Falling Down
I've quietly reproached myself for not pressing on about various political matters, but it's mostly so grim and I've fallen prey to the mood that mentioning things isn't doing much good. It all piles up so quickly. It's emotionally taxing to absorb so much grimness each day.
What's the likelihood that the Pentagon audit's revelation that Haliburton overcharged by $100 million will see any refund - much less penalties applied? How many have heard that California Governor Schwarzenegger was caught producing propaganda pieces disguised as news stories, much as the Bush administration has been doing for nearly all of its time in office? Will anything be done about it? Probably not much as far as the public's concerned, unless someone can find something of a sexually illicit nature.
Given his power in government, I wish more people took an interest in Tom DeLay's record. But, I'm sure there must be some subtle distinction I'm missing that would make such scrutiny a partisan act, as opposed to, well, the way the Clintons were dogged through two administrations.
There's the blizzard of bullshit swirling around the issue of Social Security, as Bush and pals continue to do everything to push an absolutely staggering sum of cash into the hands of Wall Street bookies who, whether the american public wins or loses on its investments, will make out. They get paid either way, after all. Instead of rolling back the high-end tax cuts and reforming the tax code so that those people and corporations actually pay what they should back into the system, and so keep Social Security solvent, we're being offered a bait and switch game under the vague and misleading banner of an"Ownership Society" while Social Security is starved and shrunk. Also, just because Alan Greenspan seems determined to die at work shouldn't mean that his repeated advice to Congress to cut Social Security benefits should be heeded. I wish people would read pieces like this one by Jonathan Rowe, to remind themselves what Social Security is supposed to be. Also, it's worth the time to familiarize one's self with The Ten Myths about Social Security.
Go here and scroll down to the Budget section to find information on the fantastically dire state of the budget in Bush's hands -- which achieve those heights of fiscal lunacy without even including the cost of ongoing military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and wherever else an "emergency" will be called over the next couple years.
Then there's the bill, all but assured of passage, concerning changes to the bankruptcy laws. It's difficult to read through some of the details both of the legislation and its origins and not come to the conclusion that a great many senators are either in the pockets of the credit card industry and/or exist in such an isolated and secure economic bubble that they have no idea what life is like for the vast majority of US citizens.
Then there are the multitude of smaller things creeping into our lives, setting precedents that will then be pointed to by others when they want to create new restrictions on personal liberty. One such is a recently passed (32:0) bill in Ohio that establishes security checkpoints "near ports, bridges, airports, and train stations." It's more of this "the world changed on 9/11" nonsense.
And all of this is just a taste of the bitter future being crafted.
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