AUSTIN, Texas -- My favorite factoid gathered by the 15,000 underutilized
reporters in Philadelphia is that the opening gavel of the Republican
National Convention was "acoustically enhanced" by a sound engineer to sound
"better than real." Yup.
I loved the blind mountain-climber giving the Pledge of Allegiance. (Hint
to Dems: In South Texas, we have twin dwarfs with 12 fingers apiece who play
the accordion.) Of course, everybody noticed that there were more black
faces on the stage than in the audience, but that's nothing.
At the 1972 Republican convention, there was an Ethnic Night party at which
I saw John Volpe, the Italian-American secretary of transportation, doing
the frug while a Chinese girl sang "Never on Sunday" in Yiddish. Is this a
great country or what? Except the Republicans have proved yet again the
tragic truth that White People Can't Clap On Beat. Or is it just
Republicans?
By the way, one quarter of the Republican delegates are millionaires, and
fewer than 10 percent of them make less than $50,000 a year.
John McCain wimped out. If Colin Powell (what a speech! what a guy!) could
take on affirmative action for lobbyists, prisons and corporate tax
loopholes, McCain could have at least mentioned campaign finance reform.
Naturally we were all delighted to see Big George Bush and Bill Clinton
start to mix it up -- biff, bam, pow. Great stuff. A nice illustration of
the apparently genetic Bush trait of screaming loudly: "My opponent is
attacking me! This is negative politics!" after whichever Bush has just
stuck a shiv into said opponent. Nice to hear a lecture on negative
campaigning from the side that brought us the Willie Horton ad.
In the ongoing rewrite of Little George's record, the recent Rand study of
public schools is being used to claim that Texas schools are now "the best
in the nation." The Rand study ranked Texas 27th out of 44 states and did
NOT say that higher standards, accountability or ending social promotion
were the keys to improving the public schools. It said that smaller class
sizes, better classroom equipment and spending more money on poor kids were
the keys to improvement. All of that has been done in Texas, but none of it
by George W.
Speaking of Bush's record, the slogan "Leave No Child Behind" is actually
offensive. This is the man who tried to knock 200,000 poor kids out of a
health insurance program funded by 3-to-1 federal matching dollars. This is
the guy who thinks that a useless property tax cut is more important than
funding kindergarten. I say "useless" because most school districts in the
state promptly upped their tax rates.
Rumor has it that W.'s speech will claim he's a regular guy because he's
from Midland. You might keep in mind that Midland is only half of a town.
Rich, white-collar Republicans live in Midland. Working-class people live in
Odessa.
Last year I asked the ACLU board member from Midland if they were having
any trouble with gay-bashing out there. She said, "Oh, hell, honey, there's
not a gay in Midland who will come out of the closet for fear people will
think they're Democrats."
Enough of this piffle -- back to the real story. You will have noticed that
California, the first state to deregulate utilities, is now in a desperate
bind for electricity, with rolling blackouts around the state and the bills
up by 100 percent.
Remember who sold us on deregulation? Remember the lobbyists who stuck
Texas consumers with $8 billion worth of "stranded costs"? Remember the
story of Bush's legislative liaison guy in a full-scale panic, racing into
the committee room to stop an amendment that would have forced industrial
and commercial users to pay 50 percent of those costs?
OK, connect the dots here: Utilities dereg, a bad deal for practically
everybody (you, too, will be enjoying summertime more without electricity),
benefits a select few -- among them the Enron Corp. of Houston. Guess who
ranks as W. Bush's single largest campaign contributor? Yup.
The only news story at this convention, and at the upcoming Democratic
fest, is money. Who gives how much, and what do they get for it?
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out
more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
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