Some Questions I'd Like Dubya To Answer

So the State of the Union is very good? Which Union is that, anyway? Certainly not the one I'm living in.

Dubya said last night that the US economy was robust and that our collective economic endeavors more than doubled those of the EU and Japan combined. And that we created an ungodly number of new jobs in the last year.

OK. But is creating a bunch of minimum-wage, no benefits jobs really better than losing all the high-tech jobs that US companies are outsourcing to other countries?

And is our economic performance so great when everyone I know is saying that they are having to work harder and harder, and do more and more tasks, in less and less time and with less and less support and benefits, just because the corporate powers that be are trying to improve their bottom lines?

And why is it that executive compensation packages keep getting better and better while more and more and more companies are announcing plant closures, layoffs, and other cutbacks?

What about the drag the federal deficit is putting on the economy? And why is it better to whittle away at the edges of the deficit by trying to minimize, restrict, or even curtail the already too small programs that really help people and then undoing any miniscule good that that might have done by increasing tax cuts for the already very, very rich?

And why is a 4% COLA in Social Security benefits such a good thing when the costs of things like Medicare premiums is at the same time raised by more like 33%?

Why is it that you persist in saying the free market is the best way to run health care, when it obviously does not work? People can't shop for medical procedures the way they can shop for cars--when they need services, they are not in any position to take their time, shop around, and bargain for the best price. The free market may work for people who are in excellent health and who just want to get the least expensive health care policy premiums possible, but in this day and age, with the very medical technologies we have to save and prolong lives that just a few years ago would have been lost, does that description even fit a majority of the population?

I'll say it again: health care, because it deals literally with people's lives, is part and parcel of the most important of our unalienable rights--those being "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--thus it violates our birthright as Americans to put health care on a "you can get what you can afford to pay for" mentality.

It may not be a conscious decision, but to act in ways that will eventually limit health care to those incredibly lucky few who do not need it will have the same effect as out-and-out euthanizing the entire population of the disabled. Talk about Social Darwinism run amok!

(Silly me--I thought Social Darwininsm had been thoroughly discredited as a way to run a society.) Welcome to George Orwell's Brave New World, indeed.