Bush budget seeks to acquire Ballistic Missile Defense system 2.28.01   Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr. Washington File State Dept Intl Info Pgms Bush said that acquiring a ballistic missile defense system is "America's most pressing national security challenge. Outmoded arms control treaties must not compromise America's security." The threats of the Cold War decades have been replaced "by a world in which threats come from rogue states bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, threats as unconventional as they are unpredictable," Bush said in his budget plan. BUSH LEAGUE 1/3/01   The Progressive Review THE REAL BIPARTISANSHIP ABOUT this election is this: the defense industry won. As we have pointed out, there has been a covert bipartisan agreement to dramatically increase the defense budget. That's a big reason Cheney and Lieberman were put on their respective tickets. Bush is not letting the industry down. Not only is Cheney a former member of the TRW board, his wife is on a "leave of absence" from Lockheed Martin, another major Star Wars contractor.

§ POKESMODEL ELECT SHRUB new education & Sen. Jeffords NSC Ernie global gag order Barricks Gold R. Armitage D. Cheney C. Powell C. Randt Jr D.Rumsfeld daddy's ghost henchmen CTBT appt tracking embassy row current policy & rpts cocaine arrest accidental wit HRts refs   § Ophelia

GWBush reorganizes NSC ¹

Bush jokes with Journalists about cloning Cheney
3.25.01   Reuters

Bush style gives White House corporate feel 3.11.01   Richard L. Berke NYTimes WASHINGTON   In the 7 weeks of his presidency, Geo.W. Bush has transformed how the White House and elements of the sprawling govt operate in ways that contrast sharply with those of Bill Clinton and other presidents. It is no accident that a bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower is perched to the right of Bush's desk in the Oval Office. Not since the general's days in the White House, some veterans of past administrations say, has a president so reorganized a govt to function with the crisp efficiency of a blue-chip corporation. The trappings are unchanged. As with Clinton, the American flag still looms over the president's right shoulder in photographs; at Cabinet sessions, Bush still sits in the chair with the highest back. But those common threads do not reveal the fundamental ways, besides ideology, that Bush differs from Clinton and many other modern presidents. These include the time he devotes to his job : far less than Clinton; the authority given to his vice president : Dick Cheney acts as chief operating officer; the interplay among staff members : they must follow a dress code and rules on cordiality; and the use of pollsters : they have been kept out of the Oval Office. For Americans whose notions of White House life stem from the chaotic, freewheeling Clinton era, or even from "The West Wing," the popular television program, Bush seems determined to render a different image. "This is the only bureaucracy in Washington that can change to fit the personality of the president," Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff, who served in the White House under President Reagan and the first President Bush, said in an interview. "This president is the first ever to have an MBA." Recent release of Bush's budget blueprint underscores a telling difference between Bush & Clinton. By Card's estimation, Bush devoted "in the neighborhood of 5 hours" to meetings to discuss his budget proposal. By contrast, Gene Sperling, for years a top economic adviser to Clinton, said the former president spent at least 25 hours in official meetings assembling the budget in his first weeks in office, and 50 hours more in more casual settings. Bush left it to Cheney to preside over a small group of aides to actually draft the proposal. "There has been a sea change," said Reagan chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein . "This is the first time in American history we've had a president & a prime minister."   [ Where Wm Casey was the corpse's hand of WWII on R.Reagan, Cheney is Vietnam haunting GWBush. ] The contrast also reflects altered economic realities from 8 years ago. "You have to remember how dramatically different it was to be in a time of deficits," Sperling said. "It wasn't like you sat around and just decided this is the best way to cut up the huge surplus you've inherited. We literally had to present Clinton with scores of potential cuts which could even cost members of Congress or the president himself an election." Another reason Bush can afford to spend less time doing his job is that he has a far more focused, Democrats say less ambitious, agenda than Clinton. The former president at this point was promoting a raft of initiatives to expand govt; Bush is sticking to his signature plan to cut taxes. Bush imposes a discipline so tight that Card halts senior staff meetings at precisely 7:58 each morning, even if people are in midsentence, so he can arrive exactly on time for Bush's intelligence briefing at 8. Clinton was so undisciplined about meetings that his aides once consulted an efficiency expert. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser, arrived on time Monday for Bush to videotape a message to a banking convention, only to find the taping had begun ahead of schedule. Afterward, Bush gently upbraided his aide, saying, "Lawrence, we're the on-time administration." Bush usually arrives at the Oval Office by 7 a.m. and is out the door by 6:30 p.m., often for dinner at the residence. Most weeks, he leaves late Friday afternoon for Camp David or for his Texas ranch. Card says he hears from Bush after hours maybe once every week or week and a half. "He's called me as late as 10:30 at night," Card said. "Maybe even one night later than that." Clinton often did not get to work until later in the morning but had a far longer workday, took off less time on weekends and was famous for making rounds of calls to aides well past midnight. Another stark difference is how this administration handles politics. Though polling has been commissioned by the White House, Bush's pollsters joke that he has banned them from the Oval Office; they have yet to meet with him. Stanley Greenberg, Clinton's first pollster, said that in the early days

