The Republicans are coming and, while I’m not as hateful as many of my fellow New Yorkers may be, I’m thrilled that Wayne Barrett took the opportunity to write the Village Voice cover story called The 10 Ways Bush Screwed New York. I see Wayne regularly and I can’t wait to congratulate him on this piece.
In fact, I’ve been waiting for a piece like this for a long time; why it’s so difficult for other New York-based media magazines and newspapers to rush to the defense of New York City, which gets pennies to other states’ dollars in spending after it went through a massive attack and an ugly financial implosion — it’s truly beyond me.
Briefly, here are Mr. Barrett’s Top Ten:
- Osama is at large thanks to the war in Iraq.
- The 9-11 investigation was shamefully resisted by President Bush for no good reason.
- The Bush team, armed with the knowledge that something was coming down the pike, did nothing to even try to prevent 9/11.
- The Bush Deficit, now at $500 billion, will have to hurt domestic programs in NYC.
- Bush has been cheap when it comes to going the extra mile for New York’s struggling economy
- NY is ranked “35th in anti-terrorism per capital funding and 50th in bioterrorism.” Egh.
- Ground Zero workers (and maybe all of us in Brooklyn under the WTC plume in September 2001) probably inhaled too much crap, but the EPA is partisan and disassembling.
- Government educational funding cuts have hit NYC super-hard.
- Bush is proposing to cut $107 million for the city’s housing vouchers – a first!
- Bush, alienating his allies overseas and international treaties generally, has made NYC far and away less safe.
Writing over here from the UK, to me, that whole Republican rally is the most terrifying thing I’ve seen come out of the United States for a long time. It’s frightening that the president of the country could wage a campaign based on the slaughter of nearly 3000 people, celebrated by a war in a country that had nothing to do with the attack started for reasons patently found to be false. Okay, it’s not Nazi Germany, certainly, but there’s almost a proto-Fascist element about it — strength of the fatherland, God and fundamental values and the subtlest erosion of free speech. I’m not even American, but when I heard news a few months back that there was a what if we can’t have the elections idea mooted not long back, it made me depressed. While I have plenty of suspicion and reservation about Michael Moore, he has stuck by his allegations of that war as being built on fictitious reason and I was glad his film got out, and that he takes full advantage of his right to attend the Republican convention.
Anyway, bless you and your country and I hope you take take full opportunity and advantage of your democracy in November. Sorry, am rambling. It’s been a long day.
Good luck, y’all.
Graeme,
It so happens that today is also the anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland — September 1, 1939 was a date that changed everything, in my mind and in many others’. I see the United States and Michael Moore in much the same light and worry as to whether this country will model Singapore or Russia in future.