Politics in America

Democracy is a system under which the people get the government they deserve. That is not entirely true. The people have to know what they have got, and that information is being withheld.

So far this year we have the so-called Downing Street Memo that said that Mr. Bush was determined to go to war and was fixing intelligence reports to support the decision. Thus, we have the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld telling the world he knew where Saddam Husssein's weapons of mass destruction were while the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, wanted to make sure the smoking gun did not turn into a mushroom cloud. The President himself was telling us that there was a link between the extremely worldly Saddam Hussein and the ultra religious al-Qaeda, and that Hussein could send chemical and biological weapons against Israel in ten minutes of the decision being made. Not only were none of these things true, but the nation's intelligence apparatus told the administration that they weren't true before the administration starting saying them.

This, of course, is not the only instance in which the facts have been fixed to support President Bush's wishes. Two weeks ago we learned that Philip A. Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council of Environmental Quality, edited, as in completely changed, the meaning of several reports on climate change so they comported with the beliefs of Mr. Lee Raymond, chairman of the ExxonMobil board of directors. When the news got out, Mr. Cooney took a job with, wait for it, ExxonMobil. Not since Frank Perdu walked onto the floor of the Texas Legislature and starting out $10,000 campaign contributions to the people that voted for his issue has there been a more blatant case of bought and paid for public policy.

Then, last week, the Bush administration got its chance to repay the ranchers for their support. Another White House editor changed a report on the environmental impact of grazing over 160 million acres of public land to the short-term benefit of the ranchers. What the ranchers, and those of us who eat beef, will do when the topsoil that supports the grass blows off into the Gulf of Mexico is unexplained. Who cares? By the time that happens, Mr. Bush will be out of office.

Today, we find out that the Justice Department threatened to remove one of its witnesses unless he eased up on Big Tobacco. Prof. Max H. Bazerman told the Washington Post that unless he testified that appointing a monitor to consider removing senior management would likely be inappropriate under certain circumstances, he would not be called to testify.

At the same time, the Justice Department dropped the amount it wanted the tobacco industry to pay for the smoking cessation programs from 130 billion to 10 billion.

Then, there are the Bush appointments. Mr. Bush does not like regulations. They hinder the powerful and only protect those who cannot protect themselves. His way of dealing with regulatory organizations is to gut them by appointing completely inappropriate people. Consider Harvey Pitt, his first appointment to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Pitt had to leave when he was found to have ex parte meetings with his former law clients who had cases before the commission. Now, Mr. Bush wants to appoint Rep. Chris Cox (R. Orange County, CA) whose contributions to orderly markets so far include a measure to make it harder for screwed investors to sue the people who screwed them, the directors, lawyers and accountants of public companies. He also seems to have been involved and to have profited from a securities fraud scam involving the sale of nonexistent mutual funds. Just the guy you want as the investors advocate.

Then there is Steve Johnson, the new EPA administrator. Mr. Johnson, a biologist who has spent most of his career at EPA in the pesticide office, thought it was a great idea to pay poor people to spray pesticides on their kids so the EPA could find out what happened to them. This was a project funded at least in part by the people who make the pesticides. Mr. Johnson got through the Senate confirmation only after he agreed to stop the project which enjoyed the acronym of CHEERS.

What can be said about John Bolton, Mr. Bush's favorite for UN Ambassador? He has the personality of a sneaky dog. Licks the hand of those who can't hurt him and bites the hell out of those who can't defend themselves. He, in keeping with the Bush tradition, also likes to falsify records. Mr. Bolton was opposed to Iraq's joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and had the person responsible for the program fired ebcause the OPWC would show that Iraq did not have the weapons the administration said they did.


BLOG today by "Tom in Dallas"....