Dance of the Reptiles (38 page)

Amazingly, he’s never been disowned by the GOP leadership. Just the opposite.

In 2008, when presidential hopefuls were trolling for the votes of fundamentalist Christians, Robertson was courted avidly by Republican candidates. Mitt Romney thought he’d won the preacher’s endorsement only to see Rudy Giuliani get the nod. The former New York mayor was so excited that he joined Rev. Pat for a big announcement at the National Press Club. The impact upon Giuliani’s campaign was a feeble thud. If anything, Robertson’s support probably lost votes for Giuliani in Florida, a state he’d counted on winning.

But you just wait. If Robertson still has a TV show in 2012, the candidates who are trying to sell themselves as “social
conservatives” will come swooning again. And as before, they’ll pretend they are in the presence of a true man of God, not a toxic flake.

Among Robertson’s devout followers are some pathetic souls who actually believe his pronouncement that the Haitian people invited this disaster by swearing “a pact to the devil.” Perhaps blaming the victims for some imaginary sin makes it easier for Robertson’s audience to absorb the overwhelming images of suffering and desperation that now fill the airwaves and the Internet. Who knows.

Even as he sends help, Robertson somberly advises the Haitian people to make a “great turning to God.” The country’s population happens to be 80 percent Catholic, but not all Christians are equally precious in the eyes of Rev. Pat.

The man richly deserves to be ignored, but that can’t happen until those who want to be president quit groveling for his worthless blessing.

May 23, 2010

Get Guv’ment Off Our Backs … but Not Yet

It’s fashionable to be mad at the government these days, but many folks are unclear about how to join the movement.

The first step is to master the idiom of outrage. It’s not just government, it’s Big Government. Or even better: Big Guv’ment. Huge, clunky, intrusive, exorbitant—that’s Uncle Sam. Get off our backs, get out of our lives, and let go of our wallets!

The sentiment has been around for 234 years, but never before did we have the Internet to make it feel so fresh and original. Every red-blooded patriot should aspire to a life that’s more or less free of government, which apparently can’t do anything right.

Let’s begin with health care. President Obama should immediately abandon health-care reform and turn the whole confusing mess back over to the insurance companies, with no federal rules or supervision. Wouldn’t that be swell? The problem with such a bold plan is Medicare, which funds critical coverage for many millions of older Americans. Technically, it’s a humongous government program, one of the worst drags on the deficit. But if you got rid of it, lots of people who can’t afford to pay for private insurance would grow sick and die, and a public uprising would took place. Even some crotchety Tea Partiers depend on Medicare. So, okay, leave that one alone. But otherwise, government doesn’t know squat about health care!

Now let’s talk about this so-called financial reform that the president keeps pushing. Big Guv’ment has no business meddling with our venerable Wall Street banks and brokerage houses, even though they brought the country to the brink of a catastrophic depression. Heck, everybody makes mistakes.

And why should the Federal Reserve set monetary policy when we’ve got all these sharp dudes at Goldman Sachs and AIG who have at heart only the best interests of ordinary citizens.

The only snag with banishing government completely from the financial sector is something called the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. At least 240 banks have gone belly-up since the financial crash, yet most depositors didn’t lose a dime. That’s because the mission of the FDIC is to guarantee that your savings are safe. True, it’s another layer of federal bureaucracy, but many Americans would have been ruined without it. So, fine, don’t touch the FDIC. Other than that, Mr. Obama, you let the bankers run the banks!

The same hands-off philosophy should guide our national
energy strategy—where does Big Guv’ment get off telling the oil and gas companies where it’s safe to drill? Washington should get out of the way and let the energy industry police itself, because it has the very best expertise and technology …

Okay, bad example.

Then how about that pesky Food and Drug Administration, huh? Say your child comes down with the flu. Is it really necessary for government to hassle the pharmaceutical companies over which cough syrups are safe and which are dangerous?

