The Bush cabinet: Corporate crooks and right-wing kooks
BY NORM DIXON George Walker (“Dubya”) Bush wasted no time before signalling that his government will move rapidly to
implement sweeping pro-big business measures and right-wing social policies. Bush and his cabinet are already training
their sights on abortion rights, public education, access to welfare, affirmative action and environmental protection
regulations. On January 22, his first day on the job, Bush banned US government funds going to international family
planning groups that, even indirectly, acknowledge a woman's right to have an abortion. The decision was a calculated
“thumbs up” to thousands of right-wing anti-choice zealots who had mobilised that day in Washington to demand the
reversal of the US Supreme Court's 1973 landmark “Roe versus Wade” ruling which in effect legalised abortion. A message
delivered to the demonstrators on Bush's behalf by anti-choice leader and Republican Congressperson Chris Smith declared
that the Bush regime was committed “to build a culture of life”. The anti-choice crusaders were reminded that Bush has
ordered a review of the US government's approval of the RU-486 birth termination drug and will approve legislation
banning late-term abortions if the Clinton-vetoed bill is again passed by Congress. On January 23, Republicans
introduced into Congress measures to implement Bush's plan to dismantle the public education system and transfer it over
time to privately owned and religious institutions. Bush wants to introduce annual literacy and maths tests for public
school students to establish “standards”. Schools will have three years to boost students' scores to a set level. If
they cannot, federal funds would be stripped from them and allocated as “vouchers” to parents to spend at private
institutions. Bush's agenda closely mirrors, especially his welfare, education and reproductive rights policies, that
pushed by the US corporate-sponsored right-wing think tanks and foundations. Most of his cabinet members have close
associations with big business and individuals and organisations from across the far-right of US capitalist politics —
from the “mainstream” to the outright kooky — including Bush junior himself. During his campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination and the presidential election itself, Bush carefully cultivated support from the far-right
Christian fundamentalist organisations inside and outside the Republican Party. These organisations provided many of
Bush's campaign foot soldiers and will expect a lot in return. According to the January 21 Christian Science Monitor,
“Observant evangelical Protestants, the core constituency of the `religious right', voted 84% for Bush, making up almost
one-third of all his supporters. Together with observant mainline Protestants and Catholics, religious conservatives
accounted for better than half of all Republican ballots.” Last February, Bush gave a speech at the notoriously
anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic and racist Bob Jones University in South Carolina. In response to criticism, Bush's
spokesperson Mindy Tucker stated: “From our point of view, this is a place where there are lot of South Carolina
conservative voters.” Bush's nominee for the key post of attorney general, John Ashcroft, made the pilgrimage to Bob
Jones University on May 8, 1999, to accept an honourary degree. In his speech, Ashcroft paraphrased (badly) passages
from the bible upon which Christian fundamentalists base their anti-Semitic rantings. These passages have been used down
the ages as the theological basis for pogroms against Jews. Ashcroft is closely aligned to the Christian Coalition and
far-right evangelist Pat Robertson. A former state attorney general in Missouri and a former senator, he is in favour of
passing legislation and amending the US constitution to ban abortion even if the woman is the victim of incest or rape.
He is a leader of the campaign to criminally outlaw late-term abortions. At the same time, he has attempted to ban the
birth control pill and IUDs. Ashcroft's control of the Justice Department will give the radical right control of the
selection of federal judges, including the Supreme Court. It is the Supreme Court that can overturn the Roe versus Wade
ruling. Ashcroft was the author of the “charitable choice” provision of the 1996 welfare “reform” law, which legalised
the delivery of publicly funded welfare services by churches and “faith-based” organisations. It permitted religious
groups to promote their religious beliefs while delivering services and refuse to employ people with different or no
faith. He has sponsored another bill, the “Charitable Choice Expansion Act”, that if passed will speed the privatisation
of government services and make their delivery more dependent on the moral dictates of right-wing religious outfits. Now
responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws, Ashcroft once hailed Confederate generals and politicians who
fought the US Civil War to defend slavery as “patriots” and stated that they should not be portrayed as having fought
for “some perverted agenda”. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial noted that Ashcroft has “built a career out of opposing
school desegregation ... and opposing African Americans for public office”. Other notable supporters of Ashcroft are the
reactionary National Rifle Association and the more extreme Gun Owners of America. The “pro-life” Ashcroft loves a good
execution and he successfully organised to prevent the appointment of a judge who he considered not sufficiently
enthusiastic about imposing the death penalty. Another Bush cabinet member who seems to have a soft spot for the
slavocracy is interior secretary Gale Norton. In a 1996 speech to the right-wing Independence Institute, Norton, who was
Colorado attorney general at the time, declared that “We lost too much” when the South was defeated in the civil war.
