George W. likes to pose as the Texas president — in the rough-hewn, rancher model of Lyndon Johnson.

However, George isn't actually a Texan — he was born in Connecticut, went to an East Coast prep school and to Ivy League colleges, and he summered in Kennebunkport at his family's oceanfront estate. Nor is he a rancher, as Lyndon was. Yes, George bought a ranchette to boost his cowboy image when he decided to run for president, but this "cowboy" has no cattle and is even afraid of horses — that's not quite a "tall-in-the-saddle" president like Johnson.

Yet, there is one area where George W. has stood taller than the real Texas president: federal spending. LBJ was derided as a big-spending liberal, but he was tight-fisted compared to Bush. While George is now trying to pretend that he's a small-government fiscal conservative, federal spending in his administration has grown by 5.3 percent a year, nearly a full point higher than the rate of increase in the Johnson years, and more than double the annual spending growth under Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Of course, the Bush White House takes no responsibility for anything negative, so it's now trying to blame the billions of dollars that it's dumping into his "war on terrorism" for distorting Bush's spending numbers (maybe the Bushites don't remember that LBJ had a war to finance, too, since so few of them actually served in it). But Bush spending is not just about his mismanaged wars. He has also hiked budgets in most agencies, with a disproportionate share of the increases going to privatization of government, corporate welfare and right-wing ideological boondoggles.

So, now that we hear free-spending George W. is suddenly posing as Mr. Frugal and demanding that Congress hold the line on spending, remember that no president has spent more of your tax dollars and gotten so little for it as he has.

Tony Mazzocchi

If you live near any kind of factory, chemical plant or similar facility, you might have noticed curious smells emanating from those places.

What is that stuff?

Well, thanks to a guy named Tony Mazzocchi, you and I have a legal right to know in detail what kind and how much toxic stuff these places are releasing into our air, water and soil. The national Right-to-Know program, passed in 1984, provides precise data on these toxics that is invaluable to firefighters, health specialists, environmental monitors, community advocacy groups and others.

It was not Congress — and certainly not the polluting corporations — that provided the impetus for such an essential public tool. Rather, the sparkplug was Mazzocchi. A wiry, savvy, spirited labor leader (one of the best ever), Tony even coined the phrase, "right-to-know."

Around 1970, he began receiving hundreds of complaints from chemical workers about plants that were shrouded in what the corporate bosses dismissively called "dust." Mazzocchi barnstormed across America — publicizing, organizing, negotiating and lobbying around the issue of the public's right to know about the toxics being so recklessly handled by these profiteers. He helped form grass-roots coalitions that passed dozens of state and local right-to-know laws, and they finally pushed through the federal law that has forced clean-ups and saved thousands of lives.

In 2001, however, George W. happened — and he's been doing his darnedest to undo Tony's work. At the behest of corporate executives who hate the pesky public, his regulators have exempted some 3,500 toxic spewers from the Right-to-Know law.

This is one of the first bits of regulatory monkey-wrenching that Congress or a new president must reverse. If they need inspiration to do the right thing on Right-to-Know, they should read the book on Mazzocchi's extraordinary life. It's titled, "The Man Who Loved Labor and Hated Work."

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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