So Kerry says Bush is "secretly" starting the Draft....Att.StV**

**chaserfan** · October 5th, 2004, 02:32 AM

I dont believe anything either one of the liars say around voting time....or most of any other time as far as that goes

**Andyman** · October 5th, 2004, 11:11 AM

Hey now! If it's on the internet...it must be true!

now about them UFOs.....

**Darkest Angel** · October 5th, 2004, 12:21 PM

Not that I expect those of you who have made your decisions sans any certifiable proof to care, but at least some people on this board can read.

The Global Test
It's called reality.
By William Saletan

We've just reached the crux of the presidential campaign—the moment in which one candidate, purporting to expose the other's fatal flaw, has instead exposed his own.

Saturday morning, President Bush attacked John Kerry for a comment Kerry made in Thursday night's debate. Here's how Bush described Kerry's remark:

He said that America has to pass a global test before we can use American troops to defend ourselves. That's what he said. Think about this. Sen. Kerry's approach to foreign policy would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions. I have a different view. When our country is in danger, the president's job is not to take an international poll. The president's job is to defend America. I'll continue to work every day with our friends and allies for the sake of freedom and peace. But our national security decisions will be made in the Oval Office, not in foreign capitals.

This description, which Bush continues to repeat at campaign stops and in television ads, is plainly false. In his first answer of the debate, Kerry said, "I'll never give a veto to any country over our security." But if that isn't what Kerry meant by a "global test," what did he mean? Let's go back and look at Kerry's words.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do in a way that passes the test—that passes the global test—where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who's had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations. I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy, in the Cuban missile crisis, sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with [French President Charles] de Gaulle, and in the middle of the discussion to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, [the secretary of state] said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And de Gaulle waved them off, and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me." How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?

It's clear from Kerry's first sentence that the "global test" doesn't prevent unilateral action to protect ourselves. But notice what else Kerry says. The test includes convincing "your countrymen" that your reasons are clear and sound. Kerry isn't just talking about satisfying France. He's talking about satisfying Ohio. He's talking about you.

What do you have in common with a Frenchman? Look again at Kerry's words. He says the test is to "prove" that our reasons for attacking were legitimate. In the next sentence, he gives an example of someone failing that test: Colin Powell's February 2003 presentation to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What did Powell apologize for? The inaccuracy of our intelligence. Kerry contrasts this with the trust France once placed in American spy photos.

Proof, intelligence, spy photos. The pattern is obvious. The test isn't moral. It's factual. What you and the Frenchman share is the evidence of your senses. The global test is the measurement of the president's assertions against the real world, the world you and I can see.

This is the test Bush has failed. He has failed to produce evidence for his prewar claims of Iraqi WMD and operational ties to al-Qaida, or for his postwar claims of success against the insurgency. Now he's going further. He's not simply failing the test. He's refusing to take it.

Listen to Bush's words again. "The president's job is not to take an international poll," he says. "Our national security decisions will be made in the Oval Office, not in foreign capitals." Bush doesn't say these decisions belong to the United States. He says they belong to the Oval Office. He frames this as patriotism, boasting that he doesn't care whether he offers evidence sufficient to convince people in France. He shows no awareness or concern that evidence is also necessary to convince people in Ohio. He says it isn't his job to take a "poll," to hear what others think. He needs no validation.

Bush pretends he's just blowing off the French. But his comments show a pattern of blowing off external feedback in general. He shrugs off information that debunks his claims about WMD, arguing that it's more important for a president to understand the overall nature of the world. He defines credibility as agreement with himself. He reinterprets evidence of policy mistakes in postwar Iraq as evidence of success. In Thursday's debate, he dismissed unwelcome reports from that country as too offensive to heed. And according to Sunday's New York Times, he and his aides exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capability, ignoring warnings from "the government's foremost nuclear experts."

Bush claims he has done all this to protect you. But that claim is precisely what's challenged by the evidence he conceals or disregards. What he's protecting you from is the ability to measure his assertions against the world that you and I can see. That's the global test he's mocking. And he expects you to applaud him for it, because he thinks you resent the French so much you'd rather have a president accountable to no one.

Out of the Question
Is Bush's biggest mistake too awful to admit?
By William Saletan

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

That's what it all comes down to—this debate, this war, this election. For all the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the awful question John Kerry posed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 is the same one hanging over us now.

