Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [125]
• The Christian right, which seems to be somewhat sex-obsessed, is running a campaign against condoms, including radio spots and disinformation saying condoms do not prevent the spread of AIDS. In December 2002 the Bush administration apparently signed on to that nutty notion. At an international conference in Bangkok, the U.S. delegation demanded the deletion of a reference to “consistent condom use” to fight AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.
• In January 2002 Bush invoked “security concerns” to outlaw union representation at United States attorneys offices and at four other agencies in the Justice Department. Federal law bans strikes by federal employees, but Bush still maintained he had issued the order “out of concern that union contracts could restrict the ability of workers in the Justice Department to protect Americans and national security.”
• In March 2003, on the first day of Gulf War II, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz ordered military-service chiefs to provide information that would help President Bush invoke national-security exemptions to environmental laws. Can you say, “Using national security for political purposes”?
• One of Bush’s earliest executive orders required federal contractors to post notices telling workers they do not have to join unions. It was overturned by a federal judge in January 2002.
• While playing golf in the summer of 2002, Bush said, “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.”
• Also that summer, he told Runner’s World magazine, “You tend to forget everything that’s going on in your mind. It’s sad that I can’t run longer. It’s one of the saddest things about the presidency.”
• As of September 3, 2002, Bush had spent 42 percent of his time at Camp David, Kennebunkport, or the Crawford ranch, according to the meticulous records of Mark Knoller of CBS News.
• In November 2002 the administration was upset with Al-Jazeera, the Arab television network, for having interviewed the noted racist David Duke. Newsweek reported, “An administration official said Al-Jazeera would be subject to the same kind of ‘message discipline’—reduced access for hostile coverage—that the White House uses to goad American media.”
The state of the union is that money talks and bullshit walks. Public policy is sold to the highest bidder. Less than one tenth of 1 percent of Americans gave 83 percent of all campaign contributions in the 2002 elections. The big donors are getting back billions in tax breaks, subsidies, and the right to exploit public land at ridiculously low prices. The corporations that paid zero taxes from 1996 to 1998 include AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan, Enron, General Electric, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Philip Morris. Those same companies gave $150.1 million to campaigns from 1991 to 2001. Public Campaign (www.publiccampaign.org) reports those same companies got $55 billion in tax breaks from 1996 to 1998 alone and perennial legislation to gut the alternative minimum tax. There has been a huge shift in the tax burden from corporations to ordinary citizens. Three times as much money now comes into the federal treasury from working people’s payroll taxes as from corporate tax payments.
Conservatives are fond of claiming that “rich people pay more taxes.” Actually, they don’t. The conservatives are counting only our increasingly unprogressive “progressive” income tax. The Consumer Expenditure Survey prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts all taxes—income, excise, sales, property, and payroll. The majority of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income tax. The poorest quintile has a cumulative tax rate of 18 percent; those are the people The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page (always to be distinguished from the excellent