Blame it on the dog days of summer. It's just too darned hot to think. Or more correctly, to think sensibly.
Ferinstance: I just saw a news headline about Fidel Castro saying, "He walks, he talks" and all I could think of was the old side show spiel: "He walks! He talks! He crawls on his belly like a reptile!"
It's even too hot to laugh, though the mental image of Fidel I got from that connection was certainly amusing. Snakes with beards. On a plane--or not. [Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?--Ed.]
* * * * * * * * * *
In a small act of personal political rebellion, I refused to watch the televised debate between US Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb) and his challenger, Pete Ricketts (R-Exceedingly Rich Right Wing). It's too hot to put up with all that "sturm und drang." Or, as a wit I know translated into English, "storm and dreck." Besides, I can pretty much predict what happened, based on the ads both campaigns have been running lately. Much mud was flung, started by Ricketts. When Nelson responded in kind, Ricketts claimed "Ben started it!" and flung more of his own, all the while protesting his innocence. Any resemblance between this and the behavior of very small, very spoiled children should be remembered.
My favorite bit of misinformation, a/k/a mud, flung by Ricketts is his trying to color Ben as being a "Clinton-Kennedy" liberal Democrat. Boo! Are you scared yet?
Anyone who has spent more than a microsecond in Nebraska knows Ben is no such thing. Indeed, the main complaint around here about Ben comes from Nebraska Democrats: he is a DINO [in case anyone out there doesn't know, DINO means "Democrat in name only."--Ed.] Ricketts has nothing but contempt for the intelligence of the average Nebraska voter, however, as he seems to think that if he scares Nebraskans enough by making that accusation, he'll not only make it true, he'll win the election.
God, I hope not!
Actually, the Nebraska Democratic Party is supporting Ben by slinging the worst of the mud coming from that campaign . . . and technically, it isn't mud because it's true. Ricketts wants his million-dollar-plus home tax valuation reduced. The valuation went up recently, based on the purchase price Ricketts agreed to pay for the home. The tax is still less than what it would have been if the valuation had been based 100% on the actual sale price--it's somewhere in the range of 90% of the actual sale price, as required by state law, and which Douglas County has been overly lax in enforcing until recently. But Ricketts says it is still too high, and the home is worth much, much less. [OK, I'll bite: then why the heck did he pay so much for it?--Ed.]
To a degree, shouting about this has backfired: Ben has tried to get the tax valuations on his DC and Nebraska homes reduced, more than once, which Ricketts' campaign team has in turn advertised in the most lurid fashion possible.
But if Ricketts believes that he can sling mud and then claim that Ben is the one doing it, I hope the voters in November prove Ricketts wrong.
Besides, Ricketts keeps saying he's not a career politician, he's a business man, who will "work for conservative change in Washington. " First, as anyone who pays attention knows, everything in the US Senate is based on seniority. Even if Ricketts were to win (now THAT'S a scary thought), he wouldn't be able to do much of anything until he became the dreaded "career politician" he claims to be running against.
Second, would you really want to trust the public's funds to someone who can't negotiate a sensible price and who thus pays too much for his own home?
Third, some of Ricketts' actual ideas to promote "conservative change" are downright nasty. As Nelson's campaign has in turn publicized, one of Ricketts pet projects is to get a national sales tax passed and get rid of the IRS as we know it. That ad has been running for weeks with no response at all from Ricketts' campaign team. Maybe none of them have figured out that most of us see that a national sales tax is a BAD idea.
Where Ben got his "it will add 30% to the cost of everything you buy, including food" figure, I do not know. But I like that his campaign staff is pointing out that (1) even Ronald Reagan's chief economic advisor thought a national flat tax was a dumb idea, (2) the present mortgage payment and home mortgage interest payment tax deductions would disappear under such a scheme, and (3) that we average folks would pay a lot more in under such a system than we do now, while the super-rich like Ricketts would pay a lot less.
Don't let the right wing fool you with all its talk about how we shouldn't be promulgating an economic class war. They already been waging war on the true middle class. They just don't want you to notice. The most horribly short-sighted aspect of their stand is that no democracy can survive or even remain stable without a secure middle class. The way things are going under current Republican-driven policies, a few are getting super-rich, a lot are getting much poorer, and the middle is literally being squeezed out of existence. I wouldn't be surprised to see a shooting war come to this country once the middle is gone. It's already frightfully insecure.
To wit: Nebraska recently adopted a concealed weapons carry law. Here's my question about that: if you must carry a gun, what's the big deal about keeping it concealed? Why not just carry it in plain sight? If you say it deters criminals when they don't know whether you are packing heat, I say that if you carry openly, there's no room for doubt. So why all this push for "concealed carry"? I don't get it.
Anyway, don't let the rich right wing extremists fool you by their definition of what is "middle class," either. I hate to inform them of this, but anyone making a six-figure income is NOT middle class. Anyone with that much income is UPPER class, economically speaking, at least. [I make no representations as to those folks' class in aesthetic or humane terms.--Ed.]
By the way, the real reason Dubya wants to let illegal immigrants get some kind of work permits to validate their status in the US is that they will work for less than a US living wage. It's still more than they could make at home. They send most of it back to their homes of origin anyway. They thus are better off taking the risk of being illegal than they would be if they just stayed home in the first place. Dubya's business buddies like the idea of very cheap labor more than they care to help their fellow US citizens. It makes it easier for them to keep their profit margins up. [I can see it now: Economic Viagra!--Ed.]
So, the only way to stop illegal immigrants from flooding this country is to make it UNPROFITABLE for the businesses that employ them to continue doing so . . . and the only way to do that is to enact some whopping fines (like millions of dollars per hire)--and even more importantly, to enforce those same fines. But business owners don't want that. Once they find themselves making 50% profits, they can't seem to scale back to even 45% profits. They all bought into Wall Street's "Greed is Good" mantra.
That also demonstrates why those who say the free market is the "be all and end all" of everything are wrong. Not everything is--or should be-- a commodity. Were you as grossed out as I was about the news reports that women are selling their breast milk to companies who are reselling it at a profit?
The fact that these women were compelled economically to do it is bad enough. That companies can and do turn a profit on it is disgusting. But we can't have stem cell research, oh no! That would be wrong! [Sarcasm most definitely intended.--Ed.]
If you had any kind of unpleasant gut reaction to the breast milk sales story, you know that society is about more than a financial bottom line. If we are to reestablish our country as a civilized beacon of light for the rest of the world, we need to relearn that.
However, as long as people like Pete Ricketts think they can get away with scaring us by wearing Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy masks [I dread Halloween this year, I really do.--Ed.], we aren't going to make any progress on undoing the damage that's been done by those who worship the Almighty Dollar. Don't let them fool you with that "prayer of Jabez" crap, either. They all have forgotten what Jesus said about it being "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven." Someday, they'll be in for as much of a surprise as they think the fundamentalist Muslims suicide bombers and their sympathizers will be.
I hope.
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