0590 - Angry

The entire Staff here is so angry that we must once more postpone a promised column. Perhaps the angriest is our Staff Logician, ordinarily calm and measured. But, this week, our Logician is in a fury over the repellent behavior of the Congress and the extra-repellent Tom DeLay. The cause is the phony fight over the body of one Terri Schiavo. The body of this poor remnant has been kept functioning for 15 years, although courts have over and over accepted medical testimony that the body is in a “Persistent Vegetative State” (PVS). The Logician points out that what you have here is a body, NOT a person. The person is gone, not there, any more than if you had a liver preserved for transplant. Yet, the media and the Pols talk about “Saving Terri”. The point is, she isn’t there anymore. As one George Felos, a courageous lawyer, said yesterday, the attempt of the House of Representatives, led by DeLay, to suddenly subpoena this dead body was “odious, shocking, disgusting”. He’s right.

Now, Tom DeLay happens to have been censured three times by a unanimous bipartisan Ethics Committee of the House. His response was first to see to the removal of the Chairman, and then to try to emasculate the Committee’s rules so they can’t go after him next time. Yet, this villain is leading the “Save Terri” crusade, pretending to know more about the state of the brain-dead body, and rousing the easily arouse-able forces of the crackpot far right. We beg to point out to you that Tom DeLay rammed through the U.S. budget cutting 80 billions from Medicare. Is that morally right? Wouldn’t it be a better use of money and care to save the sick than to preserve a medical specimen? The entire Staff is delighted to see that yesterday’s CNN poll on DeLay’s disgusting intervention was something like 15 to 1 against the Congress butting in, and today’s poll is 10 to one for removing tubes when the body is in a PVS.

DeLay is also the point man for the current administration and Congressional policy of cutting taxes (for the very rich) while spending money galore, thus creating an enormous burgeoning deficit. The OO believes in Fiscal Conservatism, formerly a Republican belief, and thinks this policy will create a disaster. Our Revered Investment Guru is furious that no one looks at the history of countries that have spent themselves into the pit, like, say, Argentina for one. The temptation of all politicians in power is to spend, thus buying votes, while not taxing, which annoys the tax-ees. An honest Pol resists this temptation. Those in power now do not, and the U.S. has never seen such spending deficits and such trade deficits. The R.I.G. predicts a coming disastrous decline in the dollar and an inflation (and interest rate rise) that you will not like one bit.

Meanwhile, we point out to Pols of both parties, it is time to re-jigger Social Security so it is solvent. There is no free lunch. Face the facts and get on with it. Democrats have to accept that since we live longer, it costs more unless you raise the retirement age. Republicans have to stop trying to create a hereditary plutocracy in the U.S., and accept that it costs money to take care of the poor and sick. The Repubs say that taxes “reduce investment”. Today, that’s non-relevant nonsense. Corporations these days have, literally, trillions in uninvested cash. It’s time to put something in the collection pot.

For all potential Visitors to Anguilla, among our many attractions, we’d like to point out, there is no Tom DeLay. Come see – you’ll like it here.

Next time: Change [OO #591]

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