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The high and the mighty are feeling the heat and the princes of power are squirming.
First the president. He took some time out from his vacation at the ranch in Shrub Gulch, Texas to swing over to nearby Waco and check out the Presidential Forum on the Economy he summoned.
Now mind you, while campaigning for the presidency, George W. said, "People create jobs and economic growth, not government." That didn't stop the White House Bushies from dubbing one of the sessions, "Economic Recovery and Job Creation."
What's up?
Well, it's clear as the Texas air was before the oil and chemical companies ran the state that the president is feeling the heat from the stock market plunge, economic sluggishness, the corporate crime scourge and eroding consumer confidence in the economy.
He's determined not to suffer the fate of George the Elder. Remember, he had enormous popularity after the Gulf War, but blew it all with a lousy economy and the public perception that he was out of touch with Joe Six-Pack's plight and did nothing to ease economic suffering.
The Bushes' economic record goes beyond perception. Here's a quick quiz. How many net American job gains were there in the six years so far of Bush I and Bush II? The answer: None, nada, zilch.
Old Poppy Bush didn't help his own cause when he showed he had no idea what a loaf of bread or half-gallon of milk cost. The patrician product of privilege gave the world a hoot when he marveled at what was for him the unfamiliar wonder of a grocery store check-out scanner.
George the Elder nominated the scanner for the Nobel Prize in physics and Bill Clinton won the election.
But none of that aloofness for down-on-the-ranch George W. He's showing us the economic trials of the average American are as important to him as, let's say, chopping a cord of wood. (What's with that? I'd rather play croquet.)
Those invited to the forum were supposed to be a reflection of America, real people thinking and debating about what's ailing our economy and what can be done to make things better.
But instead of an open give-and-take and free-wheeling discussions, the forum looked more like a Soviet Communist Party Congress circa 1951. C-SPAN carried most of the sessions and I didn't hear a soul make a peep that wasn't in lockstep with the Bush party line.
The attendees from the business community included an interesting proportion of African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities that seemed well out of line with their actual numbers in the general population.
It's obvious the White House staff engaged in the racial preferences they typically denounce, and for purposes of show and television cameras they even went beyond quotas.
More tax cuts and less regulation will jump-start the economy. We heard that from speaker after speaker.
All these presidential conferences are carefully staged, but the Bushies have taken it to a new level. They provided the oh-so-transparent and incredible scripting and direction that turned the forum into the theater of the absurd.
We heard this contribution from Curtis McGuire, an African-American business owner, at one session. He declared, "The overwhelming thought in this group is that the estate tax is the most messed-up tax there is."
I live in a community with a substantial African-American population. I've interviewed countless black business owners and just plain folks about a variety of economic issues.
People talk about the need for jobs and job security. They talk about mortgage rates, property taxes, health insurance and medical costs. They talk about retirement plans and their 401(k)s, and they worry about their stock investments.
But for the life of me, I have never heard a single African-American fret about the estate tax. Perhaps if I spent some time over at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club or the Bloomfield Hills Country Club I might run into a few souls sipping their martinis and shedding crocodile tears over the estate tax.
The White House script-writers were so thorough that no one raised a single question about economic issues for which the administration is directly responsible.
What about the fallout from the massive deficits Bush is piling up? The river of red ink rises and the surge drives up longterm interest rates, hurts capital formation and, as a result, job growth.
What about looting social security funds to pay current expenses? Candidate Bush promised he'd never do that, but he sure is.
At a session on corporate responsibility, participants urged more "moral responsibility," but wariness of more "laws," "regulations" and "bureaucracy."
President Bush and Vice President Cheney flitted in and out of several forum sessions. Cheney never mentioned the SEC investigation of Halliburton's financial reporting practices when he was CEO of the oil services company and raked in a fortune.
The president no longer brags about his business "successes," nor has he ever disclosed the SEC files on his remarkably prescient selling of Harken Energy stock before it tanked. Bush was a director of the company, sat on its audit board, and he bought the stock with interest-free company loans.
Those events, in part, inspired "The Nation" magazine's Calvin Trillin to pen this apt verse, entitled "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Lecture CEOs on Corporate Responsibility."
Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law is now doing his squirming on New England public television stations. They're carrying the videotapes of his deposition on lawsuits against the archdiocese brought by people claiming priests under Law's authority sexually abused them.
Law admitted under oath what was previously reported based on documents the archdiocese's lawyers filed. That is, the cardinal OKed the transfer of priests from parish to parish, knowing full well they abused children.
Law seemed remorseful and I almost felt sorry for him. Then he blamed his subordinates for the mess and diverted responsibility with his customary arrogance.
The archdiocese is now considering bankruptcy, and as long as the big shots in the Vatican allow Law, the substance and symbol of this scandal, to remain in power, they have no credibility with the victims of abuse, nor with most American Catholics, for that matter.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 20 2002 |