The Bush Administration will continue to exist after 2009

[ck4829]

It will be known as the Institute for Democracy, the 'think' tank that will be attached to the George W. Bush Library.

"After six years of incompetence and cronyism, a failed war against terrorism, the quagmire that is Iraq, wars against science, the environment, corporate regulation and the public's right-to-know, a chummy working relationship with the country's most reactionary conservative evangelical Christians, a politicized faith-based initiative, giveaways to the energy industry, tax relief for the wealthy, a culture of corruption culminating in the forced resignations and imprisonment of some of the administrations key soldiers, and an attack on fundamental democratic rights and values, the Bush Administration is hatching plans to celebrate itself with a $500 million library (the costliest presidential library ever) to be built sometime after the end of Bush's second term.

In what is being called "their final campaign," Bush's "truest believers" are aiming to raise a half-billion dollars for the mother of all presidential libraries. The library and an attached think tank -- which will pay for conservative research -- is being earmarked for the Dallas, Texas campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU), where First Lady Laura Bush is an alumna and trustee

The really big extra embedded into this project appears to be what Bush insiders are calling the Institute for Democracy. Modeled after the Hoover Institution, a long-time conservative think tank located on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, Bush's institute would hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider told the Daily News. This would effectively be the post-administration version of a policy they established during his reign - paying columnists to advocate for administration policy.

According to the newspaper, "The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.""

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=171

[mmonk]

1. If we want to better our democracy (whatever is left of it),

we've got to figure out how to keep out special interests (corporate money) and "think tanks".

[Olney Blue]

2. What a waste of time and money...

[Catshrink]

3. What irony!

His misadministration has done its best to dismantle democracy in America. What kind of democracy does he intend to spread throughout the world? I think the BFEE would be satisfied to return to the days of the robber barons, the days of the wealthy and the worker classes -- and no middle class.

Wasting money? That's what this misadministration does best.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. We'll see.

After the next 2 years the whole notion of some sort of shrine to this presidency will be laughable and out of the question. He'll get his library but it will be more of a shrine to his incompetence and a warning to future generations to pick your leaders more carefully.