Payback Time for Business
 

                                  With the Senate hanging on one vote, the Bush administration acts
                                  as if it has only limited time to do as much damage as possible to
                                  the environment, consumers, the nonrich and common sense.

                                  One day, President George W. Bush appoints as the government's
                                  head regulator a professor who has made a career of milking
                                  corporate funding while opposing environmental regulation. The
                                  next day, we learn that our new United Nations
                                  ambassador-in-waiting aided Central American death squads. Not
                                  to mention earlier Bush administration appointments, such as
                                  turning over the Justice Department to John Ashcroft and other
                                  rightist zealots.

                                  The administration is hardly "conservative" in the sense of
                                  preserving clean air and water and pristine land in Alaska. The
                                  gang in power is out to pillage the environment with an abandon
                                  not witnessed since the days when strip-mining was in vogue. The
                                  principle seems to be that what is good for a company that gave
                                  money to the Bush campaign is good for the country. As a Los
                                  Angeles Times front-page headline put it: "With Bush, Happy
                                  Days Here Again for Business Lobby."

                                  Lobbyists have enjoyed a rapid string of successes. Last week,
                                  much to the pleasure of industrial polluters, Mr. Bush reversed
                                  President Bill Clinton's order to lower the level of arsenic in
                                  drinking water.

                                  Ralph Nader was wrong: There is a huge difference between the
                                  two parties. And for the Bush administration, it is payback time on
                                  every front for his greedy legions.

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