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A former Texas governor used to say, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”

No, it wasn’t George W. Bush. Bush was born rich, and while he’s certainly been a poor president, this is a different meaning of the word “poor” — a meaning Bush would know only from books, if he read them.

I’m not sure Bush would have said “rich is better” even if a speech writer had handed him the script. His entire administration has seemed dedicated to leveling a tilted economic playing field — but he seems to believe it’s the rich who have it rough, and poor folks get all the breaks. So while one hand taketh away, cracking down on civil liberties, judicial review and habeas corpus, the other hand giveth:

The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance.

In presenting the revised rules, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty called the changes a substantial and direct response to a lobbying drive by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others.

Since devastating bankruptcies at Enron and WorldCom prompted Congress to pass a stringent corporate accountability law four years ago, business interests increasingly have pushed back on efforts to police their operations, arguing that the government has imposed too many costs on companies with too few benefits for investors.

The Salt Lake Tribune shows us how law enforcement works for people without lobbyists:

If only for a few minutes, Maria felt like an “illegal alien” in her homeland – the United States of America.

She thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant here on Tuesday, but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets.

The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were “cleared” or arrested by “la migra,” the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said.

“I was in the line because of the color of my skin,” she said, her voice shaking. … “I’m from the United States, and I didn’t even get a blue bracelet.”

…

Women were crying as they were handcuffed with plastic ties and put on the buses. Some weren’t allowed to get their belongings from their lockers. Maria, who declined to use her last name, argued with an agent because she was getting the coat for her 34-year-old niece, Blanca, who was arrested.

“She [the agent] told me, ‘Do you think it’s going to be cold in Mexico?'” Maria said, holding back tears. “I’ve never seen people get treated como animales.”

Bush is wrong about the tilt of the playing field. Former Texas Governor John Connolly was right: rich is better.