[Politics] Why I'm not voting for Bush
In 2000, I didn't care about politics. I lived with somone who ate drank and breathed political news, and was intelligent and someone whose opinion I respected. We went to rallies and discussed his experiences living in Texas when Bush was governor. Our education system was (and is) an important topic for me, so I was swayed by No Child Left Behind. Bush also promised to be a uniter not a divider and to change the tone in Washington, which sounded great after the recent attempt to impeach Clinton.
I don't remember much of Bush's first few months. Still wasn't interested in politics, and (even now) don't read/watch news as often as I probably should. September 11th hit hard for all of us. We screamed for blood. Afghanistan was given as the location where the people who had done this to us could be found and brought to justice. Oh, and we can do something humanitarian at the same time by helping the women who were being oppressed by the Taliban. We went to war with the goodwill of most of the world behind us.
The Patriot Act was passed, sections of which erode civil liberties (see 215, for example). The American Library Association is concerned enough about this legislation that it has a webpage focusing on it and passed a resolution about it (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/ifissues/usapatriotact.htm).
Read the Patriot Act for yourself at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:H.R.3162:
I don't understand why we went to war in Iraq. Yes, Saddam seemed dangerous, potentially was hiding WMD's, and we all knew he was a bad guy from Desert Storm. (If not that, from South Park and Hot Shots!) But we still hadn't found Bin Laden, and had plenty of cleanup work left in Afghanistan. Plus, our allies and the United Nations were working on diplomatic solutions. We pushed our allies away and went to war anyway. (I guess Bush lived up to his campaign rhetoric of not wanting to be in the business of nation building.... just destroying).
Our economy has been pretty horrible for his entire administration. To be honest, it started before he went into office, with the drop off of IT projects after Y2K and the dot com bust. Yes, it was a shallow recession and the low fed rates advised by Greenspan probably helped a lot. I admit that I don't know much about economics, but the war certainly didn't help. Bush took a (record?) budget surplus and turned it into a record budget deficit.
I was one of the many to lose my job during the current administration, and one of the few to be lucky enough to find another job at the same pay scale within a few months. Bush cites a lower unemployment rate... I know more people who have fallen off the unemployment rolls because it ran out than because they found a job.
No Child Left Behind was underfunded (although Bush claims to have thrown more money at the education issue) and poorly implemented. Conceptually a great idea, the NCLB focuses too much on testing. There are many students who will not test well, but are extremely bright. Even more offensive in my eyes is the fact that schools who have to be concerned about meeting a certain average on test scores will hold back their gifted students. NCLB should be used to prevent students from graduating without knowing how to read and otherwise help students who are struggling, NOT prevent gifted students from reaching their potential / excelling.
In addition, this administration has a horrible record on environmental issues and tried to push through a constitutional amendment that I find reprehensible.
I voted for Bush in 2000. I will not be making that same mistake twice.