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 Bush’s 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/

Visit us at ProgressiveWritersBloc.com.