Albany, NY May 6, 2000

We meet here in the midst of the greatest economic expansion this nation has ever seen. The country is awash in wealth. This should be the golden age of prosperity. And yet, that’s not how it is.

When I entered the work force in the 1950s, I supported my family with one job. We all did. If a wife worked, it was because she wanted to, not because she had to. Today, how many young people — even college graduates — can do that? My kids can’t. Today, both parents have to work, and at least one of them has to have two jobs. Family income today is about what it was in the 1950s. But then it represented one wage earner, one job, and 40 hours a week. Today it represents two wage earners, three jobs, and about 150 hours a week. Nobody is home with the kids. They learn their values from the television set or video games. Family meals are rare. Commutes are long. Weekends are short. Quality of life is shot to hell.

Why is that? Are we that much less productive than we were in the 50s? Of course not! With computers and technology, we’re far more productive. The average worker creates $52 of new wealth every hour. Yet his takehome pay is only $8. What’s going on? Well, the government takes about $2 in taxes. But that leaves $42 unaccounted for. Where does it go? The corporations take it for overhead and profit, including CEO salaries. The corporations we work for tax us 20 times as much as the government does! In the 50s, the ratio of CEO salary to that of the worker on the shop floor was about 20 to 1. Today it is nearly 500 to 1. And that’s for American workers. If you include foreign workers, the sky’s the limit. A Disney worker in the Dominican Republic would have to work 360 years to make as much as Disney chairman Michael Eisner pays himself in one hour! And that obscene compensation package is a tax-deductible expense for the Disney Corporation. We taxpayers are subsidizing Eisner’s salary. Well, I say we don’t have to. As president, I would tell these corporations, "This is a free country. You can pay your executives whatever you want. But we don’t have to give you a tax deduction for it. From now on the corporate deduction for executive compensation is capped at 20 times the salary of your lowest-paid worker." You’d be amazed how fast they’d raise the salary of their workers. Because every time they gave their workers another buck an hour, they could pay themselves another twenty.

This is just one of many ways in which we can attack the horrendous gap between the rich and poor in this country. The United States is now number one in the industrialized world: Number one in the gap between the rich and the poor, number one in deaths by gunfire, number one in teen pregnancy, number one in poverty among the elderly, number one in citizens without health coverage, number one in child poverty, number one in homeless veterans, number one in citizens incarcerated in what is now our fastest-growing industry — locking people up. At the same time we are by far number one in spending for useless cold war weapons. We now have a trillion dollars in new weapons on the books for corporate wars, while over thirteen thousand of our soldiers are on food stamps and thousands of ships, planes, tanks, and trucks sit idle for lack of spare parts. It’s time for our priorities to change. Almost all these problems stem from the same cause — poverty; and it’s totally unnecessary. There is so much wealth that there is absolutely no reason why every person who wants to work can’t have a job at a guaranteed living wage. It’s time!

But this is not going to happen as long as our political system is dominated by the billionaires and their multinational corporations and banks. I know how the global robber barons of the new world order elite are stealing American workers blind. And I know how to fix it. The Republicans and Democrats can’t ... or won’t. They are bought and paid for — wholly owned subsidiaries of the Trilateral Commission, the G-8, the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization. Through the Republocrat parties, the world’s billionaires direct U.S. policy for their own personal profit.

This has included a series of agreements (NAFTA & GATT) falsely portrayed as supporting free trade, but in reality promoting free investment, overturning U.S. laws, and putting American workers in competition with those in the Third World. We have also been made to compete with a permanent pool of unemployed in our own country, a constant source of scabs and replacement workers. As president, I will be satisfied with nothing less than full employment and the repeal of the Taft-Hartley law. It’s time!

Domination of politics by the billionaires has also resulted in a series of wars, from Vietnam to Kosovo — 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. 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. We must sever the connection between big money and political power. That’s why I’m running 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 44 years. One thing I have never ever been is a politician — and I don’t intend to become one. Heck, I’m not even a lawyer. (I hope you won’t hold that against me!)

I want to go to Washington to restore power to the people. Once that’s done, I’ll go back to being a part-time rocket scientist, a part-time bishop, and a full-time troublemaker.

