The latest
from Big Sky country:
The Helena IR has a poll up, asking which candidate won the debate. It looks like the GOP has already started flooding the results, because there is no way that anyone thinks Burns won. No way.
The poll is in the left column at http://www.helenair.com
Take 20 seconds to make your voice heard and then come back here for more on the debate (video link).
In a move that I hope will be followed by local bloggers everywhere, the Montana blog
Intelligent Discontent put together an extensive
Conrad Burns debate:
These are a collection of distortions or misrepresentations by Senator Conrad Burns during the June 25, 2006 Senate debate in Whitefish, Montana:
Burns: “ Are we AWOL on Darfur? Yes we are. When that broke out, it was a pacifist mind then or an appeasement mind then that did not commit anything to Africa when some of us said it was time to act.
Fact:
- A quick check of Thomas reveals that Burns' action on Sudan
includes the following: A resolution affirming the importance of
increased international action and a national week of prayer for the
Ugandan victims of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, and expressing
the sense of the Senate that Sudan, Uganda, and the international community bring justice and humanitarian assistance to Northern Uganda.
- A
search of the Lexis database reveals no hits for "Conrad Burns" and
"Sudan" in the past five years in Montana news, National news, or
Transcripts.
- The word Sudan does not appear on his campaign website and
the only reference on his official Senate page is a reference to the
appointment of John Danforth as an envoy for peace to Sudan.
- The Darfur conflict started in February 2003, well past the time of 9/11 attacks.
- Burns was not a co-sponsor of Senate Concurrent Resolution 124, which declared genocide in Sudan.
- He was not a co-sponsor of the Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act
Burns (referring to chemical weapons in Iraq): "There was some starin there, and other stuff."
Fact:
- Starin is probably a reference to sarin, but since it is imaginary, who knows?
- The sarin gas found in Iraq, according to weapons inspector Scott Ritter, was not viable. "The degraded sarin nerve agent and mustard blister agent contained in
the discovered munitions had long since lost their viability, and as
such represented no threat whatsoever. Furthermore, the haphazard way
in which they were "discovered" (lying about the ground, as opposed to
carefully stored away) only reinforces the Iraqi government's past
claims that many chemical munitions were scattered about the desert
countryside in remote areas following U.S. bombing attacks on the
ammunition storage depots during the first Gulf War."
- The Bush administration's own inspectorsreported that "that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter…"
Burns (referrring to NSA monitoring of phone calls): "They are only monitoring international traffick and those people and phone numbers that were known terrorist groups and cells, and it is legal. It's already been proven that."
Fact:
- Even Fox News says that there is a debate about the legality of the program.
- GW law professor Jonathan Turleysays, ""There isn't any question in my mind that this operation violated federal law. And once you determine that federal law was violated, you … reach a very troubling set of related conclusions."
- USA Today reports that the NSA collected a database of calls made by tens of millions of Americans.
- The New York Timessays that "Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."
Burns: "The 2005 energy bill relied on renewables and alterantive energy"
Fact:
- Public Citizen reports that "Most of positive measures that were in the earlier Senate bill, such as a renewable portfolio standard, were ultimately taken out of the conference report that was passed."
- Specifically, the bill gave $6 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies, rolled back regulation on drinking water, reduced state and federal oversight of pollution, gave $9 billion in subsidies to coal production, and rejected measures to reduce greenhouse gases, reduce oil imports, and address climate change.
Burns (on the Patriot Act): "We've not no liberties and we've lost no freedoms. None whatsoever. Nobody…nobody has complained about that."
Fact:
- ABC News reports that "Just half the public now says the United States government is doing enough to protect the rights of Americans citizens as it conducts the war on terrorism, down from 61 percent to 74 percent in polls in 2002 and 2003.
- Former Congressman Bob Barr (about as conservative as they come) and the ACLU have identified specific violations of our rights in the Patriot Act: "the act allows federal agents to gather highly personal information — including library, medical and gun purchase records– without criminal suspicion, permits secret searches of homes and businesses with indefinite notification, and expands the definition of domestic terrorism to potentially include political protest."
