Hi! I’m Bob Bowman, Lt Col, US Air Force, retired, and I’d like to talk to you about national security, because it’s something I’ve devoted most of my life to. A nation is only as secure as its families. One would think that this is obvious, but we don’t seem to give it much thought. Our nation could possess the greatest military power the world has ever seen (and we do), and we could be the dominant economic power on the globe (and we are), and yet if our families are insecure (and all too many are), what’s the point? What good is our vast arsenal of nuclear weapons or our carrier battle groups stationed in every ocean ... if they cannot protect our families from terrorism, violent crime, the ravages of unexpected illness, or financial ruin?

First, let’s talk about financial security. The world which is about to enter the new millennium is very different from that which emerged from World War II a half century ago. Technology has led to quantum leaps in productivity. Here in the United States, we have had eight years of unprecedented sustained economic growth under a supposedly liberal Democratic president. The world is awash in wealth.

This should be the Golden Age of prosperity. In this country, at least, there should be no poverty, no joblessness, no homelessness, no malnutrition, no lack of health care. The average American manufacturing worker produces over $52 worth of product per hour. Every American worker should be able to support his or her family comfortably with one job, working 16 to 20 hours per week. With the necessities of life provided for, people should be free to pursue the arts, engage in creative pursuits, enjoy 4 or 5-day weekends, and spend more time with their family. They should be financially secure.

And yet, that’s not the way it is. There is more poverty today than there was before — more than when the expansion began eight years ago, more than in the years of double-digit inflation, more than at any time since the great depression of the 1930s. The standard of living has been declining for forty years. In spite of soaring productivity, real wages have gone down. It has become harder and harder for one wage earner to support a family. Our youth, all too often without a parent at home, and besieged by an alien culture of violence and drugs, are at risk. Family farmers have been forced into bankruptcy. Seniors worry about the future of Social Security, while many must choose between buying food and medicine. The middle class is becoming an endangered species. Credit card debt is soaring. The average American family just doesn’t make enough money to get by — even in these good times. But what happens when illness strikes, or downsizing? The sad truth is there is no security for working families in this country today.

Why? Is it bad luck? Government stupidity? Bureaucratic incompetence? No. It is a political choice!

What happens to the $52 worth of wealth you create in an hour? Why is your take-home pay only about $8 ? Where did the rest go? Oh, I know, some people blame taxes, but that’s not the answer. Only about $2 per hour goes to taxes. Get this. The other $42 is siphoned off by the corporation for profit and overhead, including obscene salaries for CEOs. Think about that. 80% of what you create is taken by the corporation. That’s 20 times as much as the government takes in the taxes we love to complain about. No wonder we have no financial security!

Let’s talk about CEO salaries. In 1950, CEOs earned about 20 times as much as the worker on the shop floor. Today, that ratio is nearing 500 — and that’s for American workers. Thanks to war, gunboat diplomacy, and free investment agreements like NAFTA and GATT, the corporations can also use foreign workers. The ratio there is more like 50,000. It would take a Disney worker in the Dominican Republic 360 years to make as much as CEO Michael Eisner pays himself in one hour! And his enormous compensation package is a tax-deductible expense for the corporation. We taxpayers are picking up the tab for Eisner’s salary. Well, you know what? We don’t have to. Corporations can pay their executives whatever they want. But we don’t have to give them a tax deduction for it. We can limit the deduction to some reasonable multiple (say 20) of the salary of the lowest-paid worker in the company. The rest would come out of profit. And if the company in turn chose to tie the CEO’s salary to those of his workers, you can be sure he’d raise the pay of his lowest workers, so his pay could go up. If American workers got the same proportion of the wealth they created as they got in the 1950s, a person could support his family by working one job ... two days per week! That ... would be security.

The plight of the American worker is due to the failure of trickle-down economics. They pumped all the wealth to the top ... and then siphoned it off before it could trickle down. In 1970, the richest 1% of Americans owned 20% of the nation’s wealth. By 1989, it was 40%. Today, it’s approaching 60%. How are they doing this?

Well, it’s made possible because the billionaires who lead the Trilateral Commission, the G8, the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization have bought up political power in this country and in much of the industrialized world. Through their corporate media, they manipulate public opinion, assuring that their hand-picked members receive the nomination for President in both the Republican and Democratic parties. (It’s happened ever since Kennedy.) And through our archaic system of private financing of election campaigns, they assure themselves of having the best Congress money can buy, as well as a president beholden to them.

