Tag: Politics

The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

The 100 accomplishments of the George W. Bush administration

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As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.


 Economy
1 Increased defense R&D spending
2 Accelerated the cleanup of brownfields
3 Prescription drug benefits in Medicare
4 Ordered renovation of military housing
5 Signed Medicare Reform
6 Allowed disabled people to use up to a year’s worth of vouchers to finance down payments on homes
7 9.7% increase in government-wide homeland security funding
8 Increased budget deficit to Eisenhower levels (% of GDP)
9 New Health Savings Accounts
10 Increased the limit of Education IRA from $500 to $2,000
11 Didn’t fix economy hurt by housing crisis
12 Allowed mortgage crisis
13 Initiated 3 separate raises for US military personnel
14 Increased the Defense Department’s base budget more than 70 percent since 2001
15 Pushed through 2 separate income tax custs
16 Reduced the number of homeless veterans by 40%
17 Fixed economy inherited in 2000 and hurt in 2001 attacks

International
18 Killed the old US/USSR ABM Treaty
19 Paid off US debt to UN
20 Signed the largest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia
21 10 ABM silos in Alaska
22 Prematurely declares “Mission Accomplished” regarding Iraq
23 Doubled foreign assistance
24 Forced Syra to leave Lebanon
25 Condemned the Russian attack on Georgia
26 Allows Secretary of State to go to UN with false evidence regarding Iraq
27 Won support for three U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran
28 Increased the number of free trade agreements from 3 to 14
29 Designated Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “Axis of Evil”
30 Implemented President’s Malaria Initiative in Africa
31 Increased money for medicine for AIDS suffering in Africa
32 Setup the Afghanistan government
33 Halved the nuclear weapon stockpile
34 Secured a commitment from N. Korea to end its nuclear weapon program
35 Watched as Israel attacked Lebanon
36 Iraq invasion
37 Massively increased aid to Africa
38 Got Libya to give up nukes
39 Tried to get Europe to deal with Iran
40 Watched as Israel attacked Gaza
41 Set up new government in Iraq
42 Forced N. Korea to work with multi-national panel
43 Dealt with China and the US spy plane
44 Remove Saddam Hussein
45 Afghanistan occupation
46 Afghanistan invasion
47 Gave Pakistan billions of dollars

Policy
48 Watched passively as Katrina hit New Orleans
49 Denied knowing Ken Lay from Enron
50 Created Project Safe Neighborhood
51 Lifted the Executive Ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf
52 Kept reading children’s books on 9/11
53 Was elected in 2000
54 Made changes to allow necessary clean up of national forests to reduce fire damage
55 Reduced H1B visas from 195K per year to 66K per year
56 Substantially Increased Funding for the Great Lakes
57 Federal Energy and Carbon Sequestration Programs
58 Mandated a Cut in Mercury Emissions
59 Nuclear Power 2010 program
60 Exempt food from unilateral trade sanctions and embargoes
61 Established Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
62 Put polar bear on endangered species list
63 Eased field-testing controls of genetically engineered crops
64 Tried to privatize Social Security
65 Reduced drug use among teens by 25%
66 Killed Kyoto Global Warming Treaty
67 issued an executive order that limits access to Presidential papers
68 Ethanol production has quadrupled from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to an estimated 6.5 billion gallons in 2007
69 Created the Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors
70 National Space Policy
71 Was re-elected in 2004
72 Created USA Freedom Corps
73 Appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito
74 Appointed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
75 Stopped funding of new stem cells for research purposes
76 Reversed the requirement of parental consent for abortions
77 Issued an executive order regarding union dues being used for political campaigns against individual’s wishes
78 Challenged UN to not be the League of Nations
79 Stopped US involvement in International Criminal Court
80 Issued an EO implementing the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling
81 Established the The White House Office and the Centers for the Faith-Based and Community Initiative
82 Started the USA Freedom Corps
83 Supported the Law of the Sea treaty
84 Strengthen the National Health Service Corps
85 Ordered a 5 year plan to restructure each agency
86 Reorganized the intelligence agencies into the Department of Homeland Security
87 Put hundreds of thousands of government jobs up for bid
88 Banned partial birth abortions
89 Double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health
90 Enacted the Do Not Call list
91 No child left behind
92 Signed Teacher Protection Act
93 Interstate Air Quality Rule
94 Clear Skies Initiative to reduce air pollution
95 Prohibited federal fund for groups providing abortions

