By MicCheck Radio, Center for American Progress
A look at the biggest winners and biggest losers under the Bush Administration.
As President Bush’s days of power draw to a close, one thing is clear: We’ve got a lot more problems now than we did seven years ago. Here are 99 of them, everything from less money to more war and a planet in crisis.
[Editor Angela’s faves:]
People Who Fear Human-Animal Hybrids
President Bush was able to keep one promise from his previous State of the Union addresses. In 2006, he pledged to fight the creation of “human-animal hybrids,” sparking visions of fearsome ManBeasts terrorizing the nation. As of today, we’ve spotted no half-man/half-animal creatures. Breaking News: We may have given the president credit too soon – just this week, we’ve discovered, British scientists created a ManCow clone. State Of The Union BBC
Problem: Toxic, Mutating Weed Killer in the Water
The White House has fought against regulating the weed killer atrizine, even though the chemical has seeped into U.S. water supplies and created a new mutant breed of hermaphroditic frog. They have no idea what the effect the chemical has on humans besides the higher prostate cancer rate among those men who work around the chemical. [Washington Post]
Problem: Losing the Right to Protest
A Defense Department database, known as the Talon program, was designed to catalogue domestic threats to the Pentagon but included data on anti-war demonstrators and peaceful protestors. [Washington Post]
Problem: Killing the Polar Bears
In January of 2008, the Bush administration missed a deadline requiring a final decision on whether to give polar bears””often the poster children of global warming””federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Geological Survey’s September report, meanwhile, found that melting Arctic sea ice could wipe out polar bears in Alaska and kill off two-thirds of the species’ global population. [ABC]
Problem: Sorry, We Meant to Say “Low Food Security”
In 2006 the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempted to sugarcoat the hunger issue by banning the word “hunger” from official documents, replacing it with the more opaque “very low food security.” [Washington Post]
Problem: The Taliban’s Resurgence
Today, Al Qaeda along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border is back to pre-9/11 strength. The Taliban increased the number of roadside and suicide bomb attacks in 2007 to the highest level since the war in Afghanistan began. The two groups are flush with money from the Afghanistan opium trade, which ‘grew by 17 percent in 2007, reaching record levels for the second straight year.” [Mic Check] [USA Today]
Problem: Medicare Cheats Off the Hook
A 2007 audit by the Government Accountability Office showed private insurance companies pocketed $59 million in overpayments from Medicare that instead should have gone to better benefits and lower co-payments or lower premiums for older Americans. At the same time, the White House a) refused to audit these companies and b) refused to try to recover the missing money. [NY Times]
Problem: The World Doesn’t Like Us
In 2007, a Pew research poll showed that the United States was even less popular with our allies now than we were five years ago. In 2002, Britain had a 75 percent favorable rating of the United States. A year ago, it sank to 51 percent. Germany had a 60 percent favorable view of the United States in 2002; in 2007, it was 30 percent. [Pew]
We are so ____ed…