Bivens's Outrage

Investigating Ashcroft

By Matt Bivens

Did the US Attorney General accept excessive campaign contributions on the sly? Is he a tax evader? Has he engaged in a criminal conspiracy to cover his tracks?

These are the questions five public interest groups -- Public Citizen, Citizens for Ethics in Washington, the National Voting Rights Institute, Public Campaign and the Fannie Lou Hamer Project -- want investigated. They have written a letter to the Department of Justice formally requesting a special prosecutor -- one outside of John Ashcroft's control -- be appointed.

At issue are events almost four years ago, when Missouri, the "show me" state, handed Ashcroft bragging rights as the first Senator in American history ever to lose an election to a dead man. It was a hard-fought race; and Ashcroft's side broke the rules. Federal regulators last month finally got around to confirming this and fining his campaign $37,000 for having accepted illegal and excessive contributions.

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January 16, 2004

'We Improved!'

By Matt Bivens

This is yet-another of those hilariously depressing tales of how our President's boys and girls, when confronted with inconvenient science, simply rewrite it.

White people get better health care in this country. That's no secret. It's been so extensively documented that a few years ago, Congress instructed the White House to study the problem, with help from our top medical scientists.

Those top medical scientists even wrote a small book of guidance for their Health and Human Services (HHS) colleagues running the study, one that begins by characterizing the issue as "among this nation's most serious health care problems," and continues, "minorities receive poorer quality care in such important areas as cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma, and diabetes."

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January 14, 2004

The Thing That Ate Planet Earth

By Matt Bivens

A week from now, we'll be treated to George W. Bush's State of the Union 2004 speech. We will, almost certainly, be told that the state of our union is strong. There will be much discussion of how President Bush told fibs to us in his last State of the Union, and much discussion of whatever fibs he'll surely tell in this one; and interminable, drawn-out commentary over whether his oratory on Tuesday will boost his poll numbers on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, from the "oh, by the way" news pages, comes this gem from the State of the World 2004: "The world is consuming goods and services at an unsustainable pace, with serious consequences for the well-being of people and the planet."

The cruelly apt headline above this declaration? RICHER, FATTER, AND NOT MUCH HAPPIER.

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January 13, 2004

War Was Set

By Matt Bivens

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this'." -- former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

The implications of this are immense and of impeachment-level significance. O'Neill, both in an interview on "60 Minutes" and in his new book "The Price of Loyalty," describes his days as, among other things, a permanent member of the National Security Council -- when, to his surprise, at the very first meeting of the Bush presidency, ten days after the inauguration, the chief topic of discussion was going after Saddam. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill. The topic came up again at the second meeting two days later; O'Neil says no one ever asked "why Saddam?" or "why now?" Instead, they studied memos -- many of them discussed in his book -- about things like where the Iraqi oil was located, or the "Plan for post- Saddam Iraq."

If this is true, then George W. Bush has made a cynical manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 -- which came eight months later -- to pursue his own pet project, at the cost of thousands of American and Iraqi lives and of our prestige all around the world. As The Independent of London observes, this means all those hints and allusions and suggestions that Iraq was about al-Qaeda "were a political convenience, not the driving motivation behind the invasion."

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January 12, 2004

A War Looking for a Reason

By Matt Bivens

CBS News, citing a former Bush Administration Cabinet Secretary, reports that they began making plans for an invasion of Iraq days after the January 2001 inauguration -- eight months before the 9/11 attacks. Another reason not to miss Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's interview on "60 Minutes" this Sunday night.

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January 11, 2004

Uncurious George

By Matt Bivens

Paul O'Neil, the former Treasury Secretary who was canned for not selling Bush's tax cuts with sufficient ardor, will be on "60 Minutes" Sunday talking about working for the President -- a boss so non-involved in Cabinet meetings that O'Neil says he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." Nor is he much better one-on-one. Imagine the scene O'Neil describes: Here is the President, meeting for the first time his top economic official. A poor choice of public words by either of these men can send markets tumbling, can raise or lower national currencies. You'd think they'd each want to understand the other perfectly. Instead, O'Neil says of their first meeting, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on ... I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening ... It was mostly a monologue."

No word yet if the President was playing with an executive desk toy, or doodling his name over and over while O'Neil soliloquized ...

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January 10, 2004

Forget 'Bush-Hitler'

By Matt Bivens

As The Nation's John Nichols reports, MoveOn.org is being pounded upon hysterically by the Republican Party over two ad contest entries -- mailed in from the public, not endorsed by MoveOn and even apologized for and pulled from the website -- ads that compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.

MoveOn notes sourly, however, that none of this indignation was around when Democratic Senator Max Cleland -- a decorated veteran who lost both legs and an arm serving in Vietnam -- was smeared by the Republican leadership with television advertisements comparing him to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

And Timothy Karr at MediaChannel.org observes, even as the mainstream media has raised cries of shame at the Bush-Hitler ads -- which were mailed in to a "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest and promptly rejected -- there's been silence about the still-truculently defiant decision by The New York Post to run a column devoted entirely to comparing Howard Dean supporters to Hitler's Brownshirts, and Dean himself to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

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January 8, 2004

The Anti-Weekend President

By Matt Bivens

Here in the United States of America, if the man wants you to work late evenings or weekends or holidays, he has to pay you time-and-a-half. It's a rule dating back to Franklin Roosevelt, and as a reform it's been a tremendous success: Employers are able to find and afford help whenever they need it; employees have the luxury of choosing between more money or more leisure. This is the grand bargain that made sacred -- and possible -- the weekend itself.

Enter George W. Bush, who, as you know, has been battling furiously for months to "simplify" overtime rules, to "make them more relevant to our modern work force," as the White House spokesman put it this week. (The Administration, unless blocked by Congress when it reconvenes, intends to issue the new rules in March.)

Unions and economists have said that all this talk of "simplifying" and "modernizing" is really a Trojan Horse to deny overtime protections to some 8 million Americans, among them police officers, fire fighters, nurses, medical techs, chefs and office workers. The Administration has countered indignantly that it's only thinking of the least well-off among us (yes, it's rich, I know). They insist it's all about expanding overtime pay for 1.3 million of the lowest- income workers.

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January 6, 2004

This Just In

By Matt Bivens

"The Lord has just blessed him," says Pat Robertson -- the televangelist, purveyor of anti-aging pancakes, and coddler and partner of African despots -- about our president. "I mean, [George Bush] could make terrible mistakes and comes [sic] out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him. ... I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004."

It doesn't make any difference whether he does good or evil -- the Lord will still anoint him? What is this, Iran? Perhaps Robertson should skip making predictions, and stick to praying for God to kill Supreme Court justices; at least that was creepy-scary, as opposed to creepy-silly.

Here, meanwhile, is a smarter prediction, from the Reverend Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State: "Pat Robertson in 2004 will continue to use his multi-million broadcasting empire to promote George Bush and other Republican candidates."

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January 5, 2004

'My Lump in the Bed'?

By Matt Bivens

About three months ago, First Lady Laura Bush, in a speech to the National Book Festival, told a charming anecdote about her husband. Here, according to the White House website, is what she had to say:

"We delight in great works of literature and especially in the works of budding new artists. President Bush is a great leader and husband -- but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip [to Europe], I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist:

Dear Laura,

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