by Shlomi Simhi
The set of debates is over, the polls show a closer race than ever, but it just might be that the presidential election will be decided by an event that hasn’t occurred yet. As October moves to its end, the possibility of an “October Surprise,” an event that would change the outcome of November 2nd elections, is diminishing. But it ain’t over until October is over.
So, what if there were a terrorist attack? Can political scientists predict the consequences it might have? Why do people have a common view that such an attack would serve President Bush? And how much do terrorists really care about who sits in the oval office?
In the past few months, American intelligence agencies have continued to collect fresh information reaffirming earlier government warnings that terrorist groups are intent on launching an attack aimed at “affecting the democratic process.” The lack of experience with pre-election terror in the United States leads most people who think of the potential consequences to learn from history. Almost all of them go back to the same place—Spain.
Four train bombings in Madrid on March 11 killed nearly 200 people. The incumbent conservative government supported the war on Iraq and had slight edge according to some polls. Sound familiar?
Three days later and in the wake of the attack, Spain's voters rejected Jose Maria Aznar's ruling Popular Party in favor of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists. Al Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. Immediately following the elections, administration officials and right-wing media pundits in the Unites States denounced the Spanish population for learning the “wrong lesson” from the terrorist attacks and for “appeasing” terrorism.
Professor Robert Jervis, a widely respected international affairs scholar from Columbia University, doesn’t agree with this comparison. “In the Madrid case it’s not clear if it really turned the elections,” he said. “First of all, the government initially tried to blame ETA, Basque Armed Group, and it made it look incompetent. Second, some polls showed that it was more of a tie, than a right-wing lead.”
Professor Merrill Shanks, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, also sees a distinction between the United States and Spain: “The circumstances were very special, because there you had an unpopular war in the first place,” he said. Professor Brigitte Nacos, an expert on Mass Media and Terrorism at Columbia University, said that even if there was a change in the outcome of the elections in Spain, it shouldn’t be attributed to the terrorism. “It was an indirect effect, and the terrorists had no way to anticipate that the Spanish government would react they way it did,” she said.
Most political scientists agree that an attack works in favor of the incumbent president. “Anything that works on politics of fear, works in favor of the president”, said Professor Jervis. “Also, there is some truth in the argument that the crazier the world gets, the more it plays to the theme of the President’s campaign.”
Another factor that might play a role is the magnitude of the attack. “The bigger the attack is,” said Professor Henry Brady, UC Berkeley Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, “the greater the rally around the flag effect will be.”
As the election date gets closer, Senator Kerry’s prospects of gaining advantage from such an event are diminishing. “In the case of an attack immediately before the elections, it would help Bush because people will be angry and we will see them rally around the President,” said Professor Avery Goldstein, a political scientist who specializes in International Relations and Security Studies. “On the other hand, if the attack is several weeks before, then it might help Kerry, because we will have time to have a discussion about the fact that the administration hasn’t kept the United States as safe as the President promised.”
Dr. Michael McDonald, Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University and currently a Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution, explained why the timing might be critical for Kerry’s prospects. “The only way it can help him is if someone is able to prove Bush’s incompetence in dealing with the threats. Since we are so close to the elections, I can’t see how such investigative reporting can be published before the elections.”
Dr. McDonald said that an ‘October Surprise’ doesn’t necessarily have to be a terrorist attack. “It can also be the capture of Osama Bin Laden, or anything else that we can’t even think of.” The term, which is used this year to describe a large scope of potential surprises, comes from the 1980 campaign and the maneuvering around the release of the American hostages in Iran. It refers to an event engineered or manipulated by one of the campaigns – usually the incumbent president.
In a briefing for reporters last month about the pre-election threat, senior counterterrorism officials said that while intelligence repeatedly indicates that al-Qaida operatives oppose President Bush, no evidence has been found that they hope a successful attack might boost the candidacy of Senator Kerry. The anti-Bush sentiments, the officials said, are part of a broader hatred of the United States and Western democracies as a whole. "It's really not for our consumption," one official said of the motive behind the attack. "It's for their supporters.”
“You do terrorists attacks when you can, so it is hard believe they can do fine tuning and time it just before the elections,” said Professor Jervis. In Professor Brady’s opinion, the terrorists don’t care about changing the outcome of elections; they just want to create havoc. “Kerry and Bush are the same for the terrorists,” Brady said.
The argument that the terrorist are doing it for their supporters seems to be a “sensible analysis’’ said Professor Goldstein. “Whoever the president is, he will continue the war against terror. Neither candidate will withdraw from Iraq after such an attack. After all,” Goldstein said, “if we can’t figure out how such an attack will influence on the elections, they surely can not…”
by Ali Berzon, Tomio Geron, Marjorie McAfee, Felicia Mello, Claire Miller, Aliza Nadi, Emilia Pablo, Shlomi Simhi, Sandhya Somashekhar and Timothy Wheeler
A satiric resume of President George W. Bush has been making appearances in the blogosphere and the email accounts of just about every US voter with a friend fond of forward-spam. Entertaining as it is, the resume begged to be fact checked, and students in Susan Rasky’s J200- Reporting the News class took on the task.
Here’s the first of what they found (more to come):
In my first year of office, I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in U.S. history (tough to beat my dad’s, but I did).
First of all, the wording of this question makes it false to begin with: It states that in his first year of office, Bush set the record for vacation days of any president – implying that it is comparing his first year against the four or eight year terms of other presidencies.
A CBS News analysis from 1999 found that President Reagan spent 335 days on vacation throughout his eight-year term. Clearly, Bush did not spend 335 days out of a single year on vacation, so we can already determine that this is not a true statement.
