March 5, 2008 at 02:25:08

Better Buckle Up! -- CheneyBush's Final 10 Months

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Better Buckle Up! -- CheneyBush's Final 10 Months

By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

If anyone still harbors any illusions that the lame-duck CheneyBush Administration will taxi relatively harmlessly to its departure gate in January 2009, recent events suggest otherwise. It's been made abundantly clear that in the next ten months, these guys are going to behave even more brutishly in amassing and misusing their power, and in screwing things up, than they've already done in the past seven-plus years.

In essence, the message emanating from the White House to the country can be summed up this way: "You want us? You come and get us. Otherwise, get out of our way! We've got a whole lot of unfinished business to complete."

In foreign policy, we should expect CheneyBush to continue locking-in agreements with the Iraq government that will permit permanent stationing of troops and aircraft and missiles on that country's soil, which in effect means a continuation of the war perhaps for decades -- or, in the approving estimate of John McCain, for 50 or 100 years or more. (But you can bet that CheneyBush will withdraw some troops from Iraq, for partisan reasons, just prior to the election.) Then there's the prospect they will bomb Iran's military/scientific installations from the air, something Cheney and Bush and the other neo-cons, in and out of government, are salivating about.

In domestic policy, one can expect even more bad policy: placing a whole lot more incompetent ideologues into positions of administrative power and onto the courts, selling off more of America's public lands for energy exploitation, giving more sweetheart deals to their contributors (such as the one the EPA just cut with big agriculture so they don't have to report their factory-farm toxic-gas emissions), ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022502472.html ) cutting more vital social and infrastructure programs as the economy continues to tank -- thanks to Bush policies of spending upwards of ##three trillion dollars ( www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77663 ) on the wars and associated costs), etc. etc.

Consider just four examples from last week:

1. ENJOY YOUR "DOWNER" BURGERS

Americans were justifiably horrified when they saw recent hidden-camera footage on the nightly news of emaciated, scrabrous cows being dumped into the food supply that winds up as hamburger meat in schools and prisons and who knows where else. According to Department of Agriculture regulations, those so-called "downer" cattle (those too sick or weak to stand) are not permitted to be placed into the public food-supply chain, for fear of passing on "mad cow" or other horrific diseases.

Nearly 145,000 million pounds of such potentially tainted meat from the slaughterhouse in question had to be recalled, 37 million pounds of which already had been consumed in school lunches and other nutrition programs.

Good, the meat-processers in question were shamed and embarrassed. The government's regulatory system was in place and all was well in the world. Right?

Wrong. CheneyBush and their GOP enablers in Congress are in hock up to their eyeballs to their corporate benefactors, and ideologically opposed in any case to the concept of regulating a free market. So, how did the Administration handle this black-eye episode?

Were the fines increased for meat-processors that skirt the rules? Their corporate owners shunned and contracts canceled? Nope.

Instead, last week, the CheneyBush Administration officially authorized the use of "downer" meat ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022804117.html
) as fit for human consumption. A few more random inspections were ordered at meat-processing plants, but no systemic overhaul of the limited inspection protocols were devised to increase protection for the public.

"So you caught us red-handed bowing to the meat-processing industry," Bush&Co. seemed to be saying. "What are you going to do about it? Bugger off and get out of our face."

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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