This time, however, Kerry isn't raising the question. His opponent, the president of the United States, is raising it. Why? Because Iraq is different from Vietnam. We were attacked on 9/11. We thought Saddam Hussein was behind it. We thought Iraq posed the next threat. We don't want to believe that we were wrong, that we've committed $200 billion and sacrificed more than 1,000 American lives in error. We can't imagine asking thousands more to die for a mistake.

Bush can't imagine it, either. So, he offers himself—and you—a way out. Ignore the bad news, he says. Ignore the evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated. Ignore the evidence that Saddam had no operational relationship with al-Qaida. Ignore the rising casualties. Ignore the hollowness and disintegration of the American-led "coalition." If these reports are true, as Kerry suggests, then it was all a mistake. How can we ask our troops to die for a mistake? We can't. Therefore, these reports must be rejected. They must be judged not by evidence, but by their offensiveness to the assumptions we embraced when we went to war.

In tonight's debate, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Bush, "Has the war in Iraq been worth the cost of American lives—1,052 as of today?" Bush looked down. He recalled a woman whose husband had died in Iraq. "I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband's sacrifice was noble and worthy," the president said. "Was it worth it? Every life is precious. That's what distinguishes us from the enemy. ... We can look back and say we did our duty."

That's how Bush judges the war's worth: not by costs and benefits, but by character. It shows our nobility. It shows we did our duty. He used the word "duty" seven times tonight. Kerry never used that word, except to refer to "active duty" troops. Eleven times, Bush called the mess in Iraq "hard work." To recognize error would be to abandon that work and shirk our duty. Again and again, he framed the acceptance of bad news as moral failure. Will. Resolute. Steadfast. Uncertainty. Weakness. Supporting our troops.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is "a brave, brave man," Bush told the audience. After Allawi addressed Congress last week, Kerry "questioned his credibility," Bush charged. "One of his campaign people alleged that Prime Minister Allawi was like a puppet. That's no way to treat somebody who's courageous and brave [and] is trying to lead his country forward."

That's how Bush judges Allawi's assurances: not by evidence, but by character. Never mind that Allawi's rosy speech didn't match his own statements back home, much less independent reports from Iraq. Never mind that according to administration officials interviewed by the Washington Post, Allawi "was coached and aided by the U.S. government" and by "a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign." Any suggestion that Allawi spun Congress or was coached must be dismissed, because these suggestions besmirch a brave leader.

When Kerry quantified the meager troop contributions of our coalition partners, Bush protested, "I honor their sacrifices. And I don't appreciate it when a candidate for president denigrates the contributions of these brave soldiers." Forget the facts. Kerry's numbers must be repudiated because they dishonor good men.

Kerry offered a different way to judge the war's truth and worth: by the evidence. "I don't know if he sees what's really happened," Kerry said of Bush's Iraq spin. He worried that Bush was "not acknowledging what's on the ground. He's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea. He's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues."

But when Lehrer transposed Kerry's famous question—"Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?"—Kerry balked. "No, and they don't have to," Kerry replied. "We have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that. And from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority, because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, and I did accept that intelligence."

It doesn't add up. Kerry said tonight that Iraq was a diversion from the war on terror. He said the WMD intelligence was wrong. He added, "Two-thirds of [Iraq] was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening." The logical upshot of these beliefs—and the evidence—is that Americans are dying in Iraq for a mistake.

Why won't Kerry say so? For the same reason Bush accuses him of saying so: Because we don't want to believe it. On this ultimate question, Kerry clings to Bush's wishful thinking. Tonight, Kerry vowed to prevail in Iraq "for those soldiers and for those families, for those kids who put their lives on the line. That is noble. That's the most noble thing that anybody can do. And I want to make sure the outcome honors that nobility."

"I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right," Kerry said, explaining his vote against the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq. "That's what I learned in Vietnam. When I came back from that war, I saw that it was wrong. Some people don't like the fact that I stood up to say no, but I did. And that's what I did with that vote."

No, Senator. That isn't what you did with that vote. You haven't said no to the Iraq War as you did to the Vietnam War. And the reason is that this time, you're running for president.

