The 10 Ways Bush Screwed New York
A presidential potpourri of cuts, blunders, stonewalls, deceptions, and distractions
by Wayne Barrett, special reporting by Daniel Magliocco
The Ten Worst Ways Bush Has Hurt Us
1 Will any convention speaker dare mention the name of Osama bin Laden? What ever happened to Bush's cowboy threat to "smoke 'em" out? Osama, Omar, and Ayman al-Zawhiri became instant and explicit "Wanted Dead or Alive" Bush targets after 9-11, but when the Pentagon came up with a card deck of the hunted, the faces were all Iraqi. The RNC is still replaying the president's bullhorned GZ promise that "the people who knocked down these buildings" would "hear all of us soon," and the president and wife are even now airing a commercial that vows to bring "an enemy to justice before they hurt us again." Who knew when Bush was strapping on that holster three years ago that High Noon would require a second term? Or is Jeb going to get 'em after 2008?
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2 Why was Bush so afraid of a 9-11 investigation? As recently as last week's interview with Larry King, Bush tried to tap-dance around his record of resistance to the 9-11 Commission. It was a lie, reliant, as always, on the assumption that no one under a klieg light would make an issue of it. Tom Daschle, who was Senate majority leader in 2002, says Dick Cheney called him and "expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism." Bush's revisionist press guru, Karen Hughes, tried to insist on a March Meet the Press that Bush only had "concerns" about a probe, adding, "I don't know that the president ever opposed the creation of it." The families know better. Monica Gabrielle, whose insurance broker husband died in the attack, said: "The White House is blocking everything." Photogenic presidential hugger John McCain knows better. He said Bush tried to "slow-walk and stonewall it."
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3 Was the Bush team awake in the nine months before the attack? The press, always seeking balance, has apparently decided that if Bill Clinton was out to lunch on Al Qaeda, then Dubya's vacationing vacillation is not news. But Clinton is not seeking four more years. With CIA director George Tenet telling the commission that "the system was blinking red," the White House appears in the report as glazed as it did the first seven minutes after the second plane hit.
...snip
8 Bush has left most New York children behind. Congressman Anthony Weiner has calculated that the administration has shortchanged the city by $2.5 billion through cuts in the five key education programs funded under the Bush schools initiative, No Child Left Behind. NCLB hasn't just hurt the pocketbook, it's also forced traumatic overcrowding by widening parental choice, damaging high-performing schools and emptying low-performing ones.
More:
http://villagevoice.com/specials/0543,50thbarrett2,69312,31.html(I won't ruin this by posting #10. :) )
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