“Heckuva Job” Bush: Bankrupt In Word, Thought, And Deed

Two days ago, almost 80 percent of the American people heaved a “good riddance!” sigh as George W. Bush flew back to his newly acquired home in a wealthy Dallas suburb dominated by milli-billionaire Texas friends. Lurch even got a terrific deal on his $2.1 million home, a result of his failure to rein in the banking and mortgage meltdown. Pretending to be Billy Graham-religious and a brush-cutting ranch worker was over.

Perhaps, like Walter Mitty, he morphed into Ronald Reagan when he was on the Crawford stage. Did anyone ever see him on a horse? I wonder how many times he will return to the political-prop ranch so he can be a “windshield cowboy” and check on his “herd” that were so shielded from paparazzi cameras.

He told reporters in 2001: “It’ll be the house where I live in for the rest of my life.” And some day pigs will fly. I never detected a cow, horse, or pig (the “ranch” was actually a former pig farm) while watching press conferences emanate from a number of “ranchy” vantage points. I did observe two dogs on occasion but they didn’t look like cattle dogs to me. I recall a few small hay bales.

“Dubya” or “Shrub”—as Texas writer Mollie Ivins loved to call him—could use a pretty fakey Texas drawl when politics demanded some cornpone, but I still remember when he thought the mike was off at a political rally, and he spotted New York Times columnist and Bush critic Paul Krugman in the audience. He leaned over to Dick Cheney, and in his best Andover Prep-Yale-Harvard-Upper-Crust Northeastern accent said: “There’s that son-of-a-bitch from the NY Times!”

In 2008 Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics for analyzing and reporting on world economic problems. Bush should have read more of him, being an MBA from Harvard Business School and all that.

An Indictment Of Eight Years Of Incompetence

As one sign of how the Bush-Cheney administration failed the lower and middle classes of this country, the North Hill School District near Cincinnati announced before the 2008 Christmas break that because so many parents had lost their jobs, the school board had decided to keep the school cafeterias open during the break so the kids could have a hot meal.

At the beginning of the Bush presidency only one in ten students in the district were economically disadvantaged. At the end at least two-thirds of the students have sunk to that level.
Statistics indicate that in 2007 over 37 million Americans were living in poverty and making less than $21,200 for a family of four. The figures for 2008 will be much worse. Almost two million have lost their jobs. Between August of 2007 and August of 2008, 2.6 million more people, and one in five American kids, are on food stamps.

The Department of Agriculture’s annual report on “food security” estimated that at least 36.2 million were “food insecure.” In other words, these people did not have the resources to buy enough food. We have to remember that only 40 percent of the unemployed now receive unemployment benefits, leaving over half to fend for themselves in a poor economy.

Perhaps we need to remember that the Bush-Cheney tax cuts, often called the Paris Hilton Relief Act by detractors, is listed by the Congressional Budget Office as the main cause of our current $1.2 trillion deficit. The costs of our two wars are secondary, although substantial.

Perhaps Lurch could explain why Paris, already worth $300 million, needed another tax cut. How many jobs did she create? Before all the bailouts, Paris was getting over $250,000 plus expenses for celebrity appearances at business functions across the country. But of course that’s just carrying-around lunch money for the rich. And it shows the intellectual and moral poverty of our business community.

Harper’s Retrospective Of The Bush Era

Each Harper’s magazine has a one-page summary of facts gleaned from multiple sources called the “Harper’s Index.” In the January 2009 issue Harper’s went to two full pages and concentrated on the eight years of the Bush administration. The “facts” are sometimes trivial, sometimes maddening, sometimes humorous, but always thought-provoking.

** Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98.

Here are two examples: Stephen Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and so-called protector of the Clean Air Act, defied even the Supreme Court of the United States when it decided that the EPA could and should regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks.