But the greater shame belongs to the candidate who launched this war, refuses to admit his errors, and now holds the moral pride of his countrymen hostage, blackmailing them into shunning the truth. Tonight he scoffed, "If I were to ever say, 'This is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place,' the troops would wonder, 'How can I follow this guy?' "

Exactly, Mr. President. If you were ever to give them the correct assessment, they would ask the correct question.

**Darkest Angel** · October 5th, 2004, 12:23 PM

You think he doesn't want to control you...?

Melissa Carr: 'Just say no to Bush's drugs'
Date: Monday, October 04 @ 09:59:21 EDT
Topic: Science and Health

By Melissa Carr, Independent Media TV

A little-known initiative by President Bush is quietly creeping through the United States. The proposal is based on recommendations from the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. It is part of the broader New Freedom Initiative for the disabled. The Commission convened in April 2002 and released its report with recommendations on July 2003. Although this proposal has been largely overlooked by the mass media, it plans to impact every American citizen in a very frightening way.

The report points to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a model on which to base the national mental health agenda. TMAP was a pilot program under then-Governor Bush that standardized certain medications for certain mental illnesses in a flow chart fashion. The report also recommends that every citizen in the United States should be screened for mental illness, including children. It states, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschool and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviors and emotional disorders." It then suggests early detection is paramount in mental health and "schools can help address mental health problems." Beyond the classroom, the report suggests screenings should be addressed in primary care "throughout the lifespan."

So, the commission has determined that everyone should be tested for mental illness and a flow chart determines which medication should be used to treat it. Sound alarming? It should, especially upon hearing what Allen Jones has to say about it. Mr. Jones was employed as an investigator in Pennsylvania's Office of Inspector General. He was investigating corrupt activities involving pharmaceutical companies offering honorariums to state officials. The OIG manager told him, "Drug companies write checks to politicians--they write checks to politicians on both sides of the aisle," and changed his assignment.

Jones decided to continue his investigation on his own time. And he discovered that TMAP, which Pennsylvania adopted in 2002 under then-Governor Tom Ridge, was in fact driven by pharmaceutical companies who were lavishing Texas politicians, as well as making sure their most expensive patented drugs (some with potentially lethal side effects) were listed as the designated treatments on the algorithms. Jones released a 66-page whistleblower report about the scandal in January 2004 and was subsequently fired by the OIG.

Included in his report is background information on each member of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, offering valuable insight on this group of individuals who decided all citizens should be screened and possibly medicated for mental illness. Among them you will find Michael Hogan, whose research institute relies heavily on pharmaceutical company grants. Another is Norwood Knight-Richardson, a Texas college buddy of Bush Sr. whom he appointed as then-Governor to the Texas drug and alcohol council during the establishment of TMAP. Knight-Richardson is also the director of a pharmaceutical delivery company that has significantly profited from contracts in post-war Iraq.

The Bush family has direct pharmaceutical connections as well. According to the British Medical Journal, Bush Sr. was a board member at Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, and Bush Jr. appointed Lilly's CEO, Sidney Taurel, as a member of Homeland Security Council.

One might have been able to write off Allen Jones' stunning report as a conspiracy theory, if it weren't for the lawsuits of Dr. David Franklin and Dr. Stefan Kruszewski. Franklin, a former Warner-Lambert (now part of Pfizer) employee, was "paid to lie to doctors" about prescribing the drug Neurontin in cases where it was neither clinically safe nor effective. Pfizer pleaded guilty to criminal fraud and agreed to pay $430 million in fines. That amount pales in comparison to the $2.9 billion in annual Neurontin sales.

Dr. Kruszewski was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services. In his current federal lawsuit, he alleges he was fired after he uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania politicians and pharmaceutical representatives. Allegations of fraudulent medication billings to the United States government were also voiced. Even more disturbing, however, is his allegation that four children and one adult died while under the state's care, and all were prescribed lethal combinations of anti-psychotic drugs. He was denied access to the autopsy records and later fired.

Illinois has been the first state to adopt the New Freedom Commission's proposal. All children ages 0-18 and pregnant women must undergo mandatory mental health screenings. Iowa is moving towards adopting the proposal. On September 15, Congress voted 95-315 against a bill to cut federal funding for school mental health screenings.

The implications are astounding. Politicians are bedding with pharmaceutical companies at the detriment of the American people. But even more alarming is the concept of forced screenings and the desire to drug our children. If there are that many children suffering from mental illness, we need to examine our society to find out why. Prevention is the answer--NOT doping up young children with mind-altering psychotropic medications!

