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Tom's Editorial
The "BUSHwacker"

An Online Newsletter about "our" President
Bush Budget Shoves It to Poor, Vets, Workers
George Bush's budget priorities couldn't be clearer: Throw money at the Pentagon and at the wealthy, and let almost everyone else scrounge. His profligate military spending and his tax giveaways to the very wealthiest Americans have brought about a $450 billion deficit. And now he's using the fact of that large deficit to say we cannot afford to spend more money on crucial domestic needs.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that Bush plans to crack down on rental vouchers for low-income families. His Administration intends to scrutinize local housing agencies and to force families seeking vouchers to jump through more hoops and provide more financial data to the government in exchange for the benefit.
And even as his economic policies have cost almost three million jobs, mostly in manufacturing, Bush intends to "merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs." That's sensitivity for you.

The "S" Factor By NEAL STARKMAN GUEST COLUMNIST Millions of words have been written as to the motivations of voters. Particularly in close elections, as in the 2000 presidential contest, pundits and laypeople alike have speculated on why people voted for whom. The exit poll has been a major tool in this speculation.
But the speculation misses the mark by far. It's increasingly obvious, for example, that none of the so-called theories can explain President Bush's popularity, such as it is. Even at this date in his presidency, after all that has happened, the president's popularity hovers at around 50 percent -- an astonishingly high figure, I believe, given the state of people's lives now as opposed to four years ago.
What can explain his popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they've been impressed with the president's personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?
Is that likely?
Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush's administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?
The answer, I'm afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It's the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don't ask it,the media doesn't report it, the voters don't discuss it.
I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.
It's the "Stupid factor", the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.
It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think.
You know these people; they're all around you (they're not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They're the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of the populace.
Politicians have been aware of this forever; they cater to these people. They offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. They evade directed questions with non-sequiturs. They offer meaningless, jingoistic pap instead of thoughtful policy. And these people, the "S" people, eat it all up with a ladle.

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