Terrorism
96 Detained foreign citizens in prison without due process
97 Increased border security and interior enforcement funding more than 110 percent
98 Attacked Al Qaida
99 Implemented a wire-tapping scheme to detect conversations with terrorists
100 Allowed torture of suspect terrorists
101 Told American’s to shop after 9/11
102 Dealt with anthrax scare
103 Signed the Patriot Act
104 Created Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to monitor foreign students
105 Split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies
106 Signed the workplace verification bill to prevent hiring of illegal aliens.
107 Established a six-month deadline for processing immigration applications.
108 Told Americans that Islam was a religion of peace
109 Created the TSA
110 Created a new air monitoring system to detect harmful airborne agents
111 Signed 2 bills that arm pilots with handguns in the cockpit






And of course the one accomplishment that many people feel is the most important:


A couple of comments on the above list.

  • Yes, I know that there are more than 100 items on the list.  However, I didn’t want someone to say that two items were actually duplicate of each other.  For this reason, I felt that it was prudent to overshoot my goal of 100 in case a reader felt that some should have been excluded.
  • The links to many of the items are not meant to be the definitive source on that topic.  Rather, I wanted to remind the reader of the topic in case you didn’t remember that effort.  My hope was the link would lead you to the discovery of the issue and the action of the Bush Administration.  In the cases where I didn’t include a link, I felt that nearly everyone reading this list would understand those issues or could easily find more information by do a quick web search.
  • I titled this list as the 100 accomplishments.  I fully understand that many will feel that some of these items were failures.  That really isn’t the point.  My goal in creating the list was to try and identify the top 100 or so things that the administration did (or by inaction didn’t do). This is not a scorecard.
  • The list is not ordered by time or importance.  Do not take any inference in the numbering scheme.

Did I miss anything?

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? Part 1 of 5

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The web is filled with pronouncements that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever (or not).  I thought I would spend a few moments on the subject. This is a multi-part post so come back later to read more on this subject.  Better yet, subscribe to the feed and you can get it delivered to your email or feed reader.

First, lets look at what the historians say about W or at least how they grade other Presidents.  Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on the subject so let’s start there.  As with all of the recent Presidents there is a lack of the number of surveys and rankings. We can see from the couple that are there that the Wall Street Journal ranked him 18th out of 42 and Siena put him at 23.  That is squarely in the middle of the pack and nowhere near the worst.  The worst Presidents tend to Harding, Grant, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Buchanan.  Depending on your political bent, you could throw Carter or Coolidge into this mix for the worst.  W doesn’t appear to be in this company.

If you look at History News Network though, we get a slightly different picture.  There, Mr. McElvane cites several people and informal surveys that put him as the worst or among the worst.  Mr. McElvane is not exactly impartial though as his various writings on the web show (a quick look at Huffington Post shows he strongly favors Democratic ideals and liberal policies).  We can probably discount him as just another of the liberal herd that are saying W is the worst.

Rasmussen Reports did a poll that pretty much splits on the subject of being worst.  41 said the worst and 50 didn’t.  Unfortunately the poll didn’t ask was he among the 5 worst or the 10 worst.  To be honest though most Americans probably couldn’t get within 10 of the number of Presidents that we have had so this poll (and any other poll) probably is not a good barometer.

The US News and World Report interviewed Jay Tolson and he ranked the 10 worst Presidents.  George W. Bush doesn’t appear on this list but perhaps that is because he was being nice to a sitting President.  It is interesting that the reader poll that is on the page lists George W. Bush as the worst by 72% of the voters (as of this writing).  This is far from scientific or lacking of political slant since Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan make the worst 5 vote receivers but there is little historic push to list those two gentlemen that low.  Even Mt. Rushmore President, Abraham Lincoln, received 8% of the vote in contrast to most lists that put him at or near the top of the group.  So obviously, polling data doesn’t really mean that much.

What we need to do is grade the President on his actions for the important issues of the 8 year tenure.  Read the next post to start to dig into that subject.

More on this topic later!

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Presidential Question Time – Good idea but a terrible name

Presidential Question Time – Good idea but a terrible name

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John McCain said in a speech that he would ask Congress for an American equivalent of the Prime Minister “Question Time” that occurs in many parliamentary governments. There have been some editorials on this from George Will and the New York Times as well as some blogging on the concept.