Pres. GWBush speaks at commencement ¹ ²   5.21.01   Yale Univ. Office of Public Affairs " … to the C students I say, you, too, can be President of the United States. A Yale degree is worth a lot, as I often remind Dick Cheney who studied here, but left a little early. So now we know; if you graduate from Yale, you become President. If you drop out, you get to be Vice President. … causes that earn our sacrifice. I hope that each of you will know these rewards. … Public service is one way, an honorable way, to mark life with meaning. …   Defection costs Republicans control of Senate     5.25.01   Barry Grey WSWS Sen. Jas. Jeffords VT announced Thu. he quits GOP, aligning with Democrats. Declaring himself an independent, his defection hands Senate, prev. split 50-50, to Democrats for first time since 1994. Sen. Trent Lott MS replaced majority leader by Sen. Tom Daschle SD; Democrats will assume the chairmanship of all Senate committees. Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card said he did not learn of Jeffords' likely defection until Tue. morning; not until Wed. Wh.House made concerted effort to dissuade Jeffords in separate meetings with VP Cheney & Pres. GWBush. At home state press conference following morning, Jeffords made pointed attack on Bush admin right-wing agenda, declaring he was at odds "on very fundamental issues: choice, judiciary, tax & spending, missile defense, energy and environment, … " He placed particular emphasis on the issue of education; Jeffords chaired Senate education committee. He denounced Bush for refusing to allocate increased funding and abandoning campaign pledge to improve the schools. … Jeffords came under attack from both Wh.House & GOP leadership in Senate last month when he refused to support Bush's original plan for $1.6 trillion in tax cuts. His opposition in the evenly divided body forced Bush to trim his tax windfall for the wealthy. Vitriolic GOP reaction, incl public campaign in Wall St Journal demanding Bush punish Jeffords by stripping his committee chair and making him an object lesson to would-be dissidents. Bush retaliated against Jeffords by exclusionding from Wh.House ceremony where Bush presented teacher of the year award to teacher from Jeffords' home state. Wh.House then threatened to oppose federal pgm considered vital to VT dairy farmers. When Jeffords sought more money for special ed pgms, his request was summarily rejected by Lott & GOP leadership, apparently never imagining their tactics could boomerang. … Sen. John McCain AZ "The lesson to K St lobbyists & Republican apparatchiks is, 'Don't threaten people.'" In a written statement issued Thu. he declared, "Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party, and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up." …

Pollsters and a dedicated orientation toward the hourly news cycle may be gone, but many people inside and outside the Bush White House say it is just as political as it was under Clinton, although in different ways. A close friend and adviser of Bush's said that Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, had spoken to him in specific terms about how the White House was reacting to the energy crisis in California, and how that might affect the president's re-election prospects there.
"It's just as political, but it's not in-your-face political," the adviser said. "It's more of a big-picture perspective. It's not, 'How can we score points for the moment?' " Bush's friends say he learned from his father that he cannot tune out the political implications of his job, and he learned from Clinton to seize opportunities to sell his programs. A prime example is how Bush traveled to swing states this week to sell his budget. "Clinton was so intimately involved in every detail," said Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La. "With Bush, it comes from the bottom and works its way up the channels. But it's not any less political. The trips around the country are a classic political operation. That's playing tough, hard politics."

An important reason for what has been widely regarded as a smooth takeover of the government is that Bush has surrounded himself with veterans such as Cheney and Card. Staff members are also, by and large, older than those of past administrations, which is another reason for the more subdued White House. Several longtime govt observers said they expected members of the Cabinet to have far more latitude than those under Clinton. That is because of Bush's penchant to delegate and because he picked seasoned, independent people. "It's going back to a Cabinet govt," said former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. "What's interesting to me is how many of the people here are people who have been here before and have a sense of this place. They are steady and not new to their work, and they're not wondering how it will all come out."
Still, it also appears the White House is in firm control of the Cabinet. When Christie Whitman, the EPA administrator, announced recently that she was letting stand a flurry of regulations imposed by Clinton, Card said she first had cleared it with his staff. "It is normal for major rules or major policy pronouncements to be coordinated with the White House," Card said. "The president is the leader of the executive branch of govt." Many officials in the Bush White House said they were struck by how there seemed to be far less back stabbing than there had been even in Bush's father's White House.
Even Democrats on the outside have noticed that. "I am impressed by how much this White House seems to be geared toward the president and his interests rather than self-promotion," said Douglas Sosnik, who was a top aide to Clinton for six years. "If there's a mistake, staffers take the blame and insulate Bush from it. I'm not sure I could always say that about the Clinton White House."

Bush to visit Camp David often 3.3.01   Sonya Ross AP WASHINGTON   It's the weekend, and thousands of tourists are at the White House, snapping photos from outside the gates. But President Bush is not inside. He is at Camp David, the only place where he can still drive, run with his two dogs and relax in privacy, the scenic hills of Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. Unlike President Clinton, who typically went to the 143-acre camp only on holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Bush said he plans to be there every weekend unless he's giving a speech somewhere or is at his ranch in Texas. "I intend, every chance I get, to go up," Bush said. "It's a good place to relax. It's also a good place to catch up on my work. I'm a little bit behind in my mail right now." Camp David was the site of much Bush-family bonding during the presidency of Bush's father. The second Bush was keeping that tradition this weekend, spending it with his brother Marvin and sister Dorothy Bush Koch, who was married in 1992 at Camp David's chapel. So before the sun could disappear into evening yesterday, the president and first lady Laura Bush, both still in navy blue business suits, strode hand-in-hand past applauding staffers and guests, stepped into their helicopter and were whisked off to the retreat, just over 55 miles from the capital. They also took along a few aides, including his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the Bushes' springer spaniel, Spot. … Aides say Bush finds freedom at Camp David, as also the privacy he cherishes but gets now only in small doses. The place is heavily guarded by Marines, gates and surveillance cameras. The security allows Bush to do normal-guy stuff like watching movies and taking a morning jog in the clean mountain air. "Here at the White House, he runs on a treadmill," said spokesman Ari Fleischer. "When he travels on the road, he'll often run on a treadmill at his hotel room. So it's an opportunity for him to run outdoors, which he appreciates." Yesterday's trip was Bush's fourth to Camp David since he took office Jan. 20. He met there last week with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. At one point, Bush took the wheel of a golf cart to take Blair and both their wives for a short drive. After the Blairs left, the Bushes lingered an extra day and attended church at the chapel. Much of the weekend was spent working on the address Bush delivered Tuesday to a joint session of Congress. Behind GWBush rumors lurks Wash. gossip culture 5.14.99   Ellen J. Pollock WSJ At a dinner party in San Francisco several weeks ago that atty E. Bob Wallach picked up the rumor about Texas GWBush. A woman asked her fellow guests if they had heard about the governor & drugs. Another guest piped up that the drug in question was cocaine. "Everyone at the table had quote 'heard,' " says Mr. Wallach. But nobody, he says, offered a shred of proof. Neither, so far, has anyone else. Yet the rumors persist. They have bounced from the Washington, D.C., party circuit to the fledgling primary campaign in New Hampshire, ricocheted all the way to Mr. Wallach's nonpolitical gathering on the West Coast. … Clay Johnson, college friend of governor & appts dir., says he, too, spent time with Mr. Bush at the inauguration, "so I know firsthand that's not true." Rumors as well Mr. Bush used cocaine as young man. … pals from Yale College & Harvard Business School and his pilot chums from stint in the Texas Air National Guard say they never saw him touch the stuff. Oil business adssociates, baseball and politics also say they saw no signs of drug use. … Dozens of people who know Mr. Bush well were interviewed for this article, as were many other people who have told the drug stories at parties, workplaces and political gatherings. None provided evidence that Mr. Bush ever used drugs ; many expressed strong belief the rumors are false. … At least 37 newspapers and magazines have run articles & editorials gingerly raising the drug issue, mostly by noting that Mr. Bush declines to answer questions about drug use or other youthful misdeeds.… … Suzanne Garment, author Scandal: Culture of Mistrust in American Politics & longtime Washington observer, says the cocaine rumor is so pervasive that she doesn't even remember where she first heard it, except that it was "political people, none of whom claim firsthand knowledge. They just sort of mutter 'cocaine.' … It is impossible to pinpoint where the Bush gossip started. [ Wrong. The story began ¹ ² with what Barry Seal told Terry Reed, author of Compromised, not long before Seal was killed following final removal from protective custody. The issue, on those grounds, was raised by a reporter in a prominent Dallas news conference early in presidential campaign. The accusations had nothing to do with youth or indiscretion of GWBush. They do involve his brother Jeb. They did not start at a San Francisco dinner party. ]