A proposal to grant California a routine waiver to establish state standards on cars and trucks was rejected by Johnson over the objections of many professional scientists in the EPA. He was ordered by Cheney to reject the waiver, although both state and federal experts said it was necessary. It’s funny that a “conservative” like Cheney never wanted to conserve any natural resource as long as his oil crowd could make money from them.

Lurch’s first director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was John Henslaw, a Monsanto industrial hygienist who shocked the OSHA professional staff when he announced that employers were their customers, not the nation’s workers! He immediately started to withdraw 26 draft regulations that had been worked on for years during the Clinton administration, including rules limiting workplace exposure to air contaminants, highly hazardous chemicals, and shipyard and scaffolding hazards.

But his major effort was directed at removing a proposed regulation that would curtail ergonomic (body positioning) problems that caused 60 percent of workplace injuries. Henslaw was loved by business CEOs and hated by the workers he was supposed to protect from injury.

In 2006 Henslaw was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke, Jr., a Bush crony/fund-raiser from South Carolina who had spent much of his lawyer life defending businesses cited by OSHA for safety and health violations! Foulkes was a sleeper on the job—literally. He fell asleep at meetings and conferences—even during award ceremonies and while waiting to give speeches. At least “Brownie” of FEMA-Katrina fame wanted to look nice for the TV cameras.

“Washington Will Bail Out Those Who Shower Before Work, But Not Those Who Shower Afterwards”

This very prophetic statement was made by Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers Union. Remember when the bankers and stock company CEOs went before Congress and the Treasury Department, pleading for money?

The very ones who caused a mortgage meltdown, a 40 percent drop in the stock market, and the forces that started a worldwide depression were asked basically two questions: (1) What’s your address so we can send you a check? (2) How much do you want? And there went checks and promises for delivery of 700 billion taxpayer dollars.

These guys never had to shower after “work.” Speculating is not physical work. So, oil hit $140 a barrel? For each barrel used a day, 27 barrels were bought and sold! No wonder the stock market lost $7 trillion in value while Lurch was “watching.”

The autoworkers and their CEOs then appeared before Congress and asked for about $14 billion to keep the auto companies going for three months and possibly save about three million jobs just in this country. These autoworkers really needed to shower after real work. But the banker CEOs with their $50 million to $100 million annual salaries contacted their congressional representatives and told them to vote against the autoworkers because they made too much money at General Motors at $73 an hour.

This was a lie kept in the headlines by the right-wing press. Actually, Big Three workers average about $50 an hour in salary and benefits while their much-younger counterparts at Toyota and Honda plants average about $45. Of course the Senate Republicans voted against the union workers to kill off that snake.

They said it was tossing good money after bad—as if tossing millions to the CEOs of AIG, J. P. Morgan, CitiGroup, Goldman Sachs, and other Wall Street banks would guarantee recovery from their excesses in the first place. These bankers and senators should get together like Roman senators and have a 24-hour shower orgy just to see if they can remove the stains.

The Iraqi And Afghanistan Albatross Around Lurch’s Neck Will Always Have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A few more notable facts from the Harper’s Index:

**Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on info from a single defector: 100.

**Number of times the above defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0.

**Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4.

**Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35.

**Number of U.S. war veterans who have been denied VA health care since 2003: 452,677.

The Bush-Cheney co-presidency also brought us Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, the abolition of civil and constitutional rights, the wire-tapping of citizens, and our fears of “the smoking gun” and the “mushroom cloud.”

At the start of the war, Dick Cheney said our troops “will be greeted as liberators. The Iraqis will throw flowers.” Those “liberated” threw grenades instead. After five years of war, Iraqis threw shoes at George Bush in Baghdad to demonstrate their disgust and contempt for him and his war.

Both of them should be charged with violating the Geneva Convention and other treaties on torture. But I will settle for a “good riddance!” waterboarding on the steps of the Dallas and Casper, WY courthouses for both. Lurch should wear his “Mission Accomplished” flight suit, and Cheney should be papered over with his five military service deferments to mark the occasion.