BUSH WATCH...WALT BRASCH

Star-Spangled America

by Walter M. Brasch

Jose Feliciano gave it a new beat.

Roseanne Barr shrilled it.

And hundreds, maybe even thousands, of featured soloists have bobbled it or failed to hit the high-G.

It is the Star-Spangled Banner.

However, according to a recent Harris Poll, about two-thirds of Americans dont know all of the words or even the origin of the song that became the National Anthem in 1931. Congress made that decision 117 years after Francis Scott Key wrote new words for To Anacreon in Heaven, written in the late eighteenth century, and which was probably an English drinking song.

The National Anthem Project is a multi-year project to try to make sure that all Americans learn the words and the historical origin of the song. It is sponsored by National Association for Music Education (known as MENC), with financial assistance from Chrysler/Jeep. Among dozens of organizations that have signed onto the project are the America Legion, the Girl Scouts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Lumber and Building Materials Dealers Association, and the Walt Disney Co. Honorary chair is Laura Bush, herself backed by the House of Representatives and the White House Commission on Remembrance. The campaign began on Capitol Hill with singers from a high school in South Carolina and an elementary school in Washington, D.C. More than six million children and teachers participated throughout the country in a concert carried by PBS and the Armed Forces Network. During the next few years, the campaign will include education initiatives in schools, special performances and alliances with professional sporting events, and an extensive mobile marketing tour, according to the Association.

Buried within the promotion, almost insignificant in the national PR spin, is a reality of what spurred the national campaign. Recent budget cuts to school music programs have silenced our nation, cutting off students from access to learning about our countrys historical traditions, said John Mahlmann, MENC executive director.

Because of cuts in arts funding, with increased budgets for sports and several other programs, about 28 million students are not receiving an adequate music education, according to a U. S. Department of Education study in 2000. One-fourth of all principals reported there was a decreased time spent on the arts in their schools, and one-third of all principals say there will be continued decreases in the arts, according to a study published last year by the Council for Basic Education. Ironically, the decrease in music and the arts in schools might even be greater if not for sportsmarching bands complement the football program; rally bands, combos, and jazz bands complement basketball.

Nevertheless, fewer than half of all students receive music education at least three times a week, says Michael Blakeslee, MENC deputy executive director. Only about 40 percent of all public secondary schools require students to take even one credit in the arts to graduate, according to the latest figures from the Department of Educations Arts in the Schools surveyand that was conducted a decade ago. The requirements, undoubtedly, have decreased since then. Part of the problem, says Blakeslee, is implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasizes basic skills. Rod Paige, former Department of Education secretary, says the program was never intended to reduce arts activities in schools, a claim Blakeslee agrees with. However, interpretation and implementation of the Act by school districts has led to a significant erosion of music education, especially in the middle school, says Blakeslee. The extra time spent to meet the Acts criteria has reduced time spent in the arts. If improving basic skills doesnt work in how theyre being taught in 30 minutes, asks Blakeslee, why will they work at 90 minutes? The increase in minutes in other areas at the expense of the arts is nothing less than political expediency, says Blakeslee.

Although the way schools implement the No Child Left Behind Act may be a problem, American cultural values may be more of a problem. Extensive anecdotal evidence at all levels of education suggests that parents, guidance counselors, and others who have influence upon children and the educational system often encourage their children to take classes thatll get you a job, while discouraging them from going into the arts. Mistakenly, they believe the arts, while nice, may be frivolous in job placement opportunities.

Another problem is the Observational Society. Our children watch a limited range of music videos, listen to CDs their peers approve, and attend shrill overpriced concerts. TV and the movies have become not only ways for them to tolerate boredom, but have become the nations babysitters. Like sports crowds, our children have become observers not participants. Like the previous MTV generation, they have become so accustomed to being entertained they have failed to become participants, whether in sports, cultural and arts activities, recreationor in becoming involved in social justice or the political system.

Learning the words to the Star Spangled Banner is good. Participating in understanding the history of the music, and being able to sing it in groups is good. It plays to the patriotic urges of the nation. (Perhaps a future project could acquaint the people with the Constitution and civil liberties, something that seems to be missing in our collective education.) Nevertheless, if at the end of the music project, our children havent become participants in society, havent seen the necessity for the artswhether dance, visual arts, music, theatre, or writing as just as important to society as plumbers, electricians, lawyers, and business executivesthen all that would have happened is that Americans have learned words to a song and have gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling for the country, while still being ignorant our of heritage and still sitting on the sidelines of life. --posted 04.07.05

[Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and university professor, and author of 14 books. His latest book is Americas Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Governments Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Feb. 2005, Peter Lang Publishing). You may contact Dr. Brasch through his website at www.walterbrasch.com]

Government Approved Slaughter

by Walter M. Brasch

   Almost every day, a dozen or so wild burros come down from the foothills of the Black Mountains of northwestern Arizona onto the main street of Oatman, a revitalized high desert mining town about 15 miles from where California, Nevada, and Arizona meet.

