George HW Bush

Latest revision as of 15:51, 1 December 2018

George H.W. Bush (George Herbert Walker Bush)

Positive Activities Of George HW Bush

• Signed into law: Americans with Disabilities Act, the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, an expansion of tax credits for families with children.
• Migrated the country away from Reagan's "supply side economics" of cutting taxes on the rich and assuming it would "trickle down" to the middle class (which it did not). Bush called Reagan's plan, "Voodoo Economics." Although later Bush backpedaled on this compromise.

Criticisms

• Picked Dan Quayle as his running mate because they thought his good looks would get the female vote, despite Quayle being about as intelligent as a waffle iron.

• Bush attacked his running mate, Michael Dukakis for such positions as opposing mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, and being a "card-carrying member of the ACLU".

• Bush was elected over Michael Dukakis in 1988 by resorting to moral panics ("If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered...") and attack ads ("Willie Horton"), in one of the nastiest one-sided presidential campaigns in recent history. Ironically Bush campaigned on a vague platform of making the U.S. a "kinder, gentler nation." American politics have never really recovered. ^[1]

• Was implicated in an "October surprise" engineered by CIA-within-the-CIA to ensure Carter was not president for second term and Reagan won.^[2]

• Made the famous promise, "read my lips, no new taxes" but ended up raising taxes multiple times.^[3]
• George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Catalina Villapando was arrested and sentenced to prison for, of all things, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. To this day, Villapando remains the only sitting treasurer to be sent to prison.^[4]

• Presided over a significant recession^[5] in America, as well as the Savings and Loan crisis.^[6]

• George H.W. Bush presided over (as CIA director, vice president and president) the US selling chemical weapons to Iraq, and was aware of their use against the Kurds, and had no problem with it at the time.^[7][8]

• Presided over the Iran-Contra Affair, illegally selling arms to Iran in the midst of an embargo and hostage crisis. And redistributing money to illegally fund rebel groups in Central America.^[9][10][11]

• After being elected, Bush further restricted access to government documents relating to the Iran-Contra affair.^[12]

• Manuel Noriega, the unelected military strongman of Panama, was ousted by Bush after it became public knowledge that Noriega made drug deals with the US as part of the funding given to the Contras. Bush, as Director of the CIA, blocked investigations into Reagan & Noriega's shadiness. Bush forced him to stand trial, but not for murder, and instead for drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. Noriega had been paid by the CIA to do the things he was accused and convicted of. Eventually, Noriega was tried for murder and convicted... by France.

• Bush went on to pardon six of the criminals from his administration convicted in the Iran-Contra affair, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.^[13]

• On Bush's pardons, the government's independent counsel,Lawrence E. Walsh, released the statement: "President Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office -- deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence."

• In 1990, President George H.W. Bush released Orlando Bosch, right-wing terrorist & CIA-backed operative from Cuba, who was involved in the bomb attack on Cubana Flight 455 in 1976, which killed 73 people.

Other unusual actions

• In 1991, Louisiana had a runoff election between David Duke (R) and Edwin Edwards (D) ("Wizard" vs "Lizard"). Bush threw his hands in the air and endorsed Edwards, unusually for a Republican president, Bush pretty much came out in favor of a Democratic candidate against a Republican. Edwin Edwards would shortly be investigated by the FBI and convicted and sent to prison.^[14]

References

1. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_United_States_presidential_election
2. . https://consortiumnews.com/2013/08/26/a-cia-hand-in-an-american-coup/
3. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read_my_lips:_no_new_taxes
4. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalina_Vasquez_Villalpando#Investigation
5. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession_in_the_United_States
6. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
7. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
8. . https://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm
9. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
10. . https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/04/us/years-later-questions-remain-about-bush-s-role-in-the-iran-contra-affair.html
11. . https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_28.htm
12. . https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/04/us/years-later-questions-remain-about-bush-s-role-in-the-iran-contra-affair.html
13. . https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-pardon.html
14. . https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/07/us/the-1991-election-louisiana-bush-denounces-duke-as-racist-and-charlatan.html

See Also

• https://www.salon.com/2011/11/25/the_iran_contra_scandal_25_years_later/
• https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-george-h-w-bush-got-wrong
• https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-dirty-secrets-of-george-bush-71927/