COMMENT
COMMENT The Election of 1988 Vice President George Bush says his top goal as President of the United States would be to "make sure everybody who has a job wants a job." What a disheartening...
...A week before Wright's comments, a staff report of the House Foreign Affairs Committee noted that the CIA had also run a domestic propaganda campaign to generate support at home for the Administration's Central American policies...
...meddling and manipulation abroad are likely to expand in a Bush Administration...
...He pointed out that he disagreed with the ACLU on revoking the Catholic church's tax-exempt status and on removing the words "under God" from U.S...
...currency...
...When will they get around to investigating the runaway CIA and the undemocratic foreign policy it carries out...
...If you look at the history of journalism," she told The Times, "you find that it has often been the scrappy, inexperienced young reporter who proved to be the best...
...Constitution...
...support for the contras, he stands squarely for covert operations and for direct intervention against terrorism...
...Election-year politicking has transformed that measure into a messy, mean-spirited attack on casual drug users...
...Terrorism is to Dukakis what communism is to Reagan and Bush...
...We've got to be tough on international terrorism," he said during the first debate...
...He offers no new thinking on the Cold War and interventionist politics that for decades have dominated our lives and jeopardized our existence...
...Bush's first device was the painfully inane issue of the Pledge of Allegiance...
...Wright confirmed what we had long suspected: that the CIA has deliberately provoked opposition activities in Nicaragua aimed at destabilizing the regime and disrupting the peace process—all at a time when official U.S...
...Civil liberties are somehow un-American in George Bush's lexicon, and for reasons that can only be construed as frightening, the American people appear to be buying the slander...
...negotiators insisted, over Canadian objections, on including the definition...
...The logic is compelling...
...indeed, with Bush's experience as head of the CIA and with the cast of former CIA characters surrounding him, U.S...
...Wrapping himself like a mummy in the Stars and Stripes, he has shown an uncanny instinct for the ugly and the intolerant...
...If liberal means Americans have the right to privacy in their homes, then I'm a liberal...
...It's just a small clause in a large and complex treaty, and a big step toward dismantling First Amendment rights...
...He offers no solution to the lack of affordable housing, the scandal of health insurance, or the decline of well-paying jobs for vast numbers of Americans...
...Twelve hours after the first debate, Dukakis distributed a "fact sheet" on the ACLU—not defending his membership in the organization but distancing himself from its positions...
...nuclear deterrent would be stronger if this country could hold the Soviet command posts at risk...
...But the perils of Kennedy-style interventionism are lost on Dukakis, who has taken to repeating one of our least favorite lines from the man who brought us the Vietnam war: that the United States will "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty...
...We will take action against terrorist base camps whenever and wherever they pose an imminent threat to the safety of our people," Dukakis says...
...Haltingly, Dukakis has proposed modest expansions of the welfare state...
...He places rearming above arms control, and totally ignores disarmament...
...We've got to treat it as international crime...
...Whoever wins on November 8, we will all have a tall task: to restore a respect for basic rights and liberties so damaged by George Bush's slanders and Michael Dukakis's evasions...
...The House Gets Hooked Drug hysteria is bad enough...
...None of the other professional groups covered by the treaty are similarly defined...
...For all of Bush's liberal-baiting, Michael Dukakis offers only the palest of alternatives—and on many crucial issues, no alternative at all...
...One might have thought that thirty-five years after McCarthyism spilled its venom, this kind of attack would have no force...
...So we tip our hats this month to Jim Wright, Speaker of the House of Representatives, for having the courage to break a taboo and expose CIA wrongdoing...
...The House went along with a Senate suggestion that the Federal Government execute drug "kingpins" involved in murder—and added a death penalty for small-time criminals as well...
...Congress started out months ago with an omnibus antidrug bill that would authorize the Government to spend a couple of billion dollars—primarily on interdiction of the international drug trade, beefed-up domestic law enforcement, rehabilitation programs for addicts, and education of the general public, especially children...
...Government and highlights the fundamentally undemocratic nature of CIA activities...
...For some progressives, these differences will prove decisive on Election Day...
...hundreds of yards into the ground beneath Moscow and at several remote locations...
...The CIA is forbidden by law from engaging in efforts to influence public opinion or public policy in the United States...
...Both major-party candidates have proven worse than expected...
