By Staff
It's August's surreal silly season. Crazy-from-the-heat Congress goes away so we can learn the devilish details about the energy bill and other pet pork projects.
I squandered my last million bucks on a tank of gas for the mini-van, leaving me nothing to compete with an anonymous bidder who shelled out $1.1 million for John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to "All You Need is Love."
Lennon tossed the seven-figure paper after the Beatles performed the song in a 1967 satellite broadcast, leaving it to a BBC employee to rescue the artifact that more than doubles the previous record, $440,000 for "Nowhere Man" in 2003.
At a July 28 London rock memorabilia auction the military tunic Lennon wore in a 1966 Life magazine cover shoot sold for $175,000. A pair of his glasses fetched $98,000. Of course, that's peanuts alongside Washington greed hogs.
The awful truth buried in the 1,724-page energy bill is that an industry drowning in the most obscene profits in its history reaped billions in subsidies and tax breaks; $2.9 billion alone for the coal industry!
No wonder that in pain at the pump President Bush has finally found an issue for which he lacks a glib answer.
We have 140,000 soldiers stuck two years after the fall of Baghdad and maybe until 2009 because the Pentagon made no plan for postwar peace, sent too few troops to secure the country divided by religious and ethnic conflict after Saddam and compounded the power vacuum by disbanding the army and starting from scratch to build a security force to thwart insurgents and a terrorist threat that didn't exist before we invaded.
By trying to impose democracy on a country with no precedent for it, Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war, the constitution is late, but we can't betray them again and abandon them in chaos.
Bloodshed in Iraq, London bombings, saturation coverage of an Alabama teen missing in Aruba and scandal swirling around Karl Rove.
Some pundits assume Bush had a bummer summer when he can't clear brush in Crawford without passing packs of peace moms.
But don't forget the energy bill, the highway bill, which is reportedly the new "All You Need is Love" benchmark in indefensible government spending, and CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
A living Lennon might be moved to sing "Come Together": "One and one and one is three/got to be good looking because you're so hard to see."
And don't forget, the Patriot Act sailed through both houses of Congress to permanency, as bothered as I am by how its origins revise what I learned in civics about the legislative branch writing laws.
John Ashcroft's Justice Department wrote the Patriot Act.
The House did block a $5 billion loan to Westingthouse to build four nuclear power plants in China.
The federally-subsidized Export-Import Bank ostensibly lends money to overseas business ventures to create markets for U.S. exports. But it strikes many as a slush fund giving away low-interest loans to companies that don't need money, but recently made generous contributions to power brokers.
I can't fathom even in Washington how it seemed like a good idea to improve the infrastructure of our chief trade competitor while also sharing nuclear technology with a conglomerate that in the past swapped know-how with Iran and Pakistan.
As for the excuse backers used to justify pushing this bill, try this: nuclear-powered China would be less dependent on foreign oil and, by consuming less, our oil costs would subside.
There must a less convoluted way to reduce gas prices.
Of course, even that rationale was dishonest because with Westinghouse the Senate wasn't concerned with gas prices so much as employment.
In Pennsylvania.
Many of the 5,000 jobs the loan was supposed to create were in GOP incumbent Rick Santorum's district, to give political cover against a challenger.
Even wearing $98,000 rose-colored Lennon specs doesn't do that math - $5 billion for 5,000 jobs?
That's $1 million a job.
Republicans control the White House, House and Senate, yet with a straight face would claim Democrats remain the party of big government.
No wonder the GOP systematically suppresses debate or any compromise with the hapless minority party. They're too busy creating jobs. To spare themselves any bureaucratic delays, lobbyists hire homeless people to stand in line for them before committee hearings.
Before I get any angrier trying to be heard above the clamor of 34,000 lobbyists, let's mention Alaska, where we're spending $233 million to build a bridge linking the mainland to an island, population 50.
One analyst figured out it would be more economical to buy each resident a personal Learjet.
Alaska did very well at the highway bill trough, which earmarks $24 billion for 6,371 "special projects" - enough for every Dowagiac resident to have one, yet Bush happily signed it Aug. 10.
Ronald Reagan wielded his veto against a highway and mass transit bill in 1987 because of a mere 152 earmarks, according to The Washington Post.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of only four to oppose the bill, described it as "terrifying."
Citizens Against Government Waste dubbed it "one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of federal spending," of which my favorite nugget is $37 million to expand an access road at Wal-Mart headquarters.
Maybe they should let up on the constant cost-cutting if they're to the point where they need corporate welfare.
Alaska only has one congressman, but Republican Don Young chairs the committee. The billion dollars he shoveled to his home state outdid Texas for total dollars. Problem is, Alaska has 20 million fewer residents. Its $1,501 pork-per-capita slightly exceeds the U.S. average, $86.
I've read about a number of lobbyist-loving lawmakers, but I think my favorite is Bill Thomas, R-Calif., notable for literally being in bed with the pharmaceutical industry.
He was caught having an affair with a female lobbyist while helping write Bush's prescription-drug benefit plan.
But it can always be worse.
I could live in Indiana, where unemployment will be late because they laid off the folks who produce checks.
Can you believe that? Several weeks delay which particularly affects first-time filers is attributed to a reorganization to centralize claim determinations in Indianapolis. In the transfer of 41 positions, eight claims deputies in South Bend and two in Elkhart lost their jobs.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "Congress isn't the steady assembly line of consensus policy ideas it's sold as, but a kind of permanent emergency in which a majority of members work day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the Constitution. A largely castrated minority tries, Alamo-style, to slow them down - but in the end spends most of its time beating calculated retreats and making loose plans to fight another day. Taken all together, the whole thing is an ingenious system for inhibiting progress and the popular will. The deck is stacked just enough to make sure that nothing ever changes. But just enough is left to chance to make sure that hope never completely dies."
What ever happened to William Greider? He predicted this dismal swamp of corporate capitulation in 1992 in "Who Will Tell the People - The Betrayal of American Democracy."
What is it, a 45?: Hilary Duff, who's released just two CDs - the first in 2003 - and has yet to make the top 10, released a greatest hits CD Aug. 16, the day Madonna broke her collarbone and hand and cracked three ribs when she tumbled off a horse on her 47th birthday at Ashcombe, her estate outside London.