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By Root 296 0

way in bell junior Bush would have been able to say, “OK, America, you’ve been drinking water without poison in it long enough. Time to go back to the good old days of sucking down that ol’ arsenic!”? Hell no! No one would have stood for it. And he would have known that. He wouldn’t even have tried to reverse things. But because Clinton waited until the last minute and never removed any of this crud from the water or the air, there was no political or popular support for the decision. So It was easy for Bush to do what he did. He figured, you’re not going to miss what you never had in the first place.

But, of course, Bush forgot one thing—most of us didn’t even know we were drinking 1942—level arsenic under Clinton. Thanks to W wanting to make a big deal of “reversing” Clinton on his first day in office, we, the public, suddenly learned that our water wasn’t safe. Now ask yourself this painful question: Since you never knew or made any noise about the high arsenic levels under Clinton, do you think Gore would have removed the arsenic from the water? Why would he do that? You, the people, never knew about it, never complained to the White House that you hate drinking all this arsenic—and the industries that are responsible for much of that arsenic are some of the same people who funded Gore’s campaign. I have looked through all of Gore’s campaign literature and position statements, and I have yet to find a single word about arsenic in the water.

Let’s be honest here: It’s only because of Bush and his idiot actions that we’re now going to get the arsenic reduced. The whole clamor put the issue in the public’s mind—and it hasn’t left. So now nineteen Republicans in Congress, feeling the political heat or sensing the PR opportunity, have joined the Democrats in fighting the arsenic—and we, the American people, will end up drinking cleaner water as a result. These nineteen Republicans, with the Democrats, passed a bill not only prohibiting Bush from reversing Clinton’s last-minute order but going beyond what Clinton had ordered and reducing the arsenic levels even further. That didn’t happen under Clinton, and—trust me—President Gore wouldn’t have raised the question. Sad to say, but it was having a prick, not a slick, in the White House that made this happen.

Another bad rap Bush got in his first months was his efforts to give our tax money to churches to do “charity work.” Oh, the hue and cry over that one! So here’s my question: Where were People for the American Way and other liberal groups in 1996, when that very language was included in Clinton’s welfare reform bill? Faithbased organizations have been receiving federal funds now for more than five years. Why all the sudden screaming about “separation of church and state,” when Clinton did what Bush only wants to do more of? Is it because we liked Clinton’s “faith” better? (Hey, who wouldn’t want to join a belief system that redefined words like is?)

And about that order Bush issued to ban money for abortions overseas: wrong again. Pro-choice Clinton, like the two presidents before him, had already signed an order prohibiting any American funds from paying for abortions in foreign countries. What Bush did was expand the order to cut off any monies to foreign birth control groups that offer abortion as an alternative. Worse, yes—but he only got away with it because our Democratic President had laid the groundwork in continuing the abortion funds cutoff, placing his “liberal” approval on a piece of the rightwing agenda. If you give the devil a bone, he doesn’t just go away—he wants the whole damn leg.

So spare me all the moaning about Bush the Lesser. Those who want to turn Bush into some sort of cartoon monster have an agenda—to keep most of us from seeing the beast they themselves have become. Of course they hate Ralph Nader. He’s a disquieting reminder of what could happen if we ever elect someone who will represent the bottom 90 percent in this country. Blame Nader, blame Bush, it’s all part of the same distraction—to keep you from focusing on one very important fact: