Bush Grievances Against Liberal Ideals

At the 2nd March meeting of Drinking Liberally Olympia, members put together a list of grievances against the Bush Administration.  Some of these are illegal. Clearly. Others go against what we consider ethical behavior.  Still others that are actions that are hypocritical of what Bush says he stands for, but his actions speak very differently.  But virtually all them piss us off!!



We came up with 60 different grievances that evening.  Others have contributed since then.  We now have 85 items on the list and still counting.That is with no prior research, no thinking about it prior to the meeting.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  The list is in no particular order or priority. Here goes:

1. Suspend Habeas Corpus
2. Made travel to foreign countries more unpleasant for you and me
3. Made travel of foreign guests much more unpleasant to visit here
4. Stole 2000 election
5. "Compassionate Conservative" only compassionate depending on who you are (i.e., rich)
6. Intimidation of subordinates of those who are fired
7. Mixing political appointees vs. political appointives
8. Arsenic in Water
9. Katrina
10. Iraq
11. Mountaintop Removal
12. Valerie Plame
13. Patriot Act
14. Guantanamo
15. "Old Europe" (Estranging Allies)
16. The name "Homeland Security"
17. Disregarding Civil Liberties (Warrant less Searches)
    
    
18. Renditions
19. Torture
20. Tax Cut and Deficit Policy (i.e. De-tax and Spend Conservatives)
21. Invented "enemy combatant"
22. $9 Billion missing in Iraq
23. Refusal to fund stem cell research
24. Privatizing the military
25. Used hired mercenaries to go into New Orleans immediately after Katrina hit
26. 20,000 National Security Letters w/out warrant
27. Ignoring the Geneva Convention
28. Disregarding International Law
29. Disregarding National Law -- "I am the Decider"
30. $40 billion being spent on unfounded star wars technology
31. No Child Left Behind
32. Cutting financial aid for higher ed
33. Alienating our Gay Community
34. Pandering to the religious "right to life" sect through the Terry Schiavo case
35. Faith-based initiative
36. Lack of action and collaboration with the world community on Global Warming
37. Dick Cheney's secret energy policy written by energy companies for pure profit
38. Constant and Consistent Lying--Actions definitely do not support words (why do people keep believing him?)
39. Lied about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to get us into an endless, bloody war that has resulted, at a minumum, several 10's of thousands dying, most likely resulting in 100's of thousands dying
    
    
40. Let Afghanistan "rot on the vine"
41. Neglecting Osama Bin Laden
42. Shutting EPA libraries down
43. Drilling in National Nature Preserves
44. Clearcutting
45. Stopping a clear path of scientific information to scientists and the general population
46. Putting a "chastity belt on lady justice"
47. J. Steven Griles, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, indicted in the Abramoff Scandal
48. Curriculum developed in "No Child Left Behind" initiative directly benefits Neal Bush, George's brother (see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/8/125556/7027)
49. Appoints Sam Fox as Ambassador of Belgium as a recess appointee after being rejected by the Congress
50. Environmental Degradation is acceptable
51. Ignoring the needs of our veterans and returning injured soldiers
52. Biggest Debt in human history left for our children and grand children
53. New Nuclear weapons
54. The "war president" is the "vacation president"
55. "grammar deficient"
56. Abstinence only funding
57. Abdicating on the middle east peace process
58. US Attorney Schedule
59. Clear Skies Initiative
60. "Healthy Forests" Initiative
61. Bush Administration's attempt to deny citizens the right to sue to enforce
    
    voting rights
62. January 2001 – suspends
    
    implementation of most of former President Clinton's late-term executive orders
    
    regarding the environment, including the "roadless rule" protecting 60 million
    
    acres of national forest, new standards for arsenic in drinking water, and a
    
    phased-in ban of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park.
    
    
63. February 2001 – cuts
    
    Interior Department funding for environmental policy enforcement by 7 percent.
    