Bush's Blunders 5.30.01   Michael Kelly Wash.Post pA19 The decision of Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont to abandon the Republican Party for independent status, voting with the Democratic caucus, calls seriously into question the vaunted reputation of the Bush White House for competence (vaunted here, among other places). It suggests an increasing likelihood that the long struggle between the parties for post-New Deal primacy will end in the Democrats' favor. This is the second time in a month that the Bush White House has failed to see that it was rushing toward a spectacular disaster until the moment of the crash. The first instance occurred on May 3, when the United Nations Economic and Social Council voted to deny seats to the United States on the world body's Human Rights Commission and the International Narcotics Control Board. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a touching display of childlike candor, acknowledged that he had been blind-sided by the betrayal by American allies that resulted in the vote. By deploying the traditional frank-admission approach, Powell was of course playing for press absolution, and he won it. Some eyebrow-raising would have been in order. When you stop to think about it, didn't Powell's admitted myopia say something worth stopping to think about? For this was more than a blindness of the moment: There had been many warning signals that the European allies were itching to smite the Bush administration so that it die. In a campaign spurred and amplified by liberal media coverage, the liberal governments in Paris, London and Berlin had for months been denouncing the new administration in Washington with a fury not seen since the great wailing and gnashing of continental teeth that greeted Ronald Reagan's presidency. The reason was the same then as it is now: the natural hostility of the European elite toward an American administration determined to pursue a conservative course in foreign policy and dismissive of European elite sensibilities, which are chronically and structurally left-leaning. But Reagan could afford such nose-thumbing. He was a Cold War president. As long as the Soviet Union stood, and as long as the American dollar, the American will and the American-led NATO stood against the Soviet Union, our European friends could not afford to well and truly snub us. It did not seem to have occurred to Powell and the other cogitators of the Bush administration that this reality no longer obtained; indeed, it does not seem to have occurred to them yet. That doesn't speak of a momentary taking of the eye off the ball; it speaks of an inability to understand what is what on the most basic level. So too with the Jeffords defection. To put it mildly, Bush won election as narrowly as anyone possibly could. He took office with a Senate divided precisely in half. Only the vice president's constitutional role as the tie-breaker in a 50-50 Senate vote allowed the Republicans to stay in the majority. Moreover, the trend toward geographic polarization evident in the stark red-and-blue map of Election Day meant that Northeast Republican moderates -- besides Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine -- were increasingly vulnerable to electoral challenge if they stayed in a Republican Party led by conservative southerners. Defection was not unthinkable for any of the four; all it would take to shift the balance of power was one. Facing this reality, the Democratic leadership acted secretly and cunningly to woo Jeffords, a career-long misfit in the Republican Party. Facing the same reality, Bush and his lieutenants -- chief to blame the gormless Trent Lott -- acted publicly and stupidly to push Jeffords over the edge. As with the U.N. revolt, the blindness was not merely of the moment; again, there was a perverse purposefulness to it; again it signified an inability to grasp large and basic realities. Add to these the failure of the Bush campaign to foresee the extreme closeness of the race in a state governed by the candidate's brother, and the post-1994 congressional Republicans' chronic misreading as to what the public wanted out of government (not, as it turned out, the end of government, not the defunding of Big Bird), and you begin to suspect there might be a systemic problem here. Call it the competence gap. Parties gain and lose power because of shifts in the public's beliefs. Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980 because the public had become more conservative. But parties also gain and lose because of competence. Reagan won also because the Carter White House lacked competence. Right now the country is split down the middle ideologically and probably moving slightly in the Democrats' direction. That means competence will decide who will emerge as the majority party.

