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BYRDS IN THE TREES SING MELODEES
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Writing up my thoughts on the issues of the day has turned out to be a
tougher job than I realized before I started. I'm all right when it comes to
something I'm used to, like cops and jails and the like, but with other things I'm
a little out of it. I like politics and I like sports and a number of other
things, but my information about them is only coming at second hand, from
television and newspapers. I can't start off with "information given me by
sources close to the Kerry campaign" or "inside the Bush campaign" because I don't
know any such sources. They send me quite a bit of information, it's true,
but all of it is along the line of how much they would like me to become a
contributor to their cause. They don't offer, however, to contribute any inside
dope to me in return for my cash. As news sources they're a minus number to me.
By watching C-Span I can pick up some information not available to the
general public because the general public isn't crazy enough to spend the time to do
it. A three-hour speech by Senator Byrd is not information, though, but
indignation. There's an old proverb that says "A bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush", but he has revised it to something like "A Byrd in the grass
bites a Bush in the a-s" or "A Byrd in the sky gets a Bush in the eye" or some
other unfriendly act. The Senator sputters quite a bit delivering these
speeches, but I guess he figures it's worth it if he can splatter the White House
enough. They have to wipe it off daily.
The Senator delivers his bombshells in a regular cone of silence produced by
the planned absence of his colleagues as well as by the rules of the Senate.
He wouldn't be this lucky in the British House of Commons. He'd hear howls
of "Sit down!" or "Resign!" or alternatively "Hear, hear!" which would add
a great deal of animation to the scene. I've learned this from watching the
House of Commons in action. If I understood the accents better I'd get in on
more of the fun, because the best wisecracks seem to come from the furthest
part of the hall in some kind of impenetrable dialect, causing everyone to
double up with laughter, while I'm at a loss.
From this we see if that the American Congress is so very strait-laced and
polite in contrast to the British, it's just as well that we don't see what
kind of hijinks the French and the Italians and the Japanese are up to, since they
're not likely to be more restrained than the Brits. The Japanese in
particular seem to like a good fistfight now and then to resolve their legislative
differences.
Not only do we Yanks hold back from this kind of activity, our boys and girls
all but slop over with manners when trying to eviscerate each others'
legislation on the floor of Congress. As we all know, even one's worst enemy is
characterized as the "distinguished gentleman (or lady) from Kansas (or wherever)"
or "my friend, the gentleman, etc.", " my friend, the lady, etc." or
maybe even the "the gentle lady, etc." This is a new coinage, to replace plain
old "lady" or "gentlewoman", which some Congressmen apparently don't consider
fulsome enough.
One of the gentle ladies who seems to be as busy in the House of
Representatives as Mr. Byrd is in the Senate is Sheila Jackson Lee, a black woman from
Texas. If I surf C-Span she is usually on her feet demanding things like repeal
of the Bush tax cuts for the greater good of the poor and the "most vulnerable"
members of our society. My impression from her is that drug addicts are in
this class and should get a high priority in the expenditure of government
funds.
If this means anything it means that we need to hire more drug counselors to
divert the addicts from their bad habits. The trouble with this though is
that drug counselors to have credibility with their clients must be former
addicts themselves, meaning that they are at high risk for relapsing. This happens
a lot and hardly anyone even notices when a drug arrest is made and the
arrestee is identified as a counselor.
This has created a conflict between Ms. Lee and me, of which she may not be
aware, but which I experience anew every time I spin the dial and she pops up
on me. There she is again, telling the world what America needs is less money
in the hands of the people and more money in the hands of the government --
for hiring drug counselors. I differ with the distinguished lady from Texas.
I think that money she wants for the government is better left with the
public for hiring, not drug counselors, but truck drivers, salesgirls, scientists,
sailors, anything else. That's where the tax cut money went, of course. On
jobs. It got spent on every kind of product under the sun, which could only
be produced by people with jobs. The difference between this and drug
counselor money is that it was spent on things people really wanted, not what
politicians thought they ought to want. It thereby contributed to the sum of human
happiness as a consequence.
But what about the government debt, I hear people shriek. Well, what about
it? Has the government got the only debt in this country? What about mine?
What about everybody else's? Why shouldn't we be as free to pay our debts as
the government is? Congress carries on as if the government's debt is the
greatest threat to humanity since the Black Death. That doesn't mean they plan
to stop increasing it, though. They say we need those drug counselors. Also
those social workers and those case workers and those employment counselors
and all the other uplifters, themselves uplifted by a rising tide of taxpayers'
dough.
Like heck we need them. What we need are more jobs for the people I listed
above, truck drivers and such. Real jobs, created by consumer demand, not
political pressure. Created for consumer demand would be a better way to describe
them. They are actually brought into being by people looking to meet this
demand, who have what it takes to do so. Money, in the shape of tax cuts or
otherwise, is the thing it takes. "Tax cuts for the rich", so what? Whether we
like it or not, it takes wealth to create jobs and private wealth is only
laid out when the job created shows good prospects of bringing in more money than
it cost to establish it. Public wealth, on the other hand, is just as likely
to be spent on roads to nowhere, rock and roll museums, and other boondoggles
than it is on anything useful.
Congress doesn't concentrate solely on ways to squander tax money. It likes
to think about finding ways to squeeze more out of the taxpayer. It's
chilling to hear them talk about it. They are hung up on their theory that the only
debt anyone need worry about is Uncle Sam's. They speechify about the deficit
as if it didn't matter a damn that there's another deficit that's equally as
dangerous as theirs, and that's the one hanging over the private lenders of
this country. If the taxpayers aren't left with money to pay them and they
collapse, we're in just as much trouble or more than we would be if Sam went
broke.
I hear people say Sam won't go broke -- if things get too bad, he'll just
print money to pay his bills, and then we'll have inflation like you wouldn'
t believe, and you don't want that, do you? No I don't, and I don't expect
it as long as Mr. Greenspan is in charge of money. When he was asked what was
the right rate of inflation, he said "Zero". Love that man.
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