<html>
<body>
<font size=3><br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>April 1,
2004 CounterPunch<br><br>
</font><font face="Helvetica, Helvetica" size=4><b>Towel Boy<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4 color="#990000">Bush
Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By CHRIS
FLOYD<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=5 color="#990000">A</font><font face="Verdana" size=3>
warning to readers: this column is obscene. It relates details of an act
so depraved that young children should not be exposed to it; even adults
will be debased by the contact. The characters described herein exhibit
all the human enlightenment and moral engagement of monkeys idly
scratching their groins on a hot day at the zoo.<br><br>
Last November, in one of the innumerable, unnoticed little corruptions
that belch forth daily, even hourly, from the geyser of graft that is the
Bush Administration, the man who calls himself the president decided that
some of the lowliest laborers in America should be left to sicken or die
from forced exposure to filthy rags dripping with toxic waste. Why?
Because their bosses paid him money.<br><br>
That's the only reason. They gave George W. Bush a fat roll of cash, so
he gave them protection from laws designed to safeguard workers in
industrial laundries who handle "shop towels," heavy-duty
cleaning rags used to mop up poison chemicals, David Donnelly reported
last week in Campaign Money Watch.<br><br>
Just how crude and blatant was this corporate copulation? As Donnelly
notes, in September 2003, Richard Farmer, bossman of the nation's biggest
industrial launderer, pitched one of the bribe-orgies known as
"campaign fundraisers" for his longtime pal, the Toxic Texan.
In a single night, he forked over $1.7 million to Bush. A few weeks
later, Bush's minions at the ever-more ironically named Environmental
Protection Agency introduced a new rule that would exempt Farmer's
industry "from federal hazardous and solid waste requirements for
shop towels contaminated with toxic chemicals."<br><br>
How much quid was this pro quo worth? The EPA says industrial launderers
will save more than $30 million a year by ditching safety procedures for
their wage slaves, most of them low-paid immigrants. Not a bad return on
a $1.7 million investment. But hey, that's our George for you: he gives
great quid.<br><br>
And Farmer's certainly no slouch when it comes to putting out quo. He and
his company, Cintas, have given more than $2 million to the Bushist Party
since it seized power in the court-ordered coup of December 2000. In
fact, Farmer is one of Bush's little "Rangers," a rank reserved
for tycoons who network their connections - and browbeat their employees
- into shooting a total wad of at least $200,000 into Bush's wide-open
coffers.<br><br>
But is the EPA decision really so awful? Will anyone die from it?
Probably not; not immediately, anyway. Oh sure, patches of their skin
will fall off, their sinuses will rot, their lungs will deteriorate,
they'll be crippled, pain-wracked - and saddled by crushing debt from a
rapacious medical system whose measly public benefits were gutted late
last year by yet another quid job between Bush and his corporate johns:
more than $46 billion siphoned from the public purse to private health
plans, as the New York Times reports.<br><br>
Of course, the laundry workers will also see their cells fill up with a
sediment of cancer-causing toxins - but most of these time-bombs of
malignancy won't explode until after Ranger Robert and his fellow Bush
barons have squeezed all possible profit from the infected peons'
labor.<br><br>
And that profit is huge. Farmer, already one of the nation's richest men,
saw his Cintas sweatshop pull down almost $250 million in pure gravy last
year alone. Cintas controls a third of the market, so, overall, the
towelmongers take home about $750 million in profit annually. You can see
how all this safety malarkey - which they've been operating under for
years - is really cutting into their bottom line. Thank god they've
finally bought a president who feels their pain!<br><br>
It's true that a few malcontents, such as Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro,
have noted that Bush's porn-star turn for the shop-towel bosses will also
harm another group: the general public. The new EPA rule will allow the
bosses to process 100,000 tons of toxic solvents - which will then find
their way into the rivers, streams and groundwater of the surrounding
communities. Not to worry, though: Farmer's sweatshop empire has a
sterling record of environmental husbandry and concern for community
health. For example, one of his Connecticut plants has been cited a mere
250 times for violations that can cause "death or serious physical
harm," including "excessive emissions of cancer-causing
solvents" and "serious lapses in worker training, hazardous
material handling and protective equipment."<br><br>
But any real people affected by the Ranger's runoff - nice white people
with office jobs, suburban homes and "Bush-Cheney '04" stickers
on their Jeep Cherokees - can probably afford a good private health plan,
right? As for the laundry workers, who cares? If God wanted to protect
them from unregulated poisons and brutal exploitation, then why didn't He
arrange to have them born into wealthy families grown fat from
generations of war profiteering and crony stroking like the divinely
appointed Leader, hmm? You going to argue with God?<br><br>
No - but you can still argue with Bush. His Ranger-romping rule is not
yet final; the EPA "comment phase" is open until April 9. Why
not go to
<<a href="http://www.epa.gov/" eudora="autourl">www.epa.gov</a>>
and tell them what you think? (They don't make it easy, but follow the
"Laws, Regulations and Dockets" link through "EPA
Dockets," then "View Open Dockets," then "Docket ID
RCRA-2003-0004.")<br><br>
Will it do any good? Of course not! A man so depraved that he'd kill
10,000 innocent people in a loot-gobbling war crime - and joke about it,
as Bush did recently at a public tryst with media bigwigs - won't blush
at a pipsqueak scam like the shop-towel caper. But at least you can tell
him to stop scratching his graft-infested groin so blatantly. Children
might be watching.<br><br>
<b>Chris Floyd</b> is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular
contributor to CounterPunch. His CounterPunch piece
on</font><font face="Verdana" size=3 color="#184B81"><b> Rumsfeld's plan
to provoke terrorist attacks</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=3> came
in at Number 4 on Project Censored's final tally of the Most Censored
stories of 2002. He can be reached
at:</font><font face="Verdana" size=3 color="#184B81"><b>
cfloyd72@hotmail.com<br><br>
<br>
</b></font><pre>--
</pre><font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415)
863-9977</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>