Screw the Children, by Molly Ivins

Molly comes through again. I love this woman. In all these years, she has maintained her sense of fun. I recommend any of her books, but especially the ones that deal with her experience of Bush as Governor of Texas. They highlight the state-level catastrophes caused by the very policies Bush is pushing through at the national level.

This article is about the proposed budget. What kind of “values” are represented in it?

“Promoting the general welfare, one of the six reasons the Constitution gives for having a government in the first place, is not high on his list.”

“What’s really sad is that all this damage is being done to real, living children – not clumps of cells in a petri dish – to save what is, in Washington terms, pennies. Pitifully small sums.”

“What this budget means, quite literally, is that more kids will be hungry and malnourished. More kids who get sick will be unable to see a doctor, more kids with diseases will go undiagnosed until they get so sick they have to be carried to the emergency room. More kids who need glasses or hearing aids won’t get them, causing them to fall behind in school. More kids will show up to start school without being in the least prepared, and they will remain behind for the rest of their days. Less money for childcare means more kids left alone or in unsafe places with irresponsible or incapable people while their parents work. More kids who are being severely abused will go unnoticed, and fewer of them will find safe foster homes.”

“In Texas, whenever there’s a budget crunch, the first thing we do is hurt the children – last legislative session, we actually turned down federal money for children’s health insurance, leaving almost 170,000 Texas children uninsured, just so the state wouldn’t have to put up the matching funds, $1 for every $2.60 from the feds. How proud we are to see this fine Texas tradition being exported to Washington by our former governor.”

And in return for hurting the nation’s children? At a savings that is..

“Nothing compared to the $9.9 billion being squandered on the missile defense boondoggle this year. (Did you notice that the system flunked yet another test this week, at a cost of another $85 million?) Nothing compared to the two tax breaks in the budget that benefit ONLY the really, really rich – regular folks this time will not even get that little, tiny slice that went to the middle class in the first Bush tax cuts.”

Are you getting the true message yet?

Send Bush a thank-you love letter from the satirical action group Billionaires for Bush. Thank him for taking from children and giving to billionaires. Thank him for his ever-more successful attempts to bankrupt the country and make us less secure. Thank him for his destructive policies against the middle class, the working class, and the poor. Thank him for the choreographed conflicts of interest that take away checks against turning this country into a simple slash and burn zone for corporate greed. And thank him for his compassion, and the conservative outlook that makes his administration the most radical of our lifetimes.