A more commonly repeated statement, and perhaps more accurate, is Michael Moore’s charge in Fahrenheit 9/11 that Bush spent 42% of his first eight months on vacation. This assertion is backed up by a Washington Post article from August 6, 2001 by Mike Allen stating that including a vacation he was on when the article was published, Bush spent all or part of 54 days through August 2001 at his ranch in Crawford, plus another 38 full or partial days at Camp David, plus four days at his parents’ estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, for a total of 42% of his presidency through August, 2001. These statistics were, in the article, undisputed by Scott McClellan, Bush’s spokesperson. Also indicating the veracity of the implication that Bush’s vacations were unprecedented: At an August 3rd press briefing, according to the Whitehouse archive of briefing transcripts, Whitehouse Press Secretary Ari Fleisher was asked by a reporter, “Ari, the American people sent him here to the White House. He's going to set a modern record for not being here,” Fleisher did not dispute the idea that Bush might be “setting a modern record” for time away from Washington. It is, however, necessary to consider a few other factors. Simply stating that Bush was on vacation for that time is misleading. Many of those days were weekends, so under the way many people conceive of vacation time as time away from a regular workweek, it is questionable whether or not those days would count at all. Also, the Camp David “vacations” included working meetings with foreign leaders, which would still be considered working time.
Also important to consider… in examining White House press briefing transcripts from August 2001, it is clear that Bush’s spokespeople emphasized that Bush was working part-time during his Crawford vacations. On August 3rd, Press Secretary Ari Fleisher said that while on a month-long vacation Bush would receive security briefings every day, would do “a little policy,” and would be traveling around two days out of the week. Perhaps anticipating public opinion that Bush was “loafing,” Fleisher repeatedly called it a “working vacation” and said it would include “parts work and parts vacation.” On August 22, 2001, for example, at a briefing out of Crawford, Fleisher said that Bush had spoken with President Fox of Mexico in the morning to discuss the economic situation in Argentina and immigration policies, and would be meeting in a few days with defense experts about military transformation and strategic reviews.
It is, however, also worth nothing that there were only five press briefings in the entire month of August 2001, while Bush was on vacation, significantly fewer than previous months, perhaps indicating that there was not doing a lot worth reporting while he was on his “working” vacation. (Alexandra Berzon)
After taking the entire month of August off for a vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
According to multiple newspaper articles and press briefings from the time period, Bush was on vacation for 28 days in August, 2001 - from August 4 through the end of the month.
This has been confirmed, again in multiple newspaper articles, as the longest vacation in 32 years, when Nixon took a 30-day vacation. The White House has not disputed these facts.
In terms of the “worst security failure in U.S. history” – this is a very difficult question to confirm as it depends on how you define “security failure.” Do you quantify failure by the level of the attack, by how many people were killed, or by how preventable the attack should have been? The September 11th Commission Report is perhaps the most credible source in terms of how great the September 11th security failure actually was.
According to CNN, the Commission cited the following failures:
--Neither Bush nor his predecessor Bill Clinton understood the gravity of the threats posed by terrorists because the leaders could not imagine such attacks.
--The CIA was limited in its effort to try to capture al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in Afghanistan by the agency's use of proxies.
--Terrorism was not the top national security concern and missed opportunities to thwart the attack indicate the government's inability to adapt to new challenges.
--The failure of the CIA and FBI to communicate with each other -- sometimes because of "legal misunderstandings" -- led to missed "operational opportunities" to hinder or break the terror plot.
--The CIA did not put 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar on a "watch list" or notify the FBI when he had a U.S. visa in January 2000 or when he met with a key figure in the USS Cole bombing. And the CIA failed to develop plans to track Almihdhar, or hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi when he obtained a U.S. visa and flew to Los Angeles. Both men were on American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.
The FBI failed to recognize the significance of Almihdhar and Alhazmi's arrival in the United States or the significance of al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui's training and beliefs after his arrest in Minnesota in August 2001. It is impossible to compare these failures with previous security failures in U.S. history, such as Pearl Harbor, to make a quantifiable declaration of which is the most serious. For example, 2,400 people died in Pearl Harbor, less than the 2,800 death toll of September 11th. Judged on those terms, September 11th was worse. However, was Pearl Harbor more or less preventable? Which had more of an impact in terms of future policies and generations? It is impossible to know objectively if these are even relevant questions to ask in determining the more serious security failure, much less find the answers to them. (Alexandra Berzon)
I set the record for the most campaign fundraising trips by any president.
Bush has raised $263,695,189 through August 31, 2004, according to the Federal Elections Commission, which monitors federal campaign giving. Through the same time period in 1996, for example, according to the FEC, Clinton had raised $41,739,746.
The non-profit consumer rights and governmental watchdog organization Public Citizen has counted 60 fundraising events at which Bush appeared between June 17, 2003 and April 5, 2004. However, it is not clear whether this is a complete list, and it does not include activity since April. Also, there does not appear to be a comparable list for previous presidencies. Therefore, what can be concluded is that Bush has raised an unprecedented amount of money, and one may therefore be able to theorize from that that he may have made more campaign fundraising appearances. However, other conclusions could also be drawn, such as the influence of internet fundraising, the changes in the campaign finance laws, etc. Therefore, the statement cannot be verified. (Alexandra Berzon)
In my first two years in office over two million Americans lost their jobs.
According to the Democratic Policy Committee, which tracks Bush’s record, 2.7 million private sector jobs were lost between 2001 and 2003. This has been offset by increases in jobs in the public sector, but the report concludes that the total net job losses were still above two million during this period. Charts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that job losses significantly outpaced job gains between 2001 and 2003.
