Disaster and Chaos

The month of May set records for terrible tornadoes. The photos look like war zones and I am sure the survivors feel as if they are living in a war zone. 2011 keeps getting worse and worse. At least the world did not end, although it almost seems that way. I have been puzzling over why people have been sending so much money to Harold Camping who was predicting the end of the world. He is now a millionaire. Why would we send money to someone who is predicting the end of the world? It is beyond my comprehension, but apparently it is good business to predict the end of the world. How can we determine how to make money and what is good for business? Who would have thought that the end of the world was good for business?

As far as business is concerned the Republicans were elected to create jobs. But instead they are attacking women and doing away with all health care for women and children. They also want to do away with Medicare and Social Security. Actually they have been planning this for the past 10 years. President Bush's goal was to "starve the beast," that is, to bankrupt the country. He was very successful in that endeavor. The next step for the Republicans was to do follow their ideological goals and use the deficit as an excuse for dismantling Medicare and Social Security. Social Security has not contributed in any way to the deficit. In fact Congress has taken more than two trillion dollars out of Social Security to pay for other programs. Then they tell us that Social Security is in trouble! There is no reason why future generations cannot have Social Security. All they have to do is charge SS taxes on all incomes rather than stopping at the income level of $100,000. Of course they are ideologically opposed to the program to begin with and they refuse to do this. They do not even consider restoring the money they have taken out. They are not really concerned about the deficit, as shown by their refusal to stop subsudizing the oil companies. That would save us billions.

The real issue is that we have become such a military state that we cannot afford anything but war. We cannot afford health care for our citizens. That would be "socialism." Yet every other civilized nation in the world provides health care for its citizens. We do not have any right to life if we have no health care. Only unborn fetuses have a right to life.

What we have to cut is not education and health care. We have to cut the military budget. We have to end all these wars, support our troops, and bring them home. We all know that they need health care. The veterans hospitals are filled with terribly disabled and brain damaged veterans. And the ones who are physically well are suffering post traumatic stress. War is very destructive to our society and it has not been any help to Iraq or Afghanistan. Peace and justice are the needs of our society and of the whole world. We must cut the deficit by ending war.