Don’t just Boot Bush – Reboot

It’s pretty clear that the American people want to boot Bush & Co. out of the Whitehouse. Barack Obama’s message of change absolutely resonated in Iowa, stunning the country with an astounding win. Even on the Republican side, the insurgent who criticized the President’s “bunker mentality” beat the corporate Bush-apologist in Iowa. Change has been the recurring theme of this campaign so far. However, I think we need more than change. We need to not just boot out Bush: we need to reboot the system.

Let’s face it. If any of the Democrats are elected, change will come. There is little doubt that Barack Obama, John Edwards or Hillary Clinton would change some of the Bush policies. Let’s be honest here. If you read the position papers of all three Democrats, you will find that most of the differences in position are tinkering around the edges. The core messages are the same. Healthcare is broken and needs to be fixed. The environment is in crisis and must be healed. Education is weak and has to be supported.

We also need to restore America’s standing in the world. The pictures of Abu Ghraib still circulate on the internet as inspiration for would-be terrorists. The Bush Administration has held prisoners without trial, based on secret evidence, while Bush hides behind a veil of “state secrets” and executive privilege. It is shameful.

One difference between Barack Obama and his Democratic rivals is his ability to not just change the reputation of America in the world, but to reset it, to give us a fresh start, to reboot the political system. The election of Barack Obama as president does more than continue the conversation with different players and an altered message. It completely changes the context of the conversation.

There are times when a system doesn’t just need to close the old programs and open new ones. Until we completely reset the system, there are programs that can continue to run in the background unnoticed. We need to reboot with Obama.

Who Counts?

According to an article on MSNBC, in his proposed 2008 budget, President “Bush has asked for an additional $100 billion for Iraq and the global war on terrorism this year, on top of $70 billion already sought…the Pentagon is scheduled to get a hefty increase in spending authority of 11 percent, pushing its 2008 budget to $481.4 billion.” Now, get this. We’re talking about $170 billion, plus $481.4 billion for a total of $651.4 billion. Maybe it’s just me, but this seems like a lot of money. As Senator Everett Dirksen is reported to have said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Since these numbers are a little hard to comprehend, let’s see if we can gain some perspective by doing a little bit of counting. If we counted $1 per second around the clock, it would take us 31.69 years to count $1 Billion. If we counted $1 per second, how long would it take us to count $651.4 Billion? It would take us 20,641 years. Even if we cheated and counted $100 bills, it would still take us over 200 years of around-the-clock counting to reach the combined defense and war budget.

So, the President wants us to hand over to the Department of Defense so much money that it would take over 20,000 years to count it at $1 per second. Of course, that’s not all. There is also a lot of additional military spending that falls outside of the Department of Defense. For example, did you know that the Department of Energy spends around $7 billion a year on nuclear weapons projects maintaining nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads?

If we’re going to understand President Bush’s priorities, we need to compare the Defense Department numbers to spending in other areas. For example, according to Reuters, Bush has asked for $56 billion for Education. Is the President saying that education is less than one tenth of the priority of defense and war? The Education budget is 8.6% of the combined defense and war budgets. So, despite brave rhetoric from President Bush about the importance of education, in the Bush budget kids don’t count.

How about the poor and seniors? Do they count? President Bush proposes cutting $78 billion for Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years. No, they don’t count either.

With the recently released report on global warming, you would think that the Environmental Protection Agency could count on a boost in funding, right? Guess again. The EPA will actually see its budget reduced. I guess in the world that President Bush occupies, the earth doesn’t count.

It seems that defense contractors and war profiteers are the only ones who can count on George W. Bush. The New York Times reports that spending on government contractors has nearly doubled from $207 billion in 2000 to $400 billion last year.

As President Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Isn’t it time that we have a government we can count on?

Elizabeth Edwards on No Child Left Behind

On January 20th, 2007 several bloggers sat down with Elizabeth Edwards and asked her questions on a variety of topics. One of the most interesting conversations revolved around No Child Left Behind. Mrs. Edwards made several insightful comments.

Mrs. Edwards’ comments can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_AZrIi72o