Skaman
01-21-2004, 12:02 AM
State of the Union Dictionary
A guide to understanding many of the Bush Administration's oft-used phrases. Print this out for the State of the Union and you will have no trouble following along.
Accountability: The stick that dangles the carrot of federal funding.
Affordable Healthcare: (1) Healthcare for the healthy and wealthy. (2) More taxpayer money for private health insurers.
Ally: A nation or leader which helps us but gets nothing in return. (See Tony Blair.)
American Justice: What happens to those who disagree with the Administration.
Bipartisan Support: All Republicans, plus Zell Miller (D-GA).
Bush Doctrine: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” – unless you are the Saudi government, in which case you can be with both.
Choice: The option of deciding between the doctors you trust and the drugs you need.
Clear Skies Initiative: A gift to polluters that reverses 30 years of progress on clean air and ignores global warming and the growing asthma epidemic.
Coalition of the willing: 160,000 U.S. troops, "symbolic" support from the South Pacific archipelago of Palau, and 2,000 Moroccan monkeys to defuse mines.
Corporate accountability: Bush fundraising strategy to milk every dime out of corporations who benefit from tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
Deficit: Something that used to matter but does not matter any more.
Economic recovery: Profits are up and who cares about jobs anyway.
Economic stimulus: Tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
Economic success: Economy loses 2.5 million jobs: could have lost 3 million.
Education reform: To set expensive new standards, but fail to offer sufficient funds to meet said standards. See ‘Accountability’.
Efficiency: (1) Synonymous with streamlining; the end of the running public debate by using the regulatory process to rewrite environmental and health laws. (2) A means of overturning many Clinton Administration rules that provided essential protections for public health and the environment.
Energy bill: A gigantic, $50 billion payback to the Administration’s most loyal campaign contributors.
Energy independence: (1) A decision made all by ourselves to rely on other countries for our power needs. (2) A reason to drill in Alaska. (3) A jobs program for Halliburton.
Evidence: What is not needed to justify a war.
Evil: (1) Those who disagree with the Administration. (2) Those who do not praise every member of the Administration. (3) Those whom the Administration cannot catch or detain.
Federal lobbyist for industry: Former Bush Administration federal regulator.
Federal regulator: Former lobbyist for industry being regulated.
Fiscal discipline: (1) Making public statements that you care about the deficit, then making private statements that you don’t, and spending like a drunken sailor (See VP Cheney’s comment “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”). (2) Standards that Republicans will hold the next Democratic administration to.
Healthy forests: Saving the trees in our national forests by cutting them down and giving them to timber companies for safekeeping.
Healthy Marriage Initiative: (1) The conservative counter to the increasing legitimacy of gay rights; (2) A totally unobtrusive new initiative by the people who fight for less government; (3) Poverty prevention, according to HHS assistant secretary Horn and the Heritage foundation.
Imminent threat: A nation or regime which does not pose a serious danger to the United States but has resources that America desires.
Incentives to work: Welfare recipients need a few dollars less, otherwise they won’t show up for work; CEOs need a few million more, otherwise they won’t show up for work.
Intelligence: Data that is collected and analyzed by the government, then publicized with varying degrees of accuracy.
Job creation: A fondly remembered phenomenon of the 1990s.
Jobs program: Creating the position of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing.
Leadership: As Paul O’Neill explained, “Signing onto strong ideological positions that have not been fully thought through."
Liberate: (1) Occupy. (2) Turn a country into a security nightmare with no plan for peace and prosperity.
Market-based incentives: Let industry police itself.
Measuring results: Assessing nationwide student achievement without the use of national standards.
Medicare advantage: A renamed Medicare program providing HMOs the advantage of billions of dollars in excess payments.
Medicare choices: A drug benefit that financially coerces beneficiaries into HMOs, eliminates Medigap coverage for the drug benefit's gaps, and prohibits Medicare from negotiating better drug price discounts.
Medicare prescription drug legislation: Legislation that provides seniors with benefit gaps, increased out of pocket spending, restricted access to drugs, and enables insurers to establish which drugs are covered and how much they cost.
Mission Accomplished: Seemed like a good idea at the time.
No Child Left Behind: Two-year old legislation that guarantees the possibility that your child could be left behind.
Outlaw regimes: Regimes previously armed by the U.S. that we can now oust with little difficulty.
Ownership society: Increased stock ownership for the wealthy.
Poverty (See Heritage Foundation): If you have a TV as a babysitter, this word does not apply to you.
Prescription Drug Discount Card: Something that gives a discount to the pharmaceutical industry and gives seniors another card for their wallet (to replace their shredded AARP cards).
Public diplomacy: Mop-up work.
Reconstruction: (1) Nation-building. (2) The new mission of the U.S. Military.
School choice: The occasional option that some parents have to make sure that their child is not left behind.
Sound science: Selective use of scientific-sounding information to justify a policy the Administration has already decided upon.
Space exploration: A necessary investment of billions of dollars (that doesn't go to education, that doesn't go to health care, and that doesn't go to our troops) to ensure we have somewhere to live when our special interest-driven environmental policy catches up with us.
Temporary Worker Program: In lieu of real immigration reform, an election-year initiative that provides businesses with a temporary and cheap workforce without ensuring protections for immigrant workers.
Top policy priority: A high level Administration position left unfilled.
Uninsured: The 44 million Americans (and counting) who cannot afford the high cost of health insurance.
United Nations: A multilateral organization that is only relevant when it agrees with American policy.
War on Terror: Tough-sounding phrase that fails to specify a strategy for actually protecting Americans.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: Things that Saddam Hussein wanted but didn’t have.
