BY NORM DIXON
George Walker ("Dubya") Bush will be inaugurated as the United States of America's 43rd president on January 20. Even before he sets foot in the White House, vast numbers of Americans are already convinced that Bush has no legitimate right to be there. So determined was the ruling capitalist class to install a government prepared to intensify and broaden the attacks on the poor and working class, within the US and around the world, that only the barest formalities of democracy were adhered to.
The facts speak for themselves: only 50% of eligible US voters participated in the November 7 presidential election; Bush won a minority of the votes cast and was outpolled by his Democrat opponent Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes; the evidence is overwhelming that Bush's "victory" by 537 votes in Florida (which gained the Republicans the electoral college votes needed to take the Oval Office) was gained by widespread vote-rigging and the systematic racist disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of African-American, Hispanic and elderly voters; Bush's Florida "win" was only secured by the openly partisan decision by the right-wing activist majority of the Supreme Court to block vote recounts that would have overturned the result and delivered the White House to Gore.
Not only did Bush lose the popular vote nationally, he lost it in Florida as well. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper examined some 6000 disallowed ballots in just one pro-Republican county and found that enough votes clearly intended for Gore were cast to have shifted the official tally in his favour. The Miami Herald commissioned an analysis of the 185,000 votes rejected in Florida and concluded that Gore had in fact defeated Bush by 23,000 votes!
Having stolen the election, Bush has set about stacking his administration with some of the most reactionary capitalist politicians available. Many have been recycled from the previous Republican presidential regimes of George Bush snr, Ronald Reagan and even Richard Nixon's.
Bush's appointees share an unquestioning commitment to strengthening US big business at home and abroad and expanding the power of the US military. Most have direct ties to big business, the most prominent being the oil and coal industries determined to scuttle moves to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
A common thread running through the political histories of Bush's coterie is a fanatical opposition to affirmative action for minorities, especially African-Americans, and the right of women to choose abortion. They are committed to slashing entitlements to welfare and are fiercely pro-death penalty and "anti-crime". Many are directly affiliated to the Christian fundamentalist religious right (there is also a Moonie or two).
Rogue's gallery
Heading this rogue's gallery is "Dubya" himself. His most notable achievement (other than his infamous CIA-chief-turned-president dad's genes and miraculously becoming a multimillionaire from a string of failed oil companies) has been to execute more people in one year (40 in 2000) than any other US state since 1862 during his short reign as governor of Texas.
Vice-president Dick Cheney is also a multimillionaire oil baron. He was defence secretary in Bush snr's administration and played a key role in the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the 1991 Gulf War. It was Cheney and Bush snr who formulated the concept of the post-Cold War "New World Order" of US domination. Cheney also served in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He consistently opposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa and once voted against a symbolic resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela.
Colin Powell, who was a national security adviser to Reagan and chaired the joint chiefs of staff under Bush snr, will head the US State Department. Powell presided over the brutal US-led attack on Iraq in 1991 to ensure US control over the region's oil. The blitzkrieg resulted in the slaughter of at least 200,000 Iraqis.
Powell participated in the cover-up of the infamous 1968 My Lai massacre by US troops during the Vietnam War, was a key advocate of the contra war against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, lied under oath during investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal and was in charge of the US invasion of Panama in 1989 in which 2000 Panamanians were killed.
Bush has opted for drug company executive Donald Rumsfeld as his defence secretary. Rumsfeld is a key proponent of the theory that the US faces threats from "rogue states" armed with "weapons of mass destruction". Rumsfeld's alarmist propaganda has been used to justify Bush's, Powell's and the Republicans' enthusiastic championing of the "son of star wars" anti-missile "defence" system. The real goal of the program is to give the US the ability to launch a nuclear first strike without fear of retaliation.
Condoleezza Rice, Dubya's national security advisor was also a security advisor to Bush snr and an aide to Powell. Rice, an African American, is on the board of the Chevron oil company — notorious for its human rights abuses in Nigeria — and recently had the honour of having an oil tanker named after her!
The key post of attorney general has been reserved for John Ashcroft, a fanatic closely aligned to the Christian Coalition and far-right evangelist Pat Robertson. Ashcroft's control of the Justice Department gives the radical right control of the selection of federal judges.