If this initiative proliferates, how long before parents of diagnosed children will be charged with negligence if they choose not to medicate their children? The New Freedom Initiative is another anti-freedom policy spawned by Bush that reeks of corruption and malicious intent, but is disguised a goodwill gesture towards the disabled. As with the Patriot Act, Bush applied a buzzword, freedom, and assumed it would enjoy support from the ignorant masses. It is now the responsibility of every American citizen to stand up and just say no to Bush's drugs.

References:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/conte.../328/7454/1458

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=39078

http://www.illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=17748

http://www.dhs.state.ia.us/Publicati...03%20FINAL.doc

http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJo...PJanuary20.pdf

http://www.namiscc.org/News/2004/Spr...izerGuilty.htm

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/07/07.html

http://www.teenscreen.org/newsroom/d...ualreport3.pdf - Page 5. Legislation for the proposal has already been introduced in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada, with governors in Iowa and Florida also supporting the screenings.

Feel free to check those references, feel free to attempt to find some your own that deny the above facts. FauxNews doesn't count.

**Darkest Angel** · October 5th, 2004, 12:25 PM

We are supposed to have seperation between church ans state in this country...why is my money being spent to forward christian ideology?

Amy Sullivan: 'Faith without works'
Date: Monday, October 04 @ 09:57:27 EDT
Topic: The Bush Administration

After four years, the president's faith-based policies have proven to be neither compassionate nor conservative.

By Amy Sullivan, Washington Monthly

When George W. Bush first hit the national political scene in the crowded field for the 2000 Republican nomination, what made him different, what made even liberal Americans take a second look, was his declaration that he was a "compassionate conservative." Unlike the flinty old conservatives of the past, Bush explained, a compassionate conservative would not be afraid to harness the power of government to minister to the unfortunate. But unlike traditional liberal Democrats, who relied on fumbling government bureaucracies, a compassionate conservative would empower and fund the charitable sector, particularly religious groups, to help those in need.

This breakthrough political slogan was embodied by a "faith-based initiative" that Bush talked about incessantly on the campaign trail and rolled out within the first month of taking over the White House. And Bush's image as a different kind of Republican was only reinforced by the tableau of black pastors, conservative evangelical leaders, and liberal crusaders for social justice who gathered around him as he introduced his faith-based domestic policy.

The first part of the initiative sought to make it easier for religious organizations to get government grants to provide social services. Trumpeting the success of faith-based groups in Texas that ran drug rehabilitation and prison counseling programs, Bush argued that religious organizations could outperform their secular equivalents and so should be allowed to compete for the same government funds. The policy's second aspect was a proposed tax break to make it worthwhile for individuals to contribute more of their money to charities. By allowing non-itemizers (70 percent of taxpayers) to deduct their charitable contributions, the proposal could infuse as much as $80 billion into the charitable sector. Together, the two ideas embraced classic conservative principles: honoring the unique ability of religious organizations to help those in need, and empowering individuals in the civil sector instead of government.

Four years later, Bush's compassionate conservatism has turned out to be neither compassionate nor conservative. The policy of funding the work of faith-based organizations has, in the face of slashed social service budgets, devolved into a small pork-barrel program that offers token grants to the religious constituencies in Karl Rove's electoral plan for 2004 while making almost no effort to monitor their effectiveness. Meanwhile, the plan to extend tax credits for charitable giving has gone nowhere, despite the three enormous tax cut packages Bush has signed. Like any number of this administration's policies, the faith-based initiative has been so ill-considered, so utterly sacrificed to political expediency, and carried out with so little regard for the problems it was supposed to solve, that it bears only the faintest resemblance to the political philosophy it was supposed to embody. The history of the faith-based initiative tells us little about what could have been a truly innovative social policy, but speaks volumes about the cynical politics of the Bush administration.

Blind faith

From the very beginning, Bush has argued that faith-based groups should be judged on their results, and he insists that they do work better. The difference, he contends, is that they do more than simply minister to physical needs. On the campaign trail in the summer of 2000, Bush told audiences that religious organizations succeed where others fail "because they change hearts, they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ." Whenever "my administration sees a responsibility to help people," he promised, "we will look first to faith-based organizations that have shown their ability to save and change lives." Bush had little empirical evidence to back up the claim that religious organizations were more effective. But he relentlessly talked of two seemingly-promising programs that the Texas state government had supported while he was governor. One was Teen Challenge, a drug rehabilitation program that claimed an astonishing 86 percent success rate. The other was InnerChange, a counseling program for prisoners that boasted impressively low levels of recidivism among its graduates. Certain critics raised questions about the reliability of the studies that produced these figures. But Bush kept repeating the claims, and most of the press corps passed them along uncritically.