While state attorney general, Norton used the slogan “states' rights”, the battle cry of Southern slave states, to fight
federal environmental controls, and land and cultural rights for indigenous people. She also opposed affirmative action.
`Conservative labyrinth' Beginning in the 1960s, the US right began marshalling its resources to shift US capitalist
policy debate sharply to the right. Researcher Sally Covington points out that the assault was spearheaded by “a core
group of 12 conservative foundations” backed by the fortunes of some of the richest capitalists in the US. These
foundations in turn funded and promoted dozens of “think tanks” and “researchers” — many with dubious political
backgrounds. The influence of these organisations reached their peak during the Reagan, Bush senior and Clinton
administrations. Their ideas dominate Bush junior's team. According to Covington, “In 1994, [the 12 core foundations]
controlled more than $1.1 billion in assets; from 1992-94, they awarded $300 million in grants, and targetted $210
million to support a wide array of projects and institutions. They channelled $80 million to right-wing policy
institutions actively promoting an anti-government, unregulated markets agenda. Another $89 million supported
conservative scholars and academic programs, with $27 million targeted to recruit and train the next generation of
right-wing leaders in conservative legal principles, free-market economics, political journalism and policy analysis.
And $41.5 million was invested to build a conservative media apparatus, support pro-market legal organisations, fund
state-level think tanks and advocacy organisations, and mobilise new philanthropic resources for conservative policy
change.” Covington added that the foundations singled out “aggressive and entrepreneurial organisations committed to
government rollback through the privatisation of government services, devolution of authority from federal to state and
local governments and deep cuts in federal anti-poverty spending”. This powerful and rich “new conservative labyrinth”
launched its most sustained and vitriolic attacks on the welfare system and its recipients. Behind the seemingly learned
discourse that emerged from this army of “experts”, “researchers” and “analysts”, lurked good old-fashioned racism. Vast
sums of corporate money, a legion media-savvy spokespeople and professors with impressive credentials allowed KKK
politics to become respectable and mainstream again, and it was embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike. In the
1980s, the CIA-linked Manhattan Institute sponsored and heavily promoted a book by Charles Murray, Losing Ground:
American Social Policy, 1950-80, which claimed that anti-poverty programs reduced the incentive to marry, discouraged
workers accepting low-wage jobs and encouraged poor unmarried women to have children. The underlying argument was that
it was the moral failings of the poor that made them poor and government welfare perpetuated poverty, rather than
alleviating it, and traps them in a cycle of “welfare dependency”. Murray is best known as one of the authors of the
1994 book, The Bell Curve, which continues the theme began in Losing Ground. The books' central claim was that
African-Americans have a lower IQ than whites and Asians. The book claimed that African-Americans and Latinos are
disproportionately poor because they are objectively less intelligent, not because of institutionalised racism and poor
environments. The message of The Bell Curve was that improved welfare and affirmative action programs could not improve
the position of blacks and the poor. More than that, Murray wrote, “The United States has policies that inadvertently
social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women... We urge that these policies, represented by the
extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.” Racism Murray's respectable mask
had slipped just enough to reveal the ugly face of racism. It soon emerged that almost all the “research” that Murray
relied on to justify the central arguments of The Bell Curve had been funded by the Pioneer Fund, a racist outfit whose
mission is to promote the elimination of “genetically unfit” individuals and races. Established in 1937 by Wickliffe
Draper, a millionaire textile industry magnate and admirer of the Nazis who campaigned to have African-Americans sent
``back'' to Africa, the Pioneer Fund's charter stated the foundation's mission was “racial betterment” and to help the
people “deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption
of the Constitution of the United States”. Draper was not a lone kook — he had plenty of company. The 1930s eugenics
movement had the support of many leading US capitalists, including the Rockefellers, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, JP
Morgan, Andrew Mellon, Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush, Bush junior's grandfather. Many, including Prescott Bush,
were admirers of Hitler and had invested heavily in Nazi Germany. The fund's first president, Harry Laughlin, advocated
the forced sterilisation of the “genetically unfit” and argued that Jews were innately “feebleminded”. Another founder,
Frederick Osburn, described Nazi Germany's forced sterilisation of the disabled and others as “a most exciting
experiment”. The Pioneer Fund's current president, Harry Weyher, has refused to distance the fund from its founders'
views and has denounced the desegregation of schools in the US South. The fund's treasurer is a former leading member of
the fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies and was a supporter of apartheid South Africa's “well-reasoned racial
policies”. Other beneficiaries of the Pioneer Fund's largess have included Roger Pearson, a well-known neo-fascist
activist in Europe and the US, and Arthur Jensen, who published research in the 1970s that also claimed blacks were less
