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The Times is reporting something we already know: President Bush and the GOP are going to make scaring the hell out of Americans their center piece for this falls mid-term elections. You can forget about programs that will save social security from insolvency, forget about increased education spending, battling the epidemic of methamphetamine addiction burning its way across the nation. Want something -- anything -- done about illegal immigration? Not this year. Reducing the federal deficit is not something this administration and Congress have any intention of doing this decade. So what are they doing? Same thing this do-nothing Congress has been doing for the past 12 years: absolutely nothing. And they've been doing it on your dollar.
You're probably wondering why I mentioned something off-the-wall as methamphetamine, and how it fits into all these other problems that Republicans aren't doing anything to address. Because it is such a wide spread problem and because it's yet another example of something hurting American citizens right this second, and because of how devastatingly addictive meth is. Everybody knows how addictive the nicotine in cigarettes is. Few people that start can muster the will power to quit, and that crap is amazingly still legal.
Meth is worse. One exposure to meth is all it takes to cause a chemical addiction that cannot be broken by will power alone. What has the Republican controlled Congress and the White House done about it? They passed a law forcing pharmacies to move the drugs necessary for meths creation behind the counter, so you have to ask for it. You can't buy more than a little bit at a time, but you can go to as many stores, one after another, until you've got plenty. That's it. Is it working? Ask the 4,000,000 people currently addicted to meth how they feel about that law.
According to stopmethaddiction.com, meth accounts for over 90% of drug addiction in the Midwest. What does Congress do to fight meth addiction? It tries to ban same-sex marriage. Meth is killing thousands of people and enslaving millions more, and what does the White House do? It cuts taxes for the richest 5% of the nation. There are 30,000,000 Americans living in poverty in the worlds only super power on the planet. Our people are suffering, and our government does nothing but try to scare us.
But it doesn't end there, in fact, this is just the beginning. On the anniversary of Katrina, it's abundantly clear that the federal government has done little to help clean up and rebuild New Orleans. Video shot just days ago showed an entire home resting on top of a car, or pickup truck of some kind, blocks from where it was built. Nothing in the area was cleaned up. Other areas are equally deserted. Almost all of the displaced refugees from New Orleans are still living in FEMA trailers, which FEMA is trying desperately to evict them from because Bush and Congress won't pay for it any longer.
Nobody has said a single word about addressing the impending disaster of social security insolvency in the past six months, but Republicans have been hard at work trying to repeal the estate tax. For anybody who doesn't know, estate taxes are taxes on estate transfers for people with disproportionately valued estates. In other words, its a tax on people with homes and property worth over $1 million dollars, and Republicans want to repeal it entirely, without doing a single thing to make up for the increased budget deficit it will cause.
Rather than hearing our President assure us that we are indeed safe, thanks to the USA patriot act, the illegal wiretapping, the warrantless pat downs and searches in New York subways, the TSA's racist profiling -- we get to hear about how we should be scared. They want us to be scared, and I'm not talking about terrorists, but our own leaders. If we should be afraid, are they not doing their jobs then?
The Republicans greatest failure was not Iraq, it was forgetting that no matter what, their duty is to faithfully represent all Americans, not just members of their own party. To address all the problems our country faces, not just ones that piss them off. To respect and embrace the law, and international cooperation, because no country can go it alone.
