A Week of Gusty Wind

09/25/2005

Paul Munnis

Politics generated more wind and hot air than hurricane Rita did last week. Like the hurricane itself there was much media hype and much chaos all across our land.

In an organized anti-war demonstration that took place on a world wide basis, many thousands in the USA and in the UK came out to demonstrate against the war. In both nations the mix of demonstrators was eclectic. There were Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Communists, Labor, and all sorts of religious groups including Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and even agnostics too. It was in fact a bi-partisan crowd uttering one unified demand: “stop the killing in Iraq,” and demanding one unified solution: “Bring the troops home.” Bush has insisted that withdrawing from Iraq is not a good plan and that withdrawal would set us up for more mid-eastern inspired attacks against our nation.

George W. Bush then boarded Air Force One to get out of town and he flew to Colorado and there, inside of Cheyenne Mountain in the hardened military command post of NORAD, he watched the flood and hurricane response on FOX and CNN TV. He came out of the bunker declaring that the government did a good job on managing Rita and was exonerated from its failure of screwing things up with Katrina. Some said he was self-serving.

Bush avoided the questions that Americans have about the degree of preparedness that we have for emergency planning across the land. A consensus did seem to emerge though that we are not any better off now than we were at 9/11/2001 when the Twin Towers of the WTC were attacked. A new focus on preparedness is resulting (in theory) although that was said to be the case four years ago too. Many billions of dollars later all we have to show for the effort is a lot of hot air.

Meanwhile GOP Congressmen are at each others throats over how best to best pay for the guns and butter challenges of fighting an ongoing war in Iraq while pouring billions into rebuilding the Gulf region.

There seem to be three main issues among the Congressional people: first, should we even rebuild the Gulf in light of a forecast for a 25 year heightened storm cycle? The second issue is how to pay for it all. The third issue is the role of prior wasteful spending against demands for conservative budget management of the U.S. deficit which has grown under Mr. Bush to significant levels. Congress seems not to care what the president thinks on many of these subjects indicating his increasing lame duck status as the 2006 elections near. Most of the debate is among the members of the GOP with Democrats barely able to get a word in edgeways concerning these subjects.

As Congress debates money and power the Congressional leadership is under attack. Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is accused of violating ethics requirements and practicing insider stock trading. This even as Tom DeLay, the GOP House Majority Leader, is trying to account for accusations of his continuing ethics violations. Much hot air is being generated with both leaders insisting that they are as innocent as new born babies.

Meanwhile the G7 is getting ready for a meeting. Last spring they had told Bush to go home and to cut the deficit and that his spending recklessness is putting the world economies at risk. He promised to do that, he did put it in his plan, and he has now publicly promised to renege on it.

As one camp declares the GOP agenda for the rest of the legislative session to be DOA, the other side insists that is not true and that they will destroy Social Security as we know it before Thanksgiving comes. Somebody is wrong.

Washington demonstrations to oppose drilling in the Artic Wildlife Refuge Region took place in Washington last week with the Administration ignoring the demonstrators and their demands. Our State DFL has busses that went to that demonstration.

The UN committee on nuclear non-proliferation says that Iran is going to be referred to the UN Security Council for treaty violations. This is the same committee that Bush said was incompetent to monitor Iraq and let WMD get right past them. That later proved to be false and Bush supports their efforts this time around.

What appeared to be a good accord with the North Koreans is going up in smoke as NK makes ridiculous demands upon the USA for us to provide them with turn-key nuclear power plants. We can’t even get those for ourselves never mind for them.

Gas prices were particularly affected by the barrage of media hot air. Speculators bought gas futures and then flooded the airwaves with disaster scenarios concerning the scarcity of natural gas, the price increases that would result and ditto for our gasoline supply. According to them most of America’s energy industry was going t be destroyed and incapacitated.

The predictable result was to drive up gas and energy prices although it is clear that less people will be heating their homes, driving their cars, and consuming energy, than before this Summer of 2005 even happened. Some 290,000 more people have been added to the unemployment roles, many more people are lacking a home to heat and trailers that the homeless are being relocated to appear to be more energy efficient than the building that they lived in storm and flood afflicted urban areas.

Meantime Delata nad Northwest quietly dumped worker pensions, laid off more workers, and demanded more subsidy and relief from their debtors.

Another problem is that Americans have just realized that millions more displaced workers have no health insurance.

It became painfully apparent to Americans was that Iraqi oil is not a solution to America’s problems. In fact it became clear that many of our American troops in Iraq are deployed guarding Iraqi oil assets. Who is profiting from this Iraqi oil is not clear and is in bad need of public disclosure.

Much prediction that Rita would wipe out 45% of American refineries was proven false as the wind and rain abated and refinery people began preparations for resuming operating their businesses once again. Some see this as a wake-up call though and feel refineries need to be built in safer places within America. The problem is that nobody can define where a safer place is. We need a place that gets no storms and is handy to seaports where imported oil is brought in by mega-ship and so far nobody can name that location; it’s evasive.

Huge amounts of gasoline were used in jammed traffic as people made an exodus from Galveston and Houston for points north and in predictable heavy traffic jams. More gasoline is being spent returning back to ravished areas. In Louisiana, even more was gasoline was consumed doing a double evacuation—once for Katrina and once again for Rita. This leaves people wondering if they are going to spend the next 25 years shuttling in and out of coastal areas as the stormy season arrives.

Meanwhile few noticed it but the German government held an election that resulted in a deadlock and that is creating European chaos as a result. How to create a government coalition that can rule Germany and lead the EU is the subject of many closed door meetings all across Europe this weekend.

Now as the weekend ends, the talking heads on Sunday media talk shows are still busy wagging their tongues as they add nothing of value to the conversation and serve to confuse these issues even further.

One thing that most Americans can agree with after this week of hot air is that the GOP isn’t doing a very good job governing our country.