Little love for Bush outside Qwest

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BY NATE JENKINS / Lincoln Journal Star

Had he not carried the sign he did, one might have pinned Ron Wieczorek as a cattle buyer who had mistaken Omaha's Qwest Center for an auction ring.

Wearing a Mitchell (S.D.) Livestock hat and a flannel shirt, the South Dakotan looked as radical as a bushel of corn. But both his sign, "Bush is the King of Babblin-On," and the literature he handed out, "Foot in the Door Facism," quickly blew any inadvertent cover as he stood near the corner of 10th and Capitol Avenue in downtown Omaha Friday morning as the sun came up.

"Rather than go to ballgames, I do this," said Wieczorek, who described himself as "a Republican with a small ‘r.'" He who drove to Lincoln from South Dakota with five others Wednesday night to protest the visit of President Bush, who spoke about his plan to reform Social Security before about 10,600 people at the Qwest Center in downtown Omaha Friday morning.

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Demonstrators protest against President Bush's policies outside the Qwest Center on Friday. (AP)

Demonstrators protest against President Bush's policies outside the Qwest Center on Friday. (AP)

"This matters," Wieczorek said. "This is a very decisive battle. This is a major changing point in history."

A crowd of roughly200 cordoned off by yellow police tape about 70 yards from the Qwest Center shared Wieczorek' thoughts, protesting the Bush reform plan the president described Friday as a phased-in approach to allowing people to invest social security payroll taxes into private retirement funds. Many forced to stand a distance from the Qwest Center, like Wieczorek, didn't fit the stereotype of a Bush protester. Business suits shared space with union leaders and the elderly with bead-wearing college kids. Also in attendance was a state senator, Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.

"This is important to be out here with folks," said the freshman senator and mother of two whose husband died 23 years ago in a car wreck. "Social Security was there for us, the stock market abandoned us," Howard said of her struggle to get by in those days as a single mom.

While some chanted anti-Bush messages to those walking inside to hear the president speak, many seemed more intent on railing against the Social Security plan and citing it as another sign of Bush's allegiance to big business. Security personnel in the area said there were no flare-ups or arrests in the protest zone. Several speakers, including Nebraska labor leader Ken Mass, mostly held the attention of protesters.

"Social Security works and we continue to strengthen it," said Mass, president of Nebraska AFL-CIO. Among the big winners of the Bush plan, said Mass, would be Wall Street and money managers.

In his speech, Bush argued that if nothing is changed more money will be flowing out of the Social Security fund than into it by 2018 because of longer life expectancies, increasing costs of benefits and an influx of retiring baby boomers. By 2027, Bush added, $200 billion more than what is expected in payroll taxes will be needed to keep the government's Social Security promises and by 2042 it will be "flat bust."

A Bush protester who had found his way into the Qwest Center to hear Bush speak responded to that predicition by yelling "That's bull…, you liar," the man said.

"We love free speech in America," Bush responded. The man volunteered to leave Qwest without being asked to when approached by security, according to Sgt. Rich McShane of the Douglas County Sheriff's Department. "He was very sheepish about the whole thing," McShane said.

McShane and security with Qwest said no arrests were made during the speech and nobody had to be removed.

While the crowd treated Bush warmly Friday and the large number of cameras appeared to indicate an interest in seeing the president as much as hearing his Social Security plan, some came with political positions somewhere between protesters like Wieczorek and adamant Bush supporters, yearning for more information to help make an important decision.

Before going inside to hear Bush, Rich Embree of Omaha said his sentiments on the Bush plan were 50 percent in favor, the other half against.

"I squandered away the first 17 years of my working life and I want to see what his plan will do for me," Embree said.

Reach Nate Jenkins at 473-7223 or njenkins@journalstar.com