Politik
10 December, 2002 :: 1:35 p.m.
Has anyone else been paying attention to the Republicans lately?
They have been pulling a lot of shit while diverting the public's eyes toward Iraq.
There is a lovely little loophole in our tax laws that allows American businesses to set up "headquarters" overseas and thus avoid paying taxes in this country. Sweet. By headquarters, basically they set up a mailing address someplace such as the Cayman Islands or pretty much any Caribbean or African country. Key example? Tyco.
The IRS itself estimates lost taxes at $70 billion/year because of shady businesses pulling this shit. They can stay in this country and due to saying that they are based out of another country, they skip on taxes...can I do this? Set up a mailing address for myself in Jamaica or someplace and thus avoid having taxes taken out of my paychecks? I somehow doubt it. My taxes have to be lumped with everyone else's to help cover that $70 billion that American businesses aren't paying.
What does this have to do with the Republicans? While Bush is screaming for us to look at Saddam's beady little eyes and see the face of pure evil, his Republicans managed to remove a provision from the Homeland Security Bill that would have prevented companies who pull this crap to be awarded government contracts...and yes, this would have affected even Tyco who are best known for making toys.
Okay, obviously the first thing anyone should be thinking is "shouldn't they just pass a law preventing companies from doing this at all?" Yes, they should, but at least this would have been a step in that direction (and you know that no politician wants to piss off a potential campaign donator, so things must be done slowly).
The point is when we aren't hearing about Iraq on the news, we're hearing about how bad off the economy is, how there isn't money for this, isn't money for that--yet the government is missing out on $70 billion a year in revenue! Call me kooky, but it seems like that would help significantly with aiding educaition and health care and who knows what else.
In this same Homeland Security Bill, just to slap the American citizens in the face once more, someone (who for obvious reasons now wishes to remain anonymous) slipped a little provision in that shields the drug company Eli Lilly from lawsuits by parents of children with autism (it is suspected that mercury in vaccines given to children is linked to autism...and Eli Lilly is the maker of this stuff). This was after all of the public debate on the bill had taken place, this was snuck in in the final hours when the House and Senate were finalizing everything together. Just a coincidence I suppose that this was done after elections where the Republicans found out they were in control of Congress...just a coincidence that Eli Lilly donated close to $2 million and more than 3/4 of that was to Republicans. I realize that many politicians have little or no moral code, but I thought that maybe they all had some little voice, some conscience that would say, "hey, this has nothing to do with homeland security and it is hurting parents and children." Apparently not. That anyone could do this is despicable and I hope that if there is some sort of afterlife punishment facility that their seat is booked.
And then in other news, there was Trent Lott's (the Senate majority leader) making a jackass out of himself. He was at a party celebrating Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday and his "service" to this country. Lott, in reference to Thurmond's run for president in 1948 (yes, he's THAT fucking old) and the fact that his (Lott's) state, Mississippi, had voted for Thurmond said, "We're proud of it, and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
What is he talking about? Strom Thurmond was and, despite his denial, probably still is a racist. He's a worthless ass and the fact that South Carolineans kept electing him is reason enough for me to never want to live there. Anyway, back in '48 when Thurmond was running, he ran on the platform of anti-integration. So in essence what Lott was saying was that had Thurmond been elected president and had we not had to endure this pain in the ass called social integration, things would be much better these days. That's right, fence the niggers into the ghettos and keep the fucking spics from taking those prized migrant farm worker jobs and this country would be a lot better...Oi. So apparently it's not just Bush who needs to start thinking before getting up in public and speaking.
Bush for his part noticed that the American citizens were bored with reports from Afghanistan on the news because most of the fighting is over...we're no longer bombing weddings or Canadians or any of the other wrong targets and the Taliban are out and there's no sign of Osama...the American television audience needs something more action-packed to fill it's nights in front of the boob tube, so Bush presents us with Evil Personified--Saddam Hussein...that's right, his daddy's arch nemesis whom he beat but failed to remove from power...apparently leaving him so that little Georgie one day would have a worth adversary of his own to defect attetion from anything of substance. See, Osama would have been that, but he's too elusive, we don't know where he's at. We know that Saddam is somewhere in Iraq even if it's in a bunker while his look-a-likes travel from palace to palace facing a potential assassination attempt. Saddam has a fraction of the army he had when lil' Georgie's daddy was in office, his own people are less than enthused with him, any facilities he has left that he could try creating weapons of mass destruction at are probably in piss poor condition, but he's the face we should all fear. He hasn't been making a peep, yet Bush has turned him into the Bogie Man (why do we spell boogie with two "o"s, but Bogie Man with only one?)--Bush apparently decided against picking on real threats such as North Korea, Pakistan and India who all have nuclear weapons and while Pakistand and India are always pissing in each other's cheerios, N. Korea is always pissed at the entire world--and correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they and their nukes closer to us than Saddam and his so far imaginary WoMD?
Is it 2004 yet? I'm hoping that the American citizens who voted for Bush this last time around realize that he is no better than his father and sure as hell doesn't deserve more time in the White House than his father had as president. Hopefully a real cadidate will step up so we aren't forced to sit through Bush vs. Gore II.