At the Democratic Convention on Wednesday Al Gore honored the memories of two 1998 hate crime victims, Matthew Shepherd, the gay man from Wyoming, Mr. Cheney's "home" state, who was beaten to death while tied to a fence, and James Byrd, Jr., the black man from Texas who was dragged to death from a chain behind a pick-up truck. Dennis and Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepherd's parents, and Renee Byrd Mullins, James Byrd, Jr.'s daughter, were members of a panel devoted to crime and victim's rights, an issue that Gore promises to focus on if he becomes president.

Shepherd and Byrd have been linked together as victims of hate crimes ever since their killings. In April of this year, Shepherd and Byrd survivors met at the Millenium March on Washington for Equality, a civil-rights demonstration. But one year earlier, Renee Byrd Mullins observed first-hand that the well-publicized talk of Governor George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is a sham, a political play on words that has little meaning in the real world of Bush politics.

At the time of her ten-minute meeting with Bush in the solemnity of the Governor's Office in the Texas State Capitol, Mullins had come to Austin to lobby for a hate crimes bill that had been proposed by a Democratic legislator. Although the bill had passed the Dem House, Mullins had the opportunity to visit with Bush prior to a vote in the Republican Senate. Texas had a vague, toothless hate crimes law passed by a previous Democratic legislature and signed into law by Bush's Democratic predecessor, and Bush was determined that if he couldn't eliminate it, at least he could prevent if from being strengthened. First, the Governor let it be known in the Senate that he did not want the bill to reach his desk. (Republican senators who had previously voted for hate crimes legislation were told that the Governor wanted a "no" vote.) Then Bush did what he often does in such instances, he told the press that since the matter is being considered by the legislature, in order to be fair he would not comment upon it until it reached his desk. Given Bush's willingness to get behind bills that benefit his corporate friends, it's clear that his "fairness" is as selective as his "compassion."

Bush wanted to kill the proposed hate crimes bill, which was more specific about penalities as well as groups covered, such as homosexuals. First, he thought of the bill as affirmative action legislation, and he was on record as being against affirmative action bills. Secondly, for the first time a proposed bill of its kind specifically included gays, and his Christian Coalition backers were against that. Looking ahead to his run for president, it made good political sense to Bush not to rile his limited number of African-American backers by reminding them of his position on affirmative action. Later, after the bill was killed by the Senate, it became convenient to have his spokesmen in the Lege report that the bill would have passed if not for the inclusion of homosexuals in its language. This was a calculated, convenient excuse. Remember, though, when Byrd's daughter visited Bush, the Senate had not had its way with the hate crimes bill passed by the Dem House, and Bush was anxious to get it killed.

A pregnant Renee Byrd Mullins was able to get a short meeting with Bush through the help of Texas Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston), who accompanied her to the meeting. Later, the specifics of the meeting were reported by Mullins to Newsday columnist Marie Cocco, whose story of the meeting was published in the Austin American-Statesman on 2/14/00. "It didn't feel [like] a good greeting I had a very short handshake. In his essence, he was saying, 'OK, tell me what you want and get out.'... He's a very hard person. He had a wall built up before I even got in there."

Bush told Mullins that he hadn't looked at the hate crimes bill but "he said he would look at it when it came out of the Senate." Here, Cocco adds that Mullins already knew that Bush had instructed the Republican Senate to vote the bill down. At that point, "Mullins took out her own copy of the legislation. She placed it on a table in front of Bush. He didn't pick it up. She recounted her father's death, asked Bush if she were a homosexual, would she deserve to die?" She began to cry.

"The Governor did not offer a glass of water. Or a Kleenex. [Rep. Thompson] said she waited to see what Bush would do. Then she dug out an exra tissue and walked across the room to offer it to Mullins. Bush offered Mullins and her family his condolences." While Bush has attended a funeral service for white victims of a Fort Worth hate crime, he did not attend the funeral service for James Byrd, Jr., nor did he visit the family at any time. He claims he called the family once, but the family says it never received any such call.