Once in office, Bush wasted no time setting up a new bureaucratic structure to cater specifically to the needs of faith-based groups. He created a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and appointed political scientist John DiIulio (a Democrat) to run it before his first week was out; soon after, the White House sent proposed legislation to Congress that would expand federal grant eligibility to religious groups. But the proposal came loaded with a number of controversial provisions, including giving religious contractors the right not to hire employees of a different faith, a clear violation of federal anti-discrimination statutes. When the legislation, which DiIulio himself described as "an absolute political non-starter," went nowhere, Bush didn't bat an eye. He simply pulled out his pen and implemented his idea via a series of executive orders instead.

Critics worried that faith-based groups would be unduly privileged in the newly expanded grant-making world. For them, Bush had one word: results, results, results. In an interview with the religious Web site Beliefnet, he was asked whether he would support government money going to a Muslim group that taught prisoners the Koran. "The question I'd be asking," Bush replied, "is what are the recidivism rates? Is it working? I wouldn't object at all if the program worked." Four more times in the interview, Bush mentioned "results," noting that instead of promoting religion, "I'm promoting lower recidivism rates, and we will measure to make sure that's the case."

This rhetoric matched the administration's focus in other policy areas--like education--on accountability. Conservatives traditionally criticize government programs for throwing good money after bad, rewarding those who have not proven themselves effective with hard numbers like higher test scores, lower poverty rates, or reduced recidivism. Mel Martinez, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, echoed the results-oriented sentiment in December 2002, telling an audience that "faith-based organizations should be judged on one central question: Do they work?" Conservatives thought they already knew the answer. "The fact is, we don't just suspect that faith-based programs work best," said Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire", "we know it."

Actually, we knew no such thing. But now we've had four years to measure results and reach a conclusion. Unfortunately, in the midst of all of the instructions included in the various executive orders, it turns out that the Bush administration forgot to require evaluation of organizations that receive government grants. According to a study released by the Pew-funded Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy in August 2004, "while more elaborate scientific studies are underway, the White House has relied on largely anecdotal evidence to support the view that faith-based approaches produce better long-term results." The accountability president has chosen not to direct any money toward figuring out whether faith-based approaches really work.

So, it's a good thing that some academics and private organizations have picked up the slack. In the last few years, a few studies have looked at both faith-based and secular social service providers, and they have particularly tried to replicate the incredible results boasted by the model Texas programs. The verdict? There is no evidence that faith-based organizations work better than their secular counterparts; and, in some cases, they are actually less effective. In one study funded by the Ford Foundation, investigators found that faith-based job training programs placed only 31 percent of their clients in full-time employment while the number for secular organizations was 53 percent. And Teen Challenge's much ballyhooed 86 percent rehabilitation rate falls apart under examination--the number doesn't include those who dropped out of Teen Challenge and relies on a disturbingly small sample of those graduates who self-reported whether they had remained sober, significantly tilting the results.

It will take several more years to rigorously scrutinize the relative abilities of faith-based and secular organizations to provide effective social services, so it is impossible to know whether these initial findings are true across the board. And maybe in a perfect world it would be worth testing Bush's hunch and giving faith-based groups access to funds in the effort to alleviate poverty and other social problems. The problem is that, under the Bush administration, the overall pot of money for social services has shrunk considerably. This means that well-established organizations that have provided services for decades are now competing with--and, in some cases, being displaced by--unproven, often less-successful groups, inflicting a double whammy upon the people who really need the help.

The chosen ones

The fact that there is no proof that faith-based programs are more effective has not stopped the president from claiming that they are. But, as he has in other areas--take the ever-changing rationale for invading Iraq--Bush simply shifts his emphasis when one argument begins to lose luster. These days, he is most likely to promote the faith-based initiative by contending that religious groups have been discriminated against and merely deserve the same chances that everyone else has. To lay the groundwork for this point, the administration published a report in the summer of 2001 assessing the "barriers" to government cooperation with religious groups. Titled "Unlevel Playing Field," this audit of federal agencies argued that faith-based organizations have been unfairly locked out of participation in government programs simply because of their religious nature.

