It is already a cliche.  Web commenters cannot resist making the joke that the only book you will find in the George W. Bush Presidential Library is “The Pet Goat.”  This is the children’s story that Bush continued to read with a Florida elementary school classroom for several minutes after he was told of the second attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011.

But this was no joke.  For me, it was only the beginning of the loss of Bush’s credibility as our national leader.  He used the September 11, 2001 attacks to justify his invasion of Iraq, something he clearly had on his agenda the day he took office.  His surrogates delivered “shock and awe” to the Iraqis — in return we got ourselves an eight-year war with nearly 4,500 U.S. deaths and 32,000 U.S. wounded.  Because his focus was elsewhere, it took another administration to find and kill the perpetrator of the original attacks.

There have been and there will be no apologies from George W. Bush.  And there will be none from me, for my disdain of his library and its hollow edifice of respectability.

Barbara Bush said today that “we’ve had enough Bushes” in the White House.  If only she had told her son this 15 years ago.

My elementary school music teacher was Mrs. Scott.  (Anita Scott died last August, age 87.  She taught music in our Western Pennsylvania schools for 32 years.)  Once a week or so, Mrs. Scott would amble into our class, beckon us with her distinctive alto sing-song voice to open our music books to page-whatever, and half of the class (the girls) would dutifully sing while the other half (we croaky boys) would do everything in our power to blend in with our desks, the floor tiles or the lights, anything but open our mouths and reveal ourselves.

Here are a few of the songs in our music book that we were asked to sing in 1963:

•  “U.S. Field Artillery Song” (i.e., the “Caisson Song”).  From 1918.

•  “Old Black Joe” by Stephen Foster.  From 1853.

•  “The Deaf Woman’s Courtship (Old Woman)” from 1729 or so.  This was the one song guaranteed to make sixth-grade boys mute when they were forced to recite, “Old woman, old woman, will you kiss me dearly?”

I think Mrs. Scott meant well, but really.  Hard for me to imagine that a music educator would be unaware of the discomfort factor involved in making sixth-grade boys sing about romance.  That said, I had worse school experiences (subject of another blog).

I wonder what elementary music education is like in 2013.  I surely hope that there are no more rosy-cheeked boys belting out “the caissons keep rolling along” while having no clue what a caisson is.  I also hope sixth-grade boys and girls are no longer being asked to play 18th-century gender roles.  But what exactly are they doing in music class now?  Do they sing “Hey Jude” or “Material Girl” or “Put a Ring on It”?

Maybe no one sings at all.  Maybe they never replaced Mrs. Scott.  I’d like to know.

In Bangladesh earlier today, a building that housed several garment factories collapsed, killing at least 70 people, according to The New York Times.  Cracks in the structure had been noticed the day before, but workers were ordered to report anyway.

In November, a fire at another Bangladesh garment factory took the lives of 111 people.

Many if not most of these workers were making the minimum wage of 21 cents an hour.  The website for the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (whose headquarters are in Pittsburgh) reports that this is the lowest hourly wage in the world, even less than Pakistan’s 37 cents, China’s 93 cents, and Guatemala’s $1.21.

These workers were so desperate to survive that they were willing to work in death traps for 21 cents an hour.  Walmart, by comparison, makes a profit of $2.6 million per hour, every hour of the day.  Clothing sales account for 13% of Walmart’s income.

It has been said before (what hasn’t been) but many of the cheap things we buy in America are not cheap at all — it just means that someone else is paying the price, either in terms of environmental damage, resource depletion, poor health or even loss of life.  We don’t take advantage of other people’s productivity as much as we do their desperation.

In our addiction to cheap, Walmart may be the pusher but we are the users.  This is on us.  What you do about it is up to you.