However, it is worth pointing out that the wording of this phrase is still problematic. Taken literally, the number of Americans who lost their jobs was far more than 2 million. Between 1993 and 2003, for example, the number of gross job losses was consistently above seven million per quarter, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This, of course, is offset by job gains, which normally outpace job losses (but did not during the first two years of Bush’s administration). (Alexandra Berzon)
I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in U.S. history.
The federal government occasionally acts to extend the normal 26 week state unemployment benefits for 13 additional weeks when there is a recession or declining job market that makes it difficult for the unemployed to find new jobs. Bush signed an extension in May 2001, as well as in January 2003 and May 2003. The May extension was set to expire at the end of December 2003, and Congress left for a recess without acting on an extension. Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass an extension of the benefits, and, by a narrow margin, have not gotten the votes they need.
By all accounts, Bush has done nothing to encourage Republicans in the Congress to pass the extension.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that two million unemployed workers ran out of benefits between January, 2004 and June, 2004, and states that this is the most for any sixth month period since at least 1973, when data was first collected, even if the number is adjusted to reflect the growth in the labor force. The Center, a liberal non-profit economic policy organization, reports that this analysis was conducted using data from the Labor Department. The wording in the resume statement is again misleading--Bush did not cut the benefits--he just allowed an extension to expire without being extended. Also, it was not him but the Republican-led Congress that made this decision, although it is true that he did not use his influence as president to pressure the Republicans into passing the extension. However, although somewhat misleading, the larger point of the statement is generally verifiable. (Alexandra Berzon)
I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government’s total budget surplus was $69 billion in fiscal year 1998, and rose to $236 billion by FY 2000. But by fiscal year 2001 the surplus had fallen to $127 billion, and by FY 2002 the books were in the red.
By 2003, the total budget deficit reached $375 billion. (Prior to 1998, budget deficits were more common; 1998 was the first year there was an actual surplus since 1969, according to CBO).
As for bankrupting the Treasury: According to the Treasury Department itself, the country has been consistently in debt since the 1830s. The amount of debt has risen during times of war and recession, and has been rising steadily since the 1970s. Under President Bush, the debt has increased from roughly $5,700 billion to $6,100 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. (Felicia Mello)
I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history.
The total budget deficit for fiscal year 2003 was $375 billion, the largest since the CBO started keeping records in 1962. But as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, this deficit was far outpaced by those of the early 1980s and early 1990s. In 1983, when Ronald Reagan was president, the budget deficit was 6 percent of GDP, the largest on record, compared with only 1.5 percent in 2002 and 3.5 percent in 2003. (Felicia Mello)
I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported 1,661,996 total bankruptcy filings in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2003 (Chapters 7, 11, 12, and 13 combined). This was the greatest amount of filings in any 12-month period on record. Of those bankruptcies, 1,625,813 were personal bankruptcies, also a record high. Because some married couples file jointly, this figure may represent close to 2 million people in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy filings have risen 98% since 1994 (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts). (FM)
I set an all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
Well, this really depends on what you measure. Most analysts agree that the worst single day in stock market history was Black Monday—October 19, 1987—when the Dow Jones lost a quarter of its value in just a few hours, followed closely by October 28, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. In percentage terms, April 14, 2000 ranks as the ninth biggest single-day drop. It is the only day during Bush’s presidency to make the Top-10 list, according to Dow Jones.
In terms of index points, however, the largest net loss was on September 17, 2001—six days after the September 11 attacks--when the Dow fell 685 points in one day. The sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-biggest net losses also occurred under Bush’s watch. But eight of the top-10 one-day rises in the Dow also occurred during his presidency (Dow Jones). The figures may just be a sign that the stock market is larger now, or generally more volatile, than it was in earlier years.
Between 2000 and 2002, the Dow only lost 17 percent of its value. But the NASDAQ, on the other hand, lost 78 percent of its value in the same time period. Since NASDAQ was only established in 1971, one could argue that was the largest drop in its history. (Felicia Mello)
I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
True, with some caveats. The federal death penalty was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1972 but restored in 1988 (Federal Bureau of Prisons). Timothy McVeigh, who masterminded the Oklahoma City bombing, was executed on June 11, 2001 and was the first person to be executed since the restoration of the death penalty. Since then, two other federal prisoners, Juan Raul Garza and Louis Jones, have also been executed (Federal Bureau of Prisons).
The Attorney General, John Ashcroft, can instruct prosecutors to seek the death penalty. If a defendant is convicted, sentenced to death, and exhausts his or her appeals, President Bush is the only person with the power to grant clemency (Death Penalty Information Center). Both Bush and Ashcroft are strong supporters of the death penalty—Texas executed 152 people under Bush’s watch, and Ashcroft’s Justice Department has pursued far more death penalty cases than under his predecessor, Janet Reno (Death Penalty Information Center). (Felicia Mello)
I refused to allow inspectors access to U.S. prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
The author doesn’t clarify what kind of inspectors Bush didn’t allow, but under the Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross is responsible for visiting prisoners of war. From the ICRC: "Prisoners of war (POWs) and civilian internees (CI) are protected by the Geneva Conventions, which also give the ICRC the right to visit them. The ICRC has been mandated by the international community, under the Geneva Conventions, to ensure that international humanitarian law is applied fully. Among the ICRC's tasks are visits to prisoners, both military and civilian." If the author is referring to ICRC inspectors, this is false – according to the ICRC, it has received access to U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.
