of this broad-reaching of a plan and calculatingly move to implement it day by day. In fact, I do believe that these forces plotted to get Bush into office knowing that his charm and his non-threatening image would confound the opposition. Call me a conspiracy nut, but this is indeed a conspiracy to undermine/reverse the progressive inclinations in this country and install a corporate oligarchy supported by a range of governmental bodies.
It all really fits neatly together--the inevitable march toward Iraq and our occupation there; the new, right-wing Supreme Court, the dismissal of DOJ prosecutors, the amnesty bill delivering cheap labor and greater freedoms to businesses to use illegal aliens, Nafta related policies, Scooter Libby commutation, the Bush aversion to protecting borders both in Iraq and at home.
I think we've not seen the forest for the trees--and the forest is huge! Reading a story like this about the nomination of someone whose views are so antithetical to the office makes no sense unless you consider a larger context.
Who is this group that is running the show? Well, I bet it includes Cheney and Rove, just to name a couple. Lieberman has also been recruited. No, I don't believe Condi Rice is in this group, but I do believe the Bush family and their ties to Saudi Arabian royalty are deeply involved.
Considering the context, I now see that Bush will never leave Iraq before he leaves office and will make it difficult for this country to quit Iraq ever. He'll never back down from Gonzalez and we'll continue to read these surprising, illogical articles for months to come. Their negotiating with the Democrats where they see an advantage and a swap (the immigration bill, Palmer for Ishiguri) will persist sub rosa, keeping it out of the public eye as much as possible.
This theory is quite compatible with the review submitted on the Iraq documentary, which confirmed the fact that the war was conceived and managed by people with no resume expertise in foreign policy, the MidEast, military matters.
We need a V.
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Time for a systematic investigation of "Justice"
The current administration appears comfortable leaving critical government jobs unstaffed. In one recently reported example, roughly one quarter of senior Homeland Security positions remain unfilled:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070801201.html
In another example, the acting head of the violence against women office is simultaneously the US attorney for W. Pennsylvania:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07077/770524-85.stm
These are only two of many such examples. Understaffing or duplicate staffing of critical federal government posts helps the admin keep government costs artificially low while simultaneously undermining individual rights and public safety.
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Long history of deliberate Republican discrimination
In early 1981, a few months after Reagan took office, I visited with a former employee who was then working as a Title VII attorney for EEOC. She told me a rather disturbing story about her boss, an African-American Republican who had received numerous sexual harassment complaints about a career African American Republican supervising attorney in the office. She said her boss, instead of responding appropriately to those complaints, merely transferred the accused harasser to Maryland to save his job and pension. She also told me about the Commission's lack of support for a case she had brought against a major U.S. employer. She eventually settled the case immediately prior to trial for a record amount for Title VII cases, despite her employer's disdain for the case. She left soon afterward.
It wasn't until Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court eight years later that I realized whom she was complaining about. I called her and she told me that reporters had contacted her after allegations by Anita Hill were publicized. Based on her impression of Thomas's style displayed soon after his 1981 appointment, she felt that Hill's story might well be credible.
A previous poster of comments seems surprised by the depths to which the Bush Administration has wallowed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that we should have regulators of irresponsible and dangerous industries installed who are coming from those very industries. It shouldn't surprise anyone that we are getting Federal judges whose loyalty is to the Federalist Society, rather than the Constitution. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the Bush Administration and its hacks and lackeys are constitutionally incapable of acting fairly or telling the truth. They are determined to wreck the checks and balances in our system of government.
The situation with the prospective appointment of Bush's chosen EEOC Commissioner is entirely consistent with his agenda to place corporations and reactionary entities and individuals in every possible position of power. That the current nominee is hostile to the very purpose of Title VII is not at all surprising, nor is should it raise eyebrows that a deal has been offered that will keep the controversy out of the press.
It will take decades to undo this Administration's maliciousness, if it is at all possible in any of our lifetimes.
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Gosh
A vast, Right-Wing conspiracy. Really? No. Don't. Stop. *sigh*
I guess we need these cycles so we can see how bad things are.
They are bad so long as the prevailing philosophy is that business is to make money, not, say, pottery, or cars, or housing, or safe food or blah blah blah. So long as an indecent profit is the greatest good, this is what we will get. So long as we fail to act in the opposite direction, we will all be dragged toward an inevitable state in which the government is a business, business governs, and the military cows any protest.
There's a word for that, but we're not allowed to use it anymore on account of some Elephant Man will come along and accuse us of hate speech, probably completely unaware of the concept of irony. But I'll say it one last time. Fascists.
We don't fight this on their terms. We fight it by adopting and working around them and one day they wake up and have no power. This is the only way.
Wish it could happen. Doubt it.