    No one remembers when the burros first came into the mountain town that is bisected by the hairpin curves and switchbacks of Old Route 66, but they do know burros have lived in the area for more than a century. However, it wasn’t until the tourists began visiting the town in the early 1970s that the burros made their regular visits, arriving each day on no set schedule, but usually leaving about 4:30–5 p.m. when the tourists leave.

    The townspeople provide love, concern, funds for veterinarian bills, and two water troughs for the burros who work the Main Street tourist industry. Sometimes the residents will brush the burros, but the burros themselves are adept at making sure the entire pack is clean and groomed. The tourists pet the burros, have their pictures taken with them, chat with them, and feed them carrots, available for $1 a bag from the Oatman General Store or any of a dozen other stores. The burros work for food.

    Once protected by federal law, the nation’s 3,000 wild burros and 33,000 wild horses, as well as 24,000 horses in short- and long-term sanctuaries, now face Congressionally-approved slaughter.

    Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) inserted a rider into the 3,000 page omnibus spending bill of 2005, approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, that requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell all wild horses and burros which have not been adopted in three attempts or which are 10 years or older. Wild burros have life spans of 25–30 years; domesticated burros can live 45 years; wild horses have life spans of 20–25 years. The animals, according to the legislation, “shall” be sold, and can be butchered. There were no hearings or debate.

    The public may not know what forces helped convince Burns to silently insert the rider into the Appropriations Act, but one thing is certain—the beef industry has its brand all over it.

      During the mid-1800s, more than 2.3 million wild horses and 60 million bison freely roamed America’s west. But, ranchers, who had already seized land from the Indians and were deep into a land war with farmers, saw horses as competition for unfenced grazing land. They poisoned the horses’ watering holes, blinded the lead stallions by shooting their eyes out, or simply ran them to death, up and over cliffs, according to Mike Markarian, executive vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Ranchers “even captured wild mustangs, sewed their nostrils shut with rawhide so they could barely breathe, and returned them to their herds so they would slow down the other horses and make them much easier to capture,” says Markarian. In 1897, Nevada allowed unlimited killing of mustangs.

    By 1900, the bison were almost extinct, the result of indiscriminate killing during the nation’s “Manifest Destiny.” A half-century later, mustangs were close to meeting the same fate as the bison. That’s when Velma Johnston, to become known as “Wild Horse Annie,” began a national campaign to save wild horses and burros. It took two decades until Congress unanimously passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 that gave federal protection to the animals and made it a felony for anyone to capture or harm them.

    In 1974, the first federal census of wild horses and burros revealed that only 60,000 remained in Arizona, California, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. The BLM plans to reduce the population on public lands to about 20,000, removing at least 11,500 wild horses and burros in 2005. This number is below the minimum necessary to sustain healthy populations, according Dr. Gus Cothran, equine geneticist at the University of Kentucky. The minimum number of horses and burros in each herd management area (HMA) needs to be at least 150, says Cothran; under BLM plans, about 70 percent of the HMAs will have fewer than 100 animals. Estimates by animal rights groups place the number that will probably be slaughtered by the end of the year at 6,000–14,000.

    Prior to the new federal law, the BLM sold “excessive” horses and burros for $125, and then gave full ownership only after a year, during which time the owner had to provide adequate space, shelter, and care. However, the BLM has a long history of neglectful oversight after the animals are sold, and even has a history of willful violation of the law. In 1997, animal rights activists revealed that BLM employees personally profited by selling mustangs and burros for $400–$500 each, and then falsified records. However, under political pressures, the investigation, which had resulted in indictments by a federal grand jury, dissolved.

    Even if no horses and burros were slaughtered, and current levels maintained, that still would be too much for the ranchers. The 33,000 horses and burros, apparently, are taking up too much space and are infringing upon forage land of the 4.1 million head of cattle.  A statement by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association released about the time of the Congressional appropriations measure declared, “excessive numbers of feral horses and burros continue to cause increasing deterioration of range conditions.” Why the cattlemen want more land is a matter of economics as reflected by the AUM. An AUM (animal unit month) is the amount of forage “required to feed an average-size cow and calf per month, or one horse, or five sheep,” according to the BLM; currently, an AUM is about 800 pounds of air-dried foliage. The BLM, in its 2005 budget justification report, apparently bowing to rancher concerns, states that removing the horses and burros will “eliminate the need to reduce permitted livestock grazing during a drought.”