And, in fact, federal policy has not always been blind to religious character. This is often for good reason--the Constitution prohibits government promotion of religion--but it sometimes seems arbitrary. In 2001, for example, after an earthquake struck Seattle, a number of groups applied for FEMA funds to rebuild structures, particularly historic buildings in the downtown district. When members of a synagogue applied for money, however, they were initially turned down because FEMA regulations didn't allow government funds to go toward the construction of houses of worship. After the group lodged a complaint, the rules were changed to make religious communities eligible for aid to rebuild their damaged structures. So the concern isn't entirely misplaced.

Yet despite some unfair kinks in federal contracting procedures, the truth is that the playing field isn't all that slanted against faith-based groups. Organizations like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services have been mainstay providers of social services and have received government funding for decades. Instead of acknowledging this fact, the administration indulges in rhetoric that is almost a parody of left-wing identity politics--including making false accusations of discrimination. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's audit of its dealings with religious groups reports that no faith-based organizations received funding under the department's $20 million Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program. HUD apparently forgot that Habitat for Humanity--which has received over half of that program's total funding in recent years--is a faith-based organization. The same report concludes that religious organizations were "banned" from being owners of housing projects under a Section 202 housing program for the elderly. Again, religious groups have comprised more than two-thirds of the program's sponsoring organizations during the program's 35-year history.

Far from offsetting any serious anti-religious discrimination, the new faith-based grant program seems to have devolved into a religious version of race-based set-aside programs. As The American Prospect first reported last spring, some states that are responsible for dispersing federal social service grants have altered their grant applications to include a box that potential grantees should check to indicate whether they are faith-based. In Massachusetts, several long-time recipients of funds for programs to help veterans learned the hard way that failure to check that box leads to the sudden denial of cash. When they identified themselves as "faith-based" the next time around, their applications were, not surprisingly, approved.

Some Bush officials are alarmingly honest about this quota-like system. When I asked Courtney McCormick, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture's faith-based office, what steps the administration is taking to track the effectiveness of faith-based grantees, she candidly replied, "That's not our concern." What they do care about, she said, is "getting more churches and community groups through the door to get access to funding."

Foiled by the death tax

The total absence of accountability for faith-based grantees and the institution of affirmative action for religious groups may seem like an abandonment of conservative principles. And it is. But that's small potatoes compared to what the Bush administration has done to the most conservative piece of the faith-based initiative--a plan to encourage charitable donations through private giving that could have revolutionized the world of social service organizations far more than the expansion of federal grant eligibility has done.

Currently, only individuals who itemize their taxes (usually those at the higher end of the income scale) are entitled to deduct their donations to charitable organizations. Bush's proposal was simple: Allow the nearly 85 million non-itemizers to take a charitable tax deduction, while also increasing the amount of money corporations can give tax-free to charities and permitting tax-free charitable donations from individual retirement accounts.

The president and his colleagues endorsed the idea as a way to equalize the tax code and promote a "culture of giving." Proclaimed then-candidate Bush in 1999: "We will encourage an outpouring of giving in America. . . encouraging giving by everyone in our society, not just the wealthy." Shortly after Bush took office, his top economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, laid out the plan at a White House press conference and explained, "We think that's an important part of solving America's social problems: not just giving it [the deduction] to roughly the 33 percent richest taxpayers, but to all taxpayers." At its core, the charitable giving proposal reflected a classic conservative belief that the best way to alleviate poverty and social ills is through private giving and civil society, not government programs. But liberals liked the idea as well because it finally acknowledged what they had been pointing out for years--while the largest share of charitable contributions may come from the very wealthy, when you look at the percentage of total wealth that individuals donate, Americans at the lowest end of the income scale give the most, an empirical illustration of the biblical "widow's mite" story. And they couldn't ignore the fact that a study by the group Independent Sector predicted the plan (which would cost an estimated $20 billion) would spur $80 billion in new donations to charity.

Potential givers and recipients lobbied on behalf of the plan, which the White House sent to Congress in early 2001 as part of its faith-based legislation. Universities, fund-raising associations, religious groups, advocates for the poor, and corporate lobbyists all urged that the provision be included in the tax plan barreling through the usually sluggish legislative process on the Hill. Quickly incorporated, the charitable giving provision seemed destined for speedy enactment and flew through both houses of Congress.

