The Poet's Eye
     commentary by Lightning Rod

The Poet's Eye is skeptical without being cynical,
innocent without being naive and critical without
being judgemental.

May the Farce Be With You
for release 02-21-05
Washington D.C.

You can't have grown up in Texas without hearing the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." George Bush grew up in Texas, just like I did. His government has a corollary to this axiom, it goes, "If it ain't broke, then let's break it." They apply this transitive theory to everything from foreign policy to Social Security deform, to economic policy, and to what they generously refer to as 'tort reform.'

Condi Rice has been in Europe this week trying to put a new veneer on the Bush Foreign Policy Doctrine--"You're either with us, or you are against us." Why does the good Dr. Rice remind me of Darth Vader? I guess it's her hair, that looks like a helmet, with that cute little Nazi flip in the back. Her consistent message on this trip was that, while the public face of US diplomacy would be cooperation, the steel fist will still be in the velvet glove and we are going to dictate policy. We will scold Syria and Korea and Iran for being dictatorships with WMDs while ignoring the much more concrete threats of Russia and China and Pakistan.

When Bush smiles and tells us that everything is 'on the table' regarding the Social Security 'crisis,' what he really means is, "Sure, you can put anything on the table, but then we are going to do whatever we want anyway. We're going to plunder the system and put the spoils in the pockets of our friends." In typical Looking Glass style, he is proposing to 'save' Social Secuity, which he keeps reminding us will go belly up in 2018, by removing funds from it. I don't think math was George Bush's best subject in school and it certainly wasn't economics either. He is not only going to save Social Security by robbing it, he is also going to balance the budget by running up the biggest deficits in history while fighting expensive and unnecessary wars. The man is a genius.

Saving Social Security by means of private accounts is like Nancy Reagan solving the drug problem by asking us to Just Say No. Or by treating chronic depression by saying Just Cheer Up. In the case of Social Security the motto should be, Just Save Your Money.

In America we have a strange version of democracy. We are not governed by everyday people as we like to advertise. We are ruled by The Silent Aristocracy, who occupy a world of private jet planes and yachts and golfing greens. They don't want you to know their names, but they have stock in Bushco. And it's voting stock. Those votes count much more than yours, even if you live in Ohio.

For instance.

Under the banner of "tort reform" President Bush has slammed the door to the State courts in class action claims asking for more than five million dollars. To call this bill that the President signed into law this week a 'reform' is a miracle of terminology. It is also a giant favor to the guys who are selling you defective or harmful products and polluting your environment. Now that the President has signed the Tort Reform Bill, they are protected from being sued in Mississippi, whose courts are notoriously generous to plaintiffs.

Halliburton recently agreed to pay over four billion dollars to the 400,000 claimants in a class action suit filed against them by victims of asbestos related diseases. You can see how this might put a crimp in the style of the high rollers that own these companies. Four billion dollars will buy a lot of sports cars, vacation homes, golf junkets and prostitutes.

In recent speeches Bush has characterized asbestos disease claims as 'frivolous.' This is because he has never had to work for Monsanto or Halliburton as a miner or a construction worker who used asbestos products and has died or became stricken because of it. When the drug companies push a product that kills hundreds or thousands of people or when Pfizer makes a defective artificial heart valve that causes over five hundred patient's hearts to explode, the victims of these commercial products surely don't consider their damage claims to be 'frivolous.' After all, it's the American Way for our citizens to have access to the courts.

But Bushco doesn't work for you. It works for its stockholders, the ones whose votes really count. Over the years, American companies have paid out tens of billions of dollars in legal damages. These are companies like Monsanto, who knew since the 1930's that asbestos was a cause of cancer and concealed it while they operated another fifty years until 'frivolous lawsuits' caused them to stop their commercial genocide in the 1980's. Now Bushco has spared its friends the inconvenience of these suits.

The Poet's Eye must be color blind, because when I hear my government say white, I see black. When I hear 'compassionate conservatism,' I know that social programs are about to be cut. When I hear No Child Left Behind, I know that I should look into home schooling. Whassa matta wif me?

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."-- Hunter S. Thompson
R.I.P.

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