George Bush Hates "NonCorporate" People

Some have suggested that the sluggish response to the Katrina disaster was based on race. I personally doubt that. But in many other areas, class does play an important role in the policies of the Bush Administration.

In the hearings on John Roberts, an image of a corporate-lobby lawyer who was an advocate for corporate interests such as the coal industry to gut clean air laws or strip mining laws, or to represent major corporations such as Toyota and Chrysler is quickly emerging. Rather than being a merely social conservative like the deceased Rehnquist, Roberts is emerging as slightly more flexible on issues before the Supreme Court involving social issues, but also as the corporate conservative that I believed him to be. He is emerging as the $700 an hour corporate attorney that he is, rather than the one dimensional Bork or Rehnquist clone who merely sought to use the high court as a mouthpiece to rubberstamp their personal right wing politics.

This sort of nomination is in keeping with the role of the Bush Administration in promoting corporate goals, rather than the merely social conservative views that many in the Christian right mistakingly believe the Bush Administration to be a champion of. This is the glue that has held this temporary Republican coalition together. Giving enough "lip-service" to the Christian right to make them believe they call the shots within the party, while actually being a party bankrolled and almost solely interested in procorporate goal.

The problems with the FEMA director reflected all of this as well. This wealthy attorney, Michael Brown was chosen solely for his friendship with Mr. Bush. His experience as a lawyer for an Arabian horse organization was hardly the background required to have the knowledge or skills to respond to a bona fide disaster.

And within the Bush re-election efforts, two major groups of wealthy contributors emerged, the Bush Pioneers and Bush Rangers, who often donated in excess of $100,000 to the Bush re-election campaign. Of this elite group of contributors, 43 were appointed to positions within the Bush Administration, and 19 were appointed as ambassadors. In addition a total of 43 persons who were oil company executives, major stockholders or paid consultants. In addition, 33 persons who were either defense contractor executives, major stockholders or paid consultants were appointed to major positions with the Bush Administration.

Some like Condoleezza Rice were a former member of the Board Of Directors of Chevron Oil, and even had a major oil tanker named after her. Any many like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton were members of the neoconservative defense contractor funded Project For The New American Century which had planned the renewal of the old 1990-91 Gulf War against Iraq as a financial windfall for the defense contractors.

Any many of the Bush Administration goals have an openly known benefit to corporate goals, including using the Justice Department to limit the services that HMOs are required to offer their clients, "bankruptcy reform" as a major boost to credit card companies and banks, when many families are destroyed by huge medical bills. And the Social Security "reform", which has the open goal of pumping more private money into Wall Street stocks. The public already has the right to lose money on Wall Street stocks that go down in value, or the corporation fails. Now the public is being encouraged, with the blessing of government to risk their retirement on such Wall Street stocks, subject to many factors as well as CEO manipulations.

The victims of the New Orleans flood did not have the financial clout of the corporate interests of many of the Bush Administration goals. Yet this does not mean this city of great poverty, with a full 28% living below the poverty line were neglected solely for being Black or poor. But rather, with so many Bush Administration positions being given to corporate friends and major contributors, Michael Brown was poorly qualified to act as a real FEMA head should be expected.

George Bush is the first MBA president. He believes that whatever is good for big business is good for the country. But this often means that unqualified persons such as Michael Brown are put in positions of power they are not suited for. Bush loves corporate people. And if one is noncorporate, then their clout level is quite low in this Administration.