GOVERNING BY GREED

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/29/06)

The Republicans know how to win elections, but they don’t know how to govern. They deceive and lie to win. They confuse public service with greed to govern.

They have not done well. As a matter of fact, they have done badly. We are worse off for Republican governance than we were before the sorry lot came to power.

The economy is doing badly for the middle classes and the poor. They are earning less money than before the toadies to the rich came to power. The rich are getting richer. Everyone else is getting poorer. The only boon is for the rich and the global corporations. Corruption in rampant in the corporations. Wages are being cut, pensions eliminated, and medical benefits cheapened. We’re in hock up to our ears to the Chinese Communists.

The Bush foreign policy is a mess. Bush said he wanted to democratize the world with the blood of the bravest. So far, the Iraqi’s have chosen an Islamic state in an atmosphere of ancient mutual hatreds. The Palestinians have elected an Islamic terrorist organization to lead them. The Iranians chose a government that wants to wipe Israel off the map. If elections were held in Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, they would probably become fundamentalist Islamic states. All this for over 2,000 American military killed.

The Bush Administration has acted as though they were surprised that Hamas won the parliamentary elections in Palestine. No one else was. Bush’s intelligence was just as pathetic as it was with his WMD. The conclusion is that the Bush Administration is both stupid and ignorant for not anticipating the obvious. Hello!

Medicare is a mess. The Republicans have developed a plan for medications that not even the bureaucrats can explain. Since it was written by lobbyists for the benefit of drug companies, the principal beneficiaries are the drug companies, not those on Medicare.

The Republicans in the Senate and the House are corrupt to their bones. They have sold themselves out to corporate interests for golfing junkets. I would not want any of my children to marry a Republican politician for fear they might spend their Christmases at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary visiting their inmate spouses for the holidays.

The price of energy has shot through the roof, and all this from oil men from Texas. Bush can’t act decisively with Iran because we need its oil. His answer to Hamas in Palestine is what he won’t talk to them. His posturing resembles an impotent, inept adolescent.

The clincher is that the Bush Administration cannot protect the country. Katrina showed the Republicans to be inept. Katrina was not a covert operation by some hidden and cunning terrorist enemy. It was a hurricane for which there were several days notice. If the Bush Administration cannot cope with a known, visible threat, it shouldn’t be trusted to protect the country from an invisible threat.

The underling theme in all this ineptitude is greed. Greed is the vice of the lazy and stupid. A noted criminal defense attorney once said of criminals that they are both lazy and stupid because they either don’t want to work or are too stupid to earn money legitimately. If I were a Republican, I would be ashamed of myself.

The Republicans have sold their political birthright for a pottage of greed.

Copyright (c) Dana Prom Smith 2006