Currency of the Realm
"Gossip is the currency of the political culture in Washington. It doesn't have to be true," says Ms. Matalin. "Everybody is a gossip. … Clark Randt, Shearman & Sterling law firm partner, once social chairman of fraternity that Mr. Bush led. happily confesses downing beers with the governor during their 1960s Yale days. But when it comes to Mr. Bush's doing drugs, he says, "heavens no. We lived for Saturday night," recalls Mr. Randt, who is no longer close to Mr. Bush. "Saturday night was party night and it was rock 'n' roll, rhythm & blues, dance music and drinking beer. People think there must have been drugs; in 4 years at Yale, there must have been some. I never saw any. We drank a lot of beer but nothing more." Harvard Business School: "Chewing tobacco. That was disgusting enough," says classmate Tom Riley about Mr. Bush. Mr. Riley, a Silicon Valley executive who is raising money for the Bush campaign, … governor drank he would occasionally become a little boisterous, "just like anyone else would. You do get a little out or a little happier." Drugs? "None of our group did any drugs."
[ As with his father, the accusations are of participating in an official govt capacity in the very large scale smuggling of cocaine, not ingesting it personally. ]

A Quisling press corps ¹ ª 5.7.01   Robt. Parry ConsortiumNews After years of denial, The Washington Post has acknowledged the existence of the Right-Wing Machine. Post national political correspondent John Harris came to this epiphany grudgingly, never using those exact words. But in a Sunday article in the Outlook section, Harris recognized that U.S. conservatives have built a powerful and well- financed apparatus that can dictate the tone of the political discourse in Washington. The article observed that there is no countervailing apparatus on the liberal side of national politics. In his article, Harris concedes that he'd still like to deny this. Harris writes that his initial reaction to Democratic complaints about the fawning press coverage of George W. Bush was to dismiss the griping as "self-pity," characteristic of President Clinton and his allies. Nevertheless, Harris does ask the question: "Are the national news media soft on Bush?" "The instinctive response of any reporter is to deny it," Harris writes, unintentionally revealing how widespread this press corps' defensiveness is. "But my rebuttals lately have been wobbly. The truth is, this new president has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton." … Jimmy Carter on GWBush: disappointed Former president had hoped for moderate administration 7.25.01   R.Hyatt & S.I.Bhuiyan Ledger-Enquirer Columbus GA Columbus GA   Former President Jimmy Carter is disappointed in GWBush's performance in the Oval Office and said the first-term Republican has ignored moderates of both parties, incl Sec.State Colin Powell. Interviewed last week at his ranch-style home in Plains, GA, Carter criticized Bush for not pressuring Israelis to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, for threatening to abandon the ballistic missile defense treaty, for not supporting human rights and for "strictly conforming" to the views of conservative Republicans. "I have been disappointed in almost everything he has done," Carter said. The former president said he volunteered to be one of the few Democrats at Bush's inauguration last January because of the high hopes he held for Bush's presidency. "I hoped that coming out of an uncertain election he would reach out to people of diverse views, not just Democrats and Republicans but others who had different points of view," said Carter, former Georgia governor elected president in 1976 and defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. "I thought he would be a moderate leader, but he has been very strictly conforming to some of the more conservative members of his administration, his vice president and his secretary of defense in particular. More moderate people like Colin Powell have been frozen out of the basic decision-making in dealing with international affairs." Continuing conflicts between the Palestinians & Israelis make the administration's efforts in the Middle East fruitless, Carter said. He said Bush ought to follow his father's stance and demand removal of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. "Geo. Sr. took a strong position on that issue, and so did I," said Carter, who offered to mediate the conflict, an offer declined by both sides. At the same time, Carter cautioned the current administration not to ignore other parts of the world. "I noticed when President Clinton was in office, his Secretary of State made 26 visits to the Middle East before going to any country in Africa. I think the devastation of the wars in Africa is much more serious than the conflicts in the Middle East," he said. A presidential scholar said Monday that it is unusual for former presidents to criticize their successors. Erwin Hargrove, professor emeritus at Vanderbilt Univ., said Carter has always been kind to Geo. Bush Sr. "I think this is just Jimmy calling it like he sees it," Hargrove said. "He must feel remote enough from the office to do this. He must be genuinely disappointed." In the wide-ranging interview, Carter also said the U.S. should respect the Kyoto Protocol, intl agreement designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and he questioned the Bush administration's reluctance to ratify the so-called "rights of the child" treaty. He called the proposed shield against incoming missiles "technologically ridiculous." Carter said it goes against the 1972 treaty with the Soviet Union and is a setback for the "prestige & respect due our country." "I think it will re-escalate the nuclear arms race," he added.

