With the old proverb in mind, "A new bush – uh, make that broom -- sweeps clean" I took a look at President Bush’s new Cabinet. "Oh, boy!" I thought with breathless anticipation, "I’ll bet he’s really going to appoint some new folks with new ideas who will break out of the mold."

Sorry. More accurate would be "who are still covered with the same old mould." This is the same old crowd, with the same old bipolar disorder. That is, you can’t tell whether they’re at the North Pole of liberalism or the South Pole of conservatism, because Republicans differ not from Democrats, nor liberals from conservatives, never mind how they’re billed. All and sundry follow the party line of the powers that be, issuing from the domestic-and-foreign policy Establishment in New York. Want an idea of who that is? Take a look at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission (TLC). It’s the Chamber of Commerce gone metastatic, Big Money steering Big Government and Big Labour for BIG fascist profits. The only loser is the nation – and the people.

THE "NEW" CREW

Vice President Richard B. Cheney appears to be the "control" placed on the Bush Administration, the Establishment overseer to keep an eye on things. A lifelong bureaucrat, technocrat, and politician, Cheney began dining at the government trough during the Nixon Administration. There he led the nation forth to glory while serving on the Cost of Living Council, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the White House staff (not in the Democratic Party Surveillance and Burglary Department), and the Presidential Office to Combat Belly-Button Lint (just joking – there wasn’t really a Presidential office to combat Belly-Button Lint. That was a congressional office.) Cheney is plugged in tightly to the Defense and Intelligence establishments, and served Daddy Bush as Defense Secretary during the Mother of All Imperialist Interventions. He’s a long-time CFR member.

Unlike the Clintons’ Band of Merry Dwarves, not each and every Bush nominee belongs to the CFR – only the Vice President (Cheney), labour secretary (Elaine Chao), secretary of state ("Instant" General Colin Powell), national security advisor (Condelezza Rice), and EPA Fuehreress Christine Todd Whitman. You are not at liberty to infer from this seeming shortage of CFR members among the Bushites (?Bushmen?) that the rest of the appointees are outsiders to the power apparat. Most are loyal hacks, thoroughly allergic to controversy.

Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld has been hacking around Washington for years. With time served on the various boards for Asea Brown Boveri, Salomon Smith Barney, the RAND Corporation, Hoover Institute, and as a member on US/Russia Business Forum, employee of an investment banking firm, and ex-ambassador to NATO, you can bet Rumsfeld has what the Spanish call enchufe – a plug-in. In a previous incarnation he was the Secretary of Defense under Ford, and before that Commissar of Wage & Price Controls for Nixon. Rumsfeld is a reliable apparatchik globalist.

The new secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill comes fresh from Alcoa. In case you don’t remember, Alcoa is the milch cow of the Mellon family, as in the same Andrew Mellon whose signature as treasury secretary appeared on all US currency during the 1920s. I’ll bet we can expect some new and radical reforms from him, huh?

Education secretary Roderick R. Paige appears to be a faithful educationist bureaucrat from Houston. Although touted as a conservative he favours all the Revolutionary educationist programs. Ye will look in vain for the abolition of the Education Department under Bush and Paige.

Spencer Abraham at Energy was a Republican senator from Michigan who used to head up the Senate Immigration Reform committee. There he helped fling open US borders to massive immigration. Nothing new with Spencer Abraham.

New Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans is Bush’s old chum who served as his National Finance Chairman during the presidential campaign. READ: he knows where the money comes from. A banking and oil executive, he will push the same old globalist economic agenda that favours multinational corporations – now there’s a surprise.

Mel Martinez is a faithful Cuban from Bush’s brother’s machine in Florida. Expect no revolutions at Housing and Urban Development.

Old hack Norman Mineta, late of the Democratic California congressional delegation, has been shoe-shined with bipartisanism and propped up in the chair at Transportation. He comes fresh from Bill Clinton’s cabinet, where he served as secretary of commerce after Ron Brown’s tantalisingly convenient accident. At commerce Mineta played ball with everything from thwarting investigation into Brown’s "accident’ to making trade trips for Clinton to Indonesia, where he met many interesting people, some later indicted or implicated in Chinagate.

Tommy G. Thompson is the duplicatively named former governor of Wisconsin. (Where do people get these names? Reminds me of Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutrous-Gali. Apparently they had severe name shortages both in Wisconsin and Egypt the years these fellows were born. "Nope, sorry, we’ve already got three Ralph Thompson’s this year. You either name that kid `Tommy’ or we’ll have to call him `Baby Boy’ the rest of his life.")

Thompson pushed through welfare reform in his own state, a.k.a., trimmed the rolls a la guidelines coming from CFR honcho Peter G. Peterson. He also pushed "BadgerCare", a state health insurance program for uninsured families, which, like TennCare in Tennessee, will, I’m sure, prove a bonanza boondoggle of incalculable profitability to thousands of minority contractors and frauds of every other stripe, as well as eventually bankrupting the state. (Grimly amusing, isn’t it, the way these people symbolically shoot themselves in their own symbolic foot? They name it "BadgerCare" because Wisconsin is the "badger state," get it? Only what will happen is that BadgerCare, like its vicious and voracious carnivore namesake, will savage and devour all the available tax money in the state. Whoa! Duck! Here comes another boomerang!)

Thompson will take up office as the R.C.C. (Resident Compassionate Conservative) at Health & Human Services. Moreover, you will also take comfort when I remind you that our former Secretaryess of Health and Humanoid Services also hailed from Wisconsin. That would the hideous Clintonista, Donna Shalalalala, who as Chancellorette of the University of Wisconsin became Most High Priestess of Political Correctness. My pro-life friends in Wisconsin aren’t terribly impressed with Tommy Thompson, but I guess we’ll just have to wait-wait and see-see.

California lawyer Ann M. Veneman will serve as the agriculture secretaryess. Hot ziggety, another lawyer in government! We needed that. She has worked in the Ag Department since 1986, and was involved in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, NAFTA, and the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement. From 1995 to 1999 she was California Secretary of Food and Agriculture. With impeccable credentials like these, could she possibly disappoint her globalist friends and sponsors? I doubt it.

Gale Norton at Interior is a sort of wild card. She served Colorado as Attorney General, but has a conservative position on property rights. This is logical, since she belongs to the West, where ranchers, farmers, and miners have been fighting a last-ditch stand against federal landgrabbing for the past two decades. She has opposed back door property theft by environmental regulations as "takings’ that must be compensated.

ASHCROFT

John Ashcroft, Bush’s "conservative" attorney general, has much of the conservative community and especially Christian conservatives warbling with delight and anticipation. Me? He just leaves me scratching my head in wonderment. Here’s a man who has spent much of his career fighting abortion and gun control, but now he wants to volunteer to be the enforcer of abortion and gun control. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I reckon my mind just lacks subtlety and flexibility.

WHAT TO EXPECT

Nothing. That’s right, don’t expect anything at all from the Bush administration but more of the same old stuff. That way, if they accidentally stumble on some real reforms, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. In the meantime, the sun will keep on rising, and we’ll keep looking and waiting for the real thing.

-- F. Sanders

Back to the previous page