ABQjournal: Bush Plundering National ParksBy Richard B. Smith
Retired Parks Official

Wildfires get all the television air time and newspaper column inches when it comes to harm done to national parks, but there exists a much greater threat to parks: the Bush administration.

If that sounds like overheated hype and election-year politics, you can ignore my concerns as an individual, which are based on 31 years of experience as a park ranger or senior manager in various parks and regional offices of the National Park Service.

Instead, consider the unmistakable message that emerged from an October 2003 survey by the Campaign to Protect America’s Lands (CPAL) of nearly 1,400 National Park Service employees.

Nine out of 10 park rangers and other in-house experts responding to the survey are worried that Bush administration decisions affecting national parks are based more on politics and special-interest deals than on science and what is best for the parks. …

Every month seems to bring a new outrage aimed at decreasing protection for national parks and public lands in a way that means more profit for Bush campaign contributors. With this kind of unprecedented White House assault on national parks and other public lands, the pessimism of those entrusted to safeguard our national parks appears to be well founded.

The lack of optimism about the future of parks and lands is evident in the survey findings: 79 percent of respondents said that employee morale is lower than it was a couple of years ago. Seventy-three percent of those surveyed expressed a great deal of concern about “special interest influence on park policies/decisions.” Eighty-eight percent indicated a great deal of concern that “decisions are being influenced by politics rather than professional experience/science.”

The bottom line: More than four in five of surveyed National Park Service employees expressed a “great deal of concern” about being able to protect park resources. …

As a Parks Service employee responding to the survey put it: “Our parks are being threatened by special interest money and politics, which are serving to undermine a lot of our environmental protections. I think that if the American public really understood what was going on they would be outraged, but by the time the damage is realized it may be too late.”

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Richard B. Smith of Placitas retired in 1994 from his National Parks Service position as an associate regional director for resources management of the Southwest Regional Office. He previously served as superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns.
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Related, but a different group:

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: American Taliban

More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

Commentary: Should International Monitors Observe U.S. Elections? By Debra Link

Electronic voting machines can easily be tampered with to affect the outcome. …

It is arguable that the office of the President of the U.S. was taken illegally. …

World hegemony through militaristic means (something this administration forthrightly claims) is on a heedless roll. This administration will not relinquish power easily.

I suggest a national petition drive calling for international monitoring of our Presidential election. This could be launched conceivably on the internet. If international media picked up on the fact that multitudes of Americans were so insecure with their eroding democracy that they were entreating the larger world community to observe their election process this November- well, it would be quite telling.

Everyone should be familiar with rising concerns over the trustworthiness of the election process in the US. Diebold is usually the subject of these discussions. In the full version of her commentary, Link mentions a company called ES&S (Election Systems & Software), as well. Her specific examples are alarming. This president, chosen by his father’s judges, believes he was chosen by Jesus. He is on a mission to change everything as fast as he can. What exactly is ”unimaginable” anymore? mjh

Two long, recent articles on this issue:

Politics: How Safe Is Your E-Vote?Elections go digital, but experts fear a crash
BY LEE NICHOLS, The Austin Chronicle

A Better Ballot Box? New electronic voting systems pose risks as well as solutions
By Rebecca Mercuri, Bryn Mawr College

Search this blog: Diebold

Google News Search: Diebold OR ES&S

ABQjournal: Get State Out of Marriage Role By Mary Ellen S. Capek

As a social institution, civil marriage has changed considerably over time, and the laws have followed.

When a woman married in the 19th century, she lost all her civil rights. Women and children were chattel, the property of their husbands and fathers. My great-grandmother was not able to inherit property and would have lost custody of her children had she sought to leave an abusive marriage.

As recently as 1967, a Caucasian man and an African-American woman would not have been able to marry in 16 states — and their children would have been deprived the benefits and protections of their parents’ marriage. …

Many committed gay and lesbian families are models of nonhierarchical family units and are actually more stable than some so-called “traditional” marriages that dictate inequality and preach dominance of husbands over wives — not a healthy model for sustaining marriages or raising children.

Divorce rates in predominantly “Bible Belt” states are evidence of these failures— 73 percent in Mississippi, for example, 79 percent in Oklahoma. (The national heterosexual divorce rate is 51 percent.) Two of the most significant threats to the institution of traditional marriage are sexism and divorce. …

Lesbian and gay families lack essential state and federal benefits that automatically accompany a marriage license, for example, financial and legal rights that protect a surviving spouse when a partner dies — which include automatic inheritance, assumption of a spouse’s pension, bereavement leave, burial determination, exemption from property taxes, Social Security survivor benefits, and the right to wrongful death benefits.

Additional government-bestowed protections for families include divorce, child custody and visitation rights, joint adoption and foster care, domestic violence restraints, immigration rights for a foreign spouse, insurance discounts, joint bankruptcy, joint parenting, medical decisions, and sick leave to care for a spouse.