NAACP chairman criticizes Bush   7.8.01   AP   response Cong. J.C. Watts NEW ORLEANS   NAACP board chairman Julian Bond had harsh words on Sunday for President Bush's record in his first months in office, criticizing some of Bush's Cabinet choices and denouncing his faith- based initiative. Bush is the 18th president the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has seen in its more than 90-year history. "We've applauded them when they're right and condemned them when they're wrong,'' Bond said in an interview a day before his speech at the group's 92nd annual convention. In remarks prepared for delivery Sunday, Bond especially assailed the civil rights records of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, and Attorney General John Ashcroft. "The president who promised to unite, not divide, chose as a secretary of the interior a woman who opposed racially equitable scholarships ... she refused to defend her state's support of a business fairness program,'' Bond said in his prepared text. And for the nation's top law enforcement officer, Bond said Bush chose "a man who doesn't believe in many of the civil rights laws he has sworn to enforce - affirmative action, racial profiling, hate crimes, voting rights . An administration representative defended the president's choices. "The president's Cabinet and staff are made up of accomplished and diverse individuals'' including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Education Secretary Rod Paige, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, said Bush spokesman Jimmy Orr. The administration's tax cut and its faith-based initiative, which would allow government funds to flow to churches, mosques and synagogues that seek to ease social woes, were also targets of criticism. Bush has asserted that church-based groups receiving government funds should be able to refuse employment to people outside their religion, but critics, including Bond, contend that this could amount to government-funded discrimination. Orr responded that Bush's "commitment to equal opportunity and equal justice is demonstrated with sweeping public school reform that fights to leave no child behind, proven help for the nation's poor with the faith- based and community initiative and his call for an end to racial profiling.'' Bush was invited to address the gathering, which runs through Thursday, but he was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict, NAACP officials said. Instead, he sent a videotaped greeting that will be played sometime during the convention. In his remarks, Bond also referred to a five-year strategic plan that will be presented to delegates on Wednesday. The plan calls for building the NAACP by boosting membership, increasing training, expanding the NAACP's legal staff and increasing advocacy. The plan also seeks to sharpen the group's focus on civil rights enforcement and discrimination in the criminal justice system, increase economic opportunity, guarantee educational equity, register voters and take on a spectrum of health issues. "We need to be much more aggressive,'' Bond said. "It's going to make us more efficient, which will make us quicker to respond.'' Votes of poor more likely uncounted ¹ 7.9.01   AP WASHINGTON   The votes of people living in poor and minority communities were much more likely to go uncounted in the 2000 presidential election than were the ballots of the more affluent, a congressional study found. The report was prompted in part by Vice President Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush and was prepared for Democrats on the House Governmental Reform Committee. It found that voting problems like those encountered in Florida, where the election was decided, were not unique. "This problem is an urgent national priority,'' said Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the committee. "The technology is available to make certain that everyone's vote counts. It is intolerable to allow the disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters to continue.'' The study, released Monday, analyzed 40 congressional districts in 20 states. Those states are Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia. According to some estimates as many as 1.9 percent of all the votes cast in the last presidential contest went uncounted, the report concluded. That equals about 2 million votes, a number that could have made a difference in such a close election. Some ballots, the study said, were not counted because voters did not vote for a presidential candidate or voted for more than one.

