With last week's reversal of his campaign pledge to limit power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global warming, President Bush surrendered to coal companies and utilities dependent on coal. He had little choice. It's payback time, and every industry and trade association is busily cashing in. There's no longer any countervailing power in Washington.
Business is in complete control of the machinery of government.
The House, the Senate and the White House are all run by business-friendly Republicans who are deeply indebted to American business for their electoral victories. If corporate America understood its long-term interest, it would use this unique moment to establish in the public's mind the principle that business can be trusted. But it's doing the opposite, and the danger for American business as a whole is profound. Credit-card companies are getting a bankruptcy bill that will make it harder for overstretched people who succumbed to these companies' blandishments ever to get out from under the resulting debts. Oil companies are on the way to obtaining rights to drill on Alaska's coastal plain.