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Bush gets an
'F' on this midterm exam
By Mark Eddy
Special to The Denver Post
If you believe the United States is better off today than it was
before the Supreme Court declared George Bush president, don't read
"Bushwhacked."
If you believe the public education system is in better shape today
than it was before Bush became president, don't read "Bushwhacked."
If you believe American workers are better off today than before
Bush became president, that corporations are being held accountable
for wrongdoing, that our food supply is safer and our grandchildren
will be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water, then don't
read "Bushwhacked."
According to authors Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, the America you
see is not the one most of us are living in.
In "Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America," Ivins and
Dubose take the reader on a tour of the workplaces of America and use
the stories of real people to make their points.
And the picture they paint is not pretty.
From workers at catfish farms in the Mississippi Delta,
schoolchildren in Houston and residents near the Shattuck radioactive
waste dump in Denver, working mothers in Philadelphia and consumers
who count on the government to keep their food safe, the authors say,
people are suffering as a direct result of Bush's policies.
But the authors' subjects aren't whiners. They go about their jobs
with dignity, making do the best they can. The sad thing, Ivins and
Dubose point out, is they don't expect any better out of their
government.
Ivins, a nationally syndicated political columnist and three-time
Pulitzer Prize finalist based in Texas, previously collaborated with
Dubose on "Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W.
Bush."
The book is informative as well as entertaining - Ivins and Dubose
write with the biting wit that made their first book (and her columns)
entertaining as well as informative. The truth is you need some humor
interspersed with all the bad news.
Make no mistake; these veteran Bush watchers don't like the man.
"Our biggest problem with the Bush Administration is that for us
it's dej vu all over again," they write in the forward of
"Bushwhacked." "We spent six years watching the man as governor of
Texas ... We were tempted to begin this book by observing, "If y'all
had've read the first book, we wouldn't have had to write this one."'
"Bushwhacked" opens with a fascinating tale of how Bush made nearly
$1 million on questionable business deals while he was on the board of
directors of Harkin Energy Corporation.
The company was a mini-Enron and the short story is that Bush used
low-interest loans from Harkin to buy company stock (a practice he
denounced as president), dumped $848,000 on an insider trade, didn't
report it to shareholders or the Securities and Exchange Commission
(another practice he later denounced as president) and approved
business deals that led to SEC investigations.
In 1990, Bush left the oil business after clearing nearly $1
million in cash while losing more than $3 million of other people's
money.
Bush has never had the best interests of the general public, Ivins
and Dubose contend.
One of Bush's first acts as president was to put the kibosh on a
set of rules that would have protected workers from repetitive strain
injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. In one fell swoop Bush wiped
out rules that were written after 12 years of hearings, public comment
and legal wrangling. During the process everyone, small business, big
business, union members, injured workers, doctors, anyone who wanted
to participate could and did.
The rules would have protected workers such as Sherry Durst, who
works in a Mississippi catfish factory and routinely skins between
8,000 and 11,000 catfish every day. Durst's job is to shove dead fish
against spinning blades that rip the skin off, flip the carcass, do
the other side and send it along. She's required to skin a minimum of
12 fish a minute. In an eight-hour workday she gets two 15-minute
breaks, a half-hour lunch break and can't leave the line to go to the
restroom without permission from a supervisor. For this she makes $240
a week.
The repetition of the work is brutal. Many of those who work on the
line have knuckles knotted and twisted with arthritis. A doctor in the
area said it's not uncommon for workers in their mid-20s to have
arthritis commonly found in people in their 60s.
The ergonomic rules would have provided workplace protections for
Durst and her co-workers. Bush killed them and due to a legal
provision, they won't be back anytime soon.
"Bushwhacked" also details the battle Deb Sanchez and her neighbors
in South Denver fought with the Environmental Protection Agency over
contaminated soil left in their neighborhood at the Shattuck Superfund
site.
The soil was laced with radium and other contaminants, the
byproduct of decades of manufacturing. Residents near the site were
told by the EPA that the soil was indeed a danger and would be dug up
and hauled to a licensed dump.
But the EPA, without notifying the neighbors, decided to mix the
soil with concrete and fly ash and build a 6-acre monolith 10 feet
high.
Sanchez and the others battled the EPA for 10 years in a seemingly
vain effort to have the monolith removed. Only when EPA Ombudsman Bob
Martin stepped in did Sanchez and the others start to see results.
With Martin, who as ombudsman regularly sided with residents in fights
against the EPA, they forced the EPA to break up the monolith and haul
it away (a process that is going on).
They would have been lost without Martin, who had long been a thorn
in the side of EPA administrators appointed by the elder George Bush
and Bill Clinton.
Shattuck proved to be Martin's last victory. Although a Government
Accounting Office report recommended more independence for the
ombudsman, Bush appointee Christie Todd Whitman moved oversite of
Martin's office into the EPA, gutted his budget and handcuffed his
only investigator.
When Martin was out of town, Whitman took more than 100 boxes of
case files out of his offices, removed the computers and phones and
changed the locks. Martin resigned in protest.
In George Bush's America, according to Ivins and Dubose, people
like Deb Sanchez don't have a voice at the EPA.
If Bush was bad for Texas, the authors say, "the bad news for you
is, to borrow a line from a Texas boogie band, 'We're bad, we're
nationwide."'
"The worst public policy created in Texas has gone national."
Mark Eddy, a former Denver Post reporter, is a Denver-based
freelance writer and communications consultant.
BUSHWHACKED
Life in George W. Bush's America
By Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
Random House, 346 pages, $24.95 |
