Democrats Should Reject Gore:
He Pushes Bush's Policies
Part 2, by Michele Steinberg
Would you buy a used policy from Newt Gingrich? If the answer is "no," then Al Gore should be replaced as the Democratic Presidential nominee. And for that matter, the Republicans should reject Bush, a puerile, inept bully, whose policies are an insult to Abraham Lincoln, a founder of the Republican Party. Both candidates fundamentally reject the concept of the General Welfare, as stipulated by the U.S. Constitution; and instead push the same fascist policies as Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America." On that basis alone, Gore and Bush are unfit, morally and constitutionally, to be President.
From their ravings about "forward engagement" that could lead to war in the Middle East, to their efforts to outdo one another in cutting the budget and driving millions of poor families into slave-labor jobs, depriving them of health care coverage, Gore and Bush push the same policies.
Even on the issue of Social Security, where Gore is apparently on the side of reality and sanity by opposing George W. Bush's proposal to put Social Security taxes into the stock market, Gore is not believable. As the Republicans point out, it was Gore, at a White House roundtable in early 1999, who extolled the stock market as the way to build up assets, and a way to solve the future crisis of funding Social Security. Gore's enthusiastic support for "privatization" of every kind, including the New Zealand model of private pension funds, was also the centerpiece of his January-February 1999 State Departement conferences on "Re-Inventing Government," and "Fighting Corruption."
Bush Republicans are counting on Gore to head the Democratic ticket so that they can take the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. With the results of the May 23 primary in Arkansas, giving Lyndon LaRouche a vote of 22% against Al Gore, the situation is wide open for the Democrats to dump Gore and pull together the Franklin Delano Roosevelt coalition that would bring the Democratic Party to victory, campaigning for a winning policy, including LaRouche's call for a New Bretton Woods monetary system.
The following scorecard continues our series (which began on May 19), showing that Bush and Gore are nothing but Wall Street's "two-headed" sideshow freak.
SOCIAL SECURITY AND MAGIC OF THE MARKETPLACE
Al Gore
There is good reason to believe that Gore's current attacks on Dubya's plan to sink Social Security funds into the stock market as "risky business," are only a temporary, cosmetic expediency. Through his years as Vice President, Gore has centered his "re-inventing government" project around free trade and privatization, including privatization of pension plans.
Fundamentally, Gore, like Bush, worships the speculative "magic" of the stock market. In motivating a plan (which he has since renounced) to put some Social Security trust funds into the stock market, Gore said on Jan. 27, 1999, at the White House Social Security-Medicare Roundtable: "During this whole national discussion, one of the single most important salient facts that jumped out at everybody is that, over any ten-year period in American history, returns on equities are just significantly higher than these other returns." The "equities" Gore refers to are stock speculation, and "these other returns," are Treasury bonds, which, unlike the stock market, are government protected.
George Bush
Dubya Bush is promising a major windfall for his Wall Street speculator backers in his proposal to take at least 2% of Social Security taxes, and steer them into private market accounts. Various analysts say that this 2% will be in the trillions of dollars, put directly into the pockets of brokerage houses (which liberally finance the Bush campaign). Critics point out that just the loss of these funds make the 1980s Federal bailout of the savings and loan institutions pale in comparison. But like Gore, Bush refuses to even imagine the present ongoing global collapse of the speculative bubble, into which he wants to funnel Social Security withholdings.
Bush said on May 16, 2000, in a speech unveiling his plan to put Social Security taxes into the markets: "Through the Great Depression, a world war, and 11 recessions, the overall stock market has never lost money over a 20-year period."
THE MIDDLE EAST
Al Gore
Gore's top foreign policy operative is Leon Fuerth, a veteran of the State Department's Intelligence and Research "spook" shop. Fuerth has angrily denied rumors and reports that he is the person referred to as "Mega," a top-level "agent of influence" of the right-wing Israeli mafia network around Ariel Sharon.
At a conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on May 22, 2000, Gore tried to outdo Bush in currying favor with the Zionist mafia, in promoting war in the Middle East. Gore said that he would never lift sanctions against Iraq, and would do everything to overthrow Saddam Hussein, through working with the London-based Iraqi opposition.
Gore boasts that he's tougher on Iraq than former President Sir George Bush, who first launched the genocidal war against Iraq in 1991. On Jan. 12, 1991, when he cast the decisive Senate vote for the Gulf War, Gore accused Reagan and Bush of being soft on Saddam Hussein. Because they "grossly misunderstood Sadadam Hussein," according to Gore, he had been able to amass "more troops than Hitler did in the early years of World War II." In September 1991, Gore pledged an unending war against Iraq until the United States is "successful in removing the regime of Saddam Hussein from power," and "his Baathist regime" as well. Gore says that all technology should be denied to Iraq forever. He said, in September 1991, "In general, the world does not need the contributions of Iraqi space science or of Iraqi work in nuclear physics—practical or applied. The U.S. should work to completely block future Iraqi activity of any kind in these areas." Gore told the AIPAC conference that he is going to meet with the Iraqi opposition, based in London, to arrange to bring about this policy.