While Ashcroft is vehemently opposed to women's right to choose abortion, his "pro-life" stance does not extend to death-row prisoners; he is an enthusiastic advocate of the death penalty. He has opposed allocating federal funds drug rehabilitation programs and argued for more cops instead.
Ashcroft, a former state attorney general in Missouri, has also opposed contraception, solar energy, workplace anti-discrimination measures to protect gays and lesbians and even the over-the-counter sale of sweets with liqueur centres!
Ashcroft, who will be responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws, once hailed the Confederate generals and politicians who fought in the US Civil War to defend slavery as "patriots" and stated that they should not be portrayed as having fought for "some perverted agenda". Not surprisingly, Ashcroft is opposed to affirmative action. A St.Louis Post-Dispatch editorial stated that Ashcroft has "built a career out of opposing school desegregation ... and opposing African Americans for public office".
Paul O'Neill, Bush's nominee for treasury secretary is chairperson of Alcoa Aluminium. O'Neill owns 1.6 million Alcoa shares, worth more than $50 million. No doubt, O'Neill will often employ the paraphrased maxim: "What's good for Alcoa is good for America".
Commerce secretary Donald Evans has been described as an insider on the Texas "oil mafia". He has close personal, political and business ties with Bush and Cheney.
Melquiades Martinez, nominated secretary for housing, is a right-wing Cuban emigre who, as chair of Orange County, Florida, opposed the building of public housing there. He abolished the Orange County department of community affairs, a civil rights agency set up to involve poor people in local government.
Reverend Floyd Flake, a conservative African-American leader from New York City, was a supporter of Rudolph Giulani, New York's racist mayor, until even he could not stomach the NYPD's perpetual campaign of racist harassment and violence against African-Americans in the city. Flake is expected to preside over the gutting of public education and its privatisation by corporations and religious institutions.
Bush's nominee for the Environment Protection Agency is New Jersey state governor Christine Whitman, whose polluted state is home to some of the world's largest oil refineries. Whitman has stated that the thinning ozone layer and global warming are not serious problems. Whitman distinguished herself last January when she described a benefit concert held in her state for framed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal "despicable" and called for concert-goers to boycott it.
Paved the way
The calibre and records of the Bush appointees signal that the US government is set to escalate its attacks on working people around the globe and within the US. These attacks will be an intensification of attacks that began under Democrat President Bill Clinton and his vice-president and defeated presidential hopeful Al Gore. It was Clinton and Gore who paved the way for Bush jnr's more bellicose team.
For eight years, the Clinton/Gore administration has presided over restructuring of the US economy and global trade relations to serve US imperialism.
Under Clinton, the US has repeatedly bombed Iraq and declared their right to decide who may fly in Iraqi air space. For 10 years, Washington has enforced an embargo against Iraq — which has resulted in the death of more that 1.5 million Iraqi people, mostly children.
The US invaded Somalia and Haiti and bombed Afghanistan and Sudan with cruise missiles. Clinton and Gore launched a vicious air war against Serbia's people in order to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic. The criminal blockade against Cuba has not only been maintained but strengthened. Just last year, Congress approved the $1.3 billion Clinton/Gore plan to arm the Colombian army for a war against Colombian people.
Last year saw massive protests against the imperialist financial institutions — the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation — that continue to impose misery on hundreds of millions of people in the Third World. These imperialist institutions and the agreements they enforce have been shaped, used and defended by the Clinton/Gore White House.
During the reign of Clinton and Gore, the number of prisoners in the US doubled to more than 2 million. For the first time, Black and Latino prisoners are a majority of those behind bars. The number of death sentences sought by the federal Justice Department has grown from 12 in 1991 to more than 150 in 1997, the overwhelming majority being black or Latino. During the campaign, Gore rejected calls for a moratorium on federal executions.
The Clinton administration has worked to accelerate executions at the state level by limiting federal appeals for death row prisoners (84 people were executed in the US in 2000; 98 in 1999).
Between 1995 and 1997, the income for families headed by single women fell almost 7%, affecting 6 million people. An important cause was the deep cuts to welfare programs. Millions of people have been forced off welfare since 1993. The Democrats have allowed increased restrictions on women's access to abortion and whittled away affirmative action programs.