Bush's 11th Hour Bonanza

Before America is once again in the hands of competent leadership, "W" has his last chance to sign off on about twenty 11th-hour executive orders that all have a couple of features in common. First, they reward segments of corporate America as a payback for the millions of dollars showered on the GOP these last eight years. And secondly, they cause harm to workers and consumers who didn't have million-dollar gifts for the RNC.

In 2001, Dick Cheney spent hundreds of hours in secret meetings with the GOP's most reliable donors. You might recall there was an effort by consumer groups to review the emails and correspondence that were generated from those meetings until several Republican-appointed judges determined that taxpayers had no right to know what promises were made by Cheney.

But do we really need to guess what kind of promises were made when we see the list of who was meeting behind those doors?

The Cheney meetings were about more than just gifts for the energy industry even though that was the focus of most of the mainstream media stories.

Dow Chemical, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Farm Bureau were also at the table beside Exxon, Enron, and the National Mining Association. These organizations had paid big money to buy a president and during those meetings, they were demanding the benefits.

Immediately after those meetings, Cheney made good on his promise to slow down the debate about global warming. He ordered federal employees to edit and delete federal reports establishing that global warming was real and potentially catastrophic. But here are a few other promises that Cheney is delivering on by way of "W's" 11th-hour executive orders:

● Mountaintop miners who attended the Cheney backroom meetings are now going to be able to dump all of their poisonous sludge waste directly into rivers and streams after they dynamite away the entire tops of mountains;

● Industrial pig farms will be permitted to dump their toxic raw pig waste directly into ground ponds with no sewage treatment processing at all;

● Employers will be permitted to expose employees to greater quantities of workplace poisons without the employees' knowledge;

● Power plants will be able to operate within miles of wilderness areas and federal parks without restriction on how much damage they do to those areas that have been protected for decades;

● Mining and logging operations can be expanded without any impact studies and without consultation with the government agencies in charge of wildlife management;

● The Grand Canyon will become America's newest uranium mining site, and industrial miners will be able to carry out their radioactive operations right beside the Grand Canyon National Park;

When the Republicans have a sitting president, they typically begin a discussion about how the image of that president of the day should be added to Mount Rushmore. I suppose the intended purpose of that is to forever call our attention to that president's legacy. But with this 11th-hour corporate payback bonanza taken together with an economic meltdown and a failed foreign policy, I'm pretty sure "W's" legacy will not be easily forgotten. Even without his face on Mount Rushmore.

Comments

[XME]

As Rachel Maddow said tonight, and I'm paraphrasing, though Bush may only have 50 days left in office, it would be a big mistake to take your eyes off the guy for a second!