I think most people miss the point (although Mr. Will probably comes the closest to getting it right, in my opinion). In most Parliamentary Government systems, the voters elect the Parliament and they, in turn, elect the Prime Minister (in the UK countries this is slightly different in that the Monarch actually appoints the PM but in modern history the Monarch appoints the choice of the Parliament).  So in this government, the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of the Parliament.

To compare this to the US would mean that the offices of Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader would combine to satisfy the role of the Prime Minister (not exactly of course, but close).

As any 7th grade US student should be able to describe, we have 3 separate and equal branches of government. The Senate and House form the Legislative branch and the President forms the Executive branch. The Executive branch is not more answerable to the Legislative branch than vice versa.  They are equals.

So while I think more open dialog in our government is important, Mr. McCain would be wise not to adopt the British form that is also broadcast on CSPAN.  He doesn’t answer to Congress anymore than Congress answers to him.

Instead, if Mr. McCain is elected and decides to implement this idea, it needs to expand:

  • for every question from Congress, the President should be able to ask a specific question to someone from Congress that is in attendance.  This balances the level of accountability
  • in Britain there is a time limit for the questions.  The US would also need a time limit to cut off long speeches (maybe even a time limit in the phrasing of a question).
  • the overall time should be cut in half.  The first half of the US Question Time would be with the Congress and the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House.  Since they are rough approximations of the Prime Minister, it is reasonable that they should be accountable to their collective bodies.  Perhaps they could rotate who is grilled by week.  The second half of the event would be the US President and the two way question session I propose above.

I think that all of this would make for an interesting addition to the political process.  It would add more transparency to the process and allow the US President to remind Congress to get their jobs done.  It would also allow Congress the opportunity to force the President to explain his/her decisions and reasons.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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Immediate drop of oil prices

Immediate drop of oil prices

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In my opinion the best way to quickly drop the price of crude oil is to announce that the US is going to build 30 nuclear reactors in the next decade.

This would send a strong message to the world community that we are serious about energy independence. One of the big perils with electric cars is the lack of availability of infrastructure to charge them.

We need to stabilize the world energy market and this would show everyone that we see serious about getting our house in order.

I know that John McCain has advocated a similar suggestion but I haven’t heard anything of this from Obama.

RANT! Obama should use public money

RANT! Obama should use public money

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I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue.  I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.

Obama promised that if he was nominated, he would use public money for his campaign.  Now he is backing out of that promise and is going to forgo those restrictions so that he can outspend John McCain by what some think will be 5 to 1.

Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!

While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign.  Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive.  John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!

BARACK OBAMA – YOU NEED TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE TO USE PUBLIC FUNDS! DON’T BE A TYPICAL POLITICIAN AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION WHENEVER IT IS CONVENIENT!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

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I am a big fan of the music of Sheryl Crow. I have all of her CDs and have bought each one (no, I didn’t “borrow” someone else’s MP3 files). I have enjoyed her music over the years but, to be honest, her first CD was probably her best and she could be accused of coasting since then – a couple good songs per CD with so-so songs after that.

I have listened to Ms. Crow’s latest CD several times. It is titled “Detours”. It is an apt title since it is a detour from her usual high quality work! I feel like the Democratic Party, Al Gore, and Laurie David have been injected into my brain via my ears! To think that I spent $15 for a CD of political propaganda.

I have no problem with the occasional activism song. I actually applaud this even when I don’t particularly agree with the message. For instance, Matchbox Twenty’s recent video “How Far We’ve Come” (see the bottom of this post to watch the video) is absolutely a political statement and it is excellent (I am not sure that the ending of showing Mr. Gore, Ms. Clinton, and Mr. Obama is a statement to the positive after watching the fall of the Berlin Wall but maybe that is their point).

Thankfully, Ms. Crow has put the lyrics to her songs in the CD package. I appreciate that gesture and she has regularly done this for her listeners. However, the words that she is portraying are over the top. Does she really know for a fact that the President was lying to get into a war? When I want to listen to someone exaggerate the truth, I will watch Al Gore’s movie since the British courts have already called that a political document.

Sheryl (and other artists) should limit her political statements to one or two well done messages and then spend the rest of the CD entertaining me. That is what I am paying her to do.

SHERYL – I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR POLITICS! I WANT YOU TO ENTERTAIN ME, NOT LECTURE ME ON YOUR OPINIONS!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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