This has resulted in a series of treaties and agreements falsely portrayed as supporting free trade, but in reality negating U.S. laws protecting workers and the environment and putting American workers in competition with those in the Third World.

It has also resulted in a series of wars, from Vietnam to El Salvador, from Lebanon to Iraq, from Nicaragua to Bosnia, from Grenada to Kosovo, from Somalia to Colombia — wars which are never in the interest of those fighting them, or of the families left behind ... wars which only serve the insatiable greed of the global investor class. (If you have been led to believe that the war in Kosovo was about ethnic cleansing, please see the Chronology on our web site. It wasn’t about human rights, and it certainly wasn’t about our national security. It was about money.)

Speaking of money, where does it all go? The United States is about six trillion dollars in debt. But we’re not alone. European nations can’t fund their social programs. The Russians can’t pay their soldiers. Third World countries have crushing debt burdens they can never repay. So what’s going on? If all these nations owe money, to whom? Who is on the other side of the ledger? Who owns the twenty trillion dollars the rest of us owe? Multinational corporations, banks, and big bond holders. There are about 500 billionaires. The assets of only 200 of them could provide food, clothing, clean water, medical care, and education to every child in the world! The assets of one man (Bill Gates) exceeds the combined assets of 150 million Americans.

There is a direct connection between economic injustice, the wars being waged against any country not capitulating to the New World Order, and our political system.

I come before you today determined to sever the connection between big money and political power, begin restoring our democracy, end the pillaging of the American farmer, worker, and small businessman by the New World Order elite, and make ordinary Americans more secure. Thanks to Ross Perot, that’s what the Reform Party stands for, and Jesse Ventura’s victory in Minnesota has made the Reform Party a major factor on the American electoral scene. I am seeking your help to become the nominee of the Reform Party for President of the United States.

I’ve been told that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be president. Nevertheless, I am one. I’m also a career military officer, the father of seven children, and the grandfather of nineteen. I’ve been a corporate slave, a song-and-dance man, a stuffy college professor, an itinerant preacher, a fighter pilot, a radio talk show host, and a husband to the same wonderful woman for 43 years. One thing I have never ever been is a politician. Heck, I’m not even a lawyer. (I hope you won’t hold that against me!)

So why am I running for president? Quite simply, I’ve come to believe that it’s the only way we can restore our democracy and put the American people in control of their own security. We’ve tried the Republican and Democratic parties, and found them wanting. The "Republocrat" parties are bought and paid for. They are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the New World Order. One might expect it of the Country-Club Republicans. But we might have expected better from the party of FDR. President Clinton promised to "Put People First," then sold us out with NAFTA, GATT, and the World Trade Organization. He campaigned against the arms trade, then doubled it in his first term. He spoke against useless Cold War weapons, and now is funding them, while soldiers and their families are still on food stamps. He campaigned against militarism, but has used it unmercifully against the people of Iraq and Yugoslavia — not in support of democracy and human rights, as the corporate-owned media would have you believe, but on behalf of the financial interests of multinational corporations. He gave lip-service to family farmers, but allowed farmers in both the United States and Mexico to be forced off the land and into sweat-shops by NAFTA and the giant agribusiness conglomerates. He told us it takes a village to raise a child, but didn’t say he was going to take away parents by forcing single mothers into the workforce and millions of additional children into poverty. It’s time to elect someone for the people.

Both Republocrat parties talk about family values, but their global neo-liberal capitalist policies have forced families to have two wage earners, three jobs, and no health care — all because the New World Order forces American workers to compete with Chinese slave labor and workers earning eight to twelve cents an hour. The unfair trade policies of NAFTA and GATT must be abolished. And if I am elected, they will be, and that’s a promise! We can no longer accept a government which serves the greed of global robber barons at the expense of the security of its own people. It’s time to put people and families first — and mean it!

Nothing enhances a person’s security like education. One of the best investments this country ever made was the GI Bill after World War II. It gave returning servicemen a chance to further their education, and it staggered their entry into the job market. It’s time for a new GI Bill giving expanded educational opportunities to those who are no longer needed to defend our country in the post-Cold War world.