    The BLM charges ranchers $1.79 AUM to graze one cow and calf upon public land; the cost to lease private land is $20–$50 AUM. Half of the fees collected by the BLM and Forest Service from the ranchers holding about 23,600 permits are eventually returned to them for range improvements. Even with income from the ranchers, the program had a loss of about $124 million in 2002, according to an independent study conducted by the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson. However, the cost could be $500 million to $1 billion to subsidize ranchers because “it was difficult to get a clear idea of just how much money the government is pumping into the federal grazing program [for cattle] to keep it going,” according to Karyn Moskowitz, principal author of the report. Co-author Chuck Romaniello, a BLM economist, raised the problem that “numerous programs both in and outside the two agencies [BLM and Forest Service] also bear costs [and] we could find no system that adequately accounts for all of these costs.” Even raising the grazing fee for cattle to come close to the cost of private leased land “will not cover the real costs,” according to George Wuerthner, one of the researchers. “If we did a full accounting of the ecological costs—soil erosion, extirpation of predators, water pollution, endangered species, spread of weeds, dewatering of rivers for irrigated pasture,” said Wuerthner, “the price we pay annually . . . would be in the billions of dollars.” The report has spurred the Government Accounting Office into an investigation of below-cost grazing on public lands.

    In contrast, the BLM spends only about $39 million for the wild horse and burro program. This includes costs of helicopters to round-up the animals and then to ship them to holding facilities where, under the new law, they are likely to be sold for slaughter. About 24,000 wild horses are now in one of 11 holding facilities in Kansas and Oklahoma, at least 8,300 meeting minimal criteria imposed by the repeal of the 1971 law. The cost to keep the horses and burros in the sanctuaries and not running free on land that cattlemen want may be as much as one-third of the budget, an expense not necessary if the horses and burros were allowed to run in herds.

      The sale of horses to slaughter houses is financially attractive. Depending upon market value, a 1,000 pound mustang can bring $700–$900 at a slaughter house. Horse meat is a gourmet meat in Western Europe, Japan, and several other countries. About 65,000 domestic horses, unprotected by any laws, were butchered last year. Because wild horses eat natural grasses, and have not been subjected to mankind’s artificial foods, chemicals, and drugs, the meat is considered especially delicious.

    The first sale of wild horses under the new federal law was in February to a company in Wyoming, which bought 200 horses for $10,000, $50 a horse. Wild Horses Wyoming says it plans to put the horses into a sanctuary, and not sell them. Some ranchers, just wanting the animals off public lands to allow for more cattle, say they will buy the horses and burros, and then create tourist attractions in Mexico. However, there is no guarantee that the animals will be protected or that they won’t then be sold for slaughter in Mexico or transported across the border to Texas, home of two of the nation’s three foreign-owned slaughterhouses.

    There is a possibility that the 1971 law protecting the animals may be restored. A bill by Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), with 15 co-sponsors, is in a subcommittee of the House Resources Committee. The lobbying pressure against the bill is expected to be intense. However, more than 60 national organizations are now on record calling for the repeal of the recently-passed legislation.

         When it rains in Oatman, Ariz., the burros and the tourists both head for cover beneath the stores’ wooden porches, both groups chatting with each other, both groups eating munchies.     On a plaque in Oatman is a reality— “[I]f it were not for these burros, in all probability, neither you nor the plaque would be standing here today.”  Beneath the wooden awnings of stores, the burros of Oatman remind us that all of us, human and animal, need each other. --Posted 03.14.05

     [Assisting on this story were Rosemary Brasch and Gail Fox. For more information, go to the Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org), International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (www.ispmb.org), American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign  (www.wildhorsepreservation.com), Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates (www.aowha.org), and Bureau of Land Management (www.blm.gov) Brasch is an award-winning journalist, author of 14 books, and a university professor. His latest book is America’s Unpatriotic Acts; the federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights. You may contact him through his website at www.walterbrasch.com]

Hollywood Patriots

by Walter M. Brasch

 Sandra Bullock and Leonardo DiCaprio each donated about $1 million for disaster relief following the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia. The Steven Spielberg family donated $1.5 million. Jet Li donated more than $125,000; Jackie Chan added at least $64,000. Among several dozen rock bands which donated proceeds of their concerts or made outright donations, U-2 and Linkin Park each donated $100,000; Ozzie and Sharon Osborn donated almost $200,000. At the Laugh Factory in both L.A. and New York, major comedians donated their time, with proceeds benefiting the victims. The Red Cross says innumerable celebrities made anonymous donations.

