Some snippets from a current article in People For the American Way:

“As the nation reeled in shock at the destruction of lives and communities wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Americans from all political perspectives came together behind the mission of helping the victims and rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Sadly, however, it seems that a few influential right-wing think tanks, pundits, and legislators see the devastation as a “golden opportunity” (in the words of Jack Kemp) to push through long-sought components of an aggressive and regressive economic and political agenda. Controversial proposals and program cuts that have failed to pass muster in calmer times are now being prescribed as supposedly necessary measures during a period of national crisis.” 

“The Meese report called for the creation of a so-called “Emergency Board” to identify and remove industrial regulations, including environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, financial regulations (to avoid “paperwork”), and worker protections like the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that federal contracts pay prevailing wages. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a foe of both regulations and organized labor, commented that the immediate gutting of worker protections is necessary because “[u]nions have never hesitated to line their own pockets with extra taxpayer dollars, especially at the expense of lower-skilled workers.”

“The feverish daydreams of the right wing—to shirk the responsibilities of the government to all its citizens and to shrink it to “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”—have never been a secret, but neither have they been fully adopted under conditions that lent themselves to calm reflection. As the nation has its mind and heart focused on the Gulf Coast, now is certainly not the time to sneak through an extreme ideologically driven economic agenda that would sacrifice the well being of many Americans. On the contrary— the government must concentrate on rebuilding the lives and communities torn apart by Katrina and Rita, on the path of consensus, not opportunism.”

You know, I have always valued the Social Contract. It, much like the goal of having manners, is to provide the grease that keeps us from killing each other. This is how we obtain Social Justice in a widely divergent polyglot Culture.

All of us are different: varying circumstances, family connections, education… but the Social Contract in this country was meant as a leveling of the playing field. We, each and everyone of us have the Right “to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.  This is our right and responsibility to each other to uphold. It is the glue that holds us together.

For some folk to view the double catastrophe of Katrina/Rita and the Federal Flood of New Orleans a perfect time to subject the American people to a NeoCon social experiment is somewhat like the experiments of Dr. Mengele in Nazi Germany. This is about Human lives and dreams, not the Ruling Elite and their aquireing of more money and toys.

He who has the most toys and shit at Death is NOT THE WINNER. It doesn’t work that way in the ‘Verse. It’s about how and why we live our lives… that we see a little bit of ourselves in those we meet, and we honor their Right to be who and what they are, just as they should do in return.

The NeoCons cannot understand this. They are stunted developmentally as Human Beings, and the kindest act we can perform for these creatures is to place them in a safe place and keep them from preying on each other. Watch over them and hopefully bring some enlightenment to their dark little psyches.

This is why I’m a Progressive Socialist.