Thursday, November 30, 2006

Kaul: You're not hungry, just insecure


YOU’RE NOT HUNGRY, SILLY … JUST INSECURE – by Donald Kaul

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the eve of his nomination for president in 1932, said: "I see one-third of a nation ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad." Ever since, American presidents have promised to end hunger. None of them has.

Not John Kennedy with his plans cut short, not Lyndon Johnson who used them to build his own Great Society, not Ronald Reagan with his "a rising tide raises all boats" philosophy, not Bill Clinton, who felt everybody's pain. Until now. George W. Bush, who didn't even promise to end hunger, has done it anyway. And in time for the holidays.

In fact, mere days before Thanksgiving, Mr. Bush's Department of Agriculture issued its annual report on food availability and, lo and behold, no one was listed as "hungry." Take that, FDR!

It seems that the USDA had done away with the "hungry" category in its 2006 report because the word is an imprecise, non-scientific term. Instead, those who can't afford to put food on the table are now said to have "very low food security." This year, that group was even bigger than last year---35 million, or 12 percent of the population. But no hunger.

Good for our side. Now if President Bush would only get to work on the ill-housed and ill-clad issues we could get on about the business of carving a place for him on Mt. Rushmore.

But if you're surprised that 35 million Americans have very low food security and that 11 million reported going (you should pardon the expression) hungry at times, you shouldn't be.

I know that we're the greatest country in the world---just ask us---but there are certain minor areas in which we lag behind much of the industrialized world. I'm talking matters almost too trivial to mention: life expectancy, nutrition, housing, health services, education, employment.

The United Nations each year publishes a "human development" index, ranking countries according to the ability to provide their citizens a chance at a long and prosperous life.

It turns out that Norway, land of the steeply progressive income tax, is the place most likely to help you live long and well. Capitalistic America is no better than eighth, coming in behind Iceland, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada and Japan. To which I can only say in rebuttal: "Our rich people are richer than your rich people and we don't make them pay taxes either. Ha, ha."

If that doesn't make the Norwegians and the rest of those socialists emerald green with envy, nothing will.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Bush and the Democrats have already started making good on the promise to be bi-partisan.

Mr. Bush's fired off the first gesture by nominating a man who does not believe in the United Nations (John Bolton) to be our U.N. ambassador and a man who doesn't believe in contraception (Eric Keroack) to oversee federally funded planned parenthood programs. The appointments are in keeping with Bush's philosophy of putting incompetents (former FEMA head Michael Brown) and outright saboteurs (former Secretary of Energy and auto industry shill Spencer Abraham) at the controls of government to demonstrate that government doesn't work.

The Democrats---who like government and think we should have more of it---haven't contrived their bi-partisan answer yet; they've been too busy fighting among themselves. Nancy Pelosi's first move on becoming the presumptive Speaker of the House was to try to strong-arm Abscam scandal-tainted John Murtha of Pennsylvania, into the No. 2 House position.

Rep. Stenny Hoyer of Maryland, however, had his own ambitions for the job. In addition, he had the votes so he won, thus making Ms. Pelosi not merely the first woman ever to lead the House, but the first to enter office carrying her head underneath her arm. But never fear. She's hoping to salvage her reputation for leadership by naming Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Hastings, you might remember, was the federal judge impeached on a bribery charge. Tell me again why we voted the Democrats into office. I keep forgetting.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

King and Delay dine in style in DC


The Capitol Hill Newspaper Roll Call reports this:

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Rep. Steve King had a juicy steak dinner at Sam & Harry’s on Tuesday night, the evening before one-time uber-lobbyist jack Abramoff was due to begin serving his prison sentence for the Florida half of his corruption conviction.

DeLay – whose demise, of course, is linked to the Ambramoff corruption scandal – enjoyed a steak, according to sources in the restaurant. He and King chatted and whispered away at a cozy table against the wall.

No word on who gave who more gossip. DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said only, “Let’s just say Sam & Harry’s wasn’t the only one dishing out read meat.”