    Dozens of “A”-list celebrities, many with Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Obies became part of a live broadcast fund-raiser for the tsunami victims—and worked the phones to take pledges from Americans whose names are unknown outside their own communities. George Clooney, who had helped organize the creative community for the 9/11 telethon that raised more than $130 million three years earlier, again rounded up his friends and their friends for “Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope.”     These are the people whom President George W. Bush believes “don’t represent the heart and soul of America.” To innumerable conservative talk-show hosts who bash celebrities, while bathing in the limelight of celebrity themselves, they’re the “Hollyweird.” Rush Limbaugh and his Dittoheads call most of the creative community “Left Coast Hollywood Kooks,”even if they live in Omaha; simply, they’re traitors who should be exiled. But it is these “kooks” who are among the first to respond to humanitarian needs.

    In 1985, Bob Geldof organized Live Aid. From Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to B.B. King, Joan Baez, and the Beach Boys, dozens of the best pop singers and musicians came together for 16 hours that led to more than $100 million in contributions for the people of Ethiopia who were dying in a famine that had been flamed by the world’s neglect.

    Shortly after Live Aid, on a suggestion from Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp organized Farm Aid to help struggling farmers who were being forced into poverty and bankruptcy by corporate farming.

    Following 9/11, Madonna and Julia Roberts each donated $2 million for victims and their families. They were only two of thousands from the creative community, most earning less than $50,000 a year, to contribute.

    The “Left Coast Liberals” have been the face of almost every charity in America. It’s Danny Kaye and Audrey Hepburn who spent innumerable days every year working with UNICEF in places Americans seldom want to tour. It’s Jerry Lewis, who has worked tirelessly for the Muscular Dystrophy Association for more than 40 years. It’s Paul Simon who’s an active contributor for the Children’s Health Fund, and it’s Paul Newman whose company has donated more than $150 million to charities, and provides millions of dollars a year to help children with cancer and blood diseases. It’s Michael J. Fox whose foundation has raised more than $50 million in the past five years for research into Parkinson’s disease. It’s Marlo Thomas who has continued the work of her father at St. Jude Hospital. It’s Elizabeth Taylor who helped Americans develop a conscience about AIDS at a time when many Americans, if they even had heard about the fatal disease, believed it was “God’s revenge” for people being gay, a belief that unfortunately still remains among the ignorant. It’s Sting who campaigns to save the rain forests, Robert Redford who is active in environmental issues, and Bono whose work with Amnesty International is as important as his music. It’s Angelina Jolie, who unselfishly works with Third World poverty and who donated $1 million for Afghan refugees and $5 million for an animal sanctuary in Cambodia. It’s Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek who organized Clothes Off Our Backs, a continuing auction of stars’ clothes that provides funds for not only tsunami victims but also for other humanitarian charities. And it’s conservatives Donnie and Marie Osmond, lumped into the “celebrity” swatch, who pitch for the Children’s Miracle Network. Name a charity, and a celebrity is out front donating funds and time.

    However, to America’s vitriolic right-wing, anyone opposed to President Bush’s policies is wrong. In internet chat rooms, and on blogs and call-in radio shows, they are babbling that the “left-wing” donated millions to try to defeat George W. Bush for a second term, but failed to contribute like amounts for disaster relief. When confronted with the facts, which seldom happens on radio talk-shows, they blather that the celebrities donated only so they could get their names in the papers—and that these celebrities should have donated even more. There is no medication for the verbal diarrhea that gushes from their loose minds that celebrities should be contributing to American causes, not those of “them furriners” who didn’t provide money for disasters in the U.S. There’s no salve that will heal the viciousness of the rabid-mouths who castigate the Heinz Endowment for donating “only” $450,000 for tsunami relief, or who believe that Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, Alan Alda, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Barbra Streisand, who donate millions to humanitarian causes, are self-promoting unpatriotic scum who should donate even more.

        If the “Left-Wing Kooks” responded in similar fashion as the “Right-Wing Nuts” they would flood the Internet, the radio talk shows, and the newspaper’s letters columns. They would call the Bush administration hypocrites for staging a $50 million inauguration while there is world-wide famine, a war in Iraq, and a natural disaster that left more than 150,000 dead and two million homeless. They would question why multimillionaire George W. Bush personally donated only $10,000 for the relief fund. They would wonder if that donation was made only because Bush’s political advisors believed the donation might placate a worldwide storm of indignation that grew while the Compassionate-Conservative-in-Chief continued to bicycle and clear brush from his ranch as millions were swept into the ocean’s fury. They would say that the President’s personal contribution was made amid a fusillade of notices from the government’s massive public relations operation, proving that the donation was political and not from the heart. They would spend far more time attacking the President than in working to help others less fortunate.

