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BORED BY BUSH BAMBOOZLES? Subscribe to "Inside Bush Watch" and you'll get the stuff we don't report at "Bush Watch." Breaking news and broken promises. Quotes, jokes, blokes, and tokes. For you? Free. Such a deal! (Click on "JoinList") BUSH STORIES Bush's Soft-Core Economic Porn Sale Catalogue Whatever are we going to to with our friends in the Fourth Estate? Here they have been, racking up one fifteen-yard penalty after another for piling on--is there a pundit living who hasn't done either an "asshole" piece or a "RATS" piece or both?--and now, having sufficiently lowered our expectations, they are going along with the pretense that Bush's new Sale Catalogue, "Real Plans for Real People: A Bluepint for the Middle Class," is an attempt, as the Washington Post put it, "to return to the issues." Issues? This piece of advertising is nothing but soft-core economic porn, articulated in the high-minded idiom of the car dealerships. Here's a direct quote from the tax section: "A family of four with one earner making $40,000 a year will receive a 70% income tax cut under the Bush plan. This means $1,600 cash back for meeting the family's needs." "Cash back"? Is this a dealer incentive or a rebate? Can I also get 2.9% financing? One gets the impression that, after the fiasco of the dollar bill props, the Bush campaign has simply decided to give up on trying to answer the question of how all of his grand plans--tax cuts, spending initiatives, Social Security privatization--can be paid for. The hell with that "big picture" stuff--this "brochure" goes straight for our consumer fantasies: "The Bush tax cut helps middle class families pay for today's bills and save for tomorrow's needs. Cash back for school clothes and supplies. A home computer. A car payment. A child's college education. Or the down payment on a home." We're gonna empty the public treasury to pay for middle class car payments? Don't worry, be happy, sez the Bushies: "Governor Bush believes all income taxpayers deserve a tax cut. Not a chosen few. Not some. But all. His plan is fair and returns one-quarter of the surplus to the people who earned it. His plan sets aside money to save Social Security and pay down the national debt. He believes no family should pay more than one-third of its income in taxes." Of course his plan doesn't "set aside money to save Social Security," but what's a brazen lie or two when you're down in the polls? And speaking of lies, this one looks familiar: "In 15 years less cash will come into Social Security than is paid out to retired seniors. About two decades later, the entire system will go bankrupt. Without reform, according to the Social Security Administration, benefits will then have to be cut 30 percent or taxes increased 50 percent." Bush really ought to go back to waiving dollar bills around. When the Treasury has more obligations than income, we call it a "deficit" and borrow enough money to keep going. When the SSA has more obligations than income--or may possibly be forecasted to do so in the future, if you pick and choose your numbers carefully--we call it "bankruptcy." But Bush is too busy accusing Gore of lying about his mother-in-law's dog's prescription internet account--or whatever--and the watchdogs of the press, who appear to take similar drugs, are too busy lapping it up. For the love of Pete, Bush put it in writing this time and handed it out--why isn't anyone asking him to define the term "bankruptcy"? Why aren't they waiving the actual text of the SSA Trustee's Report at him and daring him to find those numbers he's slinging around? This money that Bush "sets aside" to "save" Social Security turns out to be our old friend, the "lockbox." In other words, Bush will "save" Social Security by promising not to steal from it. Unless, of course, he needs to count Social Security and Medicare trust funds in the total surplus, in order to make his tax plan consume only one-quarter of it. Not even the car dealerships lie like that. How do the shills in Austin keep a straight face while writing sentences like this: "The Bush [education] plan will . . . strengthen accountability and restore local control. Increase local control and require annual testing in grades 3-8 to ensure that students are learning the necessary skills. Reward schools that boost student performance and hold schools accountable if they fail to teach children." What, exactly, does "local control" mean if Bush in Washington is going to mandate what tests the students will take, when they will take them, what the passing grade will be, and what will happen if the kids don't pass? The provinicials on the Bush campaign have become so enamored of their own slogans that they have forgotten the first rule of propaganda: when putting contradictory statements in writing, make sure to separate them by at least one whole sentence. Or how about this one? "A 68-year-old woman on Medicare with an annual income of $11,000 has prescription drug costs of $900 a year. She does not have prescription drug coverage, nor does she have a supplemental Medicare policy. Unfortunately, she suddenly suffers a major illness. After her return home, she is left with $15,000 in unpaid medical bills. Under the Bush Medicare plan, her monthly prescription drug costs would be fully covered, and she would not have to pay for any medical costs above $6,000." The Bushies are so caught up in slapping at Gore--whose Medicare plan offers no cap on catastrophic expenses--that they can insouciantly point out that an elderly person making $11,000 per year "only" has to pay $6,000 in medical expenses under the Bush plan. Real People might notice that this leaves said elderly person with $5,000 to afford a year's worth of rent, utilities, food, transportation, etc. In other words, the old folks get to live on $416 a month, or the equivalent of . . . a middle-class car payment. The middle class gets their car payments covered by Bush's tax-plan bribery. The "Blueprint for the Middle Class" can't even resist a limp swipe at the Debate Debate Fiasco: "This is an agenda for middle America, which is sometimes overlooked in our national debate." Which "national debate" would that be, the one Bush has been trying to duck out of? Or the Larry King show? As a bona-fide Real Person who lives in Official Middle America--it doesn't get any more "middle America" than Iowa--allow me to point out that even here we can tell the difference between a rip-off of the beef producers' ad slogans and a public-spirited debate on the economy. The interesting question, as always, is whether the beltway press corps can tell the difference. Personally, I'm not sure that even a free ride on this ridiculous pamphlet could save the Bush campaign at this point, but a free ride is, sadly enough, what I'm predicting that Bush is going to get. All I can say is that any reporter who doesn't ask some fairly obvious questions about this "Blueprint for the Middle Class" might be an "asshole," but is hardly a "major-leaguer." Now that we know that Cheney's blueprint for a his new house in D.C. doesn't include a jacuzzi and and extra 13,000 square feet, can we talk about what Bush's doesn't include? Or has legalized bribery and insider campaign-speak become so normal to the press corps that they can't recognize it when they have it handed to them printed on blueprint paper with flattering pictures of soccer moms, the whole shebang packaged in nice, white mailing tubes? --Doris in Middle America, 9/19/00 for previous bush headlines, go to...