Sunday, October 30, 2005

Logging The Shame

Scandal Files’ USA Corruption Roll Call for October is due to be published next Tuesday. The focus this month is fair and square on the White House. Roll Call shows that the ‘Scooter’ Liddy fall is just the beginning for the beleaguered Bush Administration.
Scooter has taken the fall for this one. Apparently 'ministerial responsibility' or 'the buck stops here' is no longer operative. If it was Cheney would be gone as well.However, for Cheney and the rest of the administration, this is just the beginning. The raft of scandals, indictments and investigations, many reaching into the White House, promise a rocky ride for the Bush team.
Rove is on notice that he is under scrutiny over the CIA leak affair. But that is just one issue on Rove’s plate. His dealings with lobbyist ‘Casino Jack’ Abramoff have caught him up in a web of suspected corruption.

You could say the Bush administration are the architects of their own potential downfall.
The crazy part, for the US and its economic partners around the world, is that the woes of the White House are based in their focus on dubious social and ‘defense’ priorities. The Iraq war, investigations are slowly revealing, was prosecuted on a package of lies and misinformation.
The social agenda, part of the cost of Bush’s support base, is further destabilizing the administration.
Social issues, such as abortion, might quickly raise the political temperature, but they are not, at heart, valid political issues. Where this administration should have had its eye on matters economic, they have been diverted by ‘lifestyle’ issues which can never be successfully legislated.
In the meantime the economy is, at best, shaky. This has serious consequences far beyond US borders. As the self proclaimed keeper of the dollar, the US has a responsibility to the rest of the world to ensure sound economic policy.
The war ‘that should never have been’ has led to Liddy’s fall. Rove’s much trumpeted dalliance with the religious right will lead to more scandal in the coming weeks.
Overriding all of that, the greed implicit in the second area of electoral support, the big money, has been tendered to so conscientiously, good sense and probity was all but forgotten.
Yes, the Bush Administration is in deep kakka. It is not something to gloat about. The fallout from their time in office will hurt far more people that the trumped up war on terror.Clinton said, ‘it’s the economy stupid!’ It sure is.

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