Recently, we hear-tell of more extremist rhetoric from the NeoCon Nation about the definition of GENERAL WELFARE in the preamble to our Constitution.
Pull it up on Google. The sites that come up first explain some claptrap about how the Founding Fathers did not mean that our populace should be well or that leadership should try to guarantee that prospect.
A deeper investigation finds that most of these websites’ home pages have been removed from the Internet, with a few orphan pages remaining. Seems the courts have ruled these folks are giving out free lies in the guise legal definitions of our laws. Maybe Free Speech ends where law begins. But, I doubt it.
Most of these groups are really against having the government help a raped, 14-year-old girl get a federally financed abortion because somehow it costs them money! Money?
Mind you, their share of the victim’s abortion is probably a penny per. Hell, if they can’t legislate their morals and blow up the clinic, why not try and tell you how abortions are breaking our nation’s finances and laws?
Conversely, each week it is costing every American about $10-$20 to kill civilians in Iraq. If our population is 303 million, every billion equates to about $3.30 per capita per day. That’s the official cost, which is about to go up after this week’s plea from the President; sans someday-reparations to Iraq; sans the cost of totally rebuilding our military; sans the cost of thousands of veterans to receive lifetime medical and psychiatric treatments for the next 50 years - and, we could drone on and on. These unreported items (can we call them off-the-book expenses?) dwarf the costs of marching around and shooting up Baghdad. Have you heard anyone mention these future costs? Nor, have I.
Not an iota of these costs, not even Iraq’s billions, includes the “normal” (a giant misnomer and malapropism when compared to war budgets of any other nation on Earth) - Pentagon expenditures. You know! The five-sided anti-Wal-Mart in Arlington where coffee makers cost $1,700 and billions of dollars worth of personal computer equipment is charged anonymously to Pentagon credit cards.
Even in peacetime, if such a thing existed, the Pentagon is currently costing each individual $40-some per week. That's every billionaire, bum and baby in a crib. Even under President Clinton it was $21 per week per capita. This doesn’t count our interest payments due because the president was the first on Earth to initiate tax cuts and a war simultaneously.
It’s obvious; something has got to give. So those who support conflict attack welfare. Let's attack babies’ WIC programs and funds for the elderly. My God, nearly half of all seniors - you and I if we live long enough - will have to "spend down" in the end anyway, to get a subsidy to live our last days out in a nursing home. These aren’t deadbeats, but people who had jobs, insurance, Social Security and Medicare.
Many conclude, with the help of Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and the official line of our government, that these infants and sick folks are taking money from our war efforts.
Some would say if we do away with these wasteful things we could find the money for attacks on Iran and North Korea - with cameo stops in Darfur and Congo and/or any civil war that might break out. After all there are currently more than 10 million war refugees walking the jungles and unpaved roads of Africa. And, tax collection to support these things is not only not important, but hurts the long-term China effort.
That’s the plan. The more money we spend, the more we owe China in interest payments. Which allows us to benevolently and covertly build the Chinese Army up by paying them that interest. Meanwhile, Bush and Company has started Cold War II with Russia so the powers that be can rest assured that any peace dividends from ending decades of Cold War are not only going to be spent, but spent long after the current administration leaves office, whether we leave Iraq or not.
This current gear up for war became full blown by 1942. Since then we have not stopped. Not for a single day. Check military expenditures as a percent of Gross National Product prior to 1942 and since. A moment of peace from 1990-2000 was too much for some. And long before the conflagrations of September 11, 2001, there were forces aloft working to make sure things did not become too friendly with any former adversary.
The choice is clear: Kill Iraqis or feed and care for American babies and comfort our seniors who have devoted their lives to our nation and their families.
The Bush veto of SCHIP says there isn’t money for both.
We can only assume the Bush-Cheney War Machine means: throw out the baby, the bath-water and your grandmother. But keep your army boots close and await your marching orders.