Never mind—that’s another not-so-great example.

Along those same lines, it’s also probably not a terrible idea for U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors to take a peek at the chicken and beef that are sold in our grocery stores, just to make sure they aren’t crawling with salmonella or E. coli.

Because this is getting a bit confusing, let’s recap: Government is totally inept, wasteful, and useless, with the possible exceptions of Medicare, the FDIC, FDA, and USDA. We might as well add the Coast Guard, which rescued hundreds of people during Katrina and is now scrambling to contain the BP oil spill.

Come to think of it, now would also be a foolish time to chop up the TSA, CIA, NSA, FBI, or any of our national security agencies. There are too many terrorists hell-bent on killing Americans, and—no offense—most local police departments aren’t geared up to screen airline manifests or track Al Qaeda’s cell-phone signals.

Oh heck, I just thought of another federal bureaucracy that seems to work pretty well: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Without NOAA, we wouldn’t know how large a hurricane was or where it was heading,
which is fairly useful information here in Florida. With the storm season starting next month and the Gulf of Mexico turning black with crude, let’s add NOAA to the not-so-worthless list, along with Medicare, the FDIC, FDA, USDA, Coast Guard, FBI, and so on.

As for the rest of Big Guv’ment, get your shiftless boot off our hardworking necks and let us be—at least until we’re old enough for Social Security.

Then we’ll tell you where to send the checks.

December 5, 2010

In a Giving Mood, but Only Toward Rich

Just in time for the holidays, Congress has terminated unemployment benefits for millions of out-of-work Americans. We’re told this was done as an act of fiscal responsibility, to help prune the gargantuan national deficit.

It’s somewhat revealing, then, to follow another big battle on Capitol Hill. This one centers on the so-called Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the month.

Democrats want to keep the lower rates for all Americans except individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $250,000. Republicans want to extend the lower tax rates for everybody, including the wealthy—their most prized constituency.

The problem with the GOP tax plan is that it would add about $700 billion to the deficit over the next decade. A few years ago this would have been business as usual, because the Bush administration was printing money as fast as the Republican leadership could spend it. Now, prodded by the renegade Tea Party, guys like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are born-again penny-pinchers. They’ve rediscovered the deficit and declared war.

Well, sort of.

A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there—no biggie, right?

Listen to this, from a recent column in
The New York Times
: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.” The writer is David Stockman, a former GOP congressman and Ronald Reagan’s budget chief from 1981 to 1985.

Stockman says Republicans have abandoned their fiscal principles to embrace a policy that “has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit spending.” He also chides McConnell for asserting that the richest taxpayers shouldn’t be burdened with a relatively modest 3 percent rate hike to reduce the nation’s public debt, which is approaching $18 trillion.

To some people who are suffering in the current economy—with the worst continuing unemployment in three decades—axing jobless benefits while prolonging a fat tax cut for the rich seems not only wrong but cruel. Even some who aren’t suffering feel the same way.

More than 40 wealthy Americans—including some Google executives and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—have formed the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength. On its website, the group has urged President Obama to end the Bush tax breaks for rich folks such as themselves: “For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as scheduled.” Not all millionaires share such a bighearted view, but it’s refreshing to hear from some who do.

Throughout the midterm campaigns, many Republican candidates were eager to spread the fiction that taxes had gone
up under Obama and the Democrats, when the opposite was true. A sizable chunk of the Big Bad Stimulus program was a tax refund in middle-class paychecks, which many people haven’t noticed because it has been spread out over time.

Another boilerplate lie was that Obama was scheming to do away with all the Bush tax cuts. In truth, under the Democratic proposal, 98 percent of taxpayers would continue paying at the lower rates. Only the wealthiest 2 percent would see their tax scale revert to pre-Bush levels, but that particular 2 percent is near and dear to the GOP.