One of the most important factors in financial security is health. We can no longer accept a government which allows the medical needs of its veterans to be unmet, which allows our elderly to be bounced back and forth between Medicare and Medicaid, and which allows millions of working Americans and their children to have no health coverage at all — just because that’s the way the insurance companies and giant HMOs want it. I don’t want an insurance company running my health care; I don’t want an HMO running my health care; and I don’t want the government running my health care. I want my doctor running my health care. I don’t want the government deciding who my doctor should be. I don’t want the government deciding whether I need to see a specialist. I don’t want the government deciding when I need an operation. I don’t want the government deciding what medications I should take. I only want the government to do one thing — pay the bill. It’s time to end the myriad of piecemeal medical programs. It’s time to kick the insurance companies out of the medical business and end the stranglehold of the hospital conglomerates. It’s time for the United States to finally join the rest of the civilized world and make every American family secure. It’s time for a single-payer national health system.

This would also enormously enhance the security of small businesses because it would allow us to eliminate payroll taxes. We tax what we want to discourage. And it works. So why do we tax small businesses for providing jobs? Why do we impose payroll taxes when paychecks are what fuel the economy? We want entrepreneurs to build businesses which provide jobs. So why impose taxes on them even before they become profitable? A business should only be taxed on its net, not its gross. It’s time to sever the connection between employment and health care, unburden our small businesses, and eliminate payroll taxes altogether.

And why should the tax burden fall on the small business which uses American suppliers and hires American workers, while the big multinationals use offshore suppliers, offshore slave labor, and offshore bank accounts to avoid US taxes altogether? The Fortune 500 companies control 25% of the world’s output and 70% of the world’s trade, but employ only one twentieth of one percent of the world’s population, and pay almost none of its taxes. Why penalize an honest businessman for not creating a paper headquarters in Switzerland or the Bahamas? It’s time for the giant multinationals who sell their products here to pay their fair share of taxes.

Now I’d like to say a word about welfare. It was originally intended to be a safety net, providing minimal security and keeping families from becoming destitute. But it was poorly designed. People got trapped in it because if they got a low-paying job all their benefits were taken away, including Medicaid health coverage. What with clothes, transportation, baby-sitters ... they were much worse off working than staying on welfare. The working poor were subjected to effective tax rates far in excess of 100%. It’s crazy. No wonder it didn’t work. Yet the solution is not to yank away the safety net completely, but to keep the benefits in place for the working poor.

We must also recognize the dignity and value of the homemaker. If a single mother feels she should stay home until her children are in school, we should respect that and not force her to choose between abandonment and poverty. Day care is sometimes necessary, and should be available to those who need it; but it is no substitute for parents and the security of a home.

There is one form of welfare that is particularly loathsome — corporate welfare. We the taxpayers actually pay the bill for some corporations to move plants overseas, taking what were good jobs for Americans and turning them into sweatshop jobs for people in developing nations. We also allow multinational corporations to profit while polluting our land, water, and air. Again we the taxpayers pay for the cleanup, if it ever gets done. Instead, the polluters should pay for their own cleanup, and tax money should be used to help small businesses here at home and to help family farmers develop sustainable agriculture. It’s time to end corporate welfare as we know it.

We can no longer accept a government which allows us to be number one among industrialized nations: number one in child poverty, number one in the gap between rich and poor, number one in unimmunized children, number one in teen pregnancy, number one in deaths by gunfire, number one in poverty among the elderly, number one in citizens without medical coverage, number one in homeless veterans, number one in citizen incarceration ... and yet has a trillion dollars worth of new weapons on the books at a time when we just ran out of enemies. It’s time for our priorities to change.

The resources are available. It’s time to end poverty, homelessness, joblessness, and malnutrition in this country. Poverty breeds desperation and criminals. Living-wage jobs breed dignity and consumers. This is not liberalism or welfare or charity; it is common sense and common decency.

This may mean cancelling unneeded Cold War weapons and useless nukes, but it does not mean reducing our national security. (Indeed, many of the weapons programs of the past and present have reduced our national security by making nuclear war more likely.) It does mean redirecting our defense dollars to meet the needs of today and tomorrow, not yesterday. It means putting the needs of the people in our military services ahead of the greed of the weapons manufacturers. (And I’ve been on both sides of this game, so I know how it’s played.) It doesn’t do any good to have high-tech weapons if you don’t have well-educated, highly-trained people to operate them. And these people are not going to stay in the military unless we keep our promises to them and to their families and to the veterans who served before them. I was very fortunate. I came back in one piece from my 101 combat missions in Vietnam, and relatively unscathed (although some things you never forget). Most were not so lucky. Veterans of the Vietnam War came home afflicted with Agent Orange, unappreciated, and traumatized by what they saw and what they were asked to do. More Vietnam vets have died of suicide than were killed in combat. Tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans have had their lives destroyed by a combination of depleted uranium, anthrax vaccine, and chemical weaponry. They are still being told it’s all in their head. Our men and women in uniform were promised better than that. It’s time for us to keep our word to those who put everything on the line for us and for our security.

