W Revealed

I think W is a splendid failure. He is the worst of the worst. Bring on Harding! Bring on Coolidge! Bring on Grant! These are GIANTS compared to W. If this be (fair & balanced) sedition, so be it!

[x Atlantic Monthly]
"A Miserable Failure"
by Jack Beatty

Will Bush be re-elected? Only if voters wittingly ignore his long list of failures while in office

.....

W ith one phrase Dick Gephardt has defined the issue to be decided next November. Can a "miserable failure" of a president win re-election? Bush's victory would testify to a civic failure more dangerous to the American future than any policies implemented or continued during a second Bush term. A majority would have demonstrated that democratic accountability is finished. That you can fail in everything and still be re-elected president.

You can preside over the most catastrophic failure of intelligence and national defense in history. Can fire no one associated with this fatal chain of blunders and bureaucratic buck-passing. Can oppose an inquest into September 11 for more than a year until pressure from the relatives of those killed on that day becomes politically toxic. Can name Henry Kissinger, that mortician of truth, to head the independent commission you finally accede to. You can start an unnecessary war that kills hundreds of Americans and as many as 7,000 Iraqi civilians—adjusted for the difference in population, the equivalent of 80,000 Americans. Can occupy Iraq without a plan to restore traffic lights, much less order. Can make American soldiers targets in a war of attrition conducted by snipers, assassins, and planters of remote-control bombs—and taunt the murderers of our young men to "bring it on." Can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nation building—and pass the bill to America's children. (Asked to consider rescinding your tax cut for the top one percent of taxpayers for one year in order to fund the $87 billion you requested from Congress to pay for the occupation of Iraq, your Vice President said no; that would slow growth.) You can lose more jobs than any other President since Hoover. You can cut cops and after-school programs and Pell Grants and housing allowances for the poor to give tax cuts to millionaires. You can wreck the nation's finances, running up the largest deficit in history. You can permit 17,000 power plants to increase their health-endangering pollution of the air. You can lower the prestige of the United States in every country of the world by your unilateral conduct of foreign policy and puerile "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric. Above all, you can lie the country into war and your lies can be exposed—and, if a majority prefers ignorance to civic responsibility, you can still be reelected.

Even Republicans must be capable of applying a cost-benefit analysis to this record of miserable failure. Their tax cuts on one side, the burden of Bush-begotten debt on their children on the other. And surely even Republicans breathe the air befouled by those power plants. I have it on good authority that the conservatives in the party do as well. Surely they must question the judgment of a President who proposes to turn Iraq into what James Fallows calls "the fifty-first state" in order to bring democracy to the Middle East—the kind of do-gooder fantasy conservatives have long ridiculed in liberals.

But the election won't be decided by Republicans and conservatives. Most will sacrifice independent judgment to ideology or party and vote for Bush. No, swing voters will pick the next President. They vote the man not the party, character not ideology. Many voted for Bush in 2000 because they liked him better than Al Gore—applying the standards of product acceptability to a job that entrusts its holder with the power to blow up the planet. Well, do they still "like" Bush? I fear many do. After all, he has spared them the embarrassment of having to discuss sex with their children. Swing voters like Bush's "image" as a strong leader, a CNN pundit claims. Are they incapable of looking behind that image and seeing the weak President who stayed away from the White House on September 11 because his Vice President said it was not safe for him to be there and whose PR people lied to cover up his failure of leadership? John F. Kennedy, as R. W. Apple wrote on the front page of The New York Times on September 12, remained in the White House throughout the Cuban missile crisis knowing that it would be hit in any nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

The Founders feared that the republic would succumb to corruption without republican citizenship—without citizens who could transcend privatism and hold elected officials to account, demanding probity and competence, and judging their performance against both the clamorous necessities of the time and the mute claims of posterity. They made property a criterion for voting because it secured a measure of economic independence. Property-less wage laborers, they feared, would vote as their employers instructed them to. The extension of democracy to those who could not rise to the responsibilities of republican freedom would corrupt the republic—hasten its decay into oligarchy or mob rule.

For all their worldliness the Founders were naïve to regard property as a shield of incorruptibility or the property-less as inherently corruptible. Their core insight, however, remains valid. A republic can be corrupted at the top and bottom, by leaders and led. The re-election of George W. Bush would signal that a kind of corruption had set in among the led. Our miserable failure as republican citizens would match his as President.

Copyright © 2003 The Atlantic Monthly

$147,000 for a Bossa Nova?

The former Chancellor of Phillips Community College (with campuses in DeWitt, Helena, and Stuttgart, AR) of the University of Arkansas—Steven W. Jones, Ed.D.—takes his place as President of Amarillo College on October 15, 2003.

[From the Amarillo College Web site announcing Jones' arrival]

Dr. Jones earned his doctoral degree in higher education administration from Nova Southeastern University; his master's degree in management and economics from the University of Mississippi; and his bachelor's degree in business administration from Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He is a Certified Fund Raising Executive by the Association of Fund Raising Professionals and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources by the Personnel Accreditation Institute. Jones has also served on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Community Colleges and was the AACC Board Liaison to the White House Transition Team in 1993-94. Dr. Jones has been a contributing writer in three books and is the author of Exemplary Practices in Community College Marketing, which is scheduled for release in 2004. Jones will replace Dr. Bud Joyner at the helm of the college. Joyner was named president by the board in June of 2002 after former AC president Dr. Fred Williams resigned for health reasons. Joyner also served as Amarillo College's president from 1992-1999.