    But they don’t. They just keep giving, some using their media-induced fame to generate even more donations for humanitarian needs, many of them making large donations of time and money anonymously. The creative community keeps giving, even while being viciously attacked for using their self-endowed rights of dissent that Jefferson, Madison, and the Founding Fathers demanded of all citizens. And that’s what true patriotism is all about. --posted 01.24.05

    Walter Brasch’s latest book is America’s Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, January 2005). You may contact Brasch through his website at www.walterbrasch.com

A Failure to Support the Troops

by Walter M. Brasch

    As usual, Donald Rumsfeld was in control. At a “town hall” meeting with almost 2,000 American combat soldiers in northern Kuwait, the Secretary of Defense and his PR machine were going to give a “pep rally” to troops about to go into combat. He would prove he cared about the individual troops, that the Bush Administration supported them, and that God and country, at least 51 percent of the mortal voters, were patriots who supported George W. Bush and, thus, the war.

    But, just in case there might have been a problem—and in the Bush Administration there are no problems, no weaknesses, no errors—the Secretary of Defense didn’t allow any reporters to ask questions. He didn’t really need to impose that restriction. For more than two years, the nation’s reporters had lamely tossed cream-filled puffs at Rumsfeld, who effortlessly swatted each one into crumbs. Even the public enjoyed seeing the Secretary of Defense pose his own questions and then answer them, or tongue-lash reporters whose inane questions became indicative of how poor the media had prepared for this war.

    In an aircraft hangar at Camp Buehring, a transitional camp for soldiers going into the quagmire that was Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was smiling, joking, and mugging for the cameras, completely in control. And then a soldier spoke out.

    “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?” Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard asked to the applause and cheers of hundreds of others. It was a question thousands of Americans had asked but were largely ignored by the establishment media and by sycophantic generals who should have, but didn’t, question post-war occupation strategies. It was also unusual for an enlisted person, drilled to obey orders unquestioningly, to even ask such a question, especially of the Secretary of Defense. But these Reservists and National Guardsmen were tired; tired of lies and deceptions from being told the Army would honor their contracts to how quickly they were be paid—and how little protection the sand-slogging soldier was given.

    “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have,” said a slightly shaken Rumsfeld, who never acknowledged that it was the Bush Administration that decided how and when to launch the invasion of Iraq. Nor had Rumsfeld admitted it was the Bush Administration that didn’t have substantial plans to occupy the country, as Colin Powell and dozens of retired four-star generals and admirals had said prior to that invasion. And so friends and relatives of soldiers bought bullet-proof Kevlar vests to send to the war zone, and millions of Americans sent all kinds of personal supplies to the troops. But now the question to the Secretary was about the lack of armor protection that Americans couldn’t afford or couldn’t send to protect the troops.

    It’s “physics,” said Rumsfeld, thinking he could dismiss the soldier’s question, just as he easily dismissed the questions of those who previously challenged his authority. “It isn’t a matter of money.

. . .  It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it,” he said. The Army later claimed that at least three-fourths of its vehicles had protection. Gary Motsek, a civilian official for the Army Materiel Command and a former Army colonel, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that about one-third of all convoy vehicles are armored. An analysis by the House Armed Forces Committee revealed only about 10 percent of medium and light military trucks in combat zones were protected.

    “The demand has gone up leaps and bounds since 9/11,” says Ray Toone, general managing partner of Elite Armoring Co. of Dallas, Tex. Toone says his company has had to increase staff by more than 40 percent in the past three years to meet demand. Most of Elite’s customers are CEOs and the wealthy who pay as much as $85,000 to protect their own Hummers, BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, Cadillac Escalades, Chevy Suburbans, Ford Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators. When Elite finishes with a vehicle, it appears to be just like a floor model. Elite’s Level IV protection will stop a 147 grain 7.62 x 51 NATO-certified armor-piercing bullet fired with a velocity of 2,900 feet per second or a 220 grain .30-06 armor-piercing bullet fired at 2,400 feet per second.

    During most wars, the United States required private companies to retool their production lines to produce war materiel not for the elite of other countries but for the American war effort. Elite doesn’t manufacture armor for the military. “We haven’t been contacted,” Toole says, but his company is supplying vehicles for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

    Elite isn’t the only company that provides vehicle armor. International Armoring Corp. of Ogden, Utah, in partnership with the Ford Motor Co., produces armored Lincoln Town sedans.

