Bowling Pins

Our conservative president has vowed to rebuild New Orleans and essentially opened the big checkbook, signed a thousand blank checks and and said, "Have at it!". The fiscally-responsible, accountable Republicans have been relatively quiet.

$200 billion dollars. That means $400 billion dollars in government speak. Right now that's $1600 per person to rebuild New Orleans. That's like paying a substantial part of a month's salary to set the bowling pins back up. Who will pay? Not the poor, not the rich, but Joe Six Pack and Schmootzie Pony Keg -- us poor bastards that make too much to avoid the tax man but don't make enough to have connections to hide it. It will cost each of us dopes $8000 each before it is said and done, and I don't have it and I don't want to pay it!

One billion is a big number. I got this email from my dad today putting the abstraction of a 'billion" into tangible terms

a.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
b.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
c.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
d.. A billion days ago no-one walked on two feet on earth.
e.. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the
rate our government spends it.

Yikes! And to think we've spent $270 billion on war since 2002, according to the Congressional Research Service. Even the president can tell you that this many seconds ago would be back past Creation. This is the problem. When one's core philosophy is based in abstraction and hocus-pocus, one can't grasp the reality of a billion dollars and how one gets it. Add on the fact that GWBush and most of congress always had money for the asking and it is clear why real value is meaningless.

This is the problem. How can Bush and his Republican rubber stampers NOT pay to rebuild an American region when they freely can afford to rebuild Iraq? How can they tell the core of the populace, where their state's color on election day is the color of their necks, that the money will go there, but not here?

How can they dupe us, and say that they can do it without raising taxes?

Where will it come from?