And then the plan that everybody liked, that would have unleashed the armies of compassion with an injection of eighty billion new dollars, ran into one insurmountable obstacle: greed. When congressional and White House negotiators sat down to iron out the differences in the two separate tax cut bills that had been approved by the House and Senate in the spring of 2001, they were faced with a price tag that topped $1 trillion. Fiscal conservatives started to balk, protesting that the cost was simply too high. Something had to go. Sitting next to each other on the potential chopping block were reductions in the tax rate, the repeal of the estate tax, and the charitable giving proposal. The choice for Republicans was, in the end, simple.

"In reality, the bottom line was that their priorities were in the rates, the death tax, marriage penalty, and the child credit," a senior Republican staffer told The Washington Post at the time. The charitable tax deductions were "never high on anyone's list," including the White House's. A Democratic aide involved in the negotiations agreed: "There wasn't a lot of push coming from the White House." Even worse, for advocates of charitable giving, was the fact that the repeal of the estate tax was expected to hurt charities by depriving them of an estimated $6 billion each year from bequests, a traditional way of getting around tax payments.

DiIulio was outraged, according to a source, by the political calculations which had tossed the charitable deduction overboard in favor of repealing the estate tax; he left his position at the White House in disgust just a few months later, telling Esquire writer Ron Suskind that "what you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm."

The White House assured supporters of their initiative that this was only a temporary set-back. "The president is hopeful this will happen," said press secretary Ari Fleischer soon after the deal was cut. "It's the right thing to do." Right or not, two additional tax bills came and went without charitable deductions. Hoping to capitalize on the proposal's popularity, Republicans reattached it to the broader faith-based legislation to expand grant eligibility to faith-based organizations and exempt those groups from restrictions against discrimination in hiring. "There was some sentiment in the House and the Senate that this was such a positive thing with legs that you could attach other things to it, and it would carry them along," Stanley-Carlson-Thies, who served as DiIulio's deputy at the White House, explained to me. What they found, however, was that "opposition to some of the religious hiring stuff was so strong that it put an anchor on the private giving instead." And so the faith-based bill languished for the rest of the congressional session.

In 2003, Republicans finally separated the charitable giving plan and introduced it as a stand-alone bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support (the House version received 408 votes, the Senate garnered 95). But the bill has hit another roadblock as a result of the political hardball Republicans have played over the last few years. Incensed after they were effectively shut out of the conference committee on Medicare, Democrats have now refused to take part in any more negotiations that aren't conducted fairly. Instead of pulling rank to order congressional Republicans to play nice and work out their differences on the charitable giving legislation, Bush has backed off, choosing to focus on other priorities. "The White House has not pushed this bill," says one lobbyist for a religious organization. "They could have it if they wanted it."

In the meantime, Bush never misses an opportunity on the stump to remind voters that, religious groups are now receiving $1 billion more in grants than they did four years ago as a result of faith-based initiative. It's not nothing, but it's also not much. Compared to the $80 billion they could be receiving through private giving, his boast can't help but seem like Dr. Evil's preening "one meeelion dollars."

A different kind of Republican

On the third night of the Republican convention, one of the many gauzy "W." video-mercials that appeared on giant screens in the middle of Madison Square Garden during slow stretches featured images of Bush surrounded by people of color, while in a voiceover the president reminded viewers, "I rallied the armies of compassion." More than with any other piece of his domestic policy agenda, Bush has linked himself personally to the faith-based initiative. During a campaign stop in March, he told a crowd of religious leaders that he--and he alone--was responsible for the changes that have taken place. "Congress wouldn't act," Bush said, "so I signed an executive order--that means I did it on my own."

And so he did. Bush alone is responsible for supporting the distribution of taxpayer dollars without requiring proof that the funding produces results, for establishing a new government bureaucracy to give special help to a "discriminated" community that has always been on equal footing with everyone else, and for encouraging religious organizations to rely on government funding instead of encouraging private donations. It turns out that a "compassionate conservative" is a different kind of Republican after all. Just not the kind we expected.

Amy Sullivan is a Washington Monthly editor.

