in case you've been comatose for the past 4 years

The idea that the Bush tax cuts have helped to move the economy forward is based on the false premise of trickle-down wealth. This economic concept is archaic, to say the least, having more in common with feudal systems than modern capitalist systems. It has also never been proven to move the economy in any direction, let alone forward. The tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the rich, with more than 93% of the tax breaks favoring the top 1% richest people in the country. The figures and estimates on how well the U.S. economy is doing is based primarily on the GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. But this index of economic health does not factor in where the money is ending up, namely in the pockets of the richest 1%. On the surface, interpreting the GDP does seem to show that the economy is moving along better now than in the past couple of years, but this is misleading. It only shows that more money is moving among the hands of Americans, and overwhelmingly the hands of those that benefitted most from Bush's so-called tax relief. While we cannot say with certainty that Kerry, if elected, will not raise taxes for middle-class citizens, his intention to roll back the tax cuts imposed by Bush will not affect the middle-class at all. Since nearly all the tax relief went to the rich, rolling back the cuts will raise rich people's taxes, not the middle-class. And whereas it has never been conclusively shown that giving tax breaks to the rich results in a more robust economy, it has been shown that giving tax breaks to the middle and lower classes does.

Bush has claimed that his latest budget proposal has a large deficit, in fact one of the worst in United States history, due to the fact that we've "just come out of a war". To say nothing of the fact that we are not by any means "out" of the war, this just doesn't wash with the facts. The fact is that Bush's budget does not mention or account for the past and continuing operations in either Iraq or Afghanistan. This budget proposal runs in the red even despite heavy slashing of funding for many education programs, leaving the Leave No Child Behind program more than $45 billion under-funded, as well as many other public health programs grossly underfunded.

There has been much analysis of the voting record of Senator Kerry in the recent run for the White House. It has been pointed out on numerous occasions how Kerry has seemingly voted contradictorily on many issues. This is not the result of wavering on issues of importance, rather this shows the Bush campaign team misrepresenting the facts at hand. In many cases, the votes they cite are not individual votes against weapon systems or certain laws. One vote that Kerry cast against a bill was based on funding appropriations that seemed out of hand. This is translated by the Bush team to paint Kerry as weak on defense because he 'voted against' every new weapon system put forth in a Senate bill. This sort of misrepresentation has blown out of proportion the inconsistencies apparent in less than 2% of Kerry's voting record. Whereas this is certainly pertinent and should be addressed, it also avoids the glaring issues of Bush's record, which is by no means nearly as long and distinguished as Kerry's.

During four years in the Oval Office, Bush has accumulated quite a record as well. He has, on numerous occasions lied to the American people, directly and through the statements of his administration officials, about the reasons for invading Iraq, the false connection between Al-Qaida and Hussein (when anyone with even half an inkling of Islamic terrorist history knows this is patently absurd), and many other seemingly mundane matters. His administration has been undermining, rewriting, and eliminating many civil liberties generations of people have fought for before he came along. This was not done in the wake of 9/11, like many think. Rather, he and his administration had a draft of the Patriot Act ready to go the day he took office, as well as starting many other programs to undermine the rights and freedoms of American citizens. The Bush administration has overseen the most extensive rollback of civil and personal liberties ever witnessed in the history of our country. They did not start this after 9/11, though they quickened the pace of the existing drive to curtail and eliminate many freedoms. They have sought to destroy Judicial Branch oversight of the Executive Branch, while at the same time preventing judges from exercising flexible sentencing guidelines. The Bush administration has sought to close the doors of government access to mere citizens, drafting a memo explicitly denying all Freedom of Information Act requests unless such requests are backed by lawsuits and attorneys. Bush has openly shown contempt for protestors of his policies, having many rounded up preemptively or cordoned off in "free speech zones" and calling them "irrelevant". His record on the environment is atrocious, simply put. Never in the past 80 years has environmental concerns been so blatantly marginalized, or even ignored. Claiming that the solution is to let polluters voluntarily set limits is a sham. Never has it ever been shown that businesses, especially polluting ones, have any incentive to clean up their acts, except perhaps as marketing stunts. Never before has our National Parks, Monuments, and Forests been under such repeated and ongoing attacks on all fronts. Bush has rolled back rules that prevent massive pollution from factory farms, allowed companies to release more levels of mercury, arsenic, and other heavy metals, all of which have been shown to cause cancers and other health problems. Bush's fiscal policies are irresponsible at best, frittering away the largest surplus in American history and turning it into the largest deficit in American history. This is the same budget proposal that would give almost 80% of the budget to military expenses, while shortchanging the very same domestic programs Bush has been lauding.

This is but a small sample of the record of the most neo-conservative, right-wing radical our country has ever seen.

As far as Bush being a strong leader, where was he all day on September 11, 2001? He was flying around, from secret location to secret location, ostensibly avoiding the danger of further terrorist attacks. While I understand there is a need to keep the President safe in times of crisis, he was still joyriding around in the empty skies many hours after it was clear that no more attacks were imminent. He rolled into the White House at 7pm that evening. It took another 3 days for him to visit Ground Zero in New York, and weeks before visiting rural Pennsylvania where the fourth fated plane crashed, most likely because of the brave intervention of the hostage passengers. Where was his strong sense of leadership then? Where was his leadership evident when he sent thousands of soldiers off to invade Iraq, under misleading reasoning and with bad intelligence? Where was his sense of duty when he cut funding and pay benefits to those same soldiers, denying many basic medical care and equipment necessary to "bring democracy to the people of Iraq"? This is leadership from a man who cannot put to rest the claims that he went AWOL during his time in the Air National Guard. I will not try to impugn his honor by claiming the obvious, that joining the ANG was a ploy to stay out of Vietnam, but he should have at least willingly served his whole time, rather than skipping out for a few months. Bush still cannot put this issue behind him, because he still has not offered incontrovertible evidence to put to rest the doubts of the nation. While Bush and his officials were repeating the mantra of WMD over and over to convince Americans that Saddam needed to be ousted, there were many reports from credible and verifiable sources that show that Libya (who has since admitted its nuclear program), North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan have all been pursuing nuclear weapons. In fact, many such reports denied the claims that Iraq could have nuclear weapons in a few years, as Rumsfeld and Powell both cried repeatedly, while at the same time stressing the very real threat that several other nations presented. It doesn't seem to speak highly of a leader's priority structure to ignore a very real threat, verified by credible sources, while harping on the threat of a battered, backward country that was the least of our worries. Now, when no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and all evidence points to a glaring mistake or misinterpretation of the data, our esteemed leader cannot find it within himself to apologize for blowing the threat out of proportion, if not directly lying to us. Bush said during his election campaign of 2000 that he would not support nation-building, and now the American taxpayers are about to be saddled with an enormous burden to do just that. The exact amount is not known, since Bush's budget proposal apparently forgets to factor that in.

Do we really want a leader who is strong only in misplaced religious fervor, that lies to the people he serves repeatedly and without excuse, that panders to the rich and powerful, while marginalizing and ignoring the middle-class and working poor? Do we really need a leader that takes a minor recession and turns it into a much larger one, while not holding true to his promises to create jobs and a better work environment? Do we really need a leader intent on dominating world politics unilaterally with force of arms, rather than diplomatic means? Do we really need four more years of this?

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