Bill Moyers Comments on the PATRIOT Act

At the same time the Bush administration is probing into your private life, it is shielding itself from all public scrutiny. It has shredded the Freedom of Information Act; it has locked away presidential records not only of the current administration but of administrations going all the way back to Reagan as well; and it has even locked up George W. Bush's gubernatorial records so that the people of Texas can't see what he did to them while serving as their governor.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is also using anti-terror legislation and executive orders to protect its corporate sponsors from scrutiny and from prosecution.

The drug company Eli Lilly, for instance, was recently granted immunity from all cases brought against it related to a vaccine it manufactured that turned out to cause autism in many children. Eli Lilly contributed over $3 million in the last two election campaigns. The Bush administration also protected the Bayer Corporation’s patent on the antibiotic Cipro throughout the anthrax scare.

Under George W. Bush's kinder, gentler fascism, U.S. corporations are now allowed to do business with the Homeland Security Department even if they cheat the government out of vast amounts of tax revenues by setting up offshore business fronts in the Caribbean Islands. It used to be that tax-evaders were tracked down and punished. Now they're rewarded with fat government contracts. Could the slave labor be far behind? No. Look at the Mariana Islands. It will be coming to a neighborhood near you.