BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Wasn’t it Colin Powell who told President Bush that if/when we break it, we just bought it?  I’m wondering if he mentioned the high cost of breaking it.  Let’s not talk about the billions of dollars being spent each month on the War in Iraq, at least not for now.  Many of us feel that is irresponsible enough, but we will get to that in a minute.

Let’s talk specifics first, just for the fun of it.  The lack of oversight of where our tax dollars are going is abominable.  Who is responsible for keeping up with our paper?  Is anyone minding the store?  I think not.  Or, did the U.S. hire Enron’s former accountants?

Several months ago someone made the decision to put $12B (petty) cash on pallets and fly it to Iraq.  Oh, God!  What a brilliant idea that was.  It disappeared into thin air.  We have about as much chance finding it as we did finding D.B. Cooper.  In today’s world, most of us have enough common sense to know that we shouldn’t carry large sums of cash.  Yet, our government decided to pack cash in piles on pallets and fly it to Iraq.  Did anyone really think we would know where it would end up?  If anyone from the bureacracy dares answer “yes”, I suggest he be fired on the spot. 

God only knows how many other billions of dollars have gone missing.  And, I do mean that literally!  But, what does that mean to the U.S. citizens?  If I may suggest, it means that our hard earned dollars that are overtaxed and under supervised have been pissed away by a government that has no more fiscal responsibility than a gambler who hits a losing streak and continues to play expecting his luck to change. 

That $12B alone would have paid one-third of the cost of the health care plan for children that President Bush vetoed because we can’t afford it.  We could redirect over $10B a month towards health care and education and growing the economy.  Can we imagine how many jobs we could create with those tax dollars? 

In fact, with the dollars we have spent to break Iraq we could have put New Orleans back together again and rebuilt the thousands of bridges that are ready to collapse across our country and finished the Great Wall of America to keep our neighbors out.  Hell!  We could have built the levees right this time and prevented a recurrence of Katrina’s malice, and hired some competent FEMA personnel, to boot.  We could have created jobs for Americans, not mercenaries.

You know what’s the most disheartening aspect of all of this?  I would like to be able to blame the President.  I would like to call it HIS war.  After all he did start it… without a declaration…. but what the hell are our Senators and Representatives doing to stop it?  If Prez 43 has no qualms about pulling the plug on children’s health care, someone please tell me why the Senate and the House can’t vote against continuing to fund this war.  Someone changed the concept of “checks and balances” to checks and more checks…. all sent carte blanche to the White House, endorsed by the Congress.

Forget the dollars.  The government will print more. 

Never forget the real cost:

                                                  3,930 American Soldiers have been killed. 

                                                  28,773 American Soldiers have been wounded.