Political Rants

Pay days.

Writing this totally on the fly, so try to read fast and skip over any errors in grammar (or judgment). Have a heart, will you?

Tax fraud. It was probably inevitable that, as the sunset for the Bush 2003 tax cuts approached, the chorus of whining from the well-to-do would begin in earnest. Now we are faced with the remarkable phenomenon of hearing politicians who identify the federal deficit as public enemy #1 argue forcefully for an extension of tax relief for millionaires that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. I know Americans have a short memory, but some of you out there must surely remember the 1990s. Were rich people overtaxed in those days? They seemed to be living pretty high at the time. Then their president, W. Bush, had the audacity to deeply cut their taxes with one hand while he launched two pointless wars with the other. Having blown a huge hole in the budget, they now want to stretch it wider. Time to come in now, children. You’ve had enough fun.

Job one. The president has been speaking a bit more forcefully about the economy in recent days. That is good, but not good enough. We need a deeper, broader commitment to the notion of full employment in this country, and to back it up with some appropriate action.  Various T.V. pundits blandly claim that there is little government can do, but I disagree. The fact is, government has to take steps to provide incentive to industry to employ workers in this country. They could start with procurement. The entire Federal Government, including the Defense Department, should require all contracts to be fulfilled with U.S. labor. If we need it, let’s build it here. We’ve got the skills, the money, and a workforce more than ready to do the work.

Would this be in violation of our myriad trade agreements? I hope so. Then maybe we could dump out of them altogether. That is the commitment Obama needs to make. Stop making it easy to export manufacturing and other jobs. Use the power of the federal government to drive domestic manufacturing and service employment. And for Christ’s sake, if people are willing to work and can’t find a job, provide them with work.

There’s plenty that needs doing in this country. Let’s get it done… and put people to work at the same time.

Usual Rubbish

Last minute waltz.


One-two-three, one-two-three, JUMP-two-three, one-two-three… Good, good – you’ve got it! Now try it again, from the top. And a-one-two-three…

Greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, a combination squat house, launch pad, recording studio, interstellar refugee center, and – now – dance studio! You heard me right. Sure, sure – no one in Big Green can dance his way out of a paper bag; this much is true. But needs dictate actions in this corner of the universe as well as in yours, and damn it, we need money to get this tour off the ground. So….. dance lessons. Administered by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), as it happens.

Oh, sure, laugh. You may laugh, but actually… he’s not as bad a dancer as you might imagine. In fact, he’s far worse than that. To observe that he is mechanical is less than surprising, I suppose. Actually, he’s kind of mechanical even for a robot. (He doesn’t do that robot dance any justice.) Fortunately, we live in an area where no one can dance, apparently (precious little reason to do so, as well), so Marvin can, simply by dint of his willingness to claim expertise, seem like an expert. Oh, the lengths money will drive a man (or an automaton) to. Sad.

Why are we so short on cash? Please! Aren’t we always? Think of the expenses we need to bear. Just keeping ourselves in Cheesits and crepe paper is enough to bankrupt any tycoon. And then there’s Anti-Lincoln’s odious absinthe habit. (Now I know why he spent so much time at the theater.) We’re just pouring money down the rat hole every day of our lives. And those rats are living pretty large, my friend, pretty large. Of course, now they have to share with our tour manager, Admiral Gonutz (ret.), who needs cash (and lots of it) to provision our ramshackle interstellar space craft.

So… I don’t care how poorly Marvin teaches the waltz. So long as his students pay their bills, we’re bleeping golden. ‘Nuff said.

Political Rants

War’s end.

President Obama delivered his second address to the nation this past Tuesday, this time on the subject of the “end of combat operations” in Iraq. Here – unsolicited by anyone – are my comments:

Turn the page. President Obama said it was time to “turn the page” on the War in Iraq. Um… not so fast, Mr. President. I know you are obsessed with looking ahead rather than behind, but if everyone took that attitude (say, local law enforcement), no one would be held accountable for anything. This war was caused by people in our own country – people in positions of authority. Your administration has neglected to even examine the record of those responsible for this disaster. This has emboldened them to the point where they regularly flaunt their guilt in public, secure in the knowledge that they will never pay a price for what they did.

Good intentions? At one point, the president said this:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.

I won’t address the “patriot” issue, since that is such a loaded term. But I can most certainly doubt President Bush’s “support for our troops” without any resort to imagination. He sent them into Iraq to die by the thousand, for no legitimate reason, in pursuit of an illegal and immoral war – a war of choice, no less. He shipped National Guard troops overseas in the ramshackle vehicles they used back home, with no armor, no protection. He is no friend of our soldiers or military families. To suggest otherwise is simply obscene.

Dark creations. The president went on:

Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.  They stared into the darkest of human creations — war — and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.

This passage is worthy of his predecessor. Reading it, one would think we invade Iraq to help the Iraqis.  It also, like so much of Bush’s prose, seeks to cloud the notion of agency behind the initiation of the war itself, as if to suggest that our troops went to Iraq on their own initiative to do good works, as if they were Peace Corps volunteers. This is just a rhetorical cop-out, a between-the-lines attempt to deflect criticism away from those who plan the wars by keeping the focus on those sent to fight them.

His call to Bush reminds me of that closing scene in Animal Farm, when Napoleon the pig was having dinner with the farmer and the other barnyard characters, looking on, couldn’t tell one from the other. Such is our ruling class, I suppose.

luv u,

jp

Weird ass music since 1986