The author also doesn’t clarify which prisoners of war – those in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay. In Guantanamo Bay, where the United States detains suspected al Qaeda members captured in the war on terror, it’s true that the administration does not abide by the Geneva Conventions. This is not, however, “by default” because it doesn’t allow inspectors (it does.) Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions defines prisoners of war as fighters who are part of a nation’s armed forces or organized militia and who wear identifying uniforms and carry arms openly. The Bush administration says al Qaeda members don’t meet these qualifications. It labels them unlawful or enemy combatants, thereby maintaining that they don’t have to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. In a White House press briefing on January 28, 2002, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, “As for the people who are the detainees who are being held in Cuba, the determination has been made that they are not and will not be considered POWs. … they are unlawful combatants,” and the president has referred to them many times as enemy combatants.
In Iraq, the Bush administration says it is abiding by the Geneva Conventions for Iraqi prisoners of war detained there. However, not all soldiers are following the conventions’ rules. Article 3 says prisoners must not be subjected to physical or mental torture or coercion. However, at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq U.S. soldiers abused prisoners, and several have been sentenced. Major General Antonio M. Taguba conducted an internal Army investigation in February 2004 and concluded that the abuse was taking place, and military courts have found the same thing. (Claire Miller)
I am the first president in U.S. history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 U.S. elections.
This is false (putting aside the fact that as written it’s literally true, since Bush was the only president during the 2002 U.S. elections.) According to the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division, within the Department of Political Affairs, the office of the president of the member state (the United States in this case) "must send an official written request for assistance to the United Nations Focal Point for Electoral Assistance Activities (e.g. the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs) at least 3 months before the scheduled election to allow for meaningful involvement," which the White House did not do. The U.N. lists each member state that asked for and received electoral assistance between 1992 (when the electoral assistance division was established) and 2004, and the United States is not listed as having requested it. (Claire Miller)
I am the all-time U.S. (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
This is false, because corporations are not allowed to make campaign donations to candidates running for federal office or state office in Texas. The Federal Election Commission says: “The [Federal Election Campaign] Act prohibits corporations and labor organizations from using their treasury funds to make contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections.” Texas also bans corporate contributions. Some campaign finance watchers calculate corporate donations by calculating the amount of money corporations’ political action committees and individual employees of a corporation donate to a candidate, but neither of these are actually corporate campaign donations to Bush.
It’s impossible to determine corporate campaign donations worldwide. (Claire Miller)
The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, and also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation.)
This is false, according to FEC information compiled on opensecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization founded by Ralph Nader that tracks campaign money. (The numbers can be verified on www.fec.gov.) Independently, Kenneth Lay contributed the maximum amount he could to Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign ($2,000), but thousands of other people also donated the maximum. So far, Lay has not contributed to Bush’s 2004 campaign, so other individual donors have out-donated him. Along with many others, in 2000 Lay was also a Bush Pioneer – someone who raised over $100,000 in contributions of $1,000 or less – according to the Bush campaign.
Enron has donated $736,800 to Bush’s campaigns – $312,500 to his 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial campaigns, $113,800 to his 2000 presidential campaign, $10,500 to his 2000 recount fund, and $300,000 to his 2001 inaugural fund, also according to Open Secrets. (These donations are a compilation of soft money, money from Enron’s PAC, and individual employees’ donations, including Lay’s.) These contributions make Enron one of the largest corporate donors (though not the largest) to Bush’s presidential campaigns – so the statement is false. Recent data shows that the credit card company MBNA has out-donated Enron.
Enron WAS the biggest corporate donor to both of Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns, according to Texans for Public Justice, a non-profit Texas-based group that describes itself as non-partisan and “a vocal advocate for citizen rights, open government, and corporate accountability in Texas.” Its numbers match with other reports; official Texas numbers are only available from 2000 on. Lay himself was not the largest individual donor to Bush’s Texas campaigns – he donated $100,000 while someone named Dennis R. Berman gave $175,000. (Claire Miller)
I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in U.S. history.
It’s hard to say, definitively. A portion of this information can be found by reviewing Bush’s financial disbursement filings, available through the FEC, and tallying the amount of money paid to companies that run polls and focus groups. Then, the same thing would have to be done with past presidents, and the numbers compared. According to a “Washington Monthly” article, the RNC disbursement filings at the FEC for the year 2001 revealed that the Bush administration spent $346,000 on principal pollsters and, including independent polling firms, about $1 million overall. The reporter said this was about double what Clinton generally spent per year, but there is no way of knowing in either case whether that is the total amount spent on such services. (Claire Miller)
The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
True, at least until Chevron renamed the vessel Altair Voyager, after a star. On May 5, 2001 Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell confirmed that the company had renamed the tanker.
Rice, a Chevron Corp. director since 1991, resigned from the company's board, effective Jan. 15, 2001 to join the new Bush Administration as the President’s National Security Advisor. (Shlomi Simhi)
I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.
By late November 2001, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) reported that 44 states (including the District of Columbia) were reporting that revenues were coming in under projection, while 22 reported that expenditures were over budget. As a result, 36 states were in the process of, or were considering, cutting expenditures planned for fiscal year 2002.
As the U.S. economy turned down in late 2000, state and local budgets came under increasing pressure. After averaging almost $22 billion (annual rate) over the first half of 2001, aggregate budget surpluses of state and local governments fell to $1.9 billion by the third quarter of 2001. As the growth of tax receipts slowed dramatically, many states, most of which operate under some sort of balanced-budget requirement, were forced to trim planned outlays, raise taxes and/or redirect money from "rainy day" funds. This marked a reversal of the tax reduction trend that was in place from 1995 to 2001.
