"ROBUST GEORGE"
Jim Hightower
Have you noticed that one of the Bushite's favorite words is "robust?" It implies vigor, action, power. It's a manly sort of word that they punch out of their mouths like a fist.
They've been using the word a lot lately to buff up George's image as an unrelenting foe of terrorism, who is battling every aspect of the global terrorist network. The President is "robust" in his commitment, they bark at anyone who dares question Bush's actions or inactions.
Yet there's one aspect of battling terrorism that the Bushites have gotten downright wimpy about: Tracking down the money that finances the global network. While George himself has talked big about rooting out the "evil doers" who put the money up for terrorist attacks, this is not an area that the big banks and some of our supposed allies really want to have deeply investigated.
So, Bush very quietly zeroed out a request by the IRS to increase by half the number of investigators it has to follow the money trail of terrorism. This is painstaking work that requires substantial staff with the expertise, time, and backing to do the job. But in his latest budget, which George hailed as evidence of his "robust" pursuit of the bad guys, there is zero funding for the 80 additional criminal investigators requested by the IRS.
This would not have come to light at all except that it was mentioned in one sentence on the last page of a routine report to an obscure congressional subcommittee by an even more obscure IRS oversight board. Bush's defunding of IRS's financial diggers was caught by one alert committee member, Rep. Earl Pomeroy, who has since been directing some very "robust" questions to the White House.
A bush PR flack responded that the treasury department, of which the IRS is a part, got an overall budget increase, which, she says, "demonstrates [Bush's] robust commitment" to tracking terrorist money. But since that still doesn't get the IRS the 80 agents it needs, I'd call that a "robust" dodge.
"I.R.S. Request for More Terrorist Investigators Is Denied," New York Times, March 31, 2004
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