The Hightower Lowdown

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WHO'S REALLY STANDING UP FOR THE USA?

Attention Americans: The Pentagon is back on Code-Red Alert -- not because of another threat from foreign terrorists, but because of a red-white-and-blue attack by solid American patriots!

These patriots are hitting the very heart of the Pentagon -- its budget. This is not an assault from the left, attacking the waste and fraud in the bloated budget, but rather a surprise attack from the right. It's led by Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, a superhawk who's never seen a weapons program he wouldn't throw our tax dollars at.

Hunter has no quarrel with the unlimited billions we pay to Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and other bloodsucking Pentagon contractors, but he is alarmed that these U.S. corporations are shipping so much of the work on these weapons offshore. The contractors are taking hard-earned tax dollars from America's working families, then thumbing their noses at us by sending the work, the jobs, the money, and even the technical expertise to Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Where's the fairness -- or the patriotism -- in that, Duncan rightly asks.

So he has shocked the Pentagon by putting a "Buy American" provision in the budget. It requires that 65% of the content of goods bought by the Pentagon must be made in the USA.

Oh, the shrieks and squeals from the corporate profiteers! They've been making a killing by charging top dollar for weaponry made on the cheap by low-wage subcontractors abroad. So their lobbyists are now swarming senators, demanding that they strip Hunter's "Buy American" provision from the bill, and they even got their boy, Don Rumsfeld, the Pentagon chief, to promise a presidential veto if the budget includes what they call a "ludicrous" idea.

What's ludicrous is that these greedheads consider a 65% made-in-America standard to be ludicrous. To urge Rep. Hunter to stand firm, call him: 202/225-5672.

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GOP GOES FROM IRONY TO INTIMIDATION

Apparently the Bushites think that "irony" is the name of a far-off planet, for they never seem able to see it in their own work.

Irony is George W. standing adamantly against affirmative action, oblivious to the obvious fact that he's the privileged poster-child of America's aggressive affirmative-action program for the rich.

But one of the latest actions by the Bushites proves that they couldn't find irony if we let them use the Hubble Telescope. It came in the form of a threatening letter sent to Wisconsin TV stations by the Republican Party's top lawyer, Caroline Hunter. It seems that these stations were airing an ad produced by the Democratic Party that calls for a bipartisan independent investigation of the false information used by Bush and the White House to mislead the American people about the supposed "imminent threat" posed by weapons of mass destruction they claimed were in Iraq.

The lawyer's letter to the TV stations demanded that they not air this ad because -- get this -- she blithely says that stations have "no right to willfully spread false information in a deliberate attempt to mislead the American people."

Yoo-hoo, Ms. Hunter, call home once you zoom past Pluto. Oh, the irony! The White House willfully spreads false information to mislead the American people -- but if anyone is bold enough to point out this deception, they get slapped with charges of being false and misleading.

Bush's GOP henchwoman wasn't playing patty cake with the TV stations, either. "As an FCC licensee," she wrote station managers, "you have the responsibility to exercise independent editorial judgment. ... This letter puts you on notice ... you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement." That's no small threat, given that the Bushites have politicized the FCC and can make life hell for a local station.

This is more than ironic -- it's crass political intimidation.