I want your property
I happened to spend part of my Fourth of July with the former mayor of one of our most affluent suburbs…as if I needed reminding of why I don’t live out there. First I heard of all his suburb’s problems–high taxes, hard to park on main street, white kids into beer (or was it martinis?) and driving too fast, and the local scandal at the country club over who was banging who else’s wife. So far no murders, though.
From this perspective, he began to tell me what was wrong with liberals like me. The answer, basically, is we like oral sex and don’t care who knows it. Yup, Clinton and the gays. That’s why the religious right has taken over. “It’s your fault I have to explain what a blow job is to my 10-year-old daughter.”
That logic kind of got past me. I asked, “Could you please explain that to me?”
“It was all over the TV for a damn year. How you gonna keep them away from that?” he sputtered.
“Turn off the TV news,” I suggested. “It works for me.”
He didn’t like that idea, so I followed up with, “Don’t give a special prosecutor an unlimited budget and an unlimited portfolio to attack a sitting president and his wife unless you have a reasonable cause to believe he’s done something wrong. You started in on Whitewater, found absolutely nothing except that the Clintons lost money on the deal, then ended up impeaching him because he lied about having sex with an intern. How would you answer if I asked you in front of your wife if your intern had been under your desk?”
Of course, there’s not much sense in arguing with someone who doesn’t see any connection about lying about sex and lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Because one stained blue dress is certainly more of an indictment of our disrespect for truth, justice and the American Way than having started a war that’s killed 1700 American soldiers, maimed thousands of others, and killed untold thousands of Iraquis. Even when I tied it up neatly with the question “Why do we impeach Clinton for screwing an intern and let Bush get away with screwing the whole country?”
Of course, we know the answer to that one: the government is completely for sale. Every level of it. The only difference between the federal, state, city or dogcatcher levels is how much it costs.
And, don’t kid yourself, both sides are for sale. If you didn’t believe that before, be sure to think again about last week’s Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London. The court’s liberal wing got together to sanctify the right of governmental bodies the right to take private property in order to give it to other private concerns so they can build something that will qualify for big tax breaks. (If you don’t think that can happen here, remember the Walser car stores that used to be where the Best Buy headquarters is now.)
I never thought I’d find myself on the same side of an important issue as Antonin Scalia, and I really hadn’t given much thought to how much we’re going to miss Sandra O’Connor until I read her dissent. But damn if I didn’t think what a bunch of idiots Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens and Kennedy are, to give more power to local governments, who are well known to sell out cheap, to take your property and sell it to big campaign donors.
Yup, that’s in the best tradition of exactly what Bush has been doing since he was elected President by the Supreme Court in 2000. Take from the poor and give to the rich. Dems can do it too, and they will get to like it more and more…especially when they can use the power of eminent domain to help themselves get re-elected, too. Why didn’t we think of that sooner? Let’s us liberals ally ourselves with big business and let the Republicans have the religious right wing.
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