George Bush's legacy: a hiss before dying

“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,†Shakespeare has a character in “Macbeth†report about the death of a traitor. We acknowledge that we are often defined by last impressions, by how we leave this life, a relationship or a job.  

         There are plenty of positive examples.  But just now President George W. Bush is giving us a great negative example.  In what he has been doing in his last days in office, we can see, more clearly than ever before, the full measure of his mendacity and the extent to which his presidency has been completely devoted to enriching his friends and hurting the rest of humanity.  

The Bush presidency has really been the Cheney regency, but the man who called himself  “the decider†is still in charge, and can and must be tarred with whatever deeds his associates or underlings do. They are readying some 90 new rules and regulations for promulgation in Bush’s last days. There is no real need to put any of these things into law right now, especially since the problems addressed are difficult, requiring discussion and careful thought before making decisions. The proper thing to do would be to leave these issues to the incoming Obama administration, but that would mean Bush losing opportunities to harm people, and he has shown himself incapable of passing that up.

Interestingly, his father did the opposite. Aside from pardoning the Iran-Contra folks, George H. W. Bush cooperated properly with the incoming Bill Clinton administration, for instance consulting with the Clinton foreign policy people on the several crises facing the nation and working out programs to address them that Clinton would continue, relatively unchanged, for several years.  

    But the current Bush will have none of that sort of magnanimity. Like some villain in a bad movie, he is determined to utilize his power to do wrong until it is wrested from his failing grasp.  

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Maintaining the planet’s rush toward global warming is one Bush goal. There are laudable, necessary attempts afoot to cap the emissions of greenhouse gases to reverse or slow the warming trend that even Bush now accepts is real, but Bush is working hard to make sure that this logical step will not be permitted.  

A 2007 Supreme Court decision demanded that the EPA issue a ruling on how to comply with a Clean Air Act passed by Congress and signed by Bush; now, in the administration’s waning hours, Bush stalwarts are attempting to undercut any future carbon or other emissions caps.  

Who will this action benefit? Certainly not the vast majority of Americans, but it will help the oil companies who sell carbon-rich fuels and car manufacturers who refuse to modernize their products’ emissions systems.  

The Los Angeles Times reports on other rules that will ease restrictions on emissions from coal plants, oil refineries and chemical factories, and allow mining operators to further pollute Appalachian streams. Wired.com reports that the administration is exempting perchlorate, a known neurotoxin, from regulation even though dangerous levels of it have gotten into water supplies in 153 municipalities. EPA’s own estimates put the number of Americans already affected by perchlorate at 16 million; critics say it is 40 million.  

A broad rule will protect businesses from suits by employees and former employees who were exposed to toxic chemicals while on the job. Why do this?  Certainly not to protect the vast majority of employees, but to protect business owners who have been derelict in their duty to their workers, which is — by law — to provide workers with a safe place in which to do their jobs.  

Not only will this regulation hamstring OSHA’s attempts to keep workers safe, it will also prevent workers from suing if they end up, as the asbestos workers did, with life-threatening conditions.   Under Bush, OSHA had previously been neglected — just one new safety regulation had been put in place during his administration, and that, in response to a direct court order.  

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The New York Times reports on the many attempts to embed notions in the federal regulations that will be difficult to reverse: “One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.† 

    Although the consensus on abortion in this country has been solidly behind a woman’s right to choose whether  to end a pregnancy, Bush is about to promulgate rules that will make it even more difficult to obtain an abortion. A “right of conscience†rule will make it permissible for health-care personnel and even entire hospitals to refuse to assist in any abortion-related procedure if they don’t want to — even in instances of abortions being done to save the life of the prospective mother.  

A Baltimore Sun report asserts that the new regulation goes beyond a 30-year-old law that already allows doctors and nurses to refuse to provide their services; henceforth, health-care workers can refuse to provide information about abortions, etc. HHS estimates that the new rule will cover more than a half-million entities that provide relevant services, everything from doctor’s offices to pharmacies and clinics.  

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The new rule, proponents gush, will do more than prevent abortions. It will allow health-care workers to refuse to provide contraception information, even to people who request it. Critics say the ability to refuse service will extend to end-of-life care, giving a handy opt-out excuse to those who might decide that God desires human beings to suffer and so do not wish to provide painkillers to those about to die.  

The American Medical Association opposes the new rule. The ethics committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said, “Although respect for conscience is important, conscientious refusals [to provide service] should be limited if they constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients [or] negatively affect a patient’s health,†adding that physicians have a “duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can, in conscience, provide the standard reproductive services that patients request.† Bush’s new rule would replace the Hippocratic oath.  

But that, it seems, is precisely the point of all of these new regulations: to reward friends, punish enemies, and to enforce the morality of a few on the health, wealth, welfare and the very life of the many.  That, more than the needless war in Iraq, is Bush’s true legacy.  

Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written more than two dozen books and many television documentaries.