The Hightower Report
Your tax dollars pay for Bush's nonpropaganda, and Congress cuts Bush's budget robbery down to simple theft.
By Jim Hightower, Fri., May 9, 2003
Bush's Nonpropaganda Office
Speaking for the Pentagon, Maj. Joe LaMarca said not long ago: "We don't practice propaganda in this country."
Of course not, major, for that would be undemocratic and un-American. Propaganda is what nasty little "evildoers" practice. That's not us. As President George W. himself has informed us, we're the global good guys, the world's only omnipower, so we do not practice propaganda. Definitely not.
"Strategic Communication," however, well that's a different animal altogether, and we definitely do practice strategic communication. Indeed, you, as an American citizen, will probably burst with patriotic pride to learn that George W. has given the U.S. of A. its first ever "Office of Global Communications." Without fanfare or even congressional authorization, he quietly signed an executive order on Jan. 21, and -- poof! -- there it was, a spiffy, slick, and shiney OGC, operating out of the White House.
We're told that it serves as a sort of mega-public-relations firm for the Bush administration -- but it doesn't practice propaganda. Every morning, it holds a global conference call with various officials to set the "message of the day" -- but it doesn't practice propaganda. It issues official government language for the media to use to describe U.S. actions -- but it doesn't practice propaganda. It preapproves dramatic anecdotes for Bush and other officials to tell the media and the public, including anecdotes that turn out to be fabricated -- but it doesn't practice propaganda.
We know that the OGC doesn't practice propaganda because the head of the office tells us it doesn't. And we know we can trust him because he's Tucker Eskew, the Republican political operative who ran Bush's bare-knuckled primary election in South Carolina a couple of years ago. As we know, there's no propaganda in presidential elections, even in down-and-dirty ones like that one was.
It's good to know that our own tax dollars are paying for an executive office that directs nonpropaganda at us.
When a Loss Is a Gain
You know we're in trouble when we have to measure progress in negatives.
Take Bush's assault on our national budget, for example. The plutocratic regime of King George was out to further plunder our public treasury by taking $726 billion off the top over the next 10 years and doling it out in big wads to America's wealthiest people. This is public money that most people would rather see being spent on education, health care, road and school repairs, and other actual needs, rather than further fattening the wallets of the privileged few. Bush's giveaway would be morally bankrupt and an economic fraud any time, but it's especially despicable when our economy is in the ditch, when the workaday majority of the people are hurting, when budget deficits are becoming dangerous chasms, and when America needs a percolate-up economic approach, rather than more of the tried-and-failed trickle-down voodoo of the Bushites.
So, most Democrats and a few sane Republicans in Congress have dared to challenge the economic idiocy of his Royal Bushness by -- oh, progress -- slicing his giveaway to the rich in half. If they succeed, these bold reformers would give only $350 billion of our badly needed public funds to the pampered class so these elites can fritter it away on their personal vanities and amusements.
I was born at night, but not last night. Come on! This is no victory -- the rich are still stealing $350 billion from our common good for their selfish aggrandizement.
Bush is probably kicking himself for not demanding, say, $1.5 trillion, since Democrats and moderates then would've cut that in half, giving the rich "only" $750 billion and claiming that to be a "victory."
As it is, George W. and his congressional cohorts are pressing for a "compromise," saying instead of $750 billion, they'll magnanimously settle for a $550 billion theft from the public treasury.
In the sick world of American politics, this loss is counted as a gain.
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