- The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School Identified these concerns about the Patriot Act: These enhanced surveillance powers license law enforcement officials to peer into Americans' most private reading, research, and communications. Several of the Act's hastily passed provisions not only violate the privacy and confidentiality rights of those using public libraries and bookstores, but sweep aside constitutional checks and balances by authorizing intelligence agencies (which are within the executive branch of government) to gather information in situations that may be completely unconnected to a potential criminal proceeding (which is part of the judicial branch of government). The constitutional requirement of search warrants, to be issued by judges, is one such check on unbridled executive power.
Burns (referring to the Hurricane Katrina): "The states (sic) in order to bring FEMA in has to request it. They have to request it and that was never done."
Fact:
- On August 27th, 2005, two days before Katrina made landfall, the President declared a state of emergencyand ordered federal aid to supplement state and local responses efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina.
- The Louisiana National Guard requested 700 buses from FEMA, but only 100 were sent to help in the evacuation.
- Congress and President Bush systematically reduced the influence and power of FEMA before Katrina.
Burns: "I don't believe in raising taxes."
Fact:
- Yes, he does. As long as they are college students or parents, dealing with the high cost of tuition.
Burns: "We tried to get a balanced budget amendment. We tried to get a line item veto. They were killed both by the Democrats in Washington, D.C."
Fact: Flatly untrue. The Line Item Veto Act was passed in 1996, and struck down by the Supreme Court in Clinton v. City of New York (1996).
Burns: "We are retiring the deficit."
Fact:
- The Bush Administration makes deficit reduction claims easier by lying about the size of the deficit.
- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calls the reduced total of a $300 billion deficit will still cause: "will cause the debt to grow faster than the economy; it will cause the debt-to-GDP ratio to rise this year. When debt rises faster than the economy, it becomes a growing burden — future taxpayers will have to devote more of their taxes to paying off debt, or alternatively to paying interest on the debt. Put simply, a rising debt-to-GDP ratio means that the nation is increasing the financial burden on future generations, while a falling debt-to-GDP ratio means that the nation is reducing the burden on future generations. The debt cannot grow faster than the economy forever without eventually causing bankruptcy.
- 2003-2007 will be the five largest deficits in the history of the United States.
Burns: You can't negotiate with these people. 9/11 was the result of appeasement. I am for strong national security.
Fact:
Senator Burns favors amnesty for insurgents who have murdered American soliders in Iraq, and was one of just nineteen members of the Senate who voted against a bill stating that "the Government of Iraq should not grant amnesty to persons known to have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the Armed Forces of the United States."
Burns: "We've got to kill this death tax…my goodness…so one farm can be inherited by another."
Fact:
- A study by the Congressional Budget Office shows that in 2000 (ie, before the recent evisceration) only 1,659 farms and 485 small business were liable for the estate tax, almost all of which had sufficient liquid assets to pay it. The rest can stretch their tax payments over many years.
- The American Farm Bureau Federationacknowledged to the New York Times that it could not cite a single example of a farm having to be sold to pay estate taxes.
Burns: "Don't worry about the ports, Jon. They ain't coming through the ports…if we secure the border and we grant no amnesty, we'll have time to deal with that (visa overstays) domestically."
Fact:
- The Coast Guardsays that Immigration is "a stiff challenge for personnel at ports of entry along U.S. coastlines and at international airports throughout the country. With so much commerce and so many people entering and leaving the country each day, inspecting every man, woman and package that enters the United States would be a daunting task."
- Congress cut nearly $650 million from a program to increase port security, despite the fact that the U.S. is still only inspecting five percent of cargo at seaports.
- The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that people who overstayed their visas account for as much as 45 percent – nearly half – of the unauthorized immigrants now in the US. Most of the 4.5 million to 6 million people who violated their visas were tourist or business travelers.
Not only did Tester win the debate, but Burns lost -- big time.