The most profound threats to the institution of “traditional” marriage in New Mexico are the domino effects of poverty: violations of basic human needs for shelter, security and well-being. …
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Mary Ellen S. Capek, a researcher and consultant, is co-author of “Effective Philanthropy: Organizational Success Through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality,” a book written for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that will be published by MIT Press in 2005. Capek and her partner, Sue Hallgarth, live in Corrales and got married Sept. 16 in Victoria, Canada.

mjh’s weBlog: Read the Conservative argument FOR gay marriage

Terrorism cells multiplying, Senate warned

Al Qaeda has ”infected others with its ideology, which depicts the United States as Islam’s greatest foe,” he said. ”The steady growth of Osama bin Laden’s anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement and the broad dissemination of al Qaeda’s destructive expertise ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future — with or without al Qaeda in the picture.” — CIA Director George Tenet speaking to Congress

So, more muslims than every hate us and want to destroy us? Does Bush work for bin Laden or vice versa? Who profits from a war without end? Those who rule through fear. mjh

Cal Thomas

President Bush should quickly change the subject. What signal would it send to our highly motivated enemies should America change leaders in mid-war? One of the reasons the United States prevailed in World War II was the four terms to which Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. Continuity at home helped prosecute and win the war against Germany and Japan. The stakes today are higher. We cannot afford trivial pursuits in presidential politics during wartime.

This isn’t a game. It is about the survival of the United States of America and the values associated with Western traditions. Rejecting an administration that has built a (so far) successful defense against terrorism following 9/11 in favor of one with no such experience could give America’s enemies a unique window of opportunity to hit us again, and harder.

This is the line the Bush reelection team should take. We are at war, and we are likely to remain at war for a very long time. Political games can be played after we win. They should not be played during the battle.

Most agree that the ”War Against Terrorism” will last a long time, perhaps a generation. Thomas says ‘stick with Bush during the War’ — is he advocating Bush remain president forever? Or does he think Bush will win the war in 4 more years? mjh

White House Struggles to Halt Flap Over Jobs Report By Steve Holland, Reuters

The White House on Thursday sought to contain the fallout over an overly optimistic forecast that 2.6 million jobs will be created this year and some Republicans expressed concern about the damage being done to President Bush.

Bush, who has distanced himself from the forecast as Democrats emphasize sluggish job growth, tried to change the subject by accusing Democrats of wanting to raise taxes by not making his tax cuts permanent. …

The chairman of Bush’s re-election campaign, Marc Racicot, continued a general Bush administration retreat from the president’s own job forecast saying the 2.6 million figure was only a “stated goal.” …

Since 112,000 jobs were created in January, meeting the goal would require adding an average 335,000 new jobs each month all year — well above the 166,000 per month predicted by a recent survey of forecasters by the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter. [mjh: only 1,000 jobs were created in December 2003; nearly 3 million have been lost under Bush’s watch.]

In fact, the White House had implied that 3.8 million jobs would be created this year by projecting about 3 percent growth in the number of jobs in 2004.

Duhbya on ‘Meet The Press’

RUSSERT: The Bush-Cheney first three years, the unemployment rate has gone up 33 percent, there has been a loss of 2.2 million jobs. We’ve gone from a $281 billion surplus to a $521 billion deficit. The debt has gone from 5.7 trillion, to $7 trillion, up 23 percent. Based on that record, why should the American people rehire you as CEO?

BUSH: Sure, because I have been the President during a time of tremendous stress on our economy and made the decisions necessary to lead that would enhance recovery. …

RUSSERT: But when you proposed your first tax cut in 2001, you said this was going to generate 800,000 new jobs. Your tax cut of 2003, create a million new jobs. That has not happened.

BUSH: Well, it’s happening. It’s happening. And there is good momentum when it comes to the creation of new jobs. …

RUSSERT: How, why, as a fiscal conservative as you like to call yourself, would you allow a $500 billion deficit and this kind of deficit disaster?

BUSH: Sure. The budget I just proposed to the Congress cuts the deficit in half in five years. …

RUSSERT: That’s a very important point. Every president since the Civil War who has gone to war has raised taxes, not cut them.

BUSH: Yeah.

RUSSERT: Raised to pay for it. Why not say, I will not cut taxes any more until we have balanced the budget? If our situation is so precious and delicate because of the war, why do you keep cutting taxes and draining money from the treasury?

BUSH: Well, because I believe that the best way to stimulate economic growth is to let people keep more of their own money. …

RUSSERT: How about no more tax cuts until the budget is balanced?

BUSH: Well, that’s a hypothetical question which I can’t answer to you because I don’t know how strong the economy is going to be. …

RUSSERT: Are you prepared to lose?

BUSH: No, I’m not going to lose. [mjh: is that just confidence?]

RUSSERT: If you did, what would you do?

BUSH: Well, I don’t plan on losing. I have got a vision for what I want to do to for the country. See, I know exactly where I want to lead. I want to lead us, I want to lead this world toward more peace and freedom. I want to lead this great country to work with others to change the world in positive ways, particularly as we fight the war on terror, and we got changing times here in America, too. [mjh: what with American Fascism and all that.]

Bush makes pitch for making tax cuts permanent

President Bush on Thursday pressed his election-year complaints against ”tax raisers and spenders in Washington,” arguing that failure to make administration-backed tax cuts permanent would raise taxpayers’ bills by billions.

”When you hear people say, ‘Oh, let’s just let the tax cuts expire,’ it’s a tax increase,” Bush said in an event at the White House to promote his economic record. ”It’s a code word for, ‘I’m raising your taxes,’ to increase the amount of money we have to spend here in Washington on new programs, on programs that meet a particular political desire of the appropriators.”

These tax cuts were a big mistake, but now any move to correct that mistake can be attacked simple-mindedly as an increase. mjh