a few weeks ago i wrote about the ‘true face of the extreme right’ and i was criticized for portraying the extreme right as being a bunch of racist, misogynistic jerks(although i was letting them speak for themselves through letters that they had sent to my friend margaret cho that were, in fact, racist and misogynistic).
now i’d like to reprint an article from forbes magazine showing another ‘true face of the extreme right’.
and this can’t really be disputed, seeing as forbes is a fairly right wing magazine and this article is based solely on bush’s budget.
read it and weep(or rather than weep, try to do everything you can to get john kerry elected in november…)…
washington, feb 3 (forbes) – one day after proposing bigger budgets for defense the white house on tuesday released a list of the 128 programs it wants gutted, from education equity for women to combating alcohol abuse, a problem president george w. bush faced himself.
while calling on congress to rein in domestic spending to address a record budget deficit, bush has made education reform a key plank in his campaign for reelection in november and announced in last month’s state of the union address a $300 million program to help released prisoners re-integrate into society. his wife, laura, has traveled the world promoting literacy.
but according to newly released details about his fiscal 2005 budget, bush would scrap programs to improve writing skills, teach economics and foreign languages, and promote literacy.
a program that provides residents of poor areas access to computers and training would also get the ax, along with recreation programs for the disabled, aid for migrant farm workers , and an initiative to promote “”educational equity”” for girls and women.
a public advocate of physical fitness and job training, bush would do away with recreational programs for people with disabilities. olympic scholarships and arts in education would also be scrapped.
it took the white house more than 24 hours to provide the complete list of the 65 program terminations and 63 major program reductions included in bush budget for the fiscal year that begins in october. it was unclear how much of bush’s spending plan will win congressional approval as there was already growing opposition within both parties.
out-of-date
the white house said many of the targeted programs were either redundant or out-of-date.
“”being responsible with the people’s money not only means funding key national priorities and controlling other spending, as the president’s budget does, but also terminating or reducing programs that are wasteful, duplicative or fail to produce results,”” said a spokesman for the white house office of management and budget.
bush’s “”termination”” list includes a small program that documents the history of the “”underground railroad,”” which helped many african americans escape slave states prior to and during the civil war.
he also would end a $30 million alcohol abuse reduction program which, the white house says, “”supports innovative and effective programs to reduce alcohol abuse in secondary schools.””
during a visit to a dallas church in october, bush, a devout christian, alluded to his own decision to quit drinking in 1986 when he was 40.
“”a lot of times, the best way to help the addict, a person who is stuck on drugs and alcohol, is to change their heart. see, if you change their heart then they change their behavior. i know,”” he said.