Spare Change We Can Believe In

February 16, 2009

The stimulus plan is "shovel-ready" in the same way the stalls in a horse barn are shovel-ready. The bill badly needed to be mucked out before it came up for a vote, but nobody seemed to want to do the responsible thing and even so much as read it, let alone clean it up, before they approved it.

If you believe New York Senior Senator Charles Schumer, "the American people really don't care" about what's in the bill. The problem is, "the American Senators really don't know" what's in the bill. Because there's a growing double standard between our lawmakers and the people they allegedly represent, those lawmakers don't really have to know.

They'll never be subjected to the "it's time to die" clause of the legislation, because their health care coverage, to which they're entitled for the rest of their lives, isn't subject to the law of the land. Their health care will never be rationed as ours and our children's might as a result of the stimulus legislation, so why should they care? And they don't pay taxes anyway, so it's not their money they're spending.

It's eerily similar to Aldous Huxley's classic novel, Brave New World, in which the state decided when its citizens - who had a lot in common with Octomom's kids, by the way - would die. The only difference is that when the Obama Death Czar makes that decision for us, we won't likely have the option of zoning out on Soma as we glide to our final touchdown on the great landing strip in the sky. That would not be cost-effective, apparently the only criterion on which death decisions will be made if this particular clause in the law is actually carried out.

Which brings up the real question: What is the likelihood that this law will be enacted? Are there any possibilities, short of armed revolution, for making sure this legislative abomination dies under the weight of its own iniquity?

The 2010 elections are only a little over a year and a half away. What is the possibility that this administration will continue to prove itself so utterly inept at anything short of dictatorial corruption that the American people will actually see what they've wrought and utter a collective "The horror! The horror!" by going to the booths and voting enough Democrats out of office (and I include Susan Collins, Olympia Snow, and Arlen Specter among those Democrats) that the balance of power will be shifted just enough to begin to redress the mess we find ourselves in? There's a grim resemblance between our Democratic Congress and the grotesquely bloated Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now," the remake of Joseph Conrad's novel in which those words were uttered. I'd like nothing better than to be able to declare about that Congress, "Mistah Kurtz, he dead."

And what are the chances - if we do manage to unseat enough of the corrupt leftist scoundrels who ramrodded through this legislation - of our engineering some sort of an implementation-about-face, a calling off of the economically disastrous combination of debt and inflation that the bill is almost certain to trigger? Is there such a thing a taking a mulligan on legislation, a do-over simply on the grounds that not only didn't the people have a chance to read it, as Obama had promised we would, but the legislators didn't even bother to read the damn thing. You say stimulus, I say porkulus, let's call the whole thing off.

It won't be easy, given House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's penchant for changing the rules by which the House conducts business. First Pelosi eliminated by fiat fast-track status for the Colombian free-trade agreement, and more recently she introduced a rules change that disallows the introduction of alternative bills by the minority party in the House. Perhaps we can start by trying to have her recalled on the grounds that she's participated in too many photo ops with dictators and their cronies.

Comedian and radio talk show host Dennis Miller recently opined that folks are getting "comfy" with the idea of socialism, and that it might be tough to crack back against the stimulus legislation. I detected a note of resignation in his voice when he, a real champion of American values, said it. I hope he's wrong, and I hope he continues to lead the fight against our becoming a nation of beggars, cups at the ready, as we watch Obama's staged agenda of change turn into one of spare change.