At the end of the Cocco story, the columnist points to Bush's behavior as a failure of leadership: "Bush runs on his record of leadership in Texas, saying it shows the world he would serve the nation well. Mullin's story is about how Bush showed leadership at that instant when the eyes of the world were upon him, but really could not see." We see Bush's behavior differently. While the idea of hate crimes legislation is open to debate, hate crimes is not what this story is about. It's about the maturity of a politician and it happened last year, not when he was "young and foolish." In his callous treatment of Renee Byrd Mullins, Bush showed the world that votes are more important to him than people. While he talks "compassion" in front of the camera, in the privacy of his own office he is anything but compassionate. --Politex, 8/16/00

Bush Has Lost LOVE, HOPE, and FAITH. Has He Earned Our Trust?

"LOVE died. POWER failed. HOPE was abandoned, and FAITH just faded away," writes Mary Alice Davis in the 8/13 AAS. "These optimistically named schools were among seven that relinquished or lost their state charters in these wobbly first years of the [Bush] charter school experiment. Last year, Texas had about 140 charter schools, the hybrid institutions that since 1995 have used public money to operate as loosely regulated public schools with the independent attitudes of private facilities. The number is likely to rise to 175 this school year, with about 25,000 students who have eschewed public or private schools to see if tuition-free, state-chartered, alternative education suits them. It's the nation's fourth-largest charter experiment. So far, the results have been generally disappointing, occasionally heartbreaking and, in a few well-publicized [by Bush] instances, heartwarming." For example, when Bush wanted to publicize his support of charter schools, recently, he went to the successful KIPP Academy in Houston, and abandoned all discussion of LOVE, POWER, HOPE, and FAITH. The failure of the latter charter schools represent the rule in Texas. KIPP is the exception.

Take the Emma L. Harrison Charter School of Waco, not too many miles from Bush's new ranch in Crawford, Texas. "After the debt-ridden school abruptly closed in late 1999, about 90 percent of the school's pupils had to repeat their grade, estimates Bob Browning, the veteran educator the state dispatched to monitor the situation. He found a school with no governing body, insufficient food for children's lunches, untrained teachers who hadn't been paid in months, unpaid bills and a whiff of fraud. Inflated attendance figures had been used to wrest significant overpayments from the state and $300,000 had been spent -- in the educator's delicate phrase -- 'on areas not germane to instructional services.'"

Here are the conclusions based on surveys and presented last week to a Texas House subcommittee looking at the performance of Bush's charter school system:

"* Charters are touted as a way to rescue children the public schools would assign to "failing" institutions with sorry test scores. But data presented to the committee by researcher Catherine Clark showed that most often children are sent to charter schools with even lower scores.

* Charters are more "racially distinct" than the schools their pupils left. Children from all ethnic groups gravitate to charter schools in which their group is more predominant than at their previous schools.

* Mobility among charter students is high. More than half the students don't return. Dropout rates at charters dramatically exceed state averages.

* Staff turnover at charter schools is higher than the state average, and pay is below average. Accreditation is uncommon.

* Data comparing groups of similar students [was used] to contrast performance in charter schools with that in nearby conventional schools. In four cases out of five, performance was worse in the charter schools.'The public schools show better results, any way you slice it,'" the chairman of the subcommittee said.

There are two obvious problems with Bush's charter school program. First, it was hastily put together under the direction of the Governor's office to satisfy the pressure put upon him by the voucher/anti-public school forces who support him politically and contribute handsomely to his campaigns. Like too many other plans initiated by Bush, not only was it done under political pressure, but it also avoided providing oversight and safeguards. Secondly, the charter program is, in effect, one more attempt to privatize a part of the governmental system that does not lend itself to privatization, thus creatiing a solution with more problems than it solves. "The state doesn't limit the total number of charters -- although the data suggest a slowdown would be prudent. To fuel growth in charter schools, management companies are being created to site and run schools. Officials of two, ABS Management Co. and Advantage Management Co., addressed lawmakers last week. [The House subcommittee chariman] summarized the corporate approach as similar to locating a new convenience store: Do the demographics, zero in on a likely market and find someone to create and market a school there.... LOVE, POWER, HOPE and FAITH have faded. CAUTION shouldn't." When you model an educational system after a convenience store, you end up with what is most often found at convenience stores--gas, junk food, overpriced services, and underpaid workers. --Politex, 8/14/00

Troubling News About the Bush Charter School Program

Bush's Texas "experiment with the public-private hybrids called charter schools is producing disappointing results. A report submitted to legislators this week showed that, in general, students fare poorly at the state's charter schools, which now number about 175. The lawmakers also heard grim descriptions of havoc created when a mismanaged charter school closes its doors with little warning....Survey data from the Texas Center for Educational Research indicate that, generally, charter school test scores are inferior to those of the schools their students left. The data also show that charter school teachers are poorly trained and underpaid, that turnover rates for staff and students are high and that dropout rates at charters are nearly 15 times the statewide average. Dunnam said he found particularly significant the study's paired comparisons of similar groups -- children in charter schools compared to a specific peer group in a nearby traditional school. In four of the five cases studied, academic performance at the charters was worse than at the comparison school. "This is a direct `apples to apples' comparison that we've not seen before," said Dunnam, chair of a House education subcommittee on charters.