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research determined in July 2003 that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in November 2001. The trough marked the end of the recession that began in March 2001 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 8 months, which is slightly less than average for recessions since World War II. (Shlomi Simhi)
I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.
In the eyes of many people in this world, “the history of the world” is a meaningless phrase. The fall of the value of investors' equity per share in Enron during 2001 was from $85 to 30 cents. This was an unprecedented and disastrous event in the American financial world and Enron became one of the largest corporate failures in history. Was it the largest fraud ever? No one can say for sure. Can you really compare the depth and disruption of previous stock market frauds in history, in relative terms, to what happened with Enron?
Almost 300 years ago, the English had Enron of their own. In 1720 stock in The South Sea Company (SSC) in England had risen to 890 pounds, where it peaked. Since the Spanish never intended to give the English free trade in the ports of Spanish America, The whole scheme of paying off government debt through trade in South America was doomed to fail. In early 1721 the company was wound up and shareholders were paid a dividend of a little over 33 pounds. The directors of the company were found guilty of fraud as they sought to raise the stock through fictitious reports. (Shlomi Simhi)
I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.
False. The Dominican Republic proclaimed its national independence on February 27, 1844. In 1916, under President Woodrow Wilson, the United States Army occupied the country. The Army remained until 1922, when President Warren G. Harding agreed to end American military occupation and hold national elections to establish a new government.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson again sent troops to the Dominican Republic. He removed the troops in 1966.
In December 1898, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain at the Treaty of Paris for the sum of $20 million, after the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War. The United States government made plans to make the Philippines an American colony. However, the Filipinos, fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896, had already declared their independence on June 12. On August 14, President Teddy Roosevelt send 11,000 ground troops to occupy the Philippines.
Also, in 1983, under Ronald W. Reagan Presidency, United States Armed Forces occupied the island nation of Grenada. (Shlomi Simhi)
I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the “Bureau of Homeland Security”
Not quite true. Though not the classic bureaucracy, the Department of Defense is the nation’s largest employer, with 2.3 million military (Active, Reserve and Guard) and almost 700,000 civilians (Office of Management and Budget, The White House Website).
On March 1, 2003, approximately 180,000 personnel from 22 different organizations around the government became part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – It was certainly the biggest federal bureaucracy since the 1947 creation of the Defense Department, but it’s not the largest government bureaucracy.
The DHS is currently the second largest government agency. For comparison, The Department of Justice, that is comprised of 39 separate component organizations, has about 113,000 workers, The Department of Health and Human Services has 66,000 workers; the State Department has 30,000 employees and the Department of the Education has only 5,000. (Shlomi Simhi)
I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in history.
True. Overall annual spending under Bush went from $1.789 trillion in fiscal 2000 to $2.011 trillion in 2002, according to congressional budget officials. With the 2003 budget, Bush asked Congress for $2.1 trillion. The White House projects that spending will rise to $2.2 trillion in the 2004 fiscal year. Bush projected the government would run $106 billion in the red, thus returning to deficit-spending for the first time since 1997.
The Treasury Department announced on October 14, 2004, that Bush has set the record for annual deficit, bringing it to $413 billion. (Marjorie McAfee)
I am the first president in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
True. On Thursday, May 3, 2001, the United Nations' 53-member Economic and Social Commission voted against a continued US presence at the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the Commission was established in 1947. UN diplomats told reporters the US had failed to lobby sufficiently to shore up support for its election. They also pointed to European irritation with the Bush administration on issues ranging from Bush's proposed missile defense system and the American reluctance to pay its UN dues to US failure to back the Kyoto agreement on global warming, an international criminal court and the nuclear test ban treaty. Some mentioned being fed up with "heavy handed" lobbying by former US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke.
However, the US regained its seat on the commission one year later. (Marjorie McAfee)
I am the first president in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Elections Monitoring Board.
False. In July 2004, Congress voted against a bill that would invite the U.N. to monitor the 2004 presidential elections, as a way to ensure fairness and avoid the debacles of the 2000 presidential election which many Democrats accused Republicans of swaying their way. (Marjorie McAfee)
I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight, than any presidential administration in U.S. history.
A matter of opinion. While it’s true that President Bush has enjoyed having his party in control of the House (and some might argue the Supreme Court, too) for much of his first term in office, he is not the first president in that situation. The Democrats controlled the Senate during Bill Clinton’s first two years in the White House, for example. Regardless, to accuse President Bush of “removing” checks and balances by having Republicans hold many elected positions of power is a stretch.
What this accusation may be referring to is the controversial USA Patriot Act the President put into place after 9/11. Supporters of the Patriot Act say it is meant to preserve our freedom and safety. Opponents, like the ACLU, say it invades privacy and breaks constitutional rights, like freedom of speech; this argument may have devolved into this accusation that the President removed checks and balances. (Marjorie McAfee)
I rendered the entire United Nations viewpoints irrelevant.
Subjectively worded, but true. Bush went against the U.N. which voted against war in Iraq by declaring war there anyway. In the fall of 2003, Bush said that he would refuse to compromise with France and other members of the Security Council who pleaded with the president to cede control over Iraq to the United Nations. Indeed, the U.S. currently maintains control of Iraq, and thus continues to disregard the wishes of the United Nations.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the war in Iraq was not in conformity with the U.N. charter. He "raised questions about the legitimacy" of the action by the United States and Britain to go to war without specific authority from the Security Council. (Marjorie McAfee)
I withdrew the United States from the World Court of Law
True. On June 23, 2004, The United States announced it was dropping its effort to gain immunity for its troops from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. The U.S.’s efforts to gain immunity were broadly opposed by the U.N. Security Council.
