Hi Folks,

    I've attached a funny and scary article by that famed woman of the 
center, Arianna Huffington. It can also be found at: 
http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2005/01/13/future/index.html. It 
criticizes the Bush administrations well honed fiscal policy, aptly 
coined "fucked the future". Here are three wonderful consecutive 
paragraphs that you can use to judge if you want to read the entire 
article (it's really not that long).

". . .

Take the jaw-dropping federal debt, which currently stands at $4.3 
trillion. Just last month the Government Accountability Office released 
a report that found that Bush's economic policies "will result in 
massive fiscal pressures that, if not effectively addressed, could 
cripple the economy, threaten our national security, and adversely 
affect the quality of life of Americans in the future."

And what was the administration's reaction to this frightening 
assessment? Vice President Dick Cheney shrugged, took a hearty swig of 
the end-time Kool-Aid and announced that the administration wants 
another round of tax cuts. Basically a big "fuck you."

Then there's our trade deficit, which ballooned to a record $165 billion 
in the third quarter of 2004, when imports exceeded exports by 54 
percent. Thanks to this imbalance, America is racking up a staggering 
$665 billion in additional foreign debt every year -- that's $5,500 for 
every U.S. household -- and placing the nation's future economic 
security in the hands of others. Here is Bush's response to this 
daunting prospect: "People can buy more United States products if 
they're worried about the trade deficit." Sounds like he has really got 
it under control.
. . ."

 Unfortunately, the article does not discuss the motivation for the 
administrations beliefs. I thought it could be an interesting topic for 
discussion, especially, if somebody could find some logical 
justification for the rights behavior and perhaps what the democrats, 
independents and fiscally conservative republicans (remember when that 
was an oxymoron) could do to bring the administration (and the public), 
back to the world where we think beyond ourselves in the present.
    I have some thought on the matter which perhaps I can get down on 
lcd in the not too distant future.

Enjoy the reading.

Andrew




Apocalypse later
With nearly religious fervor, the Bush administration is mortgaging 
America's future into oblivion.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
*By Arianna Huffington*


 

Jan. 13, 2005  |  Near the beginning of "Saturday Night Fever," John 
Travolta's Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save 
his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, "Fuck 
the future!" To which his boss replies: "No, Tony, you can't fuck the 
future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if 
you ain't prepared for it!"

Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but America has morphed into a 
nation of Tony Maneros -- collectively dismissing the future. And 
nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House, 
which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future.


  


The evidence is overwhelming. Everywhere you look are IOUs passed on to 
future generations: Record federal debt. Record foreign debt. Record 
budget deficits. Record trade deficits.


And this attempt to "fuck the future" is not limited to economics. You 
see the same attitude when it comes to energy policy, healthcare, 
education, Social Security and especially the environment -- with the 
Bushies redoubling their efforts to make the world uninhabitable as fast 
as possible. (See their attempts to gut the Clean Air Act, gut the Clean 
Water Act, gut the Endangered Species Act, gut regulations limiting 
pollution from power plants.)

And the even bigger problem? They don't see this as a problem. In fact, 
it all may be an essential part of the plan.

If that last sentence doesn't make a whit of sense to you, then you are 
clearly not one of the 50 million Americans who believe in some form of 
"end time" philosophy, an extreme evangelical theology that embraces the 
idea that we are fast approaching the end of the world, at which point 
Jesus will return and carry all true believers -- living and dead -- up 
to heaven (the "rapture"), leaving all nonbelievers on earth to face 
hellfire and damnation (the "tribulation"). Christ and his followers 
will then return to a divinely refurbished earth for a 1,000-year reign 
of peace and love.

In other words, why worry about minor little details like clean air, 
clean water, safe ports and the social safety net when Jesus is going to 
give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he 
finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?

Keep in mind: This nutty notion is not a fringe belief being espoused by 
some street corner Jeremiah wearing a "The End Is Nigh!" sandwich board. 
End-timers have repeatedly made the "Left Behind" 
  series 
of apocalyptic books among America's bestselling titles, with over 60 
million copies sold.

