"Mr. Ashcroft is...a man of cramped vision, unyielding attitudes and limited tolerance for those who disagree with him. His actions on racial matters alone are enough to give one pause. As Missouri's attorney general, he opposed even a voluntary school desegregation plan in metropolitan St. Louis. He also conducted a mean-spirited and dishonest campaign against Ronnie White, Missouri's first black State Supreme Court justice, when Justice White was nominated for a federal judgeship. Mr. Ashcroft claimed, erroneously, that Justice White was soft on the death penalty. As an added insult, Mr. Ashcroft also accepted an honorary degree last year from Bob Jones University, a bastion of the Christian right with a history of racial discrimination.Mr. Ashcroft has been one of the Senate's most adamant opponents of a woman's right to choose an abortion. During his political career in Missouri, he sought to criminalize abortion, and he has consistently supported an extreme constitutional amendment that would ban abortion even in the case of rape or incest. Mr. Ashcroft has a poor record on church-state issues and on gay rights, and a dismal record on the environment. There is thus reason to wonder how vigorously he will help Mrs. Whitman enforce environmental laws." --New York Times Editorial, 12/23/00. Image by Shining Shakti.

Remember Ralph Nader's plea that there is no difference between Gore and Bush? Would Gore have selected New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman to head the EPA? We think not. Bush selected her because she agrees with him on how to deal with industrial polluters. Just talk nice to them and they will be sure to come around. Uh-huh. We're still waiting for it to happen in Texas and now, under Whitman, we'll be waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Thanks, Ralph. Here's what the New York Times said in the same editorial noted above: Whitman " slashed the budget for environmental law enforcement and stopped levying meaningful fines against big polluters. That pro- business mind-set will be disastrous if continued in her new job, as will her oft-repeated but naïve faith in "voluntary" compliance with environmental laws. As Mrs. Whitman will discover, there will be times when negotiating skills simply don't suffice. She must be willing to enforce the law in the face of relentless pressure, not only from the big interest groups but from her superiors in the White House." Right. Could you imagine Whitman crossing Bush on the environment? In short. Whitman has become Bush's hitman. --Politex, 12/23/00. Photo. Governor Whitman smiles as she pats down a black man in a Jersey police stop.

Now that the election is over, the social prejudices that make up Bush's view of the world are beginning to crawl out from under his head. There's little doubt, now, that with the nomination of Sen. John Ashcroft as Attorney-General and Governor Tommy Thompson as head of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Christian Coalition and their ilk have been rewarded for all those months of keeping their mouths shut so as not to alarm those moderate voters that Bush needed to get Scalia to declare him the winner in the 5-4 Supreme Court decision. For those with short memories, please recall that Ashcroft decided not to run in the Republican presidential primaries, being to the right of Gary Bauer on social values, not to mention his ugly responses to the nominations of judges who happen to be black. As for Tommy Thompson, his anti-abortion, anti-welfare, and anti-women attitudes as expressed during his tenure in Wisconsin suggests that he is as obsessed with placing social restrictions upon citizens as Bush has been in Texas. There, Dr. Archer, son of the ultra-right Republican Congressman, ended up resigning in disgrace as a result of his restrictive, Christian Coalition social obsessions. (Dr. Archer also was responsible for Poppy's abortion education restrictions at federal clinics during the previous Bush administration.) Based on Bush's selection of two administrators who have members of the Christian Coalition jumping up and down in glee, it's clear that he doesn't intend to be a social moderate as president. Those who disagree might point to his nomination of pro-choice Governor Christine Todd Whitman as his EPA head, but that's clearly window-dressing, since few believe that an interest in the reproductive lives of spotted owls and lizards has much to do with their social rights as human beings. --Politex, 12/22/00

"Today, you begin your last month in office....To make a final point about the sacredness of everyone's vote, you could make Al Gore -- not George W. Bush -- the 43rd president of the United States! That's right, you can make the will of the people a reality. And it's legal. Just resign a couple days early. Al, according to the Constitution, automatically becomes president. As I have said for years, it matters little which one of you Republicrats is in the Oval Office, so what the heck! Actually, the one thing we will miss about you is your sense of humor. Give us all a good laugh and force Baby Bush into having to succeed Al Gore. Make him have to physically take the legitimate reigns of power from the actual winner of the election into his illegitimate hands!" --Michael Moore, 12/21/00

E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
Phone: 202-456-1414
Fax: 202-456-2461

...............

"Groups representing gays and women in the military expressed alarm yesterday over the possible nomination of former senator Daniel R. Coats (R-Ind.) as George W. Bush's defense secretary, which aides to the president-elect have indicated could be announced today....Coats's voting record [is] among the most conservative in the Senate, on a par with those of Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.)." --Wash. Post, 12/20/00

A BUSH WATCHER WRITES...Love Bushwatch, but didn't like tabloid coverage of the wild Bush daughter. Let's not stoop to the level of the GOP over the last eight years (let's get close to that level, just not quite as low as to pick on their children).