George Bush
Bush's top foreign policy operatives include Richard Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, who has been identified as part of an Israeli right-wing spy ring known as the "X Committee." The X Committee came to light after 1985, when Jonathan Jay Pollard pleaded guilty to stealing sensitive U.S. defense information.
Bush boasts about his father's war against Iraq, especially accusing the Clinton Administration of failing to topple Saddam Hussein, and allowing him to grow stronger since 1993, when the elder Bush left office.
On May 22, 2000, speaking at the AIPAC meeting, Bush upstaged Gore by pledging to put Israel under the umbrella of the Ballistic Missile Defense system to protect it from the Iraqi "rogue state." A few days earlier, a Bush adviser proposed carving out the southern part of Iraq as a U.S. military enclave. Bush said that he would immediately move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (whose final status is under discussion in the Israel/Palestinian talks). But most importantly, Bush said that U.S. "special relations" with Israel are more important than peace. "If other countries don't want to make peace with Israel, then they will have both Israel and the U.S. to reckon with," he threatened.
Bush also boasted about his connection to Israeli mafia boss Ariel Sharon, who is known as "The Butcher of Lebanon" because of his attacks on women and children in Palestinian refugee camps. Bush, who rarely travels outside the United States, was given a helicopter ride by Sharon over the Israeli Occupied Territories. Sources say he was being recruited to smash the still delicate peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
HEALTH CARE—OR GENOCIDE
Al Gore
Gore's claim that "America's health care is better than ever" is an atrocity in itself. U.S. infant mortality rates rank 20th among industrialized nations, with some localities having infant mortality rates characteristic of 50 years ago. There are now over 79 million uninsured or underinsured people under age 65 in the United States; and between 44,000 and 98,000 people die unnecessarily every year from medical mistakes.
In reality, Gore doesn't have a health policy, unless you are willing to give the name "health policy" to his commitment to genocide, described in his book Earth in the Balance.
Gore has the audacity to say, "Give all children access" to affordable health insurance by 2005, by expanding on President Clinton's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). But, it was Gore, with GOP double-agent Dick Morris, who rammed through the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that pushed 4 million children off Medicaid (the Federal-state health plan for the poor), when their families were thrown off welfare.
Gore talks about "the health-care safety net," but through his support of the Gingrichite Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which he drove through—again with the help of Dick Morris—Gore is responsible for slashing Medicare funds (the Federal-state health plan for the elderly) for hospitals, nursing homes, and home care. Gore talks empty words about "help" for senior citizens' prescription drug costs, but has received hundreds of thousands dollars of direct and indirect campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies.
Gore says that he fought to promote generic drug production in the United States (while in Congress), and is committed to fighting AIDS/HIV. But, in the case of South Africa, where 3.2 to 6 million people are infected with HIV, Gore threatened to cut off all U.S. economic aid unless South Africa abandoned plans to manufacture and import cheap generic versions of AIDS drugs—a move which other poor countries are considering. Gore, as co-chair of the U.S.-South Africa Trade Commission, placed South Africa on a "watch list" as a free-trade violator, and denied it tariff breaks on its exports.
In Earth in the Balance, whose second edition he proudly released this year, Gore says the human population should be reduced by several billion people, so it's no wonder that he wants to limit and eliminate health care. Gore is a radical Malthusian, whose writings closely parallel those of the crazy terrorist Unabomber, Theodore Kazcynski (see Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "On the Crash of the Nasdaq: Information Society: A Doomed Empire of Evil," EIR, April 28, 2000).
Also in Earth in the Balance, Gore favors protecting trees over treating women for breast cancer: "The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast, and ovarian cancer in patients who would quickly die. It seems an easy choice—sacrifice the tree for a human life—until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated.... Suddenly, we must confront some tough questions. How important are the medical needs of future generations? Are those of us alive today entitled to cut down all those trees to extend the lives of a few of us, even if it means that this unique form of life will disappear forever, thus making it impossible to save human lives in the future?"
George Bush
Bush's Texas ranks first in the United States in the percentage of citizens, especially children, without any health-care coverage whatsoever. That atrocity goes hand in hand with Bush's policy on welfare, where Texas's welfare payments put a family of three at less than half the national poverty level.
Three major developments in Bush's short career stand out to show that his policy on health care is to promote the Nazi-style destruction of human life by using health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to shut down hospitals and other care providers as quickly as possible:
Crescent Real Estate Equities (CREE): Bush's financial godfather is Richard Rainwater, the man who today controls Dubya's "blind trust," and who turned Bush into a multi-millionaire, through investments in the Texas Rangers baseball team, and ownership of stock in Rainwater's real estate investment trust (REIT). Through his companies, Rainwater gutted two pillars of American health care and hospitals. Rainwater's Columbia/HCA, one of the biggest operators of for-profit hospitals, decimated the American hospital system, by shutting down hospitals in critical areas, closing emergency room services, and eliminating hospital beds. CREE was also used to buy out and shut down the largest network of psychiatric hospitals in the nation (see Richard Freeman, "The Bush Mob Destroys America's Psychiatric Hospital System," EIR, March 3, 2000).
