Bush's Great Debate -- With Himself (glass house throwing stones?)

[papau]

http://consortiumnews.com/Print/2004/030204.html

Bush's Great Debate -- With Himself (Bush-2000 versus Bush-2004).


By Sam Parry March 2, 2004

Borrowing from George W. Bush’s favorite new joke about the Democratic debates, one could say that the Republican Party’s presidential choice is featuring a wide variety of opinions – favoring action on global warming and doing nothing; calling for a balanced federal budget and charting a future of endless deficits; advocating a “humble” foreign policy that decries “nation-building” and running a foreign policy that is arrogant and deeply involved in devising how other countries govern themselves.<snip>

Global warming represented Bush’s first major flip-flop. In a clear campaign promise on September 29, 2000, Bush proposed regulating carbon dioxide as one of "four main pollutants" released into the environment by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants. Coming as the campaign was entering its final stages, the Bush pledge undercut Al Gore’s advantage among pro-environmental voters. It also boosted Bush’s image as a “compassionate conservative” who could appeal to important suburban swing voters. Even some environmentalists praised Bush’s carbon-dioxide initiative.

But two months after taking office, Bush suddenly jettisoned the carbon-dioxide pledge. Bending to the wishes of the energy industry and its lobbyists, Bush pulled the rug out from under his Environmental Protection Agency director, Christie Whitman. She had believed that Bush meant what he said during the campaign and was stunned to learn in March 2001 that the initiative had been scrapped. <snip>

A recent study (Schwartz-Randall study) prepared for the Pentagon is warning U.S. policy-makers that the growing momentum of climate change could provoke an abrupt transformation of weather patterns, followed by severe economic and political dislocations, in the near – rather than distant – future.<snip>

.... “We’re going to set aside all the payroll taxes for one thing, Social Security,” Bush said in a stump speech four days before the presidential election.....During the campaign, he called for a “humble” foreign policy and disparaged President Clinton’s interventions to bring stability to international hot spots as fuzzy-headed “nation-building.”<snip>

Under Bush, however, the military has been stretched even thinner and has faced administration efforts to trim expected pay raises. The Army Times, an independent newspaper that covers military affairs, reported that Bush tried “to significantly cut the 2004 military pay raise” from 3.7 percent to 2 percent. The Bush administration also got into trouble last year when it tried to cut combat pay and family separation pay for the men and women serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.<snip>