Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [1]
After more than two years of George W. Bush’s administration, it is becoming clearer that we are looking at people with an agenda driven by ideology. They believe the free market can solve all problems, that government is generally bad, that we should privatize everything we possibly can, that there is no such thing as global warming, that the environment is unimportant, and that worker safety will be protected by benign employers. We have seen a serious degradation of civil liberties matched by an equally remarkable increase in property rights. And in the middle of all this came that tragic spanner-in-the-works, September 11.
All this abstract, ideological, the-free-market-is-God, Ayn Rand piffle is doing cruel things to real people. This book is about them.
We are, as always, optimistic to the point of idiocy, and although not much given to Simple Solutions, we consider public campaign financing the necessary first step, the sine qua non, as they rarely say in Lubbock, for fixing this deal.
Our biggest problem with the Bush administration is that for us it’s déjà vu all over again. We spent six years watching the man as governor of Texas, the basis for our 1999 book, Shrub. We were tempted to begin this book by observing, “If y’all had’ve read the first book, we wouldn’t’ve had to write this one.” Cooler heads prevailed.
In Texas we have been dealing with postpartum blues since George W. left for Washington. He left us with tax breaks for the rich that make it impossible for government to provide basic services for working people. With bills written by energy lobbyists working the cash-and-carry model of government perfected here in Texas. He eliminated the most basic workplace protections. Those of us who knew the president when he was governor of a low-tax, low-service, no-regulation state are very seriously not amazed by what he has done in Washington.
Terry Allen, a great songwriter out of Lubbock, penned one called “Lubbock on Everything.” Kind of feels to us like the Bush years are “Texas on Everything.”
Texas has a lot of things suitable for export. The songs of the Flatlanders or the Dixie Chicks come to mind; ruby-red grapefruit from the Rio Grande Valley, boots from El Paso, sweet crude from Odessa, and brown shrimp from Corpus Christi. But public policy stamped MADE IN TEXAS is like Hungarian wine—it does not travel well. In fact, it ought to be embargoed. Very few laws passed east of the Sabine or south of the Red River are safe for national consumption.
As president, Bush had his first big legislative victory in a tax cut that turned a $127 billion surplus into a $288 billion deficit. Been there. As governor, Bush inherited a $6 billion surplus, pushed through two major tax breaks for property owners, and promised they would “grow the economy” so much the state would never even miss the money. Two years after he left we’re looking at a $10 billion deficit, and rising.
Pay-to-play energy policy. Done that. When Bush’s own appointees to our state environmental-protection agency warned that the public was demanding a cleanup of the most contaminated air in the country, Governor Bush secretly turned the job over to the presidents of the Marathon and Exxon oil companies. Every jot and tittle of the governor’s 1999 bill to “clean up refineries” was written by an oil-company lobbyist. Only under the threat of a lawsuit did Texans find out who wrote the law that “encouraged” polluters to “volunteer” to reduce emissions. (Bush had two voluntary emissions-control programs here in Texas. One involved polluting industries. The other was directed at adolescent males, who were encouraged to “try abstinence.” Only 3 of our 8,645 most obnoxiously polluting refineries actually volunteered to cut back on their toxic emissions. Numbers on teenage boys are not yet in.) No one in Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio was shocked to see Vice President Cheney turn the nation’s energy policy over to the oil companies and then refuse to turn over the records