Patients Protection Act: In 1995, Bush vetoed a Patients Protection Act in Texas that would have required HMOs to let their patients see doctors outside their own networks. The veto was of great benefit to Rainwater's Columbia/HCA. Without Bush's veto, the bill, which enjoyed widespread popularity, would have cut into Columbia/HCA's profits. On May 20, 2000, it was revealed that Columbia/HCA was so rife with fraud against hospitals and Medicare, that they paid a $750 million fine to the Federal government, to get the Justice Department to close down a number of grand jury investigations against their operations. (See details in Economics.)
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP): In 1999, Democratic members of the Texas State Legislature, which by law meets only every two years, mobilized to stop Bush's murderous policies against the poor, by passing a law to provide insurance to some 500,000 poor children in Texas, under President Clinton's CHIP, set up to compensate for the damage done by the 1996 welfare "reform" bill.
Rich-kid Bush tried to block a move by the legislature to set the income eligibility for insurance under CHIP at $33,400, which is twice the official poverty level income for a family of four (EIR's economic staff has proven that in terms of survival of a family, the poverty line is set far too low).
Bush insisted the ceiling be set at 150% of the poverty level, because he wanted to make sure that the number of new recipients would be kept low. At the 150% of poverty level, $25,100 income for a family of four, 200,000 fewer people would be eligible for CHIP coverage. Bush's actuaries had determined that many poor families would come forward, and qualify for state medical coverage, not Federal Medicaid insurance, and would then start eating into the Texas budget surplus. Bush was defeated by the legislature in a veto-proof vote.
WELFARE
Al Gore
Gore's boasts that since becoming Vice President, "the number of people on the welfare roles have been cut almost in half." Most of that occurred as a result of the "welfare elimination act," which Gore pushed through Congress and the White House in 1996. Gore, like Bush, says that the cuts in government services should be replaced by the "new revolution of faith-based organizations." Gore's "faith-based" fraud is a hit-or-miss operation that guarantees nothing to poor people in times of depression and economic collapse, as Franklin D. Roosevelt knew so well, leading him to push through legislation that created the Federal welfare system, so that, by law, no American child would ever die of hunger.
Because of the elimination of welfare, there are as many as 4 million "disappeared Americans," that is, mothers and children who were kicked off Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), but who are known to have never entered the work force. Studies show that it is not known whether they are homeless, or even alive. Under the Gore-promoted repeal of Federal welfare in 1996, extreme poverty has grown in the United States: From 1995 to 1997, the number of Americans living on an income of less than $6,258 per year (50% of the poverty level) for a family of three, is 14.59 million, a figure which increased by about 600,000 since 1995.
Gore also pushes "labor recycling." While Gore and other "Third Way" advocates push welfare-to-work schemes as providing jobs, all it really does is replace higher-paid—often skilled an unionized—workers with low-paid workers. One ridiculous example is Gore's "Re-inventing Government" scheme, which he claimed eliminated over 300,000 "wasteful" Federal full-time jobs by 1996. By 1997, Gore boasted that he had "created" 10,000 full-time Federal jobs for welfare mothers to be working off their welfare checks!
Under Gore's welfare repeal, major companies such as United Parcel Service, Federal Express, Marriott Hotels, Gateway 2000, Cessna, and Burger King are following suit, to take advantage of the forced-labor pool created by the welfare law. Union and full-time workers are shoved out in favor of former welfare recipients, who have to stay on the job, or their children may lose all benefits as a punishment, under the new welfare reform.
George Bush
Bush's campaign website brags: "Welfare accomplishments. Reduced the welfare rolls by more than 375,000—a 51% decrease—by requiring work, limiting how long people can stay on welfare, and involving faith-based institutions in the compassionate delivery of social services."
But in April 2000, it was revealed that a number of Bush's "faith-based" outfits are not delivering the "compassionate care" he promised. Roloff Homes, one such faith-based outfit delivering "compassionate" care, is under grand jury investigation in Corpus Christi, Texas for brutality, beatings, abuse, and illegal imprisonment of teenagers sent there for drug abuse treatment. Similar complaints have come in against other church programs.
Texas's ranking in the treatment of its poor tells the whole story: It ranks first in the United States in the percentage of children without health insurance; ranks number 2 in the number of children without health insurance; ranks first in the share of children kicked off national Medicaid rolls between 1996 and 1999; ranks number 2 in the number of people suffering from hunger; ranks number 2 in the number of children in poverty; ranks number 5 in the percentage of its population living in poverty; number 47 in the size of welfare payment for eligible families (only 45% of the official poverty rate); and ranks number 48 in per-capita funding for public health.