Once the people are in control, all sorts of things become possible. No longer forced to compete with Chinese slave labor, American workers can support their families with one job, not three. The unfair trade policies of NAFTA and GATT must be abolished. And if I am elected, they will be! I will tell those companies that moved to Mexico, "If you don’t give your workers the same protections for their health, their safety, their environment, and their rights to organize that we demand for workers in the United States, then you can’t import your junk into this country. And one more thing. You can use offshore suppliers, offshore labor, offshore bank accounts, and paper headquarters in Switzerland to escape US laws, but if you want to sell your widgets at Wal-Mart, you’re going to pay your fair share of taxes." No more corporate welfare and no free ride for the giant transnationals. It’s time!

With the people in control, every American can have good health care, run not by HMOs or insurance companies or the government, but by their doctor. The Republicans ignore the health care crisis. And the Democrats argue about who has the better band-aid for the system. What the system needs is radical surgery. About half of every healthcare dollar goes to the insurance companies for overhead and profit. It’s time to kick the bloodsucking insurance companies out of the health care business, break the stranglehold of the for-profit hospital conglomerates and HMOs, and finally join the rest of the civilized world with a doctor-run single-payer national health system. It’s time!

With the people in control, we can reform the tax system to take the burden off workers and small businesses and make the superwealthy pay their way. Which brings us to Social Security. The way to protect it is not to gamble with it by privatizing it, but to bring more money into it. That can be done by removing the cap on earnings subject to FICA. Make it a flat tax. That will bring in so much money you can replace the ceiling with a floor. Nobody would have to pay social security taxes on the first $40,000 of wages, but they’d get credit as if they had. In addition, retirement benefits can be significantly increased. The objective is retirement with security and dignity. Our workers deserve nothing less. I think it’s time!

Most importantly, with the people in control, Americans can be freed of the threat of nuclear terrorism. This is by far the biggest threat we face today. Not a single weapon in our vast arsenal can protect us from a terrorist attack. Some people, including the other presidential candidates, 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. 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, traceable means of delivery. 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.

The other candidates don’t have a clue what to do about this. Their proposals would only make things worse. They don’t understand the nature of the threat. You see, we are the target of terrorists because our government is feared and hated. It is hated because it 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 time and time again in Central America. As Clinton found out, it did it in Greece decades ago, and the people still remember. More recently, our government has been responsible for the deaths of half a million children in Iraq and for the rape of Yugoslavia in a war that had nothing to do with ethnic cleansing. It had to do with money and an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the world’s richest mine of rare metals. It’s always about money. We love our country, but fear our government. Well, so do people around the world, and for good reason. Some, in their fear, fail to distinguish between the US government and the American people. We may sometimes have a bad government, but we’re a very good people. We need a government that reflects the values and goodness of 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. We need a government run by and for the benefit of the workers of America.

Our values and goodness are not reflected by 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. It’s time to end the embargo of Cuba and put principle before profit in our dealings with China.

Finally, our values and goodness are not reflected by — and we will no longer accept — a government which sends our sons and daughters around the world to kill the sons and daughters of working people in other countries. The government wants our children to kill Arabs so the oil companies can sell the oil under their sand, making profits for themselves and making us the target of terrorists. I say, "No. I gave you 22 years. You’re not getting my children." No more Iraqs. No more Kosovos. No more El Salvadors. These are not isolated incidents of stupidity. They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism. It endangers our national security. And it must stop.

As President, I will use the men and women in our armed forces to protect our borders, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon. This is not isolationism, it is common sense, it is in the interest of our people, and it is obeying our Constitution for a change.

We must build an America at peace with the world and with its own people ... an America that seeks not to be king of the hill nor subservient to the World Trade Organization, but to be a responsible sovereign member of the family of nations ... an America that is free of the threat of nuclear terrorism because it is no longer feared and hated ... an America that leads the world — not just 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. That’s the kind of America I want to build, and that’s why I want to be the first Labor President of the United States. Thank you, and God bless you!

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Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He has been Vice President, Space Communications Company; Manager, Advanced Space Programs, General Dynamics; Director, Advanced Space Programs Development (DoD); Deputy Director, Ballistic Systems; Chief of Aeronautics, European Office of Aerospace Research and Development; Department Head & Asst Dean, Air Force Institute of Technology. He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. His PhD is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Cal Tech. He has chaired 8 major international conferences and has addressed the Academies of Science of 6 nations, the UN, and the House of Lords.

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