BushCo's Legacy

In Behind the Bush Bust Paul Krugman claims that the economy that BushCo is leaving us with is not so much GW's fault. Krugman blames the ever deepening Health Care hole on Newt Gengrich, ignoring the lack of leadership on this issue for the last - oh - 7 1/2 years.

Where he really turns into a Bush apologist is here:

As for high food and fuel prices, they’re mainly the result of growing demand from China and other emerging economies. But oil prices wouldn’t be as high as they are, and the United States would have been much less vulnerable to the current price spike, if we had taken steps in the past to limit our oil consumption.

Mr. Bush certainly deserves some blame here, and not just for his destructive embrace of ethanol as the answer to our energy problems. After 9/11 he could easily have called for higher gas taxes and fuel efficiency standards as a national security measure, but the thought never seems to have crossed his mind.

Still, in energy as in health care the biggest missed opportunities came 15 or more years ago, when Mr. Gingrich and other conservative Republicans in Congress, aided by Democrats with ties to energy-intensive industries, blocked conservation measures.

Um... hello?

Newtie notwithstanding, the complete clusterfuck in Iraq combined with outrageous tax cuts for the rich and an energy policy designed by Big Oil is what has been driving this economy for the last seven years. Even I can suss that out.