Thursday, September 22, 2005
Hell in a Handbasket
I don't want to make light of the predicament of those unfortunate people in Rita's path, Bush. Nor of the huge problems a new and potentially horribly destructive blow will create for our national economy. Still, the temptation to take a leaf from Pat Robertson's book is irresistible. He does have this way of attributing these disasters to God's wrath: the latest, I heard, was that Katrina was God's vengeance on Ellen De Generes--a native New Orleanian--for being a lesbian. I know you share Robertson's belief in this same God, who visits His wrath upon the human species, and I'm wondering what you personally believe His message might be? Myself, if I subscribed to this belief, I'd tend to see this unending parade of disasters--9/11, the Iraq war, Katrina, Rita--as a powerful message that we're on the wrong track and need to change course. Check out your New Testament again, Bush. I believe it suggests principles somewhat different from cutting taxes for the wealthy--and services for the poor.
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I'm going to have to inject a few facts into your fantasy world. We'll begin by comparing the halfway point of President Clinton's tenure to the 50-yard line of the Bush administration. In 1996, the poverty level in the USA stood at 13.7 percent. In 2004, the poverty level was 12.7 percent, so Bush beats Clinton here by a full percentage point. As far as entitlement spending on poverty programs is concerned, it isn't even close. In 1996, President Clinton signed a budget that directed 12.2 percent of spending be directed toward the poor. In 2004, Bush's budget kicked 2 percent more than Clinton to poverty programs, an astronomical $329 billion. In fact, President Bush is spending more on poverty entitlement programs and education than any president in history.
Tax cuts for the rich - pfft. Even if that were true (and it's laughingly false) have you ever been offered a job by a poor person. Only hippy economics says that by taking money away from people who invest in the economy, the economy improves.
Statistics are so convenient (lies), aren't they, Peter? But you and I learned a long time ago that a percentage point on a piece of paper, one way or the other isn't the point. Wiping out poverty altogether is the point. Only a lone range person with a rancher Bushleague mentality would miss the reason why poverty is a vastly more important problem than the miniscule manuevers of Reagan trickle down economics. They call it trickle down, because it only trickles down. Dah? None of your readers are smarter than Voltaire, quote, "The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third." And Republicans are the new master artists of government, painting their rosey pictures in percentage points. If administrations are jockeying for a percentage point, they all suck. Daaaaa!!
As for their rathful god, isn't it interesting he is pointing his furious finger at the Gulf refineries, where the water temperatures are 2 to 3 degrees above where they should be this time of year? I love irony; using gasoline to escape what they caused with gasoline and their hard earned money funneled into to more gasoline. A true case of the futility of man.
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