The blurb doesn't mention that Joyner also served as the consultant to the Board of Regents in the search for the last two presidents of Amarillo College. Can anyone spell double-dipping? Truth be known, the last president that Joyner found for the College—Fred Williams—was FIRED by the Board of Regents. Williams—a stealth president—was seen less often than Elvis or Howard Hughes. He presided over a bungled transition to proprietary institutional software and took the fall for incompetents in the IT shop. However, Williams had no local connections and—because of his reclusive behavior—no local defenders. The IT bumblers were longtime Amarillo residents. The Board of Regents then brought Luther Bud Joyner (only in Texas!) back to save the College and the day.

Thanks to Joyner and a meddling (what else) former Regent, Amarillo College will be led by a guy with an Ed.D. from (Bossa) Nova Southeastern University. I went to the (Bossa) Nova Web site and discovered that an Ed.D. in higher education could be had in TWO YEARS, with no dissertation!

All it takes is $13,584 per year. This tuition is payable in quarterly installments of $3,396 with each registration, plus a $30 registration fee each term. If a participant completes the National Ed.D. Program for Educational Leaders in fewer than 2 years, 2 full years of tuition payments are still required. Tuition beyond the second year of the Program is $1,650 per 3-month term. (Nova Online Catalog) This is about as close to a diploma mill as it comes. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools should be ashamed! I am!

To add insult to injury, Jones will be the highest paid president in the history of Amarillo College. On top of that, I have questions about his integrity. The publisher he lists for his forthcoming book must be housed in his garage because the publisher cannot be found in Books In Print. On top of that, Jones claimed to be the author of books edited by others; in one case, his contribution amounted to a single page! (Bossa) Nova + a fraudulent bibliography makes me want to puke! And, $147K (salary only), to boot! If this guy is worth 3x as much as me, I want to see him leap tall buildings in a single bound, stop a locomotive, and outrace a speeding bullet! Molly Ivins ought to get a whiff of this stuff! This makes the NYSE Board of Governors' salary package for Richard Grasso look like (comparative) chump change!

If this be (fair & balanced) outrage, so be it.

Molly On A Rampage

How anyone can read this latest Ivins column (No wonder it was not carried by the Amarillo fishwrap this week!) without a sense of dread? The apocalypse is upon us. If this be (fair & balanced) prophecy, so be it.

Republicans On A Rampage
by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- Not that any of us is in a position to criticize the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky, but don't you think She's been going a little heavy on the irony lately?

All those folks who had conniption fits over Bill Clinton's affair are now pooh-poohing Arnold Schwarzenegger's sexual misconduct -- and vice versa. The right-wingers who are always griping about Hollywood stars who express political opinions -- "Shut Up and Sing" -- suddenly find an actor perfectly fit for high political office based on his experience as The Terminator.

Professional patriots who would have been screaming with horror had the Clinton White House ever leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent now struggle to justify or minimize such a thing.

President Bush has spent $300 million trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and come up with zip, so now he wants to spend $600 million more. And let's mention the president's interesting theory that NOT finding any weapons of mass destruction means the Iraq war was fully justified. (Hello?)

Connoisseurs of political folly who have been enjoying the antics in California should not overlook the doings in the Great State, where Texas Republicans have achieved such a pluperfect snafu that the state's primary will be delayed next year.

The Iraqi Governing Council is complaining because the United States is wasting so much money in Iraq.

Rush Limbaugh is apparently facing drug charges.

Attorney General John Ashcroft demanded that federal prosecutors seek the maximum penalty in every case just before some perp(s) in the White House apparently broke the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. All in all, a fine fall Irony Fest.

Less ironic and more in the sickening vein is the naked profiteering by various Bushies on the Iraq War. Bob Dole used to wander around the country demanding, "Where is the outrage?" Where's Dole when we need him?

Joe Allbaugh, who was one of Bush's "Iron Triangle" when he was governor and later as his presidential campaign manager and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is now in the Baghdad biz. Already the head of one consulting firm, Allbaugh and two partners, both lobbyists and former aides to Poppy Bush, have formed a new firm.

"The opportunities evolving in Iraq are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in the United States and on the ground." Salivating over unprecedented booty and swag while American soldiers are getting killed every day is considered kind of tacky, in some circles.

A former partner of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense and a major player in pushing the war, has joined a nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and apparently the source of much misinformation before the war. The nephew has opened a law office in Baghdad, and Feith's erstwhile law partner is marketing the firm in the United States.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts have already been awarded -- without competitive bidding -- to American businesses, including Halliburton and Bechtel. Hey, no favoritism there. Appearance of impropriety? Don't be a churlish nitpicker.

Sen. Tom Daschle's office has documented the "gold-plating" of cost estimates in dozens of contracts. These include such gems as $6,000 each for handheld radios and satellite phones, as well as $200 million to protect 100 Iraqi families, at an average cost of $200,000 per family member. The federal witness protection program costs $10,000 per person per year.

While the main cell-phone contract has yet to be announced, MCI has the preliminary contract. MCI has no experience in building cell networks -- and it also perpetrated the largest accounting fraud in history.

We're footing the $87 billion-and-counting tab (not including the $79 billion we already spent) for this venture, and the Senate Finance Committee has the chutzpah to consider granting a $100 billion tax break to corporations that make profits overseas. This dandy notion would permit American firms to "repatriate" overseas profits at a reduced tax rate of 5.25 percent, rather than the current 35 percent. Now, does anyone think that doing so might, just might, encourage more corporations to move their operations overseas?

El stinko to high heaven-o.


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