Hightower Lowdown

The official spin on our new Treasury Secretary, Henry M. "Hank" Paulson, Jr., is that this CEO from Goldman Sachs brings credibility, financial star power, gravitas, and dynamic new energy to the shaping of George W's economic policies. Much is being made of the fact that Paulson has an environmentalist streak and disagrees with Bush's head-in-the-sand stance on global warming.

But Paulson isn't in charge of environmental policy -- his turf is the economy, and on this the Wall Street banker is in lockstep with the Bushites.

After all, Hank took home $38 million in pay last year and is sitting on a $700 million fortune. He's all for Bush's cuts in taxes on capital gains and dividends -- nearly half of which will go to millionaires like him.

He's also been the premier Wall Street pusher of moving American capital into ventures in China -- ventures that move more U.S. jobs to that low-wage sanctuary. As for the crushing national debt that Bush is putting on the backs of our children, Paulson airily calls it "a necessary and understandable side effect of what needed to be done to stimulate the economy."

Of course, it's the millionaires who've had their economies "stimulated," while America's workaday majority hasn't even kept up with inflation. Hank has also backed the Bushites with big bucks, putting more than $150,000 into George W's '04 race and hundreds of thousands more into GOP congressional campaigns.