Environment- Bush broke his promise to reduce greenhouse gases that produce global warming and climate change. He did not increase auto efficiency mpg requirements. He is pushing to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He allows mining in the Everglades, logging sequoias in national monuments, oil drilling in national monuments, and clearcutting in wild roadless areas. He let trade in elephant ivory start up again, inciting poachers to kill. Forests can be logged under the excuse of fire prevention without citizen input, challenges or environmental review. Coal companies in Appalachia can now dump whole mountaintops of waste into creeks and rivers. Electrical utilities and oil refineries with dirty, old processes can now abandon requirements to clean up when they expand. The Forest Service can now drop wildlife, biodiversity, and maintaining viable populations of species as goals. He has stopped the tax on polluters, which funded Superfund cleanups. He reversed Clinton's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone, so the air is worse than in LA and rangers must wear oxygen masks. He stopped the protection of wetlands unless they are connected to a navigable body of water. He wants to dump nuclear waste into consumer goods. He proposes exempting the military, the nation's largest polluter, from all environmental laws. He proposed allowing more arsenic in our water. He is overturning Clinton's protection of roadless areas; he is allowing logging, mining, and oil drilling in formerly protected roadless areas. He exempted huge hog farms from clean air and water laws.He is making deals with states to prevent future wilderness areas and to stop the protection of proposed wilderness areas. Go to sc.org and nrdc.org . Economy- Bush wants huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations. 50% of Bush's tax cut goes to the richest 1%, and 25% goes to the next richest 4%. Most tax cuts will go to those with incomes over $1 million per year. (New Yorker 1/20/03) These will add up to $900 billion over 10 years. Bush & Cheney would get tax breaks of $44,500 and $327,000. He suggests repealing the tax on dividends. He pushes the Star Wars missile defense boondoggle ($200 billion!) which can't work and just rewards campaign contributors. He won't prosecute or take back the money from the corporate executives, such as Kenneth Lay of Enron (who gave more $ to Bush than anyone else), who bankrupted pension funds, retirees, and investors by insider trading and fake accounting. He gives oil, gas, coal, and nuke companies $27.6 billion per year for 10 years. (Molly Ivins) He is giving $1.1 billion to Halliburton, BP, Shell, Unocal, Amerada, and Marathon to build oil and gas pipelines and projects ( Mother Jones, Jan 03). He is cutting funds for education, healthcare, medicare, student loans, medicaid, and unemployment compensation. The war will cost $200 billion. How long will it last? How many will die? Election Fraud - 57,000 blacks in FL in 2000 were taken off the voting rolls because their names were similar to 2,000 felons. Voting machines were set in FL to remind voters in white counties to re-vote if they made a mistake, but the machines were set in black counties to invalidate the ballot if a mistake was made, without a second chance. Late, multiple, and unpostmarked military ballots were counted in Republican counties and not counted in Democratic counties. Polls closed early despite long lines of voters in MO in black counties where the machines were not working. In 2002, Republican senatorial candidates in NE &GA surprised pollsters with wins, and it turned out that the NE candidate owned the software company that counted the votes in NE & GA- and no paper trail of votes was kept. Scalia's sons and Thomas's wife worked for Bush during the FL recount, and Scalia and Thomas voted as Supreme Court justices to make Bush president select. War- Starting an aggressive war without an imminent or recent threat from Iraq is a war crime and violates the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter & the Nuremberg Convention. Threatening to use cluster bombs, land mines, nuclear bombs, and depleted uranium bombs and shells also violates these laws and the US Army Field Manual. Depleted uranium causes birth defects and cancer. These weapons harm our soldiers, enemy soldiers, and civilians long after the battle. Using nuclear bombs could lead to a spreading nuclear war as many nearby countries possess nuclear bombs. Over 6,000 Iraqi civilians and over 300 US & UK soldiers have died in this war. The major defense contractors that benefit from war are Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace Systems, & United Technology. Corruption - Bush overturned Clinton's energy price regulations, giving Enron over $87 million in extra profits in the first 3 months of Bush' s reign. Bush and Cheney refused to regulate energy prices in CA, allowing Enron and others to fake an energy crisis and overcharge CA consumers $35 billion (from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast). Bush and his puppeteer Rove took money from the tobacco companies, and Bush opposed the WHO proposed ban on cigarette ads. Bush Sr. works for the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor, and Bush Jr. worked for it too. Oil and defense stocks go up when he threatens war; these companies are his major backers. Oil prices go up with threats of war, and oil companies will get access to trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil. Major oil companies include Exxon-Mobil, BP-Shell, Chevron-Texaco, Unocal, Occidental, & Arco. Defense companies get paid to destroy Iraq, and then Halliburton gets paid to rebuild it. Cheney still is paid $100,000 to $1 million per year by Halliburton in deferred compensation. Halliburton has $830 million in government contracts and