AUSTIN, Texas -- Gosh, silly us, getting in a swivet over war and peace.
The president is on vacation!
He's giving interviews to Runner's World, not Meet the Press.
He and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn't even talk about Iraq during
their meeting at Crawford. It was all the media's fault. We were "churning,"
we were in "a frenzy." Heck, Mr. Bush himself has never even mentioned
war with Iraq, much less going it alone.
We don't have to worry, so party hearty, and try not to make a big deal
out of the fact that Mr. Bush's lawyers are now claiming he can launch an
attack on Iraq without congressional approval because the permission given by
Congress to his father in 1991 to wage war in the Persian Gulf is still in effect.
Since that's all cleared up, here are a few little nuggets you might like
to chew on:
Mr. Bush went to Pennsylvania to meet with the nine coal miners rescued earlier
this summer to congratulate them. He also cut the budget for the Mine Safety and
Health Administration by $4.7 million out of $118 million total: Enforcement was
cut, as were mine inspections for coal dust, which causes black lung disease.
Mr. Bush filled five of the top positions at MSHA with coal industry executives.
Earlier this month, the Associated Press used a computer analysis to dig
up some interesting news about congressional spending patterns. Since the Republicans
took over Congress in 1994, tens of billions of dollars have moved from Democratic
to GOP districts.
Last year, there was an average of $612 million more spending for congressional
districts represented by Republicans than by Democrats. AP also reports that when
Democrats last controlled the House and wrote the budget, the average Democratic
district got $35 million more than the average Republican district.
That's quite a shift, and the AP says the change was driven mostly by
Republican policies that moved spending from poor rural and urban areas to the
more affluent suburbs and "GOP-leaning farm country. ... In terms of services,
that translates into more business loans and farm subsidies, and fewer public
housing grants and food stamps."
Now one could take the attitude of House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who was
quoted by the AP on this subject as saying, "To the victor goes the spoils."
On the other hand, that means more government subsidies are going to people
who need them less.
The recently passed farm bill, a subject on which I find myself in complete
harmony with the National Review, weighed in at $190 billion, a grossly disproportionate
share going to corporate farmers: Ten percent of farmers will get 69 percent of
the subsidies, according to The New York Times.
President Bush signed the $190 billion horror and then made a great show,
at his public relations event in Waco, of vetoing $5 billion in what he deemed
was unnecessary spending in the homeland security bill.
The media have achieved such a perfect "he said/she said" knot
of confusion on the story of Mr. Bush and Harken Energy Corp., it would be a wonder
if the public ever gets any of it straight. Even though the Center for Public
Integrity has posted the relevant documents from Harken on its Web site, the news
has been buried under a scrum of pundits shouting "It's old news"
or "Is not, it's new news." All I can say is, if Slick Willie Clinton
had ever eeled out from under information like this, Rush Limbaugh would've
had a heart attack.
Just for the record, George W. Bush had not just one but four Harken stock
transactions worth more than $1 million during the time he was on the board. And
in each case he was months over deadline in reporting the matter to the Securities
and Exchange Commission.
Second, newly posted documents show that Mr. Bush, who claims he had no idea
Harken was in trouble when he dumped his stock in late June 1990, was in fact
warned twice: Harken's CEO sent him a memo on June 7 predicting that Harken
would run out of money before the end of the month and that it would then be in
violation of numerous debt agreements.
Even more egregious, Mr. Bush was clearly involved in the phony Aloha Petroleum
deal. Aloha was a Harken subsidiary that was sold to a partnership of Harken insiders
at an inflated price, a perfect little gem of an example of the kind of fake,
pump-the-bottom-line transaction later perfected by Enron. Mr. Bush's business
career is a small-scale model of exactly the corrupt corporate practices now under
fire.
In case you missed the theme here, it's hypocrisy.
Molly Ivins is a syndicated columnist.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun
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