And this brings us to the subject of military security. By far the biggest threat we face today is nuclear terrorism. Threats from China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba are mostly media hype. Our defense budget is 26 times as much as all theirs put together. The threat from terrorists is much more serious. It threatens our security far more than did the Soviet Union at the height of its power. Not a single weapon in our vast arsenal can protect us from a terrorist attack. Our enormous nuclear stockpile is useless, and cannot deter a man willing to die (and kill) for what he believes. Some people, taken in by the media, look to "Star Wars" to defend us. It can’t. I directed all the Department of Defense "Star Wars" programs under Presidents Ford and Carter, when their existence was secret. When Reagan turned it into a crash program to develop new offensive weapons disguised as defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff came to me to warn the American public and Congress about what they called "this military lunacy." I did. I left my lucrative position as an executive in the aerospace industry, and gave over 5,000 speeches on the dangers to our national security of weapons which could not protect us from a single nuclear bomb, but could bring on World War III. To have deployed weapons in space could have made nuclear war inevitable.

We were successful. Congress protected the ABM Treaty and kept Reagan from deploying "Star Wars." Now, under pressure from Republicans, Clinton is resurrecting it. And it is still detrimental to our national security. Even if these weapons worked, they would only be useful against isolated ballistic missiles. But no terrorist is going to use such a high-tech, complex, costly, visible means of delivery (and one which leaves a clear return address). No, he’s just going to float his nuke up the Potomac River on a barge or fly it into Red Square in a Cessna or smuggle it into the country in a bale of marijuana ... or deliver it in a Ryder rental truck. No "Star Wars" system can do any good against a nuclear terrorist.

Not a penny of the nearly 300 billion dollars a year we spend on the Pentagon is of any use in protecting us from a nuclear terrorist. There are only three things that can help. The first is to buy up bomb-grade nuclear materials. Buy up the plutonium and enriched uranium from Russian missiles. Take it from our own useless nuclear weapons, too. Mix it all with the tons of depleted uranium we have in storage, making it useless for bombs. Vitrify it. Make glass blocks of it, and bury it. The second is to buy up nuclear brainpower. Put Russian nuclear scientists to work on something useful, and pay them, so they don’t have to work for terrorists to support their families.

The third is the most important, for it provides the only long-term solution to our current insecurity. We must change our government’s ways. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our government has done hateful things to people all around the world. Our government has deposed elected leaders and supported brutal dictators who have sold out their own people to the multinational corporations. It did it in Iran. It did it in Chile. It did it over and over again in Central America. We love our country, but fear our government. Well, so do people around the world, and for good reason. Unfortunately, some (in their desperation, fear, and hatred) do not distinguish between the U.S. government and the American people. The only way we can make ourselves secure from the threat of nuclear terrorism is to get control of our government and stop it from doing hateful things in our name.

The young people in our armed forces are idealistic. They certainly didn’t join the military for the pay or for the working conditions. It is wrong to ask them to participate in immoral ventures. It is wrong to imprison those who, as a matter of conscience, refuse. And it is wrong to corrupt those who, in their innocence, cooperate. We can no longer accept a government which uses our youth and our money to train death squads in the techniques of torture, intimidation, and assassination. It’s time for The School of the Americas to be closed.

We can no longer accept a government which gives Most Favored Nation status to the butchers of Tianenmen Square and places an illegal secondary embargo on the impoverished people of Cuba. Trying to isolate Castro hasn’t done any good. The rest of the world is doing business in Cuba. All we’re doing is isolating our own businesses. It’s time to repeal the Helms-Burton law, end the embargo, and establish normalized relations with Cuba.

We can no longer accept a government which promotes and subsidizes arms sales around the world, especially to dictators who use our weapons to control their own impoverished people. We are the world’s supplier of everything from small arms to F-16s, from landmines to Trident submarines, from cluster bombs to depleted uranium. All too often, these weapons wind up being used against our own men and women in the military. It’s time to stop pandering to the merchants of death.

We can no longer accept a government which promotes instability, insurrection, tyranny, torture, terrorism, and murder around the world in our name and with our money through the Central Intelligence Agency. These actions have killed millions of people around the world, and they endanger our security. If the multinational corporations want to engage in industrial espionage and destabilize other nations, let them hire their own spooks. Why should we pay for it and take the blame for it. Once and for all, the CIA must be abolished.

One of the great things about our country is that it is ruled by the force of law, not the law of force. The people in many nations live in fear of a hated national police. Often trained, armed, and paid by the United States, these paramilitary units trample on human rights. They shoot first, and ask questions later. They are not part of the communities they terrorize. The more distant any police force becomes from the community, the more dangerous it is. NATO and its actions against the people of Yugoslavia is perhaps the extreme example. But it could never happen in this country ... or could it? Recent events with respect to Waco and Ruby Ridge must give us pause. The FBI was supposed to be an investigative body, not a national police force. We shouldn’t have to arm ourselves to protect ourselves from our own government. It’s time to get the FBI and the ATF under control or disarm them altogether.

Finally, we can no longer accept — we will no longer accept — a government which sends our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so the oil companies can sell the oil under their sand, making us the target of terrorists. Do we want our children and grandchildren used as cannon fodder for multinational corporations? Do we want them to be used as hired killers for Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon? Or do we want them used to defend our borders and, when necessary, to feed starving children and rebuild shattered cities. If the giant corporations want to go to war with Yugoslavia so they can destroy socialism, steal their resources, and control the oil from the Caspian Sea, let them hire their own mercenaries. Why should we taxpayers pay the bill, our sons and daughters do the fighting, and the American people get the blame? It’s time for us to be the good guys. No more Iraqs. No more El Salvadors. No more Kosovos. No more gunboat diplomacy ... anywhere!

Many on the right and on the left have protested these individual acts of militarism. But we must not see them as isolated acts of stupidity. They are not. They are part of a long bloody history of foreign policy conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism, it endangers our national security, and it must end.

We must build an America at peace with the world and with its own people. We must build an America that leads the world — not by dominating and manipulating other nations, but by earning their respect and admiration. We must build an America that strives not to be king of the hill, nor to be subservient to the World Trade Organization, but to be a responsible sovereign member of the family of nations. We must build an America that leads the world — not with military might, but with its vision, its compassion, its democracy, its productivity, its standard of living, its treatment of its own people, and its goodness.

We must speak the truth to the American people — about the growing economic injustice of the New World Order, about what has been done to American democracy, and about why there never seems to be an end to war. We the people have been lied to, manipulated, and ignored. We must wake the people and restore the dream.

We must unite those in the Reform Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Taxpayers Party, the New Party, the Labor Party, the Natural Law Party, the Peace and Freedom Party — all those of the left and the right, conservatives and liberals, disenchanted Democrats and repulsed Republicans, doves and hawks — because there is one great cause on which we all agree. We must take political power from the multinational corporations and banks, the arms merchants, and the lobbyists and restore it to the people of America.

Ultimately, no nation, no family can be secure as long as war is an available instrument of national policy. Fortunately, once the people are empowered, war will be abolished, because it has never been the people who made war. Abolishing war is as easy, and as difficult, as taking power away from those who profit by it. This is what we must do. Our security demands it. It’s time! And together, we can do it. Mine is not a protest candidacy. Once the American people understand the truth, the candidates of the Republocrat parties won’t stand a chance. I intend to win. Thank you, and God bless you!

Biographical Highlights for Dr. Robert M. Bowman

President, Institute for Space and Security Studies 82-99. Presiding Bishop, United Catholic Church 96-99. Executive Vice-President, Millennium III Corporation 83-99. Executive Director, SHALOM International Interfaith Network 85-95. Vice-President, Space Communications Company 81-82. Manager, Advanced Space Programs, General Dynamics 78-81. Director, Advanced Space Programs Development, DoD, 76-78 (directing all the "Star Wars" programs and developing systems for super-secret National Reconnaisance Office spy satellites). Deputy Director, Ballistic Systems, Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems, DoD, 75-76. Chief of Aeronautics, European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, London 71-74 (directing contracts and grants in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Asia). Lt. Col., USAF, ret. Flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. Taught at 4 universities. Served as Department Head and Assistant Dean. Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Cal Tech. Recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans For Peace, six Air Medals, the Republic Aviation Airpower Award, the Society of American Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice). Been on Larry King, Donohue, Firing Line, McNeil-Lehrer. Addressed Academies of Science of six nations, UN, Congressional caucuses, House of Lords.

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