President Bush has conceived of some pretty stupid plans over the years. His plan to fight poverty by spending federal money on marriage counseling immediately comes to mind.
Well, another gem from Bush’s moronic mind mercifully went up in flames yesterday, blocked by senators from the Northwest, saving all of us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
Bush’s plan was to force the Bonneville Power Administration to increase its electricity prices to correspond to market rates. The change could have resulted in a 20 percent jump in electricity bills throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Conspiracy theorists will suggest this was
President Bush’s attempt at revenge against a
region of the country that didn’t vote for him in the last two elections. Whatever his motivation, the fact remains that his plan would have
devastated our already shaky economy and
barren job market and was vigorously opposed by members of both parties.
Thank you senators for standing up against the president and for the Northwest taxpayer.
A fox guarding the hen house
With more than 9.9 million victims of identity theft in the United States last year, according
to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Americans are becoming extremely sensitive about their
personal information. So it makes perfect sense that the Department of Homeland Security would create an advisory committee to help it navigate the ethically thorny and technologically complex world of privacy issues, especially given the
department’s plans to do background checks
on everyone boarding a plane and entering the country, according to the Associated Press.
What makes less sense are some of the names included on the 20-member Data Privacy and
Integrity Advisory Committee, which is
overloaded with representatives from privacy-
violating corporations and light on actual privacy advocates. For example, Cendant Corp. owns a company that turned over customer records
without their knowledge; Science Applications
International Corp. let thieves steal computers with loads of employees’ personal information; and Claria Corp., installed pop-up ads on
customer Web sites without their permission.
This oft-called “fox guarding the hen house” approach to advisory committees is a Bush
administration favorite. It allows them to appear as if they care about the public’s privacy concerns without really doing anything. They do the same thing with AIDS and a host of environmental and civil liberty issues.
This practice cuts to the heart of the Bush
administration ethic: See no evil, hear no
evil, speak no evil. The administration surrounds President Bush with yes men (from the press room to his Cabinet to the federal courts), switches the televisions in the White House to FOX News, holds unscripted press conferences once in a blue moon and attempts to silence all dissent.
The echo chamber of this White House is
ringing more than ever, with the conservative press acting as a megaphone. And what is getting drowned out is any semblance of truth.
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