Wednesday, March 21, 2001

George W. Bush is making a sharp right turn
(Right? He is already so far to the right he is going around in circles) GENE LYONS

"The business of America," Calvin Coolidge said, "is business." It's only in light of this immortal trope that the first two months of the George Bush II presidency make any political sense whatsoever.
    Having lost the popular vote by more than a half-million, and "won" an Electoral College majority only because the U.S. Supreme Court prevented a full count in Florida, Bush is acting as if he's been given a sweeping mandate to turn the nation sharply rightward. The "compassionate conservatism" of the campaign has yielded to a Bush White House atmosphere, one admiring ideologue recently told The New York Times, "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration."
    In effect, the United States government has been acquired by leveraged buyout. With the GOP narrowly in charge of all three branches of government and Democrats in seeming disarray, it's as if the nation were being run directly from corporate boardrooms.
    Over recent weeks, Republicans have eliminated workplace rules aimed at limiting repetitive stress injuries that were originally proposed by Bush I Labor Secretary Liddy Dole; passed tougher bankruptcy laws demanded by the friendly folks who peddle credit cards to teen-agers; and decided that carbon dioxide isn't a "greenhouse gas" after all. Assisted by timely new OPEC production quotas, the Bush administration has declared an "energy crisis," and is sure to call for loosening air quality standards and oil drilling restrictions from sea to shining sea. If Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney get their way, there'll be offshore rigs everyplace but Florida and Kennebunkport.
    Is it necessary to point out that United Parcel Service, which dropped more than a million bucks into GOP campaign coffers, found ergonomics standards particularly burdensome? That MBNA America, the nation's largest credit card company, also was the single largest contributor to the Bush presidential campaign? That coal mining interests donated more than $1.9 million during the 2000 election cycle, more than 75 percent of it to Republicans? That coal producers ponied up $324,000 in "soft money" to the Bush campaign and helped deliver West Virginia, a normally Democratic state, without which none of these things would be happening?
    Bush's abrupt reversal of a campaign promise on carbon dioxide emissions was most instructive. In a speech last Sept. 29, he had gone one better than Al Gore, whom his father had mocked as "Ozone Man" during the 1992 campaign. A born-again environmentalist, Bush II pledged to "establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." Gore had proposed voluntary CO reductions. Bush also claimed that Texas enforced mandatory limits, but nobody called him on it. After all, he was "a different kind of conservative." Read my lips, no new gases.
    CO is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, especially coal. Harmless to humans and animals, it's nevertheless one of the main culprits in global warming, about which environmental scientists around the world have reached near unanimity. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that Earth's temperature could increase up to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years if nothing is done, causing ecological, social and economic catastrophe on a vast scale.
    But since CO also stimulates plant growth, coal industry shills now style themselves (swear to God) the "Greening Earth Society" and argue there's no evidence to cause alarm. They're the climatological equivalent of tobacco company "scientists" who denied for decades that cigarettes cause heart disease and cancer.
    Of course, nobody really thinks George W. knows carbon dioxide from Shinola. He's also expressed doubts about evolution. He'd question gravity if an industry rep with a handful of electoral votes and a seven-figure campaign donation in his pocket told him it would help some blue-chip corporation's bottom line.
    In selling out the environment, Bush also undercut Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, both of whom understand the gravity of the issue.
    Whitman gave up the New Jersey governorship largely on the premise that Bush was serious about global warming. Only weeks ago, she assured leaders of the G-8 nations at the Environment Summit in Trieste, Italy, that the administration was committed to reductions.
    They cheered. If the United States, which has 4 percent of the world's population but burns 25 percent of its fossi fuels, won't do its part, there's little hope for international treaties like the one negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. The European Union has issued a statement expressing "deep concern" about Bush's broken promise.
    Bush isn't the first politician ever to dissemble to win an election, to let the next century worry about the next century or to reward a campaign contributor many times over. Even so, it was ironic to observe Washington pundits, still flushed and panting from the Thirty Days Hate against Bill Clinton, taken aback by the nonchalance with which Bush--much praised for his brisk, corporate-CEO efficiency--undercut his own cabinet and went back on his word. The awful Marc Rich pardon benefited one man; Bush's environmental sellout threatens generations yet unborn.
    As some of us argued at the time, Bush signaled a hard right turn when he picked Cheney as his running mate. How long before voters figure out that most of his campaign promises, from the size of his tax cut to his Social Security "reform," are written in sand of precisely the same consistency as his CO pledge?
    In a recent New York Times article, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich argues that business is far from monolithic. Even most corporate CEOs really don't want the country to go where Bush is taking it, but they'll line up to cash their individual IOUs anyway.
    Reich predicts that "perhaps as soon as the 2002 congressional elections . . . the public will be aghast at what is happening. The backlash against business may be thunderous."
    Maybe so. But right now, the administration is acting as if there isn't going to be another election.
   
    Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
    3/21/01

This article was published on Wednesday, March 21, 2001

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 21, 2001

Excellent article Cherri.

-- dudesy (dudesy@37.com), March 22, 2001.

Bush might be running this country into the ground, but at least he's not getting blowjobs in the Oval Office and lying about it!

Besides, Peggy Noonan said Bush was "incapable of lying," therefore he can't be lying.

-- (iBelieve@Everything.IRead), March 22, 2001.

Having lost the popular vote by more than a half-million, and "won" an Electoral College majority only because the U.S. Supreme Court prevented a full count in Florida

Wow Cherri. Are those grapes that sour?

How about the US Supreme court prevented the Florida Supreme court from concocting legislation and changing the rules after an election?

Remember me?

Jest a Dumb ol Pilot

-- Im (jestadumbol@pilot.com), March 22, 2001.

The US Supreme Court stole the election for Bush. Get your facts straight.

-- dudesy (dudesy@37.com), March 22, 2001.

Dudsey,

My facts are plenty straight there. Stole implies it belong to algore, which it never did. You may not agree wih the US Supreme court decision, but it was a better decision than the FL supreme court, with arbitrary deadlines and counting methods for "undervotes". Get over it. You lost. Support your president.

-- Im (jestadumbol@pilot.com), March 26, 2001.