This move was a departure from the previous administration. On December 31, 2000, President Clinton signed a treaty joining America to the International Criminal Court. Clinton noted that Senator Trent Lott and other Republican senators opposed this move because they feared U.S. soldiers sent to other countries could be brought before the court for political reasons. Clinton shared that same concern, but ultimately felt the treaty was constructed in a way that would prevent such a situation. (Marjorie McAfee)
NEW YORK CITY--Brash and young, the Jewish woman telling jokes at the front of New York’s Laugh Factory was the typical stand-up comedian, except as part of a conservative comedy troupe Julia Gorin was mocking Democrats and liberals. Her intellectual and sophisticated schtick touched on the EU, the Kyoto Treaty, Nazism and the former USSR. Suicide bombing, rarely the subject of yucking it up, dominated her routine. And what I’m finding during this year’s Republican National Convention is that the jokes I heard tonight weren’t as weird as they might seem.
The 20 audience members laughed deeply at Gorin’s joke about the 72 virgins in heaven promised to suicide bombers. What do the few female bombers get or are only lesbians blowing themselves up (the Log Cabin Republicans’ ad hasn’t taken effect yet). The next comic, Chris Warren, also made a few jabs at the Palestinians. Instead of 72 girls saying they didn’t want to put “that” in their mouths, he’d kill for five trailer park bitches who rode motorcycles. When he visited Saudi Arabia, Warren flipped the arrow showing Muslims the direction of Mecca in his hotel room (so they’d know where to face in their prayers) so it pointed to Tel Aviv. Right now, he posited, a Muslim was kneeling to Ariel Sharon.
In the great tradition of stand-up comedy, they were crass and blunt. But I didn’t stop hearing the Republicans love Israel most theme after the show. Even Rudy Guiliani took a swing at Yasir Arafat for winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the ads on CNN right now are all for the Israel Project, which supports building a wall in the Middle East.
Wasn’t the only foreign policy issue in this election supposed to be the war? Doesn’t it seem strange the party of radically conservative Christians are being portrayed as the friends of a Jewish nation? Or that in The Price of Loyalty, Paul O’Neill recounted how George Bush started a staff meeting by asking if anyone had met Ariel Sharon personally and when Colin Powell was the only person to raise his hand, Bush dismissed Sharon’s importance?
But, if this is a successful bid for support from voters, why aren’t the Democrats more openly pro-Israel? I can’t imagine a Democrat cutting off Israel or not working toward peace in the Middle East.
NEW YORK CITY--Today I met Steve Ramputi, a 42-year -old New Yorker, who also happens to be a member of the Local 580 Iron Workers at the memorial site of the World Trade Center. He's muscular man and imposing even though he only stands about five feet tall. Ramputi was walking purposefully, and wore his red union t-shirt and red hard hat decorated with stickers, just like the ones we all saw on TV as we watched the 9/11 search and rescue missions, then the clean-up efforts of the 9/11 attacks.
This is my first time in New York and the first day of the Republican National Convention, where the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been paraded as the theme of this political scene. I watched on television the testimonies of three women. They all lost a loved one in the 9/11 attacks. The third woman to address the crowd shared her story about her husband. He was a firefighter who was severely burned on the job, recovered, and returned to his job, only to die in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Their son is now going to fight in the war in Iraq.
What struck me so much was the similarity between Ramputi and the third woman, and the Republican Convention theme and the first two women.
Ramputi, though obviously in a hurry and not eager to talk to media, was nonetheless quite charming. He repeated himself until I got used to his accent, even joked with me. I guess I got lucky for having spotted him first, chasing him down, and interviewing him and his friends, because he gave no other interviews.
When I looked up from my notepad, and gazed into his light brown eyes, I saw his pain. I saw nothing but raw pain, sadness, and anguish at that moment.
He didn't want to stop, he didn't want to talk to a stranger, or any other reporters there. He just wanted to get going. I could see the pain of the experience, the sadness of the memories, and it made me reluctant to bother him any more. I admit, I let my feelings surface, and I let them win, and I let him walk away after asking a few questions. And a picture. I had to take his picture, or the people from Cingular would never forgive me. Plus, I wanted those eyes to stay with me.
Ramputi praised President Bush for his reaction in the days following the attacks. "The steps he took towards rebuilding was appropriate," he added, "he did the right thing." It meant something to him that Bush showed up personally to Ground Zero and met with them. "He was the one who was here," he said. Ramputi had no objections to the Convention being held in this city.
In my hotel room this evening, I watched the Convention speakers on CNN. I especially noted the first two women. The perfectly manicured nails. The perfectly styled hair. The perfectly done makeup. The vacant look in their eyes. Their speeches were well structured and perfectly delivered, but they lacked depth. They lacked passion.
Then the third woman spoke. She spoke of losing her husband in the attacks. Just hearing her voice, you could tell she was struggling very hard to suppress her emotions, to keep from crying. I saw her face on screen, could see she was both mentally and physically present at that Convention, and she was very eager to address the crowd.
The Republican Party is using the images and the memories of that attack to rally the voters behind Bush. They have sent out the message that a vote against the Republicans is a vote against America. They have equated support for John Kerry as a vote for the terrorists. I think this manipulation of a serious and tragic event, a living memory in the lives of many, including Ramputi, should not be used as a banner for the Republican Party. The message plays on the fears of all who live in this country, because no one wants to go through that again; they don't want to think they may lose a loved one, or watch someone they know hurt in other act of terrorism.
Whipping the nation into panic mode is a cheap way to rally votes around Bush and a cheap ploy to draw attention away from his shortcomings.