And they have also spawned a mini-industry of imminent doomsday Web 
sites like ApocalypseSoon.org and RaptureReady.com. The latter features 
a Rapture Index that, according to the site, acts as a "Dow Jones 
Industrial Average of end time activity" and a "prophetic speedometer." 
(The higher the number, the faster we're moving toward the Second 
Coming.) For those of you keeping score, the Rapture Index is currently 
at 152 -- an off-the-chart mark of prophetic indicators.

Now I'm not saying that Bush is a delusion-driven end-timer (although he 
has let it be known that God speaks to -- and through -- him, and he 
believes "in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans"). But he and 
his crew are certainly acting as if that's the case.

Take the jaw-dropping federal debt, which currently stands at $4.3 
trillion. Just last month the Government Accountability Office released 
a report that found that Bush's economic policies "will result in 
massive fiscal pressures that, if not effectively addressed, could 
cripple the economy, threaten our national security, and adversely 
affect the quality of life of Americans in the future."

And what was the administration's reaction to this frightening 
assessment? Vice President Dick Cheney shrugged, took a hearty swig of 
the end-time Kool-Aid and announced that the administration wants 
another round of tax cuts. Basically a big "fuck you."

Then there's our trade deficit, which ballooned to a record $165 billion 
in the third quarter of 2004, when imports exceeded exports by 54 
percent. Thanks to this imbalance, America is racking up a staggering 
$665 billion in additional foreign debt every year -- that's $5,500 for 
every U.S. household -- and placing the nation's future economic 
security in the hands of others. Here is Bush's response to this 
daunting prospect: "People can buy more United States products if 
they're worried about the trade deficit." Sounds like he has really got 
it under control.

I guess after the rapture, debts of all kinds will be forgiven. The 
White House is promoting a similar "What, me worry?" attitude with our 
live-for-the-moment energy policy. America currently spends $13 million 
per hour on foreign oil -- a number that will only increase as U.S. oil 
production peaks (within the next five years) and as consumption by 
industrializing nations doubles over the next 25 years.

So is the president pushing for a long-overdue increase in mileage 
standards or launching an all-out effort to break our dependence on 
foreign oil? Hardly. Instead, he's getting ready to make his umpteenth 
attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 
  to drilling.

And that is just a small part of the president's full-bore assault on 
the environment, best summed up by Sen. Jim Jeffords, the ranking 
minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee: "I expect 
the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster 
for public health and the environment in the history of the United States."

That said, it's not hard to see why Bush has hopped aboard the 
Apocalypse Express. Acting like there's no tomorrow dovetails just as 
neatly with his corporate backers' rapacious desires as it does with his 
evangelical backers' rapturous desires. It offers him a political 
twofer: placating his corporate donors while winning the hearts and 
votes of the true believers who helped the president achieve a Second 
Coming of his own. No small miracle, given his record.

It's important to point out, however, that the problem does not lie just 
with the White House and the end-timers. Acting as if we have a finite 
future has infected our entire culture. Just look at personal savings, 
which have fallen to next to nothing, with Americans socking away a 
meager two-tenths of 1 percent of their disposable incomes. Meanwhile, 
the average U.S. household carries about $14,000 of credit card debt; 
one in four consumers spends more than he or she can afford; and, as a 
result, every 15 seconds, someone somewhere in America is going 
bankrupt. Which, I guess, in Bush World is how an angel gets wings.

All this represents a seismic shift in our cultural outlook. Since the 
nation's founding, the American ethos has been forward-looking, geared 
to a bountiful future, with each generation of parents working as hard 
as they can to ensure a better life for their children. Those days are 
clearly gone.

And it has put our entire civilization at grave risk -- a point echoed 
with great clarity by Jared Diamond, whose new book, "Collapse," 
  
looks at the reasons why so many great civilizations of the past have 
failed.

Although Diamond offers a range of reasons why these societies 
collapsed, one message comes through loud and clear: We've got to stop 
living like there is no tomorrow or "fuck the future" will become a 
self-fulfilling prophecy.