A guide to understanding many of the Bush Administration's oft-used phrases. Print this out for the State of the Union and you will have no trouble following along.
Accountability: The stick that dangles the carrot of federal funding.
Affordable Healthcare: (1) Healthcare for the healthy and wealthy. (2) More taxpayer money for private health insurers.
Ally: A nation or leader which helps us but gets nothing in return. (See Tony Blair.)
American Justice: What happens to those who disagree with the Administration.
Bipartisan Support: All Republicans, plus Zell Miller (D-GA).
Bush Doctrine: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” – unless you are the Saudi government, in which case you can be with both.
Choice: The option of deciding between the doctors you trust and the drugs you need.
Clear Skies Initiative: A gift to polluters that reverses 30 years of progress on clean air and ignores global warming and the growing asthma epidemic.
Coalition of the willing: 160,000 U.S. troops, "symbolic" support from the South Pacific archipelago of Palau, and 2,000 Moroccan monkeys to defuse mines.
Corporate accountability: Bush fundraising strategy to milk every dime out of corporations who benefit from tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
Deficit: Something that used to matter but does not matter any more.
Economic recovery: Profits are up and who cares about jobs anyway.
Economic stimulus: Tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
Economic success: Economy loses 2.5 million jobs: could have lost 3 million.
Education reform: To set expensive new standards, but fail to offer sufficient funds to meet said standards. See ‘Accountability’.
Efficiency: (1) Synonymous with streamlining; the end of the running public debate by using the regulatory process to rewrite environmental and health laws. (2) A means of overturning many Clinton Administration rules that provided essential protections for public health and the environment.
Energy bill: A gigantic, $50 billion payback to the Administration’s most loyal campaign contributors.
Energy independence: (1) A decision made all by ourselves to rely on other countries for our power needs. (2) A reason to drill in Alaska. (3) A jobs program for Halliburton.
Evidence: What is not needed to justify a war.
Evil: (1) Those who disagree with the Administration. (2) Those who do not praise every member of the Administration. (3) Those whom the Administration cannot catch or detain.
Federal lobbyist for industry: Former Bush Administration federal regulator.
Federal regulator: Former lobbyist for industry being regulated.
Fiscal discipline: (1) Making public statements that you care about the deficit, then making private statements that you don’t, and spending like a drunken sailor (See VP Cheney’s comment “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”). (2) Standards that Republicans will hold the next Democratic administration to.
Healthy forests: Saving the trees in our national forests by cutting them down and giving them to timber companies for safekeeping.
Healthy Marriage Initiative: (1) The conservative counter to the increasing legitimacy of gay rights; (2) A totally unobtrusive new initiative by the people who fight for less government; (3) Poverty prevention, according to HHS assistant secretary Horn and the Heritage foundation.
Imminent threat: A nation or regime which does not pose a serious danger to the United States but has resources that America desires.
Incentives to work: Welfare recipients need a few dollars less, otherwise they won’t show up for work; CEOs need a few million more, otherwise they won’t show up for work.
Intelligence: Data that is collected and analyzed by the government, then publicized with varying degrees of accuracy.
Job creation: A fondly remembered phenomenon of the 1990s.
Jobs program: Creating the position of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing.
Leadership: As Paul O’Neill explained, “Signing onto strong ideological positions that have not been fully thought through."
Liberate: (1) Occupy. (2) Turn a country into a security nightmare with no plan for peace and prosperity.
Market-based incentives: Let industry police itself.
Measuring results: Assessing nationwide student achievement without the use of national standards.
Medicare advantage: A renamed Medicare program providing HMOs the advantage of billions of dollars in excess payments.
Medicare choices: A drug benefit that financially coerces beneficiaries into HMOs, eliminates Medigap coverage for the drug benefit's gaps, and prohibits Medicare from negotiating better drug price discounts.
Medicare prescription drug legislation: Legislation that provides seniors with benefit gaps, increased out of pocket spending, restricted access to drugs, and enables insurers to establish which drugs are covered and how much they cost.
Mission Accomplished: Seemed like a good idea at the time.
No Child Left Behind: Two-year old legislation that guarantees the possibility that your child could be left behind.
Outlaw regimes: Regimes previously armed by the U.S. that we can now oust with little difficulty.
Ownership society: Increased stock ownership for the wealthy.
Poverty (See Heritage Foundation): If you have a TV as a babysitter, this word does not apply to you.
Prescription Drug Discount Card: Something that gives a discount to the pharmaceutical industry and gives seniors another card for their wallet (to replace their shredded AARP cards).
Public diplomacy: Mop-up work.
Reconstruction: (1) Nation-building. (2) The new mission of the U.S. Military.
School choice: The occasional option that some parents have to make sure that their child is not left behind.
Sound science: Selective use of scientific-sounding information to justify a policy the Administration has already decided upon.
Space exploration: A necessary investment of billions of dollars (that doesn't go to education, that doesn't go to health care, and that doesn't go to our troops) to ensure we have somewhere to live when our special interest-driven environmental policy catches up with us.
Temporary Worker Program: In lieu of real immigration reform, an election-year initiative that provides businesses with a temporary and cheap workforce without ensuring protections for immigrant workers.
Top policy priority: A high level Administration position left unfilled.
Uninsured: The 44 million Americans (and counting) who cannot afford the high cost of health insurance.
United Nations: A multilateral organization that is only relevant when it agrees with American policy.
War on Terror: Tough-sounding phrase that fails to specify a strategy for actually protecting Americans.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: Things that Saddam Hussein wanted but didn’t have.