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Stressed Americans ripe for GOP con |
| ANDREW GREELEY
Republicans are the party
of
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appear if the money were spread
around among the rest of the pop- ulation. Soak the rich, as the late Huey P. Long of Louisiana once proclaimed, and spread it out thin. Similarly, the House version of the Medicare reform bill is admit- tedly the first step in the long- term goal of privatizing Medicare. However, it is presented in all seri- ousness as a bill to decrease pre- scription costs for the elderly. Thus, the GOP can go into the presidential campaign insisting that it has done something for the elderly, when in fact it hasn't done much, except increase profits for drug companies and insurance companies. Someone ought to ask senators and representatives whether they are willing to give up their own federal health insurance, which is much more generous than Medicare, and join the rest of the __________How can they get awaywith such sleight of hand? population in the risks of astro- nomic prescription drug bills. Finally, plans to eliminate over- time pay are presented as a scheme to deprive union workers of their exorbitant wages (like $40 an hour if carpenters work on Sunday) and provide more jobs for non-union workers, which means---though they don't say it---immigrant workers who come cheaper than Americans. How can they get away with such sleight of hand? How can they deceive so many about their goals when the winners from such legislation or proposed legislation |
will be the rich and the powerful?
How could they convince so many that the war in Iraq and the subsequent quagmire were justified by ''weapons of mass destruction'' when these weapons did not exist and the evidence that they did was largely cooked? On President Tru- man's desk the sign said ''the buck stops here.'' On President Bush's desk the sign apparently says, ''the buck stops at the CIA.'' The answer, I think, is that Americans are still so obsessed with the surprise and pain of the World Trade Center attack that they will believe just about any- thing the country's leaders say. Hence, they can stonewall the commission investigating the World Trade Center attack and they can prevent a thorough inves- tigation of the Iraq War. Ameri- cans want to believe that the Bush administration is telling the truth. They are fooling most of the people most of the time. They hope to fool enough of the people < long enough for re-election. And the media, which screamed in out- rage when President Bill Clinton lied about his sex life, are not screaming about the fabrications of the Bush administration about taxes, Medicare, work hours, the attack on Sept. 11, and the Iraqi war. Obviously, dishonesty about sex is a worse threat to the repub- lic than dishonesty about war and taxes. The administration obviously intends to tough it out, just like Nixon did. Maybe it will work. However, at the end of the eight years, the country will be in a terri- ble economic mess, its civil liber- ties in tatters, hated by the rest of the world---and probably still fighting a foolish war in Iraq. |