Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [64]
But the business community complained. They said, “No way are all these schmucks worth nearly $4 million!” So, the Bush EPA came up with a neat little math trick: They said, okay, in order to reduce your costs and your efforts to clean up your pollution, we’ll now say that anyone over seventy is only worth $2.3 million. After all, they’re almost finished anyway, and they aren’t producing anything for you anymore, so their lives just aren’t worth as much.
That’s when critics coined the policy the “Senior Death Discount.” The elderly protested, and EPA Director Christie Whitman claimed the agency would stop using the calculation. And then she resigned.
So, you slaved your life away, you worked long hours, you gave everything you had to help your company earn record profits. When you went into the voting booth you voted for their Republican (and Democratic) candidates just like they asked you to—and after you retired, this is the thanks you got. A senior discount—not just at the movies or at McDonald’s, but on your very life.
Look, I don’t know how to put it any gentler than to say that these bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control. That is what democracy is supposed to be about—we, the people, in fucking charge. What happened to us? Perhaps we never were really in charge and those words just sounded good at Independence Hall on that sweltering day in 1776. Maybe if the Founding Fathers had air conditioning and a corporate jet they never would have written such a foolish thing. But they did, and that’s what we’re left to work with.
So how did we let the bad people win out, the ones who would’ve been blowing George III back then if they had half a chance? When are we going to get this country and its economy in our hands, electing representatives who will split the pie fairly and see that no one gets more than their fair share?
Instead, what we have are sad realities like this one: the two bosom buddies, George W. Bush (CEO of America), and Kenneth Lay (Chairman of Enron, the seventh largest company in the U.S.). Before its collapse, Houston-based Enron was raking in a monstrous $100 billion a year, mostly by trading contracts for commodities including oil, gas and electricity around the world. The increasingly deregulated energy market was a gold mine for the company, which was known for aggressive deal-making.
Lay, affectionately nicknamed “Kenny Boy” by Bush, was never shy about public displays of friendship. Enron donated $736,800 to Bush from 1993 on. Between 1999 and 2001, CEO Lay raised $100,000 for his pal, and personally contributed $283,000 to the Republican National Committee. Lay also graciously gave candidate Bush use of the Enron corporate jet during the presidential campaign so he could fly his family around the country and talk about his plan to “restore dignity to the White House.”
This friendship was truly a two-way street. Bush interrupted an important campaign trip in April 2000 to fly back to Houston to watch Lay throw out the first pitch at the Astros opening day game at the new Enron Field. Who said men aren’t sentimental?
After Bush became president, he invited Lay to come to Washington to personally conduct the interviews of people who would serve in the Bush administration, primarily for high-level positions in the Energy Department—the very regulatory agency overseeing Enron.
Harvey Pitt—the chairman of the Securities