The Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s report exploded in the media this week. The verdict? One of the major culprits is runaway cost-cutting; cut costs and compromise safety. Who suffers? The families of a few astronauts. Big deal; how many votes do they control anyway? The president makes a pretty speech about the brave heroes who perished in the Columbia disaster and goes blithely on his way. Heroes! Brave Americans! Their names will go down in history! Okay; name one.

Sound familiar? Try to rebuild Iraq on the cheap and who suffers? The families of a few Americans. (Not to mention the families of lots and lots of Iraqis.) Heroes! Brave Americans! Their names will go down in history! Okay; name one.

Starve the state universities, raise the tuition and fees. Who suffers? The state governors, forced to choose among homeless programs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, roads, bridges, state police, prisons, subsidies to public school districts, transportation, salaries for state employees, state medical services, as well as institutions of higher learning, find themselves dividing a pie that is shrinking precipitously. President George W. Bush says that he wants to give the states more in block grants even as his Republican Congress cuts everything from Headstart to funds for environmental clean-up.

Here in Rhode Island, our Republican governor’s solution has been to pit state employees against “regular” citizens by comparing the hard-earned salaries and benefits of state employees with those in the private sector, vowing to force a give-back of salaries or to make us pay for more of our health insurance. “The party’s over,” declared one of his top aides. A former businessman who ran for governor because, he said, he wanted something interesting to do in his retirement, he shares Bush’s determination to cut taxes for his wealthy friends. Can Bush name even one person whose dream of going to college was erased by his administration’s fiscal policies?

How can we expect a man who was born with a silver foot in his mouth, as former Texas governor Ann Richards once said of President Bush I, to understand? Can a man who went to the best schools and the most exclusive universities, understand the mission of state universities? Can he comprehend the need to build a middle class? Can he empathize with the laid-off fisherman attending night classes as a way of retraining for a new career; with a single mother trying to get a B.A. so she can make a better life for her kids; or with a student of color whose parents are laborers, who wants to be the first in her family to graduate from college? Does President Bush have the capacity to understand these things? So far, he has not shown any signs of doing so. Even if he cannot sympathize with the plights of these individuals, one would think that he would consider the impact on American society as a whole. Nobody wins when people cannot afford to go to college. Does he realize that this is the wealthiest country in the history of the world?

Homeless or unemployed people do not pay taxes. Underemployed people tend to be frugal; they rent a movie ($3) instead of going out to the movies ($8). They eat in MacDonald’s instead of higher-priced eateries. They buy their clothes at the Salvation Army or K-Mart instead of the high-priced stores that fill our malls.

The plain fact of the matter is that our schools, universities, and other public institutions are going to hell while Bush finds new ways to cancel his cronies’ fiscal contributions to public life. Senator Walter Mondale lost the 1980 election, in part, because he told the American people that he was not going to sugarcoat it; he would raise taxes. Reagan won, crippled the American social system by destroying legal aid, emptying the mental institutions, spending us into a blinding deficit by spending a fortune on weapons of mass destruction and the development of Star Wars weapons. Bush I followed in his wake declaring that we should read his lips: No New Taxes. Eventually, he had to break his promise but it took the president who defeated him, Bill Clinton, to bring the budget under control. I can’t imagine who will be able to bring Bush II’s deficits under control.

Let me tell you what it’s like to live in a country with nominal taxes or no taxes. In Guatemala, the Fire Department sets up roadblocks on the roads out of the city so it can solicit funds to run the fire department. The bribes that will get you anything from a letting you bring a watermelon over the border from El Salvador to a train on a “full” train, must be paid because the government cannot afford to pay its employees properly. Buses transporting people from Mexico through Guatemala are often stopped and robbed: people are relieved not only of their jewelry but of their shoes! Wealthy people live behind high walls topped with barbed wire or broken glass. They have their own retinue of armed guards. Their children are driven to school with armed guards and businessmen are driven to their appointed rounds by armed guards because kidnapping is common.

In Colombia, almost anything can get a person with money kidnapped, and college professors are gunned down on the stairs of their universities. As the niece of a Guatemalan college professor who was kidnapped and nearly killed, I can tell you, Guatemalan college professors do not have the income to hire their own armed guards.

The archeological treasures of Mexico that are housed in the National Museum of Anthropology often lack lighting or are in disrepair because the state cannot afford to light everything that is on display. Tourists swarm over the great pyramids in the Valley of the Gods in Teotihuacan, destroying them as they go. Many sites in Mexico and Central America have not been excavated because the state has no money to pay for it. And, as any tourist to Mexico City or Guadalajara can tell you, DON’T DRINK THE WATER! The state does not have the resources to clean up the system or, for that matter, the wherewithal to clean up the air pollution in Mexico City, said to be the worst in the world.

Needless to say, going to university is a distant dream for the lower classes in Latin America, assuming that they even know what a university is. Many of the indigenous people have no education at all.

We are watching the undevelopment of the United States. If the poverty in Latin America scares you, consider that our infrastructure is in disrepair; train and air transportation is in and out of bankruptcy as often as a junkie goes in and out of rehab clinics. Our water is becoming less drinkable and our universities are moving beyond the reach of many of our people. This will not be America the beautiful much longer if we fail to stand up, as a people, to stop its disintegration.

We must regain control of our government and see that the moneybags pay their fair share. The middle classes already do so. Retirees shouldn’t have to worry that their slim pensions will be taxed any further. CEOs can stand to make less; American businesses that take their jobs overseas should pay import taxes. The ridiculous tax cuts that were passed by Bush and his Congress must be reversed. If these things don’t happen, we will be the generation that sees the demise of the United States.

Bush is content to preach a gospel that he claims is Christian. It’s about time that he learned that the Bible has far more to say about charity, greed, and loving one’s neighbor than it does about anything else.

Rosa Maria Pegueros (pegueros@uri.edu) is an Associate Professor of Latin American History & Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island

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