Yates County Democratic Committee

Why I care about this election:

I have been asked by a few undecided friends to explain exactly why I am actively campaigning for the Kerry Edwards presidential ticket. There are many reasons, but I will try to express the core of my passion briefly. (Such important issues really shouldn't be painted in black & white, in sound-bite single sentences.)

I believe that Americans are blessed, by accident of birth, with the opportunities for a long, healthy, rewarding, comfortable life, and that by virtue of having those luxuries we must make choices which increase others opportunities to achieve the same. I believe we must take seriously the limits of "sustainable" policies, meaning the bounty will extend to the future and to others, not be used up by our generation or our country.

Our current administration is treating our planet as if it were a business in liquidation. Our natural resources are being converted into cash as quickly as possible, creating a pollution-based prosperity with a limited shelf-life, a joy ride which our children will have to pay for. We have seen over 400 major environmental roll-backs in the last 3 ½ years, a deliberate attempt to eviscerate 30 years of environmental laws. When they destroy a forest, they call it the Healthy Forest Law; when they destroy the air they call it the Clear Skies Bill. Please don't let this Orwellian rhetoric fool you. This year for the first time since the Clean Waters Act was passed, the EPA announced our rivers were dirtier.

Administrative appointments have put the fox in charge of the henhouse: The Forest Service is headed by a timber industry lobbyist. The head of public lands is a mining industry lobbyist who stated that public lands are unconstitutional! The head of the air division at EPA is a utility lobbyist who represented the worst polluters in America. The head of Superfunds (which has been allowed to go bankrupt) is a lobbyist whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfunds regulations. Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, believes that the Endangered Species Act is unconstitutional. The administration has refused to defend the laws and standards thoughtfully constructed during the last 30 years: the National Environmental Policy Act, Roadless Rule, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act. The polluters are running the regulatory agencies that are supposed to regulate them.

One scenario: Asthma rates have doubled among our children in the last 5 years. Asthma attacks are triggered by ozone and particulates in the air, about 60% of which come from 1100 coal-burning power plants that are burning coal illegally. They were supposed to have cleaned up their process 15 years ago, and the Clinton administration was prosecuting the worst 70 for criminal violations. And one of the first things President Bush did was to order the Justice Department to drop those lawsuits. The EPA says that just the criminal emissions from these 70 plants kill 5500 Americans a year. The science is very certain. The power plants bottom line looks good; many others are paying for it.

Polluters make themselves rich by making others poor. When their products are sold for their profit, their environmental excesses must be paid for by us (either through tax-funded cleanups, by falling ill from breathing the unhealthy air, or even by going to war to protect sources of oil). This is not free & fair marketing. Polluters are being subsidized. And they say we have to choose between economic prosperity and environmental protection. Wrong. In 100% of the cases, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy IN THE LONG RUN. In the current corporate crony capitalism, there's a mentality that the ends justify the means at any cost…and the cost falls to the unemployed, the uninsured, the unhealthy who live downstream from a Mercury emitter (who, under Bush's new regs will never have to clean up their mercury contamination), the foreign labor forces working in 19th century conditions for our imports, and our children who will face our debt and destruction of resources.

Environment hasn't surfaced as a big issue in this campaign, perhaps because Kerry believes it's so blatant that he already has that issue won, (The League of Conservation Voters give a report card for Bush at 0%, first zero ever, and Kerry 91%) but more likely because the war overshadows our lives…as it will our children's lives, and probably the world for several generations. I met a couple this summer who have been in U.S. foreign service all their lives, stationed at our embassies in Afghanistan, Serbia, Thailand, etc., currently The Philippines, as Cultural Attachés. They came home to talk to friends and find out what we must be thinking! They said they will not live long enough to see the distrust of Americans, of our motives, turned around. Tonight I received an e-mail from a lady in New South Wales, Australia, who said Australians have always thought of Americans as cousins, who so helped them during the war, but that they are overwhelmingly critical of us today.

When we announced we were about to invade Iraq, anti-war demonstrations ringed the globe. Why was this war different in people's eyes than other wars? People were reacting to the shift in perception of the U.S. from a trusted world leader, protector of the peace, to another rogue state which any country must watch with fear and suspicion. We refused to follow the United Nations decision on Iraq, in order to punish Iraq for not following the United Nations decisions. Or perhaps we did it for one of the other 22 (documented) reasons George Bush gave for the invasion.

Why shouldn't countries fear our next step? During Bush's tenure, the U.S. government has tossed aside at least 11 major international treaties. We have disavowed or ignored the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, once again participating in the proliferation of nuclear weapons; the Convention on Small Arms; the Conventions on Biological and Chemical Weapons; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the International Criminal Court; The Kyoto Agreement; The Geneva Convention, which a memo to Bush said has been "rendered quaint". Bush shrugs this off as standing up for our self interests, not cow-towing to make supposed friends. Treaties are what make this a civilized world. These many treaties were the product of much study, research, discussion among many countries, with whom we share the planet's destiny. I don't believe we can fight this century's terrorism without the world-wide trust and cooperation of peace-minded peoples, until terrorists have no place to hide. Want peace? Support justice. Support sustainable economies, not the rape of resources so the rich can get richer while the poor have no safe water.

