RedSmithClone
Active Member
I'm sure nobody will be surprised by this, but I'm actually defending George W. Bush on his social agenda.
I came across this column in The Eagle-Tribune of Massachusetts. I agree 100 percent with the writer. I think that Iraq, but more importantly just the fact that Bush is a Republican and most people on this board and well registered Democrats in general put the blinders of hate on. Let's give the man some credit. As you read the column, you'll realize a lot of his accomplishments are what Democrats want to do, and because of that, his own party is on his case. People complain and cry for more to be done, and when he does it, he still gets **** from both sides.
Published: 01/10/2007 in The Eagle-Tribune
Bush gets little credit for actions
Jay Ambrose
Eagle-Tribune
Whether it's helping get the homeless into homes, fighting malaria and other diseases in Africa, or spending on U.S. poverty programs, President Bush is breaking records - and getting no credit for it.
You might say he's a stealth humanitarian, someone whose heartlessness is constantly preached while his accomplishments are persistently ignored.
But then you stumble on the Bush ambition regarding chronic homelessness. He wants to end it, and the consequences of administration efforts to date are amazing - significant percentage drops in such cities as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Portland, Ore.
The basic idea of the program being endlessly advocated by a Bush appointee, Philip Mangano, is for cities to combine federal, local and charitable funds to put the chronically homeless into their own apartments and assist them with social services, instead of dealing with them piecemeal so they too often end up in jails, hospitals and other facilities. As various news accounts explain, you save money this way, but here's the real gold: You save lives.
Despite some critics - and they certainly exist - the evidence to date seems to be that these homeless Americans are conquering their addictions and other problems to an extent not previously experienced in those communities that have adopted this strategy and are implementing it through vigorously implemented 10-year plans.
Now, jump across the ocean to Africa, where Bush has increased developmental and humanitarian aid to $4 billion a year from the $1.4 billion allocated in 2001, and done it the right way. The wrong way is to hand money to dictators who then use it to buttress their oppressive powers. Bush has said through his Millennium Challenge Account program that you get aid if you govern justly, invest in your citizens and allow economic freedom.
Where he particularly wins me over is in sending help to fight AIDS and malaria. In the case of this last dread disease that afflicts close to 400 million Africans a year and kills as many as 2 million - mainly children - it has taken something more than patty cake to face down the environmentalist fanatics opposed to the indoor spraying of DDT.
But this Oval Office occupant isn't caring for large numbers of the poor at home, you maybe say. If you do, you are wrong. Anti-poverty spending from 2001 to 2005 increased by 39 percent - well above inflation - so that the anti-poverty portion of the federal budget is now at a record high.
My point here is not that this man Bush is a hero on all issues or without political sin. My view is that he has many faults, some of them important, but that he is nowhere close to what leftist writers and his Democratic opponents portray him as being: a figure of demonic purposes and the compassion of a rock.
Jay Ambrose is the former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].
I came across this column in The Eagle-Tribune of Massachusetts. I agree 100 percent with the writer. I think that Iraq, but more importantly just the fact that Bush is a Republican and most people on this board and well registered Democrats in general put the blinders of hate on. Let's give the man some credit. As you read the column, you'll realize a lot of his accomplishments are what Democrats want to do, and because of that, his own party is on his case. People complain and cry for more to be done, and when he does it, he still gets **** from both sides.
Published: 01/10/2007 in The Eagle-Tribune
Bush gets little credit for actions
Jay Ambrose
Eagle-Tribune
Whether it's helping get the homeless into homes, fighting malaria and other diseases in Africa, or spending on U.S. poverty programs, President Bush is breaking records - and getting no credit for it.
You might say he's a stealth humanitarian, someone whose heartlessness is constantly preached while his accomplishments are persistently ignored.
But then you stumble on the Bush ambition regarding chronic homelessness. He wants to end it, and the consequences of administration efforts to date are amazing - significant percentage drops in such cities as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Portland, Ore.
The basic idea of the program being endlessly advocated by a Bush appointee, Philip Mangano, is for cities to combine federal, local and charitable funds to put the chronically homeless into their own apartments and assist them with social services, instead of dealing with them piecemeal so they too often end up in jails, hospitals and other facilities. As various news accounts explain, you save money this way, but here's the real gold: You save lives.
Despite some critics - and they certainly exist - the evidence to date seems to be that these homeless Americans are conquering their addictions and other problems to an extent not previously experienced in those communities that have adopted this strategy and are implementing it through vigorously implemented 10-year plans.
Now, jump across the ocean to Africa, where Bush has increased developmental and humanitarian aid to $4 billion a year from the $1.4 billion allocated in 2001, and done it the right way. The wrong way is to hand money to dictators who then use it to buttress their oppressive powers. Bush has said through his Millennium Challenge Account program that you get aid if you govern justly, invest in your citizens and allow economic freedom.
Where he particularly wins me over is in sending help to fight AIDS and malaria. In the case of this last dread disease that afflicts close to 400 million Africans a year and kills as many as 2 million - mainly children - it has taken something more than patty cake to face down the environmentalist fanatics opposed to the indoor spraying of DDT.
But this Oval Office occupant isn't caring for large numbers of the poor at home, you maybe say. If you do, you are wrong. Anti-poverty spending from 2001 to 2005 increased by 39 percent - well above inflation - so that the anti-poverty portion of the federal budget is now at a record high.
My point here is not that this man Bush is a hero on all issues or without political sin. My view is that he has many faults, some of them important, but that he is nowhere close to what leftist writers and his Democratic opponents portray him as being: a figure of demonic purposes and the compassion of a rock.
Jay Ambrose is the former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].