    Even if Elite, International Armor, or dozens of other companies aren’t retooling for military production, a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is already producing armored Humvees as fast as it can—at least since August 2003, two months after the war began. However, at least two companies with military contracts said they were capable and willing to produce more armor kits for Humvees but were rejected. Matt Salmon of ArmorWorks in Tempe, Ariz., said his company was at 50 percent capacity “and we could do a lot more.” He told USA Today that the Pentagon was “aware of it.” Robert Mecredy of Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., said his company, which also had a military contract, could produce at least 100 more armor kits to trucks per month. Dozens of companies are now providing at least parts of Humvee armor or bullet-resistant glass.

    President Bush, trying to cover Rumsfeld’s comments, told military families, “We’re doing everything we possibly can to protect your loved ones.” More than 1,100 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq; more than 9,000 have been wounded. More than half of them were in military vehicles. It’s been 21 months after the invasion, and the mightiest military force in the world, with the mightiest intelligence operation, hasn’t provided for the needs of the soldiers. Instead of empty promises and misleading rhetoric, the Bush Administration might consider doing what it falsely claims the anti-war opposition doesn’t do—support the troops. --posted 12.12.04

    [Brasch’s latest book is America’s Unpatriotic Acts; the Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, Jan. 2005). You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]

On the Right Hand of God...the Far Right Hand

by Waloter M. Brasch

    She’s a pleasant enough person. Likes animals. Seems to care about people. Does an excellent job as an administrative assistant for a state agency. But she also has an impervious religious belief. The day after George W. Bush was elected to his second term, she sent an e-mail to several persons where she worked:

    “Christians have MUCH to be thankful to God for after our national election. Many conservative, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage men and women were elected to seats in both the House and Senate. Most important of all, it looks as though Christians in every state of our nation turned out in records [sic] numbers to support our God-fearing President!”

    Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes, a national evangelical organization which defines itself as “The Women of Truth,” was even more sanctimonious. The Bush victory, said Kreitzer in a widely-distributed press release, was “a rejection of the extremism of the democratic party, [a rejection of] the party of gay activists, radical feminists, lesbians, the Hollywood elite, pornographers, death-peddlers, anti-Christian bigots, and apostate Catholics.”

    In letters to the editor, on radio talk shows, and in corner bars, the conservative religious wing of America is ecstatic over the election, praising God and Bush in the same breath. Bush is the savior who will redeem the nation from the immorality of liberals, the Hollywood Left, and other pagans. In their world of divine absolute truth, even moderate and some conservative theologians will go to Hell for the sins of preaching tolerance for those who have other views of God and mankind, something not even Bush himself ever publicly stated.

    For his entire term, President Bush emphasized his devout faith, showcasing it like a personal World Series of Heaven ring. In 1999, he told a Baptist convention he “heard the call,” and believed “God wants me to be President.” God may not have taken a side in the election, but he was anointed by a 5–4 vote of the Supreme Court. Slightly more than a week after his inauguration, President Bush created a White House Office for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, and directed five cabinet agencies to do the same; he was the first president to officially blur the “separation clause” of state and religion. A year later, the Texas Republican party, apparently with no objection from the President, in its platform declared, “the United States is a Christian nation.”

    President Bush constantly speaks of his love of God, and when asked if he had consulted his father before invading Iraq, Bush the Younger said he had consulted a “higher father.” It played well in the Bible Belt.  Sen. John F. Kerry, a devout and practicing Catholic, apparently was wasn’t “religious enough”; Sen. John Edwards, a Methodist, was too liberal; certainly, to American voters, they didn’t practice the “right” religion. And, apparently, neither did Bush’s opponents from 2000—Vice President Al Gore, a Baptist; and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an orthodox Jew.

    The President’s campaign staff did a brilliant job of motivating the nation’s evangelical White conservatives to turn out in record numbers to vote for a person who heard the incessant thunder that “moral values” were more important than social justice. And so, a slim majority of voting Americans picked President Bush based upon what they believed were “moral values,” according to a post-election poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. “Moral values” edged both the fear of terrorism and the state of the economy, a surprising result since the focus of the campaign was primarily upon who would be a better commander-in-chief rather than a better president.

    For most, “moral values” centered around two areas—abortion and gay rights. Bush opposed abortion; and he had innumerable times supported a proposed Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, an amendment that itself might be unconstitutional. In Ohio and Michigan, key states for both candidates, voters overwhelmingly reinforced bans not only against gay marriages, but also against rights of domestic partnerships. Nine other states also voted against gay marriages. Bush, a Methodist, like Edwards, also opposed his own church’s philosophy that gays should be allowed in the military, that the death penalty should be illegal, and that the war against Iraq should never have been launched. Kerry, a practicing Catholic, was pro-choice, and came from a state that had recently legalized gay marriage. That got the fundamental Catholic voters to unite with the conservative Christian Right, which usually doesn’t believe Catholics are “true Christians” anyway.