The stress of population growth exacerbates every problem of the Earth: health, food supply, energy, power struggles, poverty, clean air & water, women's rights, climate change, you name it. On the first day of Bush's presidency, he reinstituted the Global Gag Rule, under which international family planning programs are force to lose a large percent of their operating funds, or to discontinue services (paid for by private funds) including gynecological exams, AIDS prevention and treatment, and contraception. He withdrew previously authorized U.S. aid to the UNFPA. He has required the Global HIV/AIDS Relief Program to direct 1/3 of their funds to abstinence-only-unless-married efforts. The Bush administration has spent $117 million on a sex-education message that "Condoms don't work". A female member of our military serving overseas is denied even privately funded safe abortions in our military hospitals. Those who suffer Bush's choice of HIS religious beliefs over the Constitutional freedoms of our government are overwhelmingly women and children world-wide. I am offended when Bush refers to our "Christian Nation"; we are a nation of freedoms, including freedom of religion.

Presidents Reagan, Ford, Carter, and Clinton all helped create the federal ban on assault weapons. President Bush refused to support its renewal, despite the support of law enforcement agencies across the country.

By 2005 they will have cut all funding for high school drop-out prevention. The White House Office of Management and Budget said it was "unnecessary", despite the fact that nationally we graduate only 50% of African-Americans, 53% of Hispanics, and 51% of Native Americans. This is a racist decision.

When the administration loosened overtime pay requirements, (claiming many more would receive benefits), the Department of Labor issued an advisory to businesses outlining ways they can avoid paying overtime, including cutting an employee's pay so their new paycheck including overtime would add up to the original base salary. Compassionate conservatism? This is a war on the middle class, while the upper class gets tax breaks.

Did you realize that our deficit spending is a root of the high cost of gas at the pump? The Arabs are paid in U.S. dollars for each gallon of crude, and as the international value of the dollar goes down with our deficit, they have to raise their price to stay even.

My son Christopher was out of work for 2 years, although he is now employed. My son Jamie has been working in the vineyards for $8 an hour with a masters degree, trying for 2 years to find work in his field. (No pun intended.) My husband took a $15,000 pay cut to stay employed. We can live with these economic realities. We are much better off than many many people here and abroad. And if I feel we are comfortable, you know I believe the rich are more so, and I'd roll back their tax relief.* In the U.S. we pay much less of our GNP in taxes than other developed countries. I'm willing to pay taxes for better health care, to educate our young people so they will contribute to society, for foreign aid to maintain a peaceful and humanitarian world. Economics aren't my primary issues. I think we are way too selfish and materialistic and need to be reigned in, in that respect.

So you say I haven't said why I am voting for Kerry, just why I oppose Bush. Right.

I saw a cartoon in which Bush said, "If you vote for Kerry you have no idea what you're getting." (Next panel) "If you vote for me you know exactly what you're getting." Right. And to me, it's all based on that corporate cronyism, short sighted profit-taking, and a go-it-alone arrogance which alienates us from world partners whom we need to survive. It debases women and children, pays lip service to education and tells lies about its environmental policies. It has created more places for terrorism to breed, and opportunities for terrorists to gain converts.

We won't really know what Kerry will do until he's there. We only know what he SAYS he'll do. He'll turn around some of this run-away extremism…no, it's not conservative to run these deficits, give away these resources, to subsidize businesses by excusing them from responsibility for poisoning our environment, to take us into a war under false pretenses.

I liked Kerry's reference the other night to his 2 favorite Biblical teachings: to love thy God with all thy heart, and to love thy neighbor as thyself…and his post script that we could use a lot more of loving our neighbors. And God willing, he'll bring our former friends back to the table to build trust again, to build a coalition of not just the willing, but the trusting. I believe the fall of our great nation is at stake, and with it, the civilization of the world as we know it. That's how important I feel this election is…election for the presidency and for the Congress.

Bonnie Barney
October 15, 2004

* At Thursday's debate President Bush said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans." That statement is flatly false. According to FactCheck.org: Bush could hardly have been farther off base when he said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans." That's just not true. In fact, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center recently calculated that most of the tax cuts -- 53% to be exact -- went to the highest -earning 10% of US individuals and families. Those most affluent Americans got an average tax cut of $7,661. And as for the "low- and middle-income Americans" Bush mentioned -- the bottom 60% of individuals and families got only 13.7% of the tax cuts, according to the Tax Policy Center, a far cry from "most" of the cuts as claimed by Bush. As a result, those in the middle class are paying a greater share of the federal taxes today than they were four years ago.

I invite others' opinions, and I'd be happy to give sources & details.

BACK