Facing South catches an unbelievable display of Bush sycophancy among a large collection of supposedly independent newspaper editors across the country. At least 5 newspapers ran an editorial praising Bush for gutting worker protection laws on hurricane-cleanup projects, using exactly the same language, as the newspaper’s official editorial position (i.e., the voice of its own editorial staff). The piece was authored by a former Republican staffer in several administrations and campaigns, who now edits one of the papers; the others ran all or portions of it verbatim. Most - but not all - of the papers are members of some sort of conservative newspaper corporation, but all ran the piece as their own, individual position - while in fact mouthing Bush propaganda fed to them by a former Republican White House press aide.
It gets better: the same hack - Sean Paige - recently editorialized against MoveOn.org members sending, on their own initiative, letters to newspaper editors that used language supplied by MoveOn. He himself, however, has no qualms about dictating entire editorials to other papers to run secretly under their own names.
It’s almost not worth getting upset about. It hardly lowers the bar on Republican hacktivism (Jeff Gannon?, pre-screened rally crowds?, military “meet the troops” press conferences in which the troops are actually PR staff?, “Mission Accomplished”? . . .). For so long now it’s been clear that you simply cannot believe any word spoken by a Republican or by most conservatives generally, and cannot take anything they say at face value. This administration, and their supporters, have taken lying beyond an art form - it’s simply ingrained. Deceit is the default position on even the most meaningless issues. Couldn’t those papers simply have written 4 or 5 paragraphs of their own on the issue? Was there any point to printing unacknowledged propaganda? But propaganda and deceitfulness is what they do - it is communication, to them. Writing an honest editorial is unthinkable, because sincere and direct communication is to today’s Republicans what lying was to a former generation - something you only do if you have no other choice.
As for the actual issue, it betrays a far greater perversity than the lying itself. The content of the lie-itorials was the “Davis-Bacon Act” - a federal law that requires that workers on federal projects be paid the prevailing local wage (not a union wage) and given the same worker protections as available under state law. Naturally, Republicans hate anything that makes life better for the working class, and have been trying to kill it since forever - Bush got a head start by gutting worker protection in the USA PATRIOT Act, in the name of “national security”, and has now taken the excuse of his own budget overruns to hammer workers in the hurricane cleanup in the name of “cost-cutting”. The editorials, however, recommend ending all federal worker protections under all circumstances.
This is as much as you need to know about the GOP.
Of course higher wages drive up labor costs - it costs more to pay workers better. Similarly with unemployment benefits, health insurance, and seniority protections. It would be a lot cheaper to pay them starvation wages, let them get sick, and fire them at whim. So we have a choice to make: treat the people who do our work for us decently, or save money by screwing it out of the workers to their detriment. (Note that no proposal to roll back worker benefits was accompanied by a proposal to reduce the incentive fees, “cost-plus” margin, or other guaranteed profit clauses in federal contracts to the companies that employ these workers.) Of course costs are an issue - especially under the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the history of any nation in the world. But it is a question of values - of basic human decency - whether we meet our financial burdens by taking a basic, decent living wage from hourly-wage workers, or look to sources that can afford that cost without sacrificing basic needs.
Democractic Congressmember George Miller made the point as starkly as it can be in a letter addressing Bush’s assault on workers. He gives a table showing prevailing wages for ordinary hourly-wage workers in the hurricane region, ranging from barelu $6/hr for truck drivers in Mississippi to a munificent $13.75 for carpenters in Louisiana (carpenters in Mississippi earn 2/3 of that). He notes:
[T]hese prevailing wages are modest by anyone’s standards. If you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, a carpenter in Louisiana working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year at the prevailing wage of $13.75 would earn $27,500 annually.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a single parent raising a single child in New Orleans needs $27,192 in annual income just to pay for basic needs like food, housing, and transportation to school and work. EPI notes that this “basic family budget” is not enough to pay for lots of items many Americans take for granted – including renters’ insurance to guard against flood or fire. (See http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/datazone_fambud_budget for the calculation).
The President’s proclamation raises the question of just how low of a wage he believes hard working Americans should earn . . . .
Recall that’s the highest-paid job in the chart - it pays barely a poverty wage, and that only for one parent with one child - the rest all pay less - and Bush wants to cut those wages further! The answer to Miller’s question about how low Bush wants wages to go is, unmistakeably: below the level at which it is possible to get by at all.
Why would we do this? Why would any decent nation, any decent person, do this? Is it so strange to expect people who do the work that makes our society run could have even a basic living standard, let alone a decent, comfortable life? There was a time when hourly-wage, blue-collar employment was a ticket to the modest middle class - you could live a comfortable, unostentatious lifestyle, own a decent house, take a modest vacation, send your kids to a decent college, and eventually retire - usually with a pension - from doing an ordinary medium-skill job. It was unions that made that possible, but it hardly seems like too much for them to have asked for. Today, full-time blue-collar employment provides a below-poverty-level standard of living in most jobs, and the Republicans think that’s too much! Why would we want to deny any full-time-employed worker a living wage? When did we become so selfish and so resentful that even a poverty-level standard of living would be prohibited by Presidential directive? When did we become a country in which a President would ever consider - or be allowed to impose - a policy of making workers worse off?
They’re not just congenital liars - they’re evil people. They simply suck as human beings.
and 
I’ve had dogs bite me, but I’ve never had one intentionally pee on me, most certainly not while I was trying to sleep!
