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Here we are again. Another year has gone by and December '05 is almost half over.
Something always goes through my head. This month it is many somethings.
Today I got a message on my answering machine. Didn't say who, but the voice ranted about how a GOP congressman from my state was allegedly dirty for taking campaign contributions (what should he have done, turned down contributions and lost the election? That'd really have helped his constituents...).
The message urged the recipient -- me -- to call the Congressman's office at such and such a number and tell him to stop taking contributions from "evil" companies who it alleged were trying to profit from the current war. So I did one better. I called the office, turned out to be a congressman I did not like because of his domestic policy. He was one of those "we need to ban guns" types who also thought the gov't should police people's health and manners too, with punative taxes. However, the war on right now is bigger than one or two domestic issues. So I called the bub's office and said that I got a message from some campaign that was seeking to gain political profit from the war by dissing the congressman, and that if this is the sort of sleazy stunts what he's up against, I might support him next time.
This was hardly what the message-leaver meant, but then his line about "profiting" from the war made me ask: What's HIS motive? Surely he isn't calling every house on the block and leaving canned messages on their answering machines in order to work on his singing voice. The obvious answer is political profit from the war by denouncing the opposition. People been doing that for years because politics, unlike life and economics, is a zero sum game. Dashing the other guy's poll numbers is easier than bringing up yer own and accomplishes the same, more or less, by default. It's been going on since they invented the barter system, but I have an aversion to such things. However, the caller couldn't know that. The law of unintended and unforseen consequences.
And that theme seems to run through the entire year. At least.
Example: can't tell ya how often I'm nearly hit by cars. I been hit several times. Folks think you gotta be nuts to bicycle in New Jersey. Not nuts, just have balls of steel and good health insurence. I have niether so I'm very careful. I have to be, due to the proliferation of SUVs in NJ.
More and more locals drive big huge tanks. And the recent hike in gas prices means they are hit harder than the guys walking, riding bikes, or driving a normal sized automobile by the financial costs of driving. Do they react by driving less, finding a possibly cheaper gas station, or simply budgeting more for gas and less for beer?
Hardly. They react by floating more stop signs, cutting off other drivers, and nearly running over pedestrians who cross because, when they look, the truck isn't coming -- but when it flies around that corner in an unsignalled turn that sends it through a stopsign at 40mph, the truck's captain expects whoever's walking to run for it. Me, you and the next guy. Oh, I'm sorry. Is it costing you $50 to wait while I cross the street? You bought that big truck to feel tough, or maybe cause you just liked it. Fine. Now live with it. An unintended consequence is that a big truck makes a big dent in your wallet. Too bad. I didn't do a scientific survey but I had more close calls in the aftermath of Katrina when gas was high than beforehand. People would run stop signs rather than waste gas idling. This is not what promotors of energy conservation had in mind, I'm sure. Another inintended consequence -- which could land you in hospital with tire tracks across your backside.
But it's not entirely the Gas guzzler's fault. They are just the symptom. The fault is with the politicians who refuse to allow the oil industry to grow. No healthy industry could be setback so much by a single natural disaster as to cause a spike in prices like we saw with gasoline. Unfortunately, the fuel biz in the US is not healthy. It is stagnant and it needs to expand. But the same SUV liberals who wanna pilot a big Ford Excursion with a John Kerry bumper sticker don't wanna have to look at refineries. So the NIMBY types and the activist types prevent needed advances, the system becomes vulnerable, and a single storm causes enough damage to excuse a hike in gas prices that'd make Al Gore proud.
Speaking of Katrina, G.W. Bush took a lot of crap for it. People said he let the storm kill folks on purpose. It'd be the first time in history the media accused a President of being unable to run the country in one breath, and yet having the power to control the weather in the next! Since when can Presidents manipulate the weather? The government can only act after the fact -- and the immediate actign is always done by locals.
The Bush-bashers ignored the craven response of local officials -- which even included cops looting stores themselves -- to bash FEMA and other federal agencies. This was an irony because the same critics are often usually the ones arguing for everythign to be federalized and run by the central government. But when that central gov't can't make a storm turn it's path or part the red sea they see red. Although really, Bush didn't help. To assuage his critics he threw money -- yours and mine -- at the corrupt and inept local gov't in New Orleans. Now his critics went from saying he ain't helping, to saying he ain't helping enough. As if a few billion is chump change. Unintended consequence. Concessions buy no relief from that sorta thing.
I must not be a Republican any more than a Democrat -- at least not a "compassionate conservative" -- because I think Geroge Carlin 'd make a better President than George Bush when it comes to his take on Katrina: "You wanna live below sea level, do your country a favor and join the Navy."
I've yet to hear anyone rip George for saying it. If they did it'd probably just give him a publicity boost. Unintended consequence again -- in a good way this time!
- Elvis