Well, we do know that DeLay had plenty to tell King about his five former staffers, who were able to continue drawing a salary in the Hammer’s personal office even after DeLay resigned last June. On Tuesday morning, as HOG reported Wednesday, all five staffers walked out on DeLay’s successor, Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs (R-Texas), because they thought she was “mean.”

Sekula-Gibbs seems to see no irony in her status as a seven-week-term Congresswoman who promises an ambitious legislative agenda that includes Medicare reform. After winning the special election to replace DeLay, she lost a write-in bid for the full term in the 110th Congress.

King’s spokeswoman, Summer Johnson, said, “As you can imagine, after Nov. 7, ther was really nothing jovial about the conversation.”

Friday, November 10, 2006

'Nothing needs reforming like someone else's bad habit'

DOUGLAS BURNS
Daily Times Herald Columnist

If Carroll kids are still reading Mark Twain these days, and after some recent reports about books and reading in school here one wonders, they may remember one of the American humorist's more famous lines.

"Nothing needs reforming like someone else's bad habit," Twain said.

At this point in the discussion of smoking in contemporary America that seems to be a motivation for many.

Which isn't to defend smoking from a health standpoint.

Anyone who sticks with smoking is like a battered wife hanging on to a husband, wondering when the slaps become haymakers, the kicks turn to bullets.

It's arguable that the decision to smoke tobacco could be the single worst choice a person can make in terms of health.

Butt it is an informed decision.

I'm 37, born at the tail end of the 1960s, and I've never not known that smoking is deleterious to my health. I've never believed that the Marlboro Lights of my youth and the American Spirit Ultra Lights I smoke today made me any better in a health sense than the unfiltered Camels my grandfather, the late James W. Wilson, smoked until near the end of his 77 years.

I've never not known the deal. Well before I started I knew the consequences. It's not the fault of the tobacco companies or anyone else. It's my own, entirely. Each day I may lose at the end of my temporal time because of smoking is a day I chose to throw back like a spent cigarette butt.

I may roll the dice and win on this one, too. Smoking may not kill me. I smoke well under half a pack a day.

Of course, there is no magic number with cigarettes, no threshold where they go from recreational vice to suicidal means.

I've never not known this.

Which makes me wonder about the need for school groups like Just Eliminate Lies (JEL), which targets tobacco use, aims straight away at the Great American Right to Individual Stupidity.

Who doesn't know the perils of smoking?

The JEL groups have every right to their voices in the public marketplace of ideas. But wouldn't their time be better spent, their energy more appropriately used working tirelessly on preventing teen drinking, the death lottery of the Carroll area for young people?

If a 17-year-old kid makes the choice to smoke a cigarette, like I did in 1987, he could end up dying at age 77 instead of 85.

But that same kid who decides to drink and drive may never see 18.

In the end, there are worse things one can do than smoke.

Like turn into an insufferable anti-smoking activist who wants to make sure everyone else gets religion. Unless you are a non-smoking drunk who spends too much at the bar, it's awfully easy to avoid second-hand smoke these days.

The reformers would never admit this, but smoking can be a useful tool in our society.

Personally, if given the option, I would rather have millions of calm smokers living to be 70 rather than dealing with life in a country with millions of high-strung, ex-smokers walking around with attitudes until their 105th birthdays.

I would bet statisticians could correlate non-smoking and road rage.

Sounds like a great advertisement for Philip Morris. Maybe on they could use it to replace those eye-rollingly ridiculous ads promoting Web sites that convince people not to buy their products.

Think of that. In America, a company that produces a legal product, albeit an unhealthy one, has been compelled to advertise against itself. It's as if Coke were made to fail the Pepsi challenge.

And that's what's wrong with the anti-smoking crusaders. The government is attempting to nanny us, and the fee-addicted trial lawyers are seeking to settle it in the courts - all of which entrenches individual smokers, makes them feel, remarkably, yet understandably in some twisted sense, that their continued lighting up is at least in spirit a stand of sorts for the rights of individual self-determination, even if in the end that means self-destruction.