POLITEX RESPONDS...Forget the tabloid story in the National Enquirer, published earlier this month, it's Bush who brought his kids into play by telling the nation that his reason for hiding his DWI was he didn't want to teach his kids a bad lesson. This is blaming his political hypocrisy on his kids. Can't stoop any lower than that. It's important to see Bush for the liar and hypocrite that he is. Obviously, his kids could have dealt with his DWI. This means he lied to the nation and hid behind his kids. Can't get any lower than that, can you? As our President, what kind of a lesson is he teaching to our parents and children? As a point of comparison, Clinton has never hidden behind his daughter when things got tough for him. As is so often the case with Bush, what he says and what he does are two different things. We need to understand that. This man will say ANYTHING to win. Isn't it obvious that he has no respect for language? 12/20/00

"The Miami Herald has hired an accounting firm to check ballots on which no vote was recorded in all 67 counties. And the [Orlando] Sentinel on Tuesday published the first outside study of a county's ballots -- which revealed that Vice President Al Gore lost a net of 130 votes that were clearly intended for him in the GOP stronghold of Lake County but weren't counted." --OS, 12/20/00

Mr. Culver, According to the election results I've seen, more of the country shares my politics than shares yours. But if you consider me a socialist, there's no point in discussing politics with you. If there's a way we could help you to stop listening, let us know. There must be a way to lock your FM dial onto another station.

Dear Garrison, I write to protest your "slur" in last evening's (12/10/00) program--in the suggestion that George W. "thought Colin Powell was a waiter." Your flippant attribution of a simplistic racism to "W" was, in my opinion, tasteless and unbefitting your stature among us. I've/We've no desire to impose a wooden political correctness on your humor. But this, we respectfully suggest, crossed the line. I'd be pleased to hear your thoughts.-- Bob (and Phyllis) Schultz

Dear Bob and (Phyllis), I stand by the joke. It's racism that's tasteless, not jokes about it. The Republican party has risen to power by successfully harnessing the racial resentments of white males, and Governor Bush's devotion to the execution of Texans (predominantly minority) without benefit of competent legal defense is deeply racist. It's a moral blight on that state and then for Governor Bush to exploit Colin Powell in his campaign invites that very joke that offended you. I'd be ashamed of myself if I had excised that joke. -- Garrison Keillor12/2000

"Bush came to the field with less experience in public life than just about anyone in a century and proceeded to take in more money in his first four months of campaigning than anyone had ever raised in two years.... The candidate with the perfect bloodlines comes to office amid charges that his is a bastard presidency, sired not by the voters but by the courts....Bush campaigned for a year against partisan politics — and that was before partisanship became so poisonous that it polluted every institution of government. The man who talked less about what he would do than how he would do it finds that his bet has been called. You promise to be a uniter, not a divider? Here is a broken, cloven polity. You promise to change the tone? We can't bear to listen anymore to the rancor of the past five weeks....But there's more. Bush staged the most inclusive Republican Convention in memory, surrounded himself at every chance with poor schoolchildren whom he promised he would not leave behind — and in the end won a smaller percentage of the African-American vote than any Republican since Barry Goldwater. The comics joked that he won 100% of the black vote where it mattered most — on the Supreme Court.... He can staple Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to his side, but it won't change the fact that 40% of the African Americans who went to the polls in Florida were new voters, and many wonder whether their votes were even counted. --Nancy Gibbs, 12/17/00

"O.K., he's not the brightest porch light on the block. Get over it. I frankly don't expect much from him; neither do you; and that's the best thing he has going for him. If he so much as clears a matchbox, we'll all fall back in wonder....It is true that Bush has difficulty expressing himself in the English language. On the other hand, you can usually tell what he meant to say. His daddy was often perfectly impenetrable.... Bush is a little vague on a lot of things. Yes, we are looking at a steep learning curve. The worst moment of the 36-day Long Count was probably when Bush, attempting to "look presidential," held a mock Cabinet meeting, in the course of which he observed in an appallingly chipper manner, "There are issues in Israel right now that I'm looking forward to hearing about."

"Here is the great unanswerable question: Exactly how ideologically right wing is George W. Bush? You can find evidence suggesting he is and suggesting he isn't. You can find a lot of evidence that he talks out of both sides of his mouth. When Bush started out as Governor of Texas, many of his appointments were enough to make your hair hurt, especially on the environment, and he tried to sell some policy ideas that were flatly ridiculous — privatizing welfare, privatizing pollution control....Because W. Bush is not terribly interested in public policy, what we've often seen in Texas is staff-driven policy. And I am not that impressed with the staff. To my certain knowledge, one politically costly and inhumane veto was prompted by a staff member so ignorant of the actual conditions the guy should have been summarily fired. (This happened to be on providing legal counsel for poor folks accused of crimes: our state has a system so miserable we actually execute innocent people.) The staff member was such a fool that his entire argument depended upon reactions from Houston judges, who get their campaign contributions from the current system. You can't count on Bush to see through a thing like that." --Molly Ivins, 12/17/00

