Blog For Arizona

Michael: The Big Easier

The Neo-Con men always take the easy way out. Instead of facing the real problems confronting America and taking them on, they ignore the problem and opt for, or just invent, an easier problem to 'solve'.

Faced with the problem of international terrorism, the Neo-Con men decided to attack a prostate and weakened Iraq instead of a hard to locate Al Qaida. Faced with genocide in Sudan, they knuckled under to big oil and had Bush scupper an embargo that would have brought Sudan running to the negotiating table in 2002; thousands of lives ago. Faced with a nuclear threat from North Korea, the Neo-Con men stuck their head in the sand and refused to talk until North Korea announced they had nuclear weapons. Faced with criminal nuclear proliferation in Pakistan, they had Bush do nothing and approve Musharrif's pardon of the network's mastermind. With Afghanistan becoming the world's leading supplier of heroin right under their noses, the Neo-Con men don't even acknowledge the problem.

Perhaps the worst Neo-Con job yet is Social Security 'reform'. Not only does the privatization plan the Neo-Con men propose fail to address the potential revenue deficit in the program, but it actually makes the problem worse by diverting up to a third of existing revenues out of the program and cutting benefits. Not only are the Neo-Con men lying about the effect and purpose of their 'reform', which is to destroy Social Security, but they are even lying about what FDR said about the program to make it seem that he would support their schemes and secretly paying shills out of government funds.

What makes the Neo-Con men's Social Security scam even more craven and cowardly is that it is just a distraction from a much worse problem which the Neo-Con men won't even mention: Medicare. Depending on one's long term economic projections, Medicare will facing shortfalls of as much as 40 trillion (yes, trillion with a 't') dollars over the next 20 years. This is a deficit several times that which Social Security may be facing - from twice to seven times as large. Bush made the problem even worse with his Prescription Drug Neo-Con job. Is Bush running around the country telling people the sky is falling because of Medicare? No, he doesn't want to deal with Medicare. What the Neo-Con men DO know is that the prospects of long-term structural deficits in multiple federal entitlements programs endanger Bush's class-warfare tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. They can sell the snake oil idea that privatization can 'fix' one huge government program, but even they can't stretch credulity far enough to encompass Medicare as well. So they won't talk about it.

One thing that one can count on is that the Neo-Con men we've allowed to steer our country are driving us straight into a blind alley, and desperately hoping that we passengers don't look forward.

"Look at the scary Muslim man!"

"Look at the perverse homosexuals!"

"Look at the naughty socialist program!"

"Look at Janet Jackson's titty!"

But, for God's sake, don't look where this nation is headed...

posted by Michael Bryan @ 2/26/2005 05:56:00 PM