"Proponents tout charters as an escape route from low-performing public schools, an option particularly vital to disadvantaged minority groups. The schools are said to offer the advantages of private institutions, but with no tuition. Parents told researchers they chose charters in search of moral-values instruction, higher test scores and better discipline. What they find may not be what they sought, said researcher Catherine Clark, attempting to explain why 65 percent of students enrolled in charter schools for at-risk students didn't return. "Charters may not be what they expected," she said. They may not be what taxpayers and legislators expected, either. The experiment is still new, having begun in Texas [by Bush] in 1995, and research should continue. Meanwhile, the state must pick up the pieces when fledgling charters fail and firmly discourage those who view schools as places to make a quick profit off tax money." --Austin American-Statesman, 8/10/00

Troubling News About George P. Bush

"George P. Bush might be a hunkalicious young Republican [as he talks to Latino groups in his uncle's name], but he still seems a bit creepy. So TSG wasn't too surprised to learn that "P" was involved in a troubling 1994 incident described in this Metro-Dade Police Department report. On December 31, 1994, Bush showed up at 4 AM at the Miami home of a former girlfriend. He proceeded to break into the house via the woman's bedroom window, and then began arguing with his ex's father. Bush, then a Rice University student, soon fled the scene. But he returned 20 minutes later to drive his Ford Explorer across the home's front lawn, leaving wide swaths of burned grass in his wake. Young Bush avoided arrest when the victims declined to press charges." read the Miami-Dade County Police Report

Can a Jew Go to Heaven? George W. Bush Answered "No" in 1994

"Until Bush backed off this position after Billy Graham told him it was a decision for God, not governors, it was unsettling news for Jews, Muslims, and believers in any faiths other than the Christian — perhaps even for backsliding Christians." (more)

Bush joked to reporters about his '94 answer a year or so ago, prior to a trip to the Middle East. According to stories in the Austin American-Statesman, he told reporters that he planned to stop in Israel and tell the Jews they were all going to hell. An exchange of messages between Bush and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League followed. While no one has accused Bush of anti-Semitism, there have been comments about his insensitivity, both toward the Jews and his own family. A Jewish reporter said Bush's remarks were quite upsetting to his son. No one in the Bush family has commented, but there's little doubt that Bush has touched a sore spot in family history.

According to a story in the Albian Monitor,"Prescott Bush, the father of the former President and the grandfather of the current candidate, spent more than a decade helping his father-in-law George Herbert Walker finance Adolf Hitler from the Wall Street bank, Union Banking Corporation. (Union Banking Corp. was eventually seized under the Trading With The Enemy Act. See Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248; Filed, November 6, 1942, 11:31 A.M.; 7 Fed. Reg. 9097 (Nov. 7, 1942).) Walker was one of Hitler's most powerful supporters in the United States, and landed Prescott Bush a job as a director at the firm. From 1924 to 1936, Bush's bank invested heavily in Nazi Germany, selling $50 million of German bonds to American investors. In 1934, a congressional investigation believed that Walker's Hamburg-America Line subsidized a wide range of pro-Nazi efforts in both Germany and the United States. One of Walker's employees, Dan Harkins, delivered testimony to Congressional leaders regarding Walker's Nazi sympathies and business transactions. According to US Government Vesting Order No. 248, many of Union Banking's assets had been operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had been used to support the German war effort. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian vested the Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares and also issued two other Vesting Orders (nos. 259 and 261) to seize two other Nazi-influenced organizations managed by Bush's bank: Holland American Trading Corporation and Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. Many major firms had dealings with Nazis in the years leading up to World War II, but relatively few engaged in such extended cooperation with Hitler's Germany after Pearl Harbor. (The Secret War Against The Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons. New York; St. Martins Press, 1994.) "