    The Republican-controlled Senate introduces, for the first time, a bill that
    
    would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a proposal
    
    resurrected annually as part of Bush's energy policy.
    
    
64. March
    
    2001 – reverses a campaign pledge by announcing that he will not order mandatory
    
    reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's electrical
    
    plants.
    
    
65. March
    
    2001 – unilaterally withdraws from the Kyoto Protocol on global
    
    warming.
    
    
66. March
    
    2001 – nominates mining industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles for Interior deputy
    
    secretary.
    
    
67. April
    
    2001 – breaks another campaign pledge, abandoning plans to invest $100 million
    
    per year in rainforest conservation.
    
    
68. April
    
    2001 – nominates Bennett Raley – who once testified that the Endangered Species
    
    Act should be repealed – as assistant secretary for water and
    
    science.
    
    
69. April
    
    2001 – instructs the Interior Department to seek to limit citizen-initiated
    
    lawsuits involving the Endangered Species Act.
    
    
70. April
    
    2001 – Dick Cheney, heading up Bush’s hyper-secret energy task force, meets with
    
    Enron executives (pre-implosion) for advice.
    
    
71. May
    
    2001 – places a freeze on new proposals for expanding the national park
    
    system.
    
    
72. May
    
    2001 – nominates James Connaughton, notorious for his legal defense of General
    
    Electric in Superfund fights with the EPA, to be the chair of his Council on
    
    Environmental Quality.
    
    
73. May
    
    2001 – nominates Linda Fisher, former head of Monsanto's government affairs
    
    office, as second-in-command at the EPA.
    
    
74. May
    
    2001 – releases his energy plan, devised in secret by a task force headed by
    
    Darth Cheney.
    
    
75. June
    
    2001 – BRIGHT SPOT: Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords switches parties, throwing
    
    control of the Senate to the Democrats.
    
    
76. June
    
    2001 – nominates former timber lobbyist Mark Rey for Agriculture undersecretary
    
    for natural resources and environment.
    
    
77. June
    
    2001 – nominates William G. Myers, a former lobbyist for the National
    
    Cattlemen's Beef Association, as the Interior Department's new
    
    solicitor.
    
    
78. July
    
    2001 – announces the opening of 1.5 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil
    
    drilling – although distant from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's shorelines.
    
    
79. August 2001 – seeks to
    
    overturn a federal court order blocking oil and gas exploration off the
    
    California coast.
    
    
80. August 2001 – citing
    
    executive privilege, Bush refuses to respond to a letter from the GAO revealing
    
    with whom Vice President Darth Cheney met as chair of the energy task
    
    force.
    
    
81. August 2001 – the select
    
    intergovernmental committee on terrorism meets for the first time – for 25
    
    minutes.
    
    
82. September 2001 – after
    
    the abject failings of his administration to prevent 9/11, invokes global
    
    terrorism as excuse for increased coal mining and oil exploration in the US,
    
    combined with relaxed regulation and oversight – leading indirectly to the Sago
    
    disaster just over 4 years later.
    
    
83. October 2001 – rams the
    
    USA PATRIOT Act – it’s an acronym, remember? – through a compliant Congress,
    
    expanding the use of National Security Letters and the powers of the FISA Court,
    
    defining a new type of crime (“terrorism-related activity”), and replacing the
    
    “probable cause” language of the Fourth Amendment with the more malleable
    
    “reasonable suspicion.”
    
    
84. November 2001 – nominates
    
    Rebecca Watson – a member of the Board of Litigation of the Mountain States
    
    Legal Foundation and a lawyer who has represented the interests of the mining
    
    and logging industries – to serve as the Interior Department's assistant
    
    secretary for land and minerals management.
    
    
85. December 2001 -- grants
    
    initial approval to a set of administrative rules that would weaken the Clean
    
    Air Act by allowing coal-burning plants to bypass "new source review" pollution
    
    standards when upgrading their facilities.