Happy Halloween: More Scary Stuff About Evil And The Wicked Rulers Of Our Fair Land

While we're on the subject of ergonomics and Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, here's a review of Bushwacked (as well as Joe Conason's book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth) by another of our heros, Paul Krugman.

Here's one excerpt from the review, in reference to a recent Interior Department ruling in favor of the mining industry:

The point about the mining-waste ruling is that it isn't at all exceptional. Instead, it is typical of the Bush administration—in its callousness toward the general welfare, in the brazenness with which special interests were able to buy a decision to their liking, and in the contempt officials showed toward the public and the press. (Indeed, the ruling received only brief mention in the national press.) We're living in a replay of the Gilded Age, in which robber barons openly bought and sold government officials and their policies. And just as the Gilded Age brought forth a golden age of muckraking, our modern descent into money politics has brought forth a new wave of outraged reporters. Ivins and Dubose are worthy heirs of an honorable tradition.