Why
Kerry, not Bush in 2004?
By
Jeanie Warner
The
best way to decide who should be President is to compare candidates.
In Bush's case, if we look at what he has actually done since 2000,
it is clear that his actions are quite different from what his words.
His record
is also quite different from what the right wing radio, Fox News
and Free Republic would tell you. Most of what Bushs ads and
literature has said about Kerry is twisted or down right false.
Bush has been shown to be less than honest in cherry picking intelligence
to build a case for attacking Iraq. And in his campaigns against
his opponents in 2000 and in 2004, he has been proven not to know
what the truth is all about. I don't trust what he might do in the
next 4 years at all.
I see a record
surplus turned into a record deficit, most of it gone to rebates
to the top 1% of taxpayers. I see the tax burden being shifted to
the middle class. I see our environment being trashed, Mercury in
our rivers and streams going up, safeguards against strip mining
and clear cutting in forests are wrecked, our energy policy being
made in secret meetings and favoring the energy companies, not the
public's health and welfare.
Bush can't
afford to keep any of the promises he has made this year because
of the gigantic tax breaks for the very wealthiest and for corporations.
But then he didn't keep many of his year 2000 promises either.
I see the war
on terrorism and the search for Bin laden mostly abandoned in order
to attack Iraq (not in my opinion a necessary war), yet homeland
security is terribly under funded. I see porous borders. I see that
55% of all the world terrorism since 9/11 has been this year, which
means terrorism is on the rise, NOT, as Bush claims, under control
at all. We are not safer since Bush.
I see No child
left behind and schools in general so under funded that it has become
a farce, leaving a huge burden on the local governments and the
teachers.
Privatizing
Social Security is a lie at best and a joke at worst. If Bush hadn't
spent the surplus, we might have been able to afford the trillion
dollar transition, but not now.
Bush is certainly
not a fiscal conservative. No matter how the right has twisted Kerry's
voting record as a Senator, he has consistently been for a strong
military AND a balanced budget. The times when he has voted against
military expenditures have been times when Cheney and other conservatives
have also been against funding those particular bills, because there
was an attempt to downsize right after the fall of the Iron Curtain
that was non-partisan. Many of his votes against military spending
have been because the bill is not paid for, cannot be accounted
for in the budget or it needed to be rewritten to get out the pork.
John Kerry
has consistently stood for civil rights, women's rights issues,
better education and protecting the environment. He has been perhaps
a little too conservative and too hawkish for me, but I like him
better than what we have now. He has laid out his plans to strengthen
America on his website. There is even a book one could down load.
http:/www.johnkerry.com/
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