For the Kids

The GOP reacheth down, like manna from heaven....

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
9/23/07

There was a really scary story in the WaHoPo by Ellen Nakashima about how the government has been compiling data on everyone traveling to and from the United States. Not just foreign visitors, either. They are collecting the data from airlines, cruise lines, border crossing sites, anywhere anyone crosses the borders, a intrusive and paranoid packrat lust to know what everyone is up to that would be worthy of the old Soviet regime.

Just what every democracy needs: a paranoid, secretive regime that needs to know what you are up to. But then, your employers already have cameras all over the place and monitor every keystroke you enter in your computer, and are demanding to know what your off-duty hobbies are so they can get a break on their health insurance premiums, so what the hell does the loss of one last tattered vestige of privacy mean to you?

It’s not like you don’t trust the government and major corporations to look out for your own best interests, after all.

It occurred to me that it must cost a fair bit to amass and maintain such a data base. I mean, millions – as many as 50 million – people are subject to this, and the gimlet-eyed servants of Homeland Security are recording not only the personal travel records of those daring to cross the American borders, but who they traveled with (known to right wing governments as “fellow travelers” but then, you already knew that, didn’t you?), what personal possessions they had, what hotels they stayed at, and even what size beds they ordered. That last one had to be something added by the professional crotch-sniffers at the GOP. “Drug paraphernalia” can get you red-flagged, and this apparently includes items such as a little flashlight with an outline of a marijuana plant leaf on it, or a book about weed. Gawd help people traveling to and from Weed, California, such as Timothy Blevins. They probably have three stars and an exclamation point on their files. [Note to Homeland Security, who is doubtlessly reading this now that I’ve mentioned weed: Blevins is an opera singer, and opera singers, as a rule, do not smoke pot. Just a little heads up, if you’ll excuse the drug humor, guys!]

The whole idea behind this is that they have some kind of super-dooper computer (doubtlessly running on Windows 95) that can correlate all the information and spot terrorists, or at least pot smokers. The only problem is that the program to do this, er, doesn’t exist yet. Like victory in Iraq or morals in Congress, it’s kinda like vaporware. It’s a good idea. Or would be if...

So they are amassing all this crap – which they supposedly will dump after fifteen years – against the day they can figure out something useful to do with it. There’s something reassuring about that type of incompetence. Makes you wish all your foes were such buffoons.

Now, granted, Republicans don’t normally worry about where the money is coming from on things. They’ll just borrow it and let the next generation worry about it, and in the meantime their friends can get richer off the interest on the national debt. That debt is NINE TIMES bigger than it was the day Reagan took office, thanks to that attitude.

But now the dollar is collapsing, the US no longer has an industrial base, and the plutocrats of the GOP have belatedly realized they’ve killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. If things get worse, they may end up having to pay their bills.

So they need to cut money somewhere.

Now, remember, the GOP is the party that is for the children. They oppose abortion because they believe the “unborn children” have the same rights as a born child. More, in fact. And they made a big production of “No Child Left Behind,” which takes American children and tenderly and gently instructs them in the important life skill of taking multiple-choice tests.

They’re also big on the disabled. They decided having a brain that was liquefied and rotted away counted as only “disabled” instead of “deader than dog shit” (and for membership in the GOP, a case can be made for that, but not for normal human life) and fought like hell to save the “life” of Terri Schiavo. And gawd help anyone who wants to terminate a pregnancy because scans show the baby is anencephalic, and will be born dead. That’s thwarting gawd’s will. He apparently can’t get enough of still-born babies.

But apparently it doesn’t apply to kids who are already born, have disabilities, and need help.

The Bush administration is trying to “stop reimbursing states for school-based Medicaid activities,” according to the Sac Bee, which would include transportation for disabled kids to and from school. (The Bee notes that the comment period on this goes to November 7th. Go to http://www.archives.gov/ for details on how to go about commenting on this).

Well, the GOP has a good point. I’m sure they would like to help those kids, but they really need the money so they can blow arms and legs off the kids in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can’t make an omelette without firebombing a few chicken coops, you know.

And it’s not like they don’t WANT the kids to keep getting rides to school. Quite the opposite. They are leaving in place the federal laws that REQUIRE the states to provide those rides. They just don’t want to pay for it any more, because they have to slaughter people in countries with interesting amounts of oil. It’s all very Christian and American.

The GOP used to whine about this sort of thing a lot back in the 80s when they were trying to get power. They called it “unfunded mandates,” the notion that the feds could order someone to do something and make them pay for it. They had a good point.

But now they have power, suddenly they don’t mind unfunded mandates so much.

After all, they’re doing it for the children. Both here and in Iraq.