In only a few days, Bush has set the tone for his administration. He says what it takes to get the backing of the American people, then he does pretty much the opposite. While Bush is talking bipartisanship, just as he did as governor, his actions are highly partisan, just as they were as governor. Keep in mind that most Democrats in Texas are like Republicans elsewhere. Thus, it's not surprising that Bush has tried to get near-Republican John Breux into his cabinet. Besides, his real purpose in his failed attempt to get Breaux was to destroy the Democrat co-control of the 50-50 Senate. What he wants to do is to pick off Dem members of the Congress to strengthen his Republican legislative hand while claiming to be bipartisan. Deceitful? You bet, but no more deceitful than what he's done in Texas during his six year tenure, and no more deceitful than in his acceptance speech the other night. His first message of fake bi-partisanship was delivered in the chamber of the Texas House. He picked the legislative setting, which is controlled by Democrats, as a symbol of bipartisanship, but the only Democrats he invited to his speech were Republicrats who actively backed him during his presidential campaign. While the House Republicans were all invited, most of the Dems were pointedly not.

Calling the Bush team's failure to invite Democrats "phony" and "hypocritical," Democratic State Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, said , "[Bush] speaks of being a bipartisan guy, but I think certainly the majority of Democrats in the Texas House would not consider him a bipartisan. He tends to be bipartisan when you agree with him." According to reporter Jake Tapper, "Bailey says there's just under 10 or so conservative Democrats in the state House and Bush 'uses them as window dressing to claim bipartisanship while the overwheming majority of Democrats are just left out in the cold.'...'It shows you how good that they are at presenting impressions,' adds [Garnet] Coleman, vice chairman of the Texas House's public health committee and a member of the appropriations committee. 'The impression was that the Legislature -- more than half the members of which are Democrats -- were standing there and applauding him. But that is an incorrect impression,' Coleman says. 'It was an image of solidarity. But the reality is, it wasn't solidarity from the standpoint that Democratic members of the Legislature who did not receive an invitation or were not invited were not part of the applauding crowd.'...

"Bush indeed made a big show out of his being in a house of Democrats. After being introduced by Democrat Speaker of the House Pete Laney, Bush referred to the chamber as 'a place where Democrats have the majority, Republicans and Democrats have worked together to do what is right for the people we represent. We had spirited disagreements, and in the end, we found constructive consensus,' Bush said. 'It is an experience I will always carry with me, and an example I will always follow. The spirit of cooperation I have seen in this hall is what is needed in Washington, D.C.'... But Coleman says that this is just how "bidness" is done in Texas, where committee chairmen could be members of either party. "That's the tradition of Texas governors," Coleman said. "It was the tradition under [former Gov.] Anne Richards. You have to reach across party lines. The committee chairs who make decisions on your proposals could be a Democrat or could be a Republican. That's the fallacy of the whole argument that [Bush] understands how to reach across lines."

"But Democrats who have been critical of Bush and supportive of Vice President Al Gore didn't get invitations to Wednesday night's speech. In addition to Coleman and Bailey, other Democratic representatives less eager to work with Bush -- like Rep. Elliot Naishtat, chair of the human services committee; Rep. Yvonne Davis, chair of local and consent calendars; Rep. Tracy King; and Rep. Manny Najera, sources say, all failed to receive invitations to the bipartisan love-in last night in their own workplace...'If they would have had it at a campaign headquarters, or out on the street, or in the governor's mansion I wouldn't have expected to have been invited,' [Dem Rep.Glen] Maxey says. 'But if the point was to show the nature of the bipartisanship that happens in the Texas Legislature, they should have issued an invitation to everybody, not just the people who worked on their campaign or a few selected Democrats.' Najera, a Democrat from El Paso, says he 'certainly' would like to have been invited to the speech, but wasn't surprised when he wasn't. On Election Night, he attempted to enter a Bush event that he had tickets for, but was turned away at the door by a Department of Public Safety officer who told him, he says, 'that this function is for George Bush supporters only.' 'Maybe they didn't get to our level' when it came to doling out the seats, Najera says. "I can't imagine how many friends have come out of the woodwork -- look at the amount of money the president-elect was able to raise. I imagine he more or less had to -- I don't want to use the word 'cater' -- but to invite them. Maybe it got full."' Others are less forgiving. 'Regarding the many of us who were not invited to his speech last night in the House chamber, I hope that soon-to-be President Bush is more generous when he invites members of the Texas Legislature of both parties to visit him at the White House,' says Naishtat. 'And my sentiments are similar in respect to his efforts to reach out to Democratic members of Congress. I hope he is more inclusive than he was last night.'" Don't hold your breath. --Politex, 12/16/00

by Jerry Politex

I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Che Zee.

Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car, the turbines winding down, and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait.

He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms.

"Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Politex. Good description."

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