Reprinted from The Washington Monthly:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...2sullivan.html

**Darkest Angel** · October 5th, 2004, 12:28 PM

Molly Ivins: 'The twilight zone of wonderland'
Posted on Wednesday, September 29 @ 09:54:34 EDT
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When things get this weird, one metaphor just isn't enough

By Molly Ivins, Working For Change

AUSTIN --- Alice, we're in the Twilight Zone of Wonderland. Whee! John Kerry is disrespectful of our allies! Donald Rumsfeld thinks an election in three-fourths of Iraq is good enough. The No. 1 best seller in our nation is an untrue, vicious and ugly attack on a genuine, bona fide, certified war hero. Despite everything you have seen, read or heard about Iraq, all is tickety-boo over there, and anyone who says different is helping the terrorists.

More than a year after "Mission Accomplished," we have still not restored water or electricity in Iraq back to Saddam Hussein's pitiful standards. The electricity is out between four and 14 hours a day in Baghdad, there is no potable water because of pipe breaks and contamination, the garbage is uncollected, and sewage runs in the streets. A year after Congress voted to spend $18.4 billion reconstructing Iraq, only $1 billion has been spent, and most of that has gone to overhead, contractors' profits, security service, insurance and property losses. The jobs have gone largely either to Americans or other foreigners in Iraq, with little benefit to the Iraqis.

This information is not partisan -- it comes from Sen. Dick Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, all respected Republicans. Military leaders on the ground all think we need more troops in there.

Now this is grim, but not necessarily fatal. What is fatal is ignoring the reality and doing nothing to stop the hemorrhaging. We can't win a war by pretending it's going well when it's not. To further suggest that pointing out that it is not going well somehow endangers the troops or encourages the enemy is despicable. The troops and the enemy know how it's going. They're there.

Even more despicable is the suggestion from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Vice President Cheney and Sen. Orrin Hatch that the terrorists favor Kerry. As Joe Conason has pointed out, George W. Bush is the best recruiting tool the terrorists have.

In Iraq, it is no longer a question of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. The trends are consistent -- bad and getting worse. Our troops were being attacked 40 to 50 times a day in Iraq before the "handover" to the Iraqis. Now they're being attacked 70 to 80 times a day. Some people think the attacks are being stepped up to make Bush look bad. That's exactly what the same people said before the "hand-off" in June, but the trends continued to get worse. The absurd claim that John Kerry is "dissing" our ally the "interim prime minister" Iyad Allawi is worthy of the Alice's White Queen herself. How did Allawi get to be interim prime minister? He started as an enforcer for Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party and was then sent abroad to keep Iraqi students in line. He later worked for the CIA, and was the chosen favorite of the American administration in Baghdad and appointed to his job over the objections of the United Nations and most Iraqis.

Now Bush says he would give the "mission accomplished" speech again. "Absolutely," he said. The only prominent person in the administration who seems to recognize reality is Colin Powell, who says the war is going badly and that it has increased anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.

On Monday, we bombed both Fallujah and the al Sadr section of Baghdad -- dozens of civilians reported dead. The scariest statistic I have heard about Iraq is that 41 percent of its people are under 15. What is this teaching them about us?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Republicans in Congress are stacking up a record of election-year folly so gross it staggers even veterans of legislative debacles. First, they let the assault weapons ban lapse, despite the fact that 70 percent of the American people want it kept in place. They had to pass a simple $5 billion corporate-tax plan because we are in violation of tariff laws. This has bogged down in a $150 billion pork-off, while American products are losing billions of dollars in retaliatory sanctions.

Even worse, Congress passed a $145 billion extension of tax cuts. To cover the resulting debt, we are borrowing money from the Bank of China, to be paid off by our children. Showing a fine sense of fiscal restraint, the R's declined to extend minimal credits for millions of children in working-poor families. Instead, they gave another $13 billion in tax cuts to the corporations. Remember when Bush told us cutting corporate taxes would result in a mighty flood of new jobs? But, hey, they're in favor of protecting marriage and against burning the flag, so your life should get dramatically better.

Nomination for worst political come-on of the year so far: The Republican National Committee sent a mailing to West Virginia Republicans that claims banning the Bible is part of the "liberal agenda." It features quite a striking picture of a Bible with the word 'BANNED" across it. No, no, no, fellas. Liberals are the ones who oppose censorship and book burning.

...I can keep this up all day...

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