Watching the Bush Administration in its final few months is like watching one of those tragic scenes in a disaster movie. In agency after agency, the Bush-Cheney-Rove crew is scrambling to do as much damage as they can to the American people – frantically manipulating our governmental systems to benefit powerful corporate interests – and having no regard for the consequences. From environmental agencies to the Pentagon, the Administration is rushing through new rules and executive reorganizations designed to lock policies that benefit Corporate America and tie the hands of the next administration.

One of their latest efforts came from the Justice Department, which issued a 215-page “policy guidance” paper for future antitrust regulators. During Bush’s eight-year reign, his tightly controlled Justice Department has filed exactly one case charging anti-competitive practices. That one was a small case involving a West Virginia newspaper. The new Bush policy protects monopolists, not consumers or competitors, and that was to be anticipated. The policy is so unbalanced that even the Federal Trade Commission blasted it as “a blueprint for radically weakened [anti-trust] enforcement” that will allow monopolies to act “with impunity.”

If you check to see what the Bush-Cheney-Rove group has done you will find regulatory agencies being stripped of authority and federal preemption being made a part of the regulatory process. Their goal has been to protect corporate wrongdoers and penalize their victims and that goal is getting a final push in the last days of the very worst administration ever.