    However, if Catholics agreed with the Pope that abortion is wrong, that marriage is only between a man and a woman, they certainly didn’t agree with him in condemning the immoral war in Iraq that killed or wounded more than 10,000 American, and, perhaps, 100,000 others, most of them civilians.

    In their rush to judgment, most voters didn’t believe the President was immoral for accepting the views of corporate polluters over the views of environmentalists or that his policies would harm the nation’s wildlife. They didn’t think that “moral values” extended to the President’s decision to try to destroy a federal program to assist low income families get housing, or to helping the poor and marginalized, the underemployed and unemployed, and more than 45 million people who can’t afford health insurance. The President’s campaign staff managed to convince a nation, already gripped by fear, that an unjust war was moral, and that obscene war profits on no-bid contracts to the Vice-President’s former company was somehow spiritually in the national interest.

     The Rev. Jim Wallis correctly pointed out that the Religious Right “fought to keep the focus on gay marriage and abortion and even said that good Christians and Jews could only vote for [President Bush].” Wallis, editor of Sojourners, official magazine of a national organization that integrates spiritual renewal with social justice, argued, that moderate and progressive Christians “insisted that poverty is also a religious issue, pointing to thousands of verses in the Bible on the poor.” He pointed out, “the environment—protection of God’s creation—is also one of our religious concerns.” The Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, agreed. “The agenda of the church must always respond faithfully to the Bible’s timeless mandate to minister to the poor, the marginalized and the outcast; and to be seekers and makers of peace,” said Edgar. About 59 million Americans disagreed.

    “Long before there was a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson or even a Tom DeLay, there was a Martin Luther King Jr., a Dorothy Day, and an Abraham Heschel,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, at a “Faith and Progressive Policy” organizing forum. For King and millions of others, said Podesta, “justice and fairness in the community was inseparable from their faith in God.”

    The Christian Right may say they support the Constitution, but they select which parts of which Amendments they want to accept. They may preach the Ten Commandments, but they don’t follow all of them. And, most of all, by deciding to vote for a President primarily on the basis that he showboats his faith, and that he opposes abortion and gay marriage, while neglecting, opposing, or shredding dozens of other social issues, they have also said they don’t truly understand the Bible.

    A day after the election, with about 51 percent of the vote, President George W. Bush said he had “political capital” he intended to spend, that he had a “mandate” from the people. Perhaps this born-against-social-justice Christian and the people who are in rapture at his election might reflect upon Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” --posted 11.30.04

    [Walter Brasch's forthcoming book is America's Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (Peter Lang Publishing, January 2005). You may contact Brasch at Brasch@bloomu.edu, or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com. Rosemary R. Brasch assisted on this column.]

    So heal/heel if you want to—but it behooves those millions of Americans who disagreed before to do so even more vociferously now. Patriotic citizens need to be the nation’s watchdogs—we’ve allowed ourselves to be lapdogs too long.

    [Rosemary R. Brasch is a national disaster family services specialist for the Red Cross, and a former union grievance officer and university labor relations instructor. You may contact Brasch at espyrose@hotmail.com] -30-

AN UNCIVIL ADMINISTRATION

by Walter Brasch

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was furious. Once again, the Bush Administration managed to subvert not only American civil liberties, but the democratic process as well. Nadler, one of the nation’s leading advocates of social justice, and whose district includes the area where the World Trade Center once stood, called the Republican leadership “shameful,” their tactics “corrupt.”

“For all of their talk of patriotism, the Republicans showed something quite different,” said Nadler. It was nothing less than “an abuse of power more likely to be seen in a police state than in a democratic society,” he said. In the 15 minutes usually allocated to voting on an issue, the House apparently had passed legislation to cut off funding for enforcement of Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. Section 215, one of the most controversial sections of one of America’s most controversial laws, permits federal law enforcement, without going through the common judicial system, to grab “any tangible thing” in any investigation. This could include taking the sales records from bookstores, demanding from libraries the records of who checked out which book, and forcing internet service providers to release e-mails not just from suspects but from all persons the suspects contacted, thus dragging thousands of innocent persons into the FBI web. A “gag” order prohibits anyone from disclosing the FBI even asked for the information. In addition to liberals, thousands of prominent conservatives oppose the act. Among them are Newt Gingrich, former House speaker who engineered the mid-term Republican victory in 1994, and Bob Barr, a representative who was one of Bill Clinton’s harshest critics in impeachment hearings.

In March 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders had introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act (H.R. 1157) that would minimize or repeal Section 215; within a year it had more than 140 co-sponsors, extraordinarily high for any proposed legislation.