intelligent. While advocating the crudest forms of racist eugenics — like gas chambers, sterilisation and deportation —
is no longer possible, far-right elements like Murray, the Manhattan Institute and the Pioneer Fund seem to believe
their goals can be achieved by the elimination of welfare. Which brings us back to Bush junior and his crew. Murray's
Losing Ground and The Bell Curve have become handbooks for the anti-welfare, anti-affirmative action and school
privatisation lobbies. Welfare “reform” pin-up boy Tommy Thompson has been appointed by Bush to deprive the poor of
welfare services. As Bush's secretary for health and human services (HHS), Thompson will be in charge of the department
that oversees the Medicare and Medicaid health system and other welfare services. Thompson, who was elected governor of
Wisconsin in 1986, succeeded in slashing the number of people in the state receiving welfare by 92%. Wisconsin under
Thompson also set the pace in diverting public education funds to private and religious schools by way of vouchers. The
Bell Curve's Charles Murray was a consultant for Thompson's Wisconsin Works (W-2), which eliminated welfare for families
with dependent children and replaced it with a system that forced recipients to work, regardless of their circumstances,
for an average of $7 an hour wage. There is no safety net for those that cannot meet the stringent requirements. In the
first year of W-2, the black infant mortality rate in Milwaukee increased by 37%. Thompson will also have responsibility
for the food and Drug Administration and US Surgeon General's office, both of which can restrict women's reproductive
rights. As governor, Thompson restricted Wisconsin women's right to have abortions. He signed into law the most
restrictive abortion law in the US, including life imprisonment for doctors who perform late-term abortions. The law was
later overturned by a federal court. While Thompson is the most prominent operative of the right-wing think tanks in
Bush's team, he is not alone. Two of Bush's senior domestic policy advisers, Stephen Goldsmith and Floyd Flake, are
listed as Manhattan Institute “experts”, along with the ubiquitous Charles Murray, on the institute's web site.
Goldsmith has referred to Murray as a “brilliant scholar”. Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, multimillionaire shareholder
and CEO of Alcoa, is a fellow at the Rand Corporation and the American Enterprise Institute. Gail Wilensky, architect of
Bush's plans to “reform” Medicare, is a John M. Olin Foundation grant recipient and serves on the boards of eight health
care corporations. Labour secretary Elaine Chao, who will be responsible for industrial relations, is a former
vice-president of Bank of America Capital Markets Group and a Heritage Foundation fellow. She won Bush's nomination
after Linda Chavez was forced to withdraw when it was discovered she had employed an undocumented worker in her home.
Chavez was a researcher at the Manhattan Institute and has received $200,000 in grants from the John M. Olin Foundation.
Despite her Latino heritage, she was a leader of the racist English First Movement. On its web site, Chavez quotes from
Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve. Energy secretary Spencer Abraham is a founder of the right-wing Federalist
Society. It's goal is to politically dominate the legal profession, especially at the level of the judiciary. It stands
for eliminating welfare, affirmative action and bilingual education. It is funded by the leading foundations. Its most
prominent members are Supreme Court judges Scalia and Clarence Thomas, whose votes were crucial in delivering the ruling
that put the George Bush junior's in the White House with a minority of popular votes. `Welfare' for the rich While Bush
junior's gang rails against welfare for the poor, they are not averse to state “welfare” for themselves. In the 1980s,
Bush's oil business partners used him as the front-person for the purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball team. They felt
that being George Bush's son would attract investors so they handed him 10% of the team. The new owners promptly
threatened to relocate the team unless the city of Arlington built a new stadium. Arlington spent $150 million on the
stadium, which boosted the value of the Texas Rangers franchise. So much so, that when the team was sold, Bush junior
pocketed a cool $14.9 million. Not bad, considering his initial investment was $600,000 of borrowed money. In 1990, Bush
junior's struggling oil company Harken Energy was granted a contract to drill for oil off the coast of the Gulf state of
Bahrain, shunting aside the oil giant Amoco, even though the company had no experience in off-shore operations.
Suggestions that the Bahrain government was attempting to curry favour with the US president, George Bush snr, were
denied. Just as suddenly, a Harken Energy director was invited to participate in private White House briefings on Middle
East policy. In May 1990, the Harken board member learned that Washington was considering an oil embargo of Iraq. In
June, Bush junior suddenly sold 212,000 of his Harken shares, raking in more than $848,500. In August, Iraqi troops
invaded Kuwait and the value of Harken's shares dropped 25%. After Dick Cheney, President Bush senior's defence
secretary during the 1991 Gulf War and now Bush junior's vice-president, left the Pentagon, he became CEO of
Halliburton, a Texas construction and engineering outfit that services oil companies and the US military. He cashed in
on his official contacts within the government, military, the oil industry and Middle east governments. Almost
overnight, the middle-sized Halliburton's business swelled to $15 billion in annual sales with contracts in 120
countries. Cheney entered the White House this year, around $50 million richer.
ENDS