Infinite Greed: A Child's Primer

I've been trying to explain to my 11 year old the difference between Democrats and republicans. I give him the usual,"Dems are more concerned with working people, GOPers are the party for the super rich and large corporations". Yada, yada, yada. But he's pretty insightful and keeps asking me for better definitions. I think I'll have him read today's Tribune front page. It's a lovely little story about what the republican party is all about and how their lack of morals and their total incompetence directly leads to international disasters and the deaths of innocent people. We all know Halliburton has received billions in no-bid contracts to do the grunt work (serving meals, cleaning toilets, washing clothes, etc) for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (service expanding soon to Iran!). Because these countries are so dangerous, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, had to be given these deals quickly, secretly, and probably in Cheney's private hideaway. But also, the rates KBR charged were many times more than the going rate for services in these countries. Why? Well, I'm sure they claimed that the unconscionable rates they were charging were necessary to convince American workers to go to a war zone to provide these services. So, did they hire Americans to do this work at handsome rates of pay? Nope. Did they hire Iraqis to help lower the high rate of unemployment? Nope. What did they do? C'mon, you can guess...they "outsourced" the hiring to "third parties" who recruited poor, uneducated workers from third world countries who were lied to about where they were going, had their passports confiscated when they arrived in Iraq, and most gruesome of all, a dozen of them were kidnapped and murdered. KBR could have made a ton of money by pocketing the cash from their bloated contracts and hiring American or Iraqi people to do the work. But in a classic example of unlimited greed, they had to cut corners to make two tons of money. If that required having to go to the ends of the earth (literally) to find people whose domestic situations were so poor that they would accept these jobs as indentured servants, well, that's fine with them. These are the type of immoral, infinitely greedy companies the republicans are happy to associate themselves with. Well, son, Democrats not only wouldn't do business with these companies, but would lose their lunches if they were in the same room with them.

Think YOUR Job Sucks?

Who has the worst job in America? Sure, we see survey after survey that ranks the worst jobs and usually something like coal miner or waitress or fruit picker tops the list. But I think that poor Scotty McClennan has the worst job in America. This poor schmuck is sent out day after day on national television to tell the same half truths, misrepresentations and outright lies that are the hallmarks of the Bush administration. Today he has to try to keep a straight face while claiming that Bush's cynical selective leaking of classified information was "in the public interest" rather than for political reasons. He then goes on to say that Bush decided to declassify and release some information to rebut "irresponsible and unfounded accusations" that the administration had manipulated or misused prewar intelligence to buttress its case for war. John Stewart's writers can't come up with anything funnier than this! But poor Scotty has to stand there and watch what little shred of personal integrity he has slip away as he repeats the same lies. At least he'll get a nice cushy job after this...probably as spokesman for Halliburton.