“One of the cornerstones of our democracy is our right of Americans to criticize their government and to read printed materials without fear of government monitoring and intrusion,” Sanders said at the time he submitted his bill. More than three dozen of the nation’s largest organizations of librarians, booksellers, journalists, and publishers filed a joint statement that declared their support for the proposed bill.

When it appeared it was stalled, Sanders and Reps. Nadler, John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), C. L. Otter (R-Idaho), and Ron Paul (R-Texas) tried another way to limit the PATRIOT Act. To the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Bill of 2005, they proposed an amendment to cut off funding to the Department of Justice for searches conducted under Section 215. The amendment didn’t diminish the government’s capacity to investigate possible terrorism. The federal government could still obtain records, as long as it went into a court of law and showed there was “probable cause” to request such records.

But, even if the amendment passed, it might only have been symbolic. In the Summer, the House passed legislation proposed by Otter, 309-118, to cut off funding for Section 213, the “sneak-and-peak” section that allows the government to raid a business or home, without the owner present, and to delay for months before even notifying them that materials were seized. The vote never moved forward in the Senate.

As with the Otter Amendment, it was unlikely the Senate would accept the House amendment about Section 215. Further, the Department of Justice could use the equally-restrictive National Security Letters, which weren’t subject of the amendment prohibition, to gain access to records; or, it could also manipulate its own budget in several ways to disguise use of funding to enforce Section 215, especially since the Department has an obstructionist attitude, except when it was politically beneficial to the Bush Administration, to release of any data about enforcement of that section.

What the Republican leadership did with the Sanders amendment was indicative of the Administration’s tactics. A day before the vote, the President’s budget office sent a memo to House members warning them if they passed anything to weaken the PATRIOT Act, the President would veto the $39.8 billion bill. It would be the first veto in the President’s term.

By the end of the 15-minute voting period, even with the President’s assurances of a veto, the amendment had 219 votes for passage, 201 against. But, the Republican leadership at that point held the voting open for an additional 23 minutes while Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), House majority leader, and his aides, bullied Republicans into changing their votes. (The House leadership had previously extended a vote by three hours to arm-twist members to reverse their vote opposing the President’s Medicare package.)

Among the tactics on the Section 215 amendment, the leadership suddenly produced a letter written by the Department of Justice that claimed a member of a terrorist group tied to al-Qaeda used the Internet at a public library. There were no specifics. Since the Department of Justice continually claimed it had “no interest” in going to libraries, how it learned of computer use at a library leads one to question if the Department lied to the people or if it lied to the Congress. The final vote, a 210-210 tie, doomed the amendment.

In public statements, members of Congress expressed the same outrage as Jerry Nadler. “You win some, some get stolen,” Otter, a conservative Republican, said. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) the House minority leader, lashed out at “Republican leaders [who] once again undermined democracy,” and declared them to be “thoroughly un-American.” Sanders called the vote “an outrage” and “an insult to democracy.”

Another representative was even more hostile to the tactics of the House leadership: “[It is] the most heavy-handed, arrogant abuse of power in the 10 years I have been here. . . . [The Speaker of the House is] a heavy-handed son of a bitch and he doesn’t know any other way to operate, and he will do anything he can to win at any price. There is no sense of comity left.”

However, it wasn’t July 2004 but October 1987, and the profane-enhanced tirade was directed not against current Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) but against Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas), who had briefly adjourned the House to allow time to “convince” a couple of Democrats to switch their votes on a pending budget bill. The man who had scoured Wright, identified by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) after the vote on Section 215, was Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyoming)—the same Dick Cheney who, with George W. Bush, campaigned on a mantra of bringing civility back to the White House, and who less than a month before the vote on Section 215, in the Senate of the United States, told Patrick Leahy to do something anatomically impossible to himself.

One thousand American soldiers are now dead; more than 5,000 are wounded, some permanently disabled, because of Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction poised to attack America, where terrorists really were being protected, and of his egotistical belief that he is the world’s commander-in-chief. This administration’s policies about the underclass, the environment, health care, worker rights, and dozens of other critical and important domestic issues, has done far more to destroy this nation, and the respect of the Oval office than anything Bill Clinton ever did. The tactics used against an amendment to restore civil liberties is indicative of why this Administration doesn’t deserve a second term. --posted 07.30.04

[Walter Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, is an award-winning journalist and author. A chapter about the PATRIOT Act appears in the recently-published “Big Bush Lies” (RiverWood Books), edited by Jerry ‘Politex’ Barrett. Brasch’s 14th book, to be published about November by Peter Lang Publishing, is “America’s Unpatriotic Acts; The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights.” You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu

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The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.