received $7 billion in no bid contracts in Iraq. Bush and the Republican party took $44 million from the oil, mining, timber, chemical, and electrical utility companies in 2000, and he has repaid them by giving them control of the government. Bush appointed 30 industry officials to regulate their former industries- see www.publicampaign.org/publications/reports/paybacks/Paybacks.pdf. Overturn Democracy - Bush has stopped the Freedom of Information Act, which allowed citizens to find out what their government was doing. Unwarranted phonetaps, searches, and seizures are now legal. People can be indefinitely & secretly jailed without trial, charges, access to a lawyer or review. A new Bush law allows companies to declare their toxic accidents, products, and illegal acts to be "government secrets" so no citizen or public health agency can learn what is wrong and campaign to correct it. He stopped activist speakers from flying to give speeches at protests. He is allowing unlimited spying on innocent citizens. He is pushing to track all phone calls, email, medical records, library records, protests, and credit card purchases of citizens. He pushed folks to spy on their neighbors, and hired an ex KGB man to build the file system. He allows torture. He allows citizenship to be taken away and then military tribunals can replace judges and juries. He allows "secret " evidence to be used without the defendant being told what it is. He takes away our privacy and covers up the government misbehavior with total secrecy. He is overturning the Constitution, and creating a police state that spies on citizens. Being a Crook - While on the audit committee and board of directors of Harken Energy, he was warned by company attorneys not to sell his stock using his insider knowledge that the company could not meet payroll. He sold it despite this, making $ 848,000. He illegally delayed notifying the SEC of his sale. He also got insider loans, and they hid losses in a secret partnership. They created fake profits from fake sales of overvalued assets to their executives. Bullying and Bribing - He offered $15 billion to Turkey for access over their land and ports. He threatened Mexico's President Fox with persecution of Hispanics similar to that of Japanese Americans in WW II unless Fox voted with Bush at the UN. His puppeteer, Karl Rove, and his aides outed Ambassador Wilson's wife to stop criticism of Bush's lie about Iraq buying uranium from Niger. This blowing of her identity as an undercover CIA operative threatens her life, the lives of her past associates, and the those who worked with her at a CIA front company. Karl Rove stopped Sen. Jeffords (VT) from attending an awards ceremony for the teacher of the year from Vermont in order to punish him for not always voting with Bush. This led Jeffords to leave the Republican party. International Law - he has withdrawn from the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, The Kyoto Treaty, the treaty banning weapons in space, the International Criminal Court, and refused to implement the Biological Warfare Treaty. His threat to use nuclear bombs violates the Non Proliferation Treaty. Empire - Bush and the oil companies want the over 122 billion barrels of Iraqi oil and control over Mideast and Caspian Sea oil. Also, they want to control China, the EU, and Japan through controlling access to the oil. Bush is building military bases throughout the Mideast, Asia and the Andes. He is building weapons to dominate space 9-11- Bush stopped investigations by US intelligence agencies into the Bin Laden family, the Saudi Royals, the Saudi links to Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear bombs, the Al Qaeda terrorists taking flight lessons, the speculators who sold short airline and insurance stocks just before 9-11, and the warnings from Egypt, Russia, and Israel that bin Laden was going to use commercial aircraft to crash into buildings in the US in September, 2001.Now he limits investigations into 9-11 and the anthrax attacks, and classifed as secret the parts of the Congressional report on 9-11 that list Saudi links to al Qaeda. He let special planes fly the members of the bin Laden family out of the US before they could be questioned by the FBI. These planes were allowed to fly after 9-11 when all other civilian planes were grounded. Bush Sr. regularly stayed at the bin Laden palace while selling Carlyle Group arms to the Saudis. Bush's August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing warned that bin Laden was determined to strike in the US, using airplane hijackings. Lying- Bush knowingly lied about Iraq getting uranium from Niger (1-28-3). He knowingly lied about having found weapons of mass destruction when all he found was two trucks used to fill artillery balloons with hydrogen gas (5-30-03). His Sec'y of Defense Rumsfeld falsely said in July, 02 that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaeda. His vice-president Cheney lied saying on 9-8-02 that the 9-11 hijacker Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April, 2001 - this 5 months after the FBI and Czech President had disproved this rumor. His Deputy Sec'y of Defense Wolfowitz said in Singapore in June, 2003 that the real reason for attacking Iraq was that Iraq swims on a sea of oil. Bush lies, calling his plan to clearcut large, healthy, fire resistant trees far from houses the "Healthy Forest Iniative", claiming it will save forests, lives, and houses. It really just allows logging companies to cut public forests without challenges from environmentalists. Bush lies, calling his program to allow more air pollution "Clear Skies", claiming it will reduce air pollution when it really weakens laws that require reductions in air pollution. **Ask your politicians and newspapers to ask for an international war crimes tribunal to charge Bush and his cronies with war crimes.