The study found, however, that more often "the ballots were discarded because the voting machine failed to accurately record the intention of the voter.'' Voters in low-income, high-minority districts, for instance, had significantly higher rates of discarded ballots on older technologies like punch-card and lever machines than they did on newer technologies like electronic voting systems, the study found. Waxman called the disparities an outrage and said they were the result of older and less dependable voting machines being used in poorer neighborhoods.
He said the report shows the problem is a national issue that should be addressed by the federal government. "I think a lot of people thought the problem was a Florida problem and not a problem all around the country,'' he said. Several measures have been introduced in Congress to address the election issue. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee, which oversees election reform, has said he hopes to have legislation drafted this year.
Bush lost the popular vote but narrowly won the electoral vote after the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida and he was awarded the state's 25 Electoral College votes. The ballots of hundreds of Florida voters were in dispute because of aging punch-card voting machines, the design of the ballots and other problems.

Bush's 6-Toed Kitty Runs Away 4.6.01   John Berman ABCNEWS.com A cat Pres.GWBush rescued from Austin TX streets has run away from the home of one of the president's friends in L.A. Ernie the Cat, the six-toed stray … has not been seen for weeks."They're very concerned," said Noelia Rodriguez, Laura Bush press secretary. Several years ago, then-Gov. Bush found the young orange & white cat up a tree in the yard of the governor's mansion in downtown Austin. … The Bush family decided to name the cat "Ernie" after the author Ernest Hemingway who famously kept a six-toed cat. When the governor became the president-elect, the decision was made that the street-wise cat might not be right for the White House. "Ernie is more of a free spirit," said press aide Gordon Johndroe said in December. Ernie had a tendency to claw things, incl Mr. Bush at times, and the Bush family was worried that Ernie might ruin precious White House furniture.

jibe a la AmEx ad campaign Fixing the election   $122million Doing coke & keeping it secret $54,612 bottle of vodka in Dallas $5.37 Knowing GOP voters will vote for you in 33 states even though you're legally retarded Priceless For everything else there is Daddy more potshot gallery

The Bushes decided to give the cat to their close friend & prolific fund raiser, Brad Freeman, founder of Freeman Spogli L.A. investment banking firm. Soon after Freeman took Ernie to Brentwood home, the cat clawed furniture. Instead of having the cat de-clawed, Freeman took Ernie to a veterinarian who placed plastic caps on Ernie's claws, incl the superfluous ones. Ernie apparently did not take well to the restraints, and broke out of the Freeman compound about 2 weeks ago. There has been no sign of Ernie since, though Freeman says that he & others have been looking. … Though the First Family is concerned, aides say they are taking a somewhat lighter view of the situation. "They realize that he is a free spirit, and hope he is having fun on the beaches of Malibu," said Rodriguez. When he was running for president, Bush would talk about Ernie as an example of perseverance: "Sometimes you may find yourself up in a tree, wet and cold. But if you just hang in there and never give up, things will get better for you, just like they did for Ernie."
[ Like the rest of us, the cat would rather be a free stray than an oligarch's slave. Charitable tyranny is not liberty. ]

Missing Bush Cat Found
President's Six-Toed Tabby Turns Up on Avenue of Stars
4.10.01   John Berman ABCNEWS.com

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