The result, playing out now in Washington, is that Republicans are threatening to smother all legislation—from the nuclear arms control to food-safety precautions—until the Obama administration caves in on the tax cuts for the rich. Although the president is willing to compromise—raising the minimum annual income threshold from $250,000 to $1 million is one option—the opposition hasn’t budged. McConnell insists that preserving the tax cuts for top earners will help invigorate the economy, a notion disputed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and discredited by events of the last three years.

In the interest of disclosure, I’m one of the fortunate taxpayers who will benefit nicely if the Bush rates are kept in place for those in the higher brackets. I don’t donate to political parties or candidates, though it doesn’t seem to matter. McConnell and his troops are fighting tirelessly to get me more money.

I suppose I should be grateful, but something doesn’t smell right.

This month alone, two million Americans will see their unemployment paychecks stop, all in the name of cost-cutting for the good of the federal budget. Meanwhile, the so-called deficit hawks want to give away a total of $700 billion
to folks like me, who can get along just fine without it. “Obscene” is the first word that comes to mind. “Sad” is the second.

February 12, 2011

Bad Photos Make for Bad Politics

Rejected first draft of a memo from House Speaker John Boehner to fellow Republicans following the embarrassing resignation of Rep. Christopher Lee of New York after he sent an inappropriate photo to a woman he met on Craigslist
.

Dear Colleagues,

In light of recent unsavory events, I would like to review conduct guidelines for social conservatives, laboring as we do in the unforgiving glare of public scrutiny.

Needless to say, it is unseemly for any Republican member of Congress, particularly one who’s married, to attempt to “hook up” with strangers on the Internet. That’s what dark hotel bars are for, and I’m told there are many such establishments in the Capitol Hill area.

Remember, we are the party of family values, the party that spent a humongous pile of taxpayer money impeaching Bill Clinton because of his fling with a White House intern. We must not allow ourselves to wander down that same sleazy path—or at the very least, we must not allow ourselves to get caught.

Rep. Lee did the honorable thing by resigning, yet the damage to our cause has been done. So what lessons can we take from this incident?

First and most important: Never get anything on Craigslist except patio furniture, golf clubs, Super Bowl tickets, riding mowers, or snow globes.

If you belong to a social network such as Facebook, don’t post any information or comments that might be misconstrued by your constituents or twisted into something sinister by your political enemies. As a further precaution, I advise you to unfriend anyone whose last names you don’t know, especially if they are employed by an unlicensed massage parlor.

In the wake of this recent controversy, several House members have inquired about our policy regarding photographs. I would ask you all to go back and reread the Brett Favre memorandum that I sent out last fall. Obviously, Rep. Lee misplaced his copy.

Let me reiterate that it’s perfectly acceptable to send out pictures of yourself to voters and campaign donors. However, you must always be careful to pose in a dignified manner—sitting at your desk, for example, or standing on the Capitol steps. Your facial expression should be one of pensive sobriety, as if you’re contemplating how to repeal Obamacare and save this great nation from ruin.

For female members, a conservative dress or suit is fine for photographs; taupe is always safe. For men, the preferred attire is a navy blue coat jacket, a club necktie, and, of course, your American-flag lapel pin (with the stripes positioned horizontally, Rep. Quayle!).

Obviously, all body piercings and tattoos should remain out of sight.

One final point, and I can’t stress this strongly enough: Republican House members should never, ever use their cell phones to photograph themselves shirtless, no matter how “hot” they think they look. In the event that such a revealing picture does exist, you are absolutely forbidden from e-mailing it to somebody you just met online. No exceptions!

That might sound harsh, particularly to those of you who’ve been putting in a lot of time at the gym. I understand
that you’re proud of your new buffed self. So, evidently, was Rep. Lee. But the sad fact is, in this time of brutal partisanship, nobody can be trusted to keep a secret. Whenever you put anything on the Internet, assume the content is being leaked to unscrupulous liberal bloggers who are eager to make us look like phonies and hypocrites.