Bush Legacy Tour

FLAGSTAFF, AZ- The day in Flagstaff started off great. We took a cab to where the bus had been parked much earlier to secure the space. The cab driver asked what we were doing in town and when we told him, he absolutely loved it! He talked about how he thinks Bush is a terrible president and how he feels that McCain has been a terrible senator. He said that if McCain becomes president his plan is to move to the Virgin Islands.

We had a lot of similar responses during the stop. We had a prime location in Heritage Square down town and had at least 100 people come through the bus.  Today was a special day not only because we were in the state of a very high profile Senator who is a great friend to Bush, but because today is the birthday of Social Security!  Seventy-three years ago FDR signed the program into law. It was fairly ironic to be in Senator McCain’s home state on the 73^rd birthday of a program that McCain has called a “disgrace” and voted twice to privatize.  Of course this doesn’t stop him from cashing the Social Security checks he gets every month. Last year he collected over $23,000 from a program he doesn’t actually believe in.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gwHGMYappR5eiPj4JoZ8L-7YUacAD91VPP78E

The Social Security issue was one of many that Arizonans passing by the bus were angry about. The environment is also a huge issue for the people with whom I spoke.  Flagstaff does a great deal of eco-tourism and prides itself on its beautiful forests, clear skies and pristine drinking water. Millions of people come to the area each year to participate in outdoor sports and activities. We talked to a lot of people about Bush’s disastrous environmental policies including the duplicitously named Clear Skies Initiative, the refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty, the weakening of clean water laws, and the overall practice of letting corporations regulate themselves. Given that McCain supported Bush’s agenda 95% of the time in 2007, his environmental record is akin to the President’s if not worse. According to the League of Conservation voters Congressional Scorecard, John McCain was the only Congressperson to receive a score of ZERO during the last year’s Congress. John McCain skipped every single important environmental vote of 2007 according the scorecard report! To his credit, he has been too busy spending his Social Security money to be in DC on the floor voting on some silly greenhouse gas legislation.