Attention All True Conservatives
 

While Conservatism is traditionally thought to be a Republican Party trait, there are conservatives in all parties. Democrats seek to balance the budget. Spending within one's means is conservative. So now I have a question for all true conservatives, regardless of party. I ask the conservatives among the Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian and all other parties as well as independent voters, just what is George W. Bush and his administration conserving?

It certainly isn't the environment. Bush 43 has the worst environmental record of any president in US history. It is so bad that it has even forged an alliance between environmentalists and gun clubs. Fisherman and hunters are seeing once pristine wilderness areas opened to logging, mining, and drilling companies despoiling the natural beauty of our nation and leaving pollution in its wake. It is a brave fisherman indeed, who is willing to eat the mercury polluted fish he catches and hunters see the natural habitat of game disappearing as industrialization by Bush's corporate cronies and lobbyists bent on that industrialization, appointed to cabinet level positions.

It isn't American tax dollars being conserved as our national budget deficit soars to over 500 billion dollars, the highest in history. The Medicare drug plan cost was under reported to get it passed and the true cost was withheld from Congress with threats of firing toward the actuary who knew it would cost over an additional billion dollars. The benefit of that bill was not for the American people but for the already obscenely profitable drug companies that the bill subsidizes. This Bush budget even included $500 million dollars for Disneyland buses. Disneyland buses! Five hundred million dollars! Can you think of any better use for five hundred million dollars when there are homeless families living in the streets, children going to bed hungry and schools short on supplies to teach the next generation than buying buses for a profitable corporation?

It isn't American jobs the Bush administration is conserving for the American worker to be able to make a living. Jobs are being outsourced to countries that pay workers as little as twenty-four cents an hour. Our unemployment and underemployment grows. We've lost close to 3 million jobs in the manufacturing, customer service and computer sectors. We’re also losing overtime pay for many professions. Does this benefit the American people or the large corporations who employ them and contribute heavily to the Bush campaign chest? It a company contributes a million dollars, you can be sure that they expect to get a much larger return on their money with the Bush cartel in office. What happens to our ability to run our government as our trade deficit widens and taxes decrease because more and more Americans find themselves without jobs? Will we recoup those loses from the profits of the corporations? No. They are moving their operations overseas to tax-free havens.

It isn't the Social Security fund that American workers have paid into for their retirement. That is being used at a time when the large population of "Baby Boomers" are getting ready to retire. It is due to run out in 2038.

It isn't the lives or limbs of our American troops being conserved in an unnecessary war we were lied into so companies like Halliburton, Carlyle Group and Bechtel can increase profits to shareholders. These and other companies that make war machines and ammunition and are linked to the Bush family and its cronies and contributors in this and the Bush 41 administration are reaping unprecedented profits. At the same time, veterans benefits are being cut both in the field with insufficient protective gear and when their battered bodies are being returned to veteran's administration hospitals. We expose them to depleted uranium munitions but don't test them for contamination when they return. Depleted uranium is very effective against tanks and also a cheap way of getting rid of nuclear waste. We give it to the munitions companies for free. The fact that it causes cancers and birth defects in those who are exposed to its exploded aerosol micro particles with a half life of 4.5 billion years is denied by the Pentagon even though they published pamphlets telling of the protective gear necessary to be worn when handling it, including the use of respirators. We aren't allowed to see the flag-draped coffins returning to Dover AFB, perhaps because the flags are made in China.

So again, I ask all conservatives of all parties, just what is it that Bush is conserving? And for whom?

4-10-04