...You have members—good, solid members," he says, "come through the door and say, 'I don't care if it's constitutional, we can leave constitutionality up to the courts.'" Before it gets to the courts, it's up to the Senate, which, fortunately, is trying to make sure that its members don't have to vote before November 8. After the election, when they can afford a bit of bravery, the Senators will have a chance to dismantle the House bill piece by piece...
...Once that grew old, he played another 1950s card, branding Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU...
...In California, he intentionally eats boycotted grapes to show that he is squarely opposed to unions...
...Donna A. Demac, the author of Liberty Denied, a recent book on censorship, who has written on free-speech issues for The Progressive, notes that the provision is consistent with the Reagan Administration's open hostility to independent news coverage...
...policy was to support the peace process...
...In this regard, the comparison between Dukakis and John F. Kennedy is probably most apt...
...Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci has ordered the Pentagon to begin developing a new nuclear bomb that would penetrate the earth and detonate underground...
...This continues the trend we reported last year: Nothing much happens to the crime rate, but at the end of every week about a thousand more Americans are behind bars than were there the week before...
...On most domestic issues, Bush has nothing useful to say...
...From the rhetoric of both candidates, you'd never get the sense that either one of them is up to the job...
...The new U.S.-Canada trade agreement guarantees unrestricted access to each country by a broad range of the other's professional workers...
...Instead of addressing these urgent concerns, he is content simply to label Dukakis a liberal...
...Lock 'Em Up America's all-purpose cure for crime is still the prison cell—only more so...
...The Soviet Union has offered the United States a great opening, but Dukakis is too timid to follow...
...Almost everyong concerned with this misguided nonsense admits it passed only because the right-wingers who favor it were prepared to slap the soft on drugs label on anyone who risked a no vote, and because those who knew better weren't brave enough to risk that just before the election...
...His health-insurance plan would partially fill one of the more shameful gaps in the safety net...
...He supports the Trident II submarine-launched missile, the Stealth bomber, the advanced cruise missile, and the concept of the Midgetman...
...Its intended victim: the U.S...
...That isn't a light at the end of the tunnel...
...We've got to use undercover operations...
...On such issues as the homeless, housing, and the rights of union workers, Dukakis certainly shows some willingness to move forward...
...He supports every weapons system Pentagon contractors have managed to concoct, and he shows no realization that the arms race can and must be halted...
...Dukakis also disappoints when it comes to ending the arms race...
...Fortunately, this can be accomplished not in the voting booths but at the grass roots—in our schools, churches, unions, neighborhoods, and communities where the sinews of politics are shaped...
...But Bush has made it a winner...
...Journalists are among the groups who will be allowed to cross the border freely—those journalists, at least, who meet the treaty's requirement of a "baccalaureate and three years' experience...
...It's just a small clause in a large and complex treaty...
...He does not break with the established doctrines of deterrence...
...Not to worry: The arms race is alive and well and moving into new areas of lunacy...
...But the House did its worst work when it refo-cused the bill on individual drug users, in what many describe as an effort to "reduce consumer demand...
...2) it would be the first time that U.S...
...It's no big deal, of course—except that: (1) The New York Times reports U.S...
...According to those "Western strategists" The Wall Street Journal likes to quote, "the U.S...
...Except for his limited day-care proposal and his silly savings idea, he has ignored the bread-and-butter issues that confront Americans in their daily lives...
...The legislators dropped a proposal to require a seven-day waiting period before purchase of a handgun...
...It didn't—but it passed the bill anyway...
...We must do whatever is necessary through modernization, and, if possible, through arms control, to insure an effective, credible, deterrent," he said in September...
...The power to license is the power to determine who will and will not cover the news...
...Instead, Dukakis clings to anachronistic thinking about the need for deterrence and the necessity to "modernize" weapons...
...If ever there was a golden opportunity to present a new vision of a safer, nonnuclear world, this is the one...
...though it does not cover the unemployed, it marks an important step forward, as does his proposal to grant prenatal care to all expectant mothers...
...To pass it, suggested one Representative in a pre-vote meeting of Democratic floor leaders, the House would have to vote to suspend the Constitution...
...And the response is the same: armed intervention...
...Hats Off to Jim Wright Rarely do high-ranking elected officials stick their necks out and oppose the clandestine policies of the Central Intelligence Agency...
...Where Dukakis differs from Bush is on some domestic social issues...
