So the elections are over, and now, unencumbered by future elections and even the remotest possibility of a political future, we see the real George W. Bush, and he makes the George W. Bush of the past 7 years look like Al Gore.
I first came across this when I found out that he had issued an executive order stripping 5000 employees of the BATF, some of whom are already represented by a union, of their collective bargaining rights.
Think Progress has a list of what he’s pushing through now, titled Bush’s Backward Sprint To The Finish, and it’s grim: (quoting directly)
- HEALTH CARE
- – Cutting medicaid
- – Allowing healthcare workers to refuse “morally objectionable” procedures [meaning allowing anyone to refuse birth control and abortion at any time]
- – Revising rules for international drug trials [more dead foreign babies]
- – Narrowing the definition of combat related disability [meaning that if you get injured when your vehicle crashes because the vehicle in front of you gets blown up, it’s no longer “combat related]
- – Allowing states to set premiums and higher co-payments
- ENVIRONMENT
- – Allowing mining near the Grand Canyon
- – Discounting global warming when assessing species risks
- – Weakening the Endangered Species Act
- – Eliminating review of fishing regulations
- – Allowing more emissions from power plants
- – Opening protected land to energy development
- – Allowing factory farms to self-regulate waste
- – Altering solid waste definition
- – Allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone
- – Allowing coal companies to dump dirt and rock into streams
- CIVIL LIBERTIES
- – Allowing guns in national parks
- – Allowing broader law-enforcement monitoring
- – Implementing the REAL ID Act
- LABOR
- – Making it harder to take time off
- – Allowing truckers to work 14 hour days [More dead on the US interstates]
- – Requiring labor unions to file extensive financial reports
- – Making it harder to regulate toxic substances on the job
- – Stripping collective bargaining rights from federal employees
- – Relaxing rules on investment adviser conflicts of interest
- ADMINISTRATION
- – Moving political appointees to permanent posts
The complete list, with descriptions is at the link.
This is someone would not be satisfied until he destroys everything America really stands for.