Ebban Clause wrote in her April 9 column some things that were truly extraordinary.

I am always amazed at how two people can be presented the same set of facts and come up with two very different interpretations.

She wrote, “Women have an immense role in our country’s economy, and under the Bush administration, women have seen vast advances.”

What does vast mean? I might use vast to describe the new freedom women had after winning the right to vote.

Women have always played an immense role in our economy, and it it disingenuous to suggest the our president has changed that in any way.

“Under the Jobs and Growth Act, 68 million women will see their taxes decline on an average of $1,338.” This is truly a vast distortion of the truth, one that the current administration uses all the time.

Republicans continually misuse the word average, hoping most people will take the statement at face value.

The median is a much better measure in this case, and the median tax savings for income earned is $470. The median, of course, means that half of all individuals and families get more and half get less.

The Brookings Institute estimated that 62 percent of the 2003 tax cuts go to families in the top 5 percent (earning more than $150,000/year) of the income scale.

If the president really wanted to stimulate the economy, he would have given more money to people who would spend it.

Businesses currently have unused capacity, so they need people to buy things. The real purpose of the Bush tax cuts is to increase the disparity in this country between the wealthy and the rest of us.

If you don’t believe me, then look at the Gini index (a measure of income distribution) and see where the United States lies in respect to other countries. The Gini index is widely used by economists and ranges from zero to 100, where zero indicates perfect equality and 100 perfect inequality in income distribution.

The World Bank provides this index for most countries and can be found at www.undp.org/

hdr2003/indicator/indic_126_2_2.html.

The United States has the most unequal income distribution of any industrialized country — with the exception of Singapore. Our Gini index is as high as it has ever been in our history and has been growing the last 30 years. I fault Bill Clinton for not making this a more important issue in his administration.

“As a conservative, President Bush’s priorities begin with opportunity for all Americans, so he tends not to see the country as a divided set of special interests.” This statement is so misguided the writer must not be paying attention to anything that is happening in our country.

The current administration is run by Karl Rove, the “boy genius” political consultant to Bush. John J. DiIulio, former head of the administration’s faith-based organizations initiative, gives an insider’s account of the total lack of public policy consideration in the White House. Read the entire memo at www.esquire.

com/features/articles/2002/

021202_mfe_diiulio_2.html. It is certainly an eye-opener.

Bush has also given over regulation of industry, environmental protection, worker protection, food safety, etc. to former lobbyists for the industries they are now regulating.

One example of many is Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Eugene, a lawyer, spent 12 years fighting against laws protecting workers from repetitive stress injuries.

Scalia said repeatedly that ergonomics is “junk science” and “quackery.”

Bush appointed him to the post of Solicitor General in the Labor Department, responsible for enforcing laws protecting workers’ rights, safety, discrimination, etc.

Probably the biggest lie President Bush used during his 2000 presidential campaign is that he is a “uniter,” not a divider. I doubt he will use that particular line much in 2004.

His policies have done much to polarize the country, not bring it together.

Ted Peterson

Ames