...Representative Steny Hoyer, Democrat of MaryGeorge Timen, owner of a pawn shop in Columbus, Ohio, arguing that Congress shouldn't impose a waiting period for gun purchasers: 'A lot of gun sales are impulse sales, and if you have to wait those seven days, we'll lose those impulse sales.' Mike Lynn, general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, explaining why he'd like to take his football team on tour in China: 'Imagine if we could get 500 million Chinese wearing NFL merchandise.' land is one of the few who was appalled...
...So much for the Fourth and Eighth Amendments...
...The Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported that the state and Federal prison population grew in the first six months of 1988 to an all-time high of 604,824 inmates...
...If liberal means believing Americans should not have to die because they don't have health-insurance, then I'm a liberal...
...it's a blinding flash...
...If ever there was a time when a Presidential candidate could credibly break with the logic of militarism and the trap of the Cold War, this is the time...
...George Bush wants to make the election a simple choice between Left and Right...
...When they do so, they deserve thanks and commendation...
...Which, as social policy, is still brutal, absurd, and insane—only more so...
...Their first debate consisted of canned one-liners that lowered the level of discussion to the petty and the carping...
...But the risks of a Dukakis Administration cannot be ignored...
...And, given Bush's hostility to civil liberties, Dukakis would probably make better choices to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court...
...And he has lived up to his share of the bargain: He has proved himself to be as scarily right-wing as his mentor, Ronald Reagan...
...At campaign stop after campaign stop, he brandishes his support of the death penalty—even as he proclaims "the sanctity of life" for unborn fetuses...
...He promises no change from Reagan's interventionist policies in the Third World...
...Dig We Must Afew naive folk may harbor the illusion that the nuclear arms race has been on the wane—or, at least, on hold—since Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev concluded their agreement on intermediate-range missiles stationed in Europe...
...He does not challenge conventional approaches to economic policy...
...law— a treaty has the force of law, of course—allowed the Government to define who is and who is not a journalist, and (3) it constitutes, therefore, a defacto provision for the licensing of journalists...
...He could have said, "If liberal means being in favor of free speech and freedom of religion, then I'm a liberal...
...Instead of upholding the core values of civil rights and civil liberties, Dukakis discards them as if they were insignificant or worse...
...Clinging to the politics of pollsters, George Bush and Michael Dukakis have skirted the basic issues in favor of staged television backdrops and unnourishing "sound bites...
...The only section of the Bill of Rights the House seems to "respect" is the Second Amendment, and what it respects is the National Rifle Association's cross-eyed vision of it...
...We can all look forward to an arms race in inner as well as outer space...
...A Democratic President, especially one who wins by a small margin and has been attacked as being too liberal, is bound to have an almost irresistible desire to flex American muscle overseas...
...And in one area, Dukakis would go even further than Reagan and would launch preemptive strikes against so-called terrorists...
...In other words, any Federal benefit you can name that might help a drug user get his life together, if he or she is so inclined, is moved beyond reach...
...As much as Bush, Dukakis is responsible for discrediting civil liberties in America...
...We've got to attack it at all points...
...Wright's disclosure, which Administration officials confirmed several days later, makes a liar out of the U.S...
...Legislators may soon open an investigation into whether he violated House ethics in discussing the CIA operations...
...A civil finding of possession of as little as five grams of a controlled substance—about a teaspoonful—can lead to a fine of $10,000, eviction from public housing, loss of student loans, loss of veterans' benefits, loss of Federal licenses, loss of access to job-training programs...
...And the logic cuts both ways, of course: Since the United States, too, has underground command facilities on standby, the Soviets will doubtless mount their own effort to strengthen their deterrent by building burrowing bombs...
...He has come around to supporting Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, though Dukakis says it was wrong to target Muammar Qadhafi himself...
...And the House voted to allow use of evidence illegally seized in warrantless searches if the police acted "in good faith...
...While Dukakis has opposed U.S...
...If this bill becomes law, the Government won't have to bother convicting anyone of a crime before it inflicts punishment...
...What's been most troubling about Dukakis, though, is his unwillingness to take Bush's "liberal" issue head on...
...Instead, he has run for cover, and his refusal to meet the issue frankly and boldly does us all a disservice...
...The weapon would be designed," reports The Wall Street Journal, "for use against sophisticated underground command posts the Soviet military has constructed over the past forty years...
...Who's a Journalist...
...But, as befits Congress, these basic issues are being ignored as conservative Republicans call for Wright's scalp...
...What a disheartening Presidential campaign...
...Cross it with campaign fever, and the result is a life-threatening disease...
...We have to be prepared to use military force against terrorist base camps...
Vol. 52 • November 1988 • No. 11