Dean's support in unexpected, jobless places
By Kathleen Hennessey -- Special to The Bee - (Published January 11, 2004)
KEOKUK, Iowa -- Politicos are calling it a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, a caucus showdown pitting Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, a party loyalist and onetime Iowa winner, against former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an upstart fueled by anti-administration fervor, Internet fund-raising and what his supporters like to call a "movement."
But here, in this river town of 10,000 in the southeastern corner of the state, the most visible movement is the flight of jobs to faraway places and the exodus of the young to the nearest urban centers.
In Keokuk, news of a rebounding economy rings hollow in the face a stubborn 8 percent unemployment rate, twice as high as the state average. Candidates courting voters in this part of Iowa talk about only one thing: jobs. After more than a year pressing flesh in farm towns, one of five of the candidates competing in Iowa will emerge from the caucuses on Jan. 19 as the official frontrunner only a week before the New Hampshire primary but nearly six weeks before California voters get to weigh in.
Keokuk's choice will be made in large part by blue-collar Democrats -- union members -- many of whom feel scarred by local leaders' broken promises, trade agreements that they say invited disaster and an overriding sense that something vital has been lost and is not coming back. The mood would feel familiar to Californians who lived through the double blow of recession and base closures in the early 1990s.
Keokuk is a place that felt the farm crisis, but knew nothing of the '90s boom. It's a place that loses about 100 residents every year and where little more than a four-lane main street separates the houses with a view of the river bluffs from the houses with a view of a massive steaming corn-processing plant.
And it's Dick Gephardt country -- or at least it should have been, if last year's conventional wisdom had held true. Keokuk borders Missouri, the 14-term congressman's home state. Unions, the bedrock of Gephardt's Iowa base, have long been the driving force in local politics. Locals largely blame free trade agreements for the city's flagging economy, agreements Gephardt has opposed.
Keokuk isn't home to a state university or private college, only upper-level management and a nearby community college bring in the sort of suit-and-tie Democrats who tend to be persuaded by anti-war New England-brand politicians like Gephardt's chief rival, Dean.
But the congressman can't take any corner of Iowa for granted these days. For more than a year, Dean's anti-war, anti-Bush, tech-savvy campaign has gotten superlative descriptions from the press and evangelistic testimonials from supporters. Recent state polls show Dean with a slim lead, and each day brings rumors of new surges of support for Sens. John Edwards or John Kerry, candidates whose campaigns have sputtered in the state for months. Even Gen. Wesley Clark -- a candidate who never launched a campaign in Iowa -- is reportedly considering a last-minute siege.
But here in Keokuk, where outrage gave way to resignation long ago and determination means putting dinner on the table, Howard Dean has made quiet conversions, most surprisingly among those who consider Gephardt one of their own.
"There's something different to me that a lot of politicians don't have," said Mike Haas, a union member who's worked the assembly line at a corn-processing plant for 16 years. "I know Gephardt respects us, but Dean just has a different approach."
Haas' union endorsed Gephardt in October. Such endorsements -- and the volunteers, phone banks, trained caucus goers and cash that come with them -- are widely believed to pave the road to victory in Iowa. But rumbles of member independence and a split that pits industrial against service unions could make this year a different story.
A son of a stockbroker and art appraiser, a Yale graduate and a doctor, Dean doesn't appear to be much like Haas at all, except perhaps in the one way that has mattered most this year in politics. On the stump, Dean is angry, he is frustrated, he is distrustful of the administration, and he is not afraid to say so. He promises to "take back America" with the same zeal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had when he vowed not to "take it anymore" from the Davis administration. And like Schwarzenegger, Dean's insurgent message is earning support in unexpected places.
It should be no surprise that Dean has the support of Chuck Mitchell, a left-wing political activist (and first husband to '70s folksinger Joni) who restores old mansions on Keokuk's bluffs. Or that Dean's message resonates with professional Democrats like the laid-off city engineer turned unsuccessful mayoral candidate, or the middle-school teacher angry about the administration's signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.
But Dean also has the vote of the teacher's husband, who works at the unionized rubber plant and has seen his friends laid off while the company shifts production to a facility in Mexico. Dean's got the support of Bill Davis, a labor leader and factory worker, and the attention of Doneal Dietrich, a 28-year-old Taco Bell employee who is considering attending his first caucus, and thinks Dean "would be a good one. He gets to the point, he says the economy's bad, and it is."
These folks and others said they were primarily turned on to Dean not for his strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq or his promise to reform health care, and no one mentioned his support of same-sex partnerships. But all of those interviewed described Dean as something new -- a promise of a change, albeit a sometimes vague and unspecific one, and a chance to send a message to people who've forgotten about the plight of time-clock voters in Middle America.
Gephardt's shot at victory may depend on an army of industrial union members not only coming to the caucuses, but coming prepared to convince their neighbors that time-clock voters don't need a new messenger.
First a stop on the river for steamboat traffic and then a layover for trains heading west from Chicago, the city of Keokuk was built with big things in mind. Underneath the streets is a Chicago-sized sewer system, and above is the long-abandoned route of a streetcar. In the '60s, the city became the home of one of the first malls.
Light industry -- rubber, steel castings, cardboard boxes and corn syrup -- thrived. But as distribution patterns shifted, companies moved their manufacturing plants close to the population centers on the coasts and then, often, overseas. The global market increased competition, and five of the city's major manufacturers were bought out by multinational companies. In recent years, the tri-county region has lost 2000 jobs. The department stores left the mall and were replaced with drug and dollar stores. The number of kids on free and reduced lunch rose to nearly 55 percent.