More recently, both George W. Bush and his father, the former President, had been forced to deal with anti-Semitism in Poppy's campaign, according to the Albian Monitor story: "Nazism was more than a joke to George Bush when he was running for President.... In the fall of 1988, Vice President Bush had to fire several neo-Nazis and anti-Semites from his Presidential campaign. The scandal erupted when Washington Jewish Week and other media outlets discovered that the Bush campaign harbored well known neo-Nazis, including Jerome Brentar, a holocaust revisionist who claims that the Nazis never deliberately gassed victims of the Holocaust, and Akselis Mangulis, who was involved in the SS-influenced Latvian Legion during World War II.8 George W. Bush, the campaign's hatchet man, fired the Nazis.... After the election, four of these came back to work for the Republican Party according to USA Today. (Old Nazis, The New Right And The Republican Party by Russ Bellant. Boston, MA; South End Press, 1991.)...In September of 1999, when many Republicans were calling for Pat Buchanan to resign from the Party for his seeming affection for Hitler and criticism of the US actions during World War II, the presidential front-runner remained silent."

With George W. Bush's insensitive remarks and the Bush family history as background, one would hope that the Republican candidate for president will practice his newly-found maturity and be particularly wary of , in his words, the "soft prejudice" of callous remarks, wherever he may find them. --Politex, 8/8/00

SMOKING GUN? $173 MILLION IN FED FUNDS FOR CHILDRENS' WELFARE SHIFTED INTO GENERAL FUNDS (AGAINST FEDERAL REGULATIONS) TO COVER PART OF BUSH $1.7 BILLION TAX CUT.

As of today, the Texas Legislature, with the advice and consent of the Bush Governor's Office, has spent $11 million in Federal money to shift an additional $162 million in Federal money into Bush's tax cut account, upon which Bush has built his presidential campaign. And since the Legislature broke Federal guidelines in doing so, it might very well cost Texas taxpayers another $173 million, all, ultimately, for Bush's presidential campaign. The initial $11 million was spent to free up $162 million that would normally fund Texas children's programs. This money, already lost and not used for tax cuts, could have paid for health insurance for over 10,000 kids who are in need of it right now. --Politex, 7/31/00 (more)

Records show legislators admit that if their plan was unacceptable to the Feds after the fact, they would stall until the 2001 session. Meanwhile they would face a "potentially hobbling state government with a monumental budget shortfall." They were willing to risk all of this to provide Governor Bush with the largest tax cut possible to be used as a presidential campaign issue. What did Bush know and when did he know it? --Politex, 7/27/00 --((more))

"I did the right thing. It's a little early to project the amount of money the Legislature will be dealing with, and as you know I hope I'm not here to deal with it. I'm seeking another office." --Governor George W. Bush, on the effect of his tax cuts on the Texas budget. 7/13/00

"If you asked me, life or death, 'You've got to tell me how big the tax cut is, that George is proposing,' I couldn't tell you. I don't give a damn. Because I'm out of it. I'm out of it." --ex-President Bush, recent NYT interview

While the Dems are getting ready to attack Dick Cheney's Sec. of Defense record of opposition to gays in the military, Mary Cheney, his 31 year-old daughter has recently quit her job as a corporate relations manager for the gay and lesbian community at, of all places, Coors Beer. (The Coors family publicly espouses the most conservative values in the beer industry.) Mr. Cheney has been quoted as saying, ""I have operated on the basis over the years with respect to my personal staff that I don't ask them about their private lives. As long as they perform their professional responsibilities in a responsible manner, their private lives are their business." While Mary Cheney has been a subject of concern within the Bush camp, Bush, himself, has yet to comment upon it. According to one report, a Bush spokesman said this week, ""The governor believes Mr. Cheney has a wonderful family. Being gay or lesbian is not a liability in this campaign. The governor embraces both of Mr. Cheney’s daughters and will invite them to campaign with him." Like nephew Pea's exclusive campaigning among Hispanics, openly gay Mary Cheney would be used exclusively to campaign within the gay and lesbian community. While word of these circumstances has not yet reached Governor Bush's "Bob Jones" voting bloc, we await their responses to this latest turn of events.--Politex, 7/26/00 (Photo. Lynn Cheney, right, with her two daughters, Mary, left, and Elizabeth, center.)

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