There are a few really big issues facing America these days with the new Bush administration. Iraq still looms large. The situation is still not settled there, even with elections coming up on January 30. The elections will bring a new government with legitimacy in at least the Shi'ite and Kurdish areas of Iraq, but the instability is really based in the Sunni areas. It is likely that the insurgency will continue for years to come, new government or no.
If Iraq remains unstable, it is possible that it can spiral out of control and a warlord could emerge there that will destabilize the entire region. Of course, the Bush administration is hoping for exactly the opposite, that elections will install a legitimate government in Iraq that provides an inspiration for democrats throughout the region. One can only hope that he is right. Even if this proves to be the case, the region will see instability for some time, though the instability will be more related to social change and upheaval rather than insurgent movements. And one should not assume that a democratic Arab state would be a pro-American Arab state.
Another big issue coming up is Social Security reform. I have not paid as close attention to this issue as I should have. It is very important. Democrats are accusing the Republicans of wanting to dismantle the most effective poverty-ending program in US history. Republicans want to allow workers more control over their Social Security taxes. In order to get some momentum behind the call for reform, the Bush administration is manufacturing a crisis in the same way it manufactured a crisis in the run-up to the Iraq war. It will repeatedly tell people the worst news, shouting down dissenters, avoiding the good news. They have said that the system is heading for bankruptcy and trillions in deficit. What they have not said is, but others have, is that the system is projected to remain solvent for the next 40 years (well into my retirement) and that the trillions projected are over a period of infinity. The solution they are putting forward is that we must allow people to take their contributions out of the system and invest it in the stock market. (Preferably in stocks of companies owned by Republicans.) Talk about counter-intuitive. We have to fix the system to prevent massive deficits by taking revenue out of the system?
One other issue that usually gets short shrift because it is less than glamorous is election reform. More and more, states and counties are moving to electronic voting systems because it is cheaper and faster to get elections processed. But is it safe? Many determined high-schoolers can hack into very secure computer systems. Many of the nation's election offices are run by small counties whose elections officers also run the computer systems. Do they all have the wherewithall to prevent security breaches, especially given the vulnerabilities built into the system? Here is an e-mail I received recently summarizing some of the problems with electronic voting:
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be Chairman of ES&S. He became Senator in a surprise upset, with votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html
8. Kenneth Blackwell co-chaired George Bush's Ohio election campaign. As Ohio's Secretary of State, he left no stone unturned to surpress the democratic vote.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/113004Y.shtml#1
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/894
http://67.15.90.110/article.pl?sid=04/10/29/1414219
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm
11. Exit polls are usually excellent predictors of election results. Reputable analyses could not find an explanation of the discrepancy between exit polls and results of the 2004 presidential election.
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/Unexplained_exit_poll_discrep_v00l.pdf http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/international/europe/23ukraine.html?ex=1102245800&ei=1&en=3a3c24b7e64fe49
12. A Diebold subsidiary employed five convicted felons as senior managers and developers. These people helped write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml
13. Jeff Dean, senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
14. Jeff Dean served jail time for planting back doors in his client's accounting software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, hacking was easily accomplished. (See the movie here with the chimp <http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov .)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190
17. ALL -- not some -- but ALL of the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm
18. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush– have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.htmlhttp://uscountvotes.org/
Based on a list compiled by Angry Girl - http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html