Pinpointing the exact turn in Keokuk's economy is like finding the beginning of the end of a romance; it's more of a feeling than an event for many people. Some point to the closing of a steel plant, others to when a French company bought the corn-processing plant and French executives moved in. Others say it was when they had to fill out applications and take aptitude tests to get a job at the factories where fathers and uncles had worked for years. Most mention NAFTA.
Ten years after the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement, experts and politicians still dispute its affect on U.S. manufacturing. Some blame it for nearly 500,000 jobs lost. Others argue the impact is minimal and the shift of lower-wage -- and increasingly middle-income -- jobs overseas was an unavoidable byproduct of an international economy. Still, the U.S. has lost 2.8 million factory jobs in the past 3 1/2 years and any candidate wanting to rely on union support needs to have an answer to the psychological toll on the communities left behind.
Of the top-tier candidates, Gephardt, the son of a Teamster who earned his pro-labor credentials by fighting free-trade agreements, has provided the clearest, most consistent opposition to free trade. Such a positioning was thought to be a silver bullet for union support. But as the campaign wears on and candidates' messages evolve, all of the top Democratic contenders, with the exception of Sen. Joe Lieberman, have staked their own protectionist ground on trade.
Dean, who in 1992 as governor of Vermont described himself as a strong supporter of the agreement, has backed off the statement and now is calling for increased environmental, child labor and health regulations. It is a move critics call changing your tune to court union support. In recent weeks, AFL-CIO leaders launched an ad campaign that highlights what they call Dean's contradictory positions on trade with China and Mexico and privatization of government jobs. Gephardt is left with little more than an "I said it first" message.
"I've been amazed to hear the other candidates -- now they sound just like me," the congressman told the Associated Press recently. "Everything I predicted would happen [because of trade policies] is now happening."
But some voters in Keokuk seemed less concerned with who said it first than how it was said.
Haas met Dean at a house party in Keokuk and asked the governor about his stance on trade. Dean told him that he wanted additional environmental and health regulations added to NAFTA, but would not try to withdraw from it outright. That wasn't what Haas wanted to hear. But the exchange won his vote regardless.
"Other people come out and say I'm going to fix all your problems. He [Dean] just says I'm going to do what I can."
Politicians relying on old messages to court voters and making promises they can't keep are likely to raise eyebrows in Keokuk, where many of the two dozen or so residents interviewed blamed local leaders for their economic woes.
According to Lowell Junkins, the executive director of Lee County Economic Development Commission and a former state senator, the city's economic decline was something leaders could have, perhaps should have, seen coming.
"We rested on our laurels for too long." County leaders tried to woo big industry, employing 1,000 people or more, to the region -- a tough sell. "We thought we could reinvent tomorrow to look like yesterday. In effect, we raced at lightning speed into the rearview mirror."
Leaders from both parties here have felt the wrath of the area's disgruntled and increasingly financially strapped constituents, although the aim is somewhat unpredictable. In recent years, voters unexpectedly fired three Democratic county supervisors and replaced them with reformers pledging economic growth. In 2000, the city threw out its longtime mayor, a union leader, and elected a member of a prominent banking family who promised to revive the economy.
Last fall, the voters unexpectedly tossed out a school board member and Republican, who some credited with leading the effort to build a new school and others said was an aloof member of a class known locally as "the moneyed people." Junkins, a former candidate for governor and Democratic operative, was also the target of vituperative attacks after the county board of supervisors persuaded him to largely abandon his lobbying business in Des Moines, return to his hometown and reorganize the effort to bring business back to Lee County. His $95,000-a-year salary didn't go over well in a county where the median household income is $36,000.
Junkins said he doesn't blame his critics for their frustration, and he recognizes these erratic trends both as a part of the Zeitgeist of economic uncertainty and the signs of voters' political independence. Like voters nationwide, Keokuk's constituents are increasingly shirking union pressure and party affiliation.
"If I'm down and out and somebody has been telling me they're going to take care of me and they don't, my confidence in the institution diminishes drastically. I become more independent about my thinking. I look for more information, I start making my own judgments about what this really means to me, not just what somebody says it means. In my home county, we see that even more because we respond even more out of that sense of desperation."
That sense of independence emboldened by desperation may be what's driving some union members to consider breaking ranks. It's a situation that doesn't surprise longtime steelworkers union leader Jerry Kearns.
"Most people don't follow the union endorsement anymore. Everybody thinks for themselves. There's so much information out there with the Internet. There's so many other sources of advice."
Kearns' decline in influence follows a nationwide trend of declining union membership. But while industrial unions continue to struggle to fill the rolls, other unions are gaining steam. The Service Employee International Union, which represents mostly health care workers and service employees, and the Association of Federal, State, County Municipal Employees, which represents about 30,000 public employees in Iowa, are both growing and increasingly flexing their political muscle.
In November, the two threw their endorsements and their cash behind Howard Dean. AFSCME promised to spend $1 million in the state. The SEIU's political director, Gina Glantz, left her job to join the campaign. But what candidates in Iowa also want from their unions is organization and, on caucus night, bodies that will show up at the local high school gym and sit through hours of discussion on everything from Iraq to clean air.
Rob Helmick, president of AFCSME local 2989 that represents correctional officers who work at a state prison in nearby Fort Madison, is confident his members will follow its endorsement and show up on caucus night.
After seeing Dean speak, Helmick came away with this description: "He's ballsy." Kearns saw Dean give a Labor Day speech on the steps of Keokuk's Labor Temple, but his reaction was remarkably different: "He's new."
Note: This speical report appeared originally on Sacremento Bee (Janurary 11, 2004, Page E1)