The Black Commentator - Radio BC: The Pirate Budget

The Bush regime has made its budget known to the Congress. Democrats say it doesn't make any sense, has no basis in reality. Bush wants to spend $120 billion in one year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while eliminating 141 domestic programs, one-third of them in education. He asks for an additional $18 billion for Katrina-related relief, but we know that the people who need trailer homes to return to New Orleans and regain their residency aren't going to get them. The Bush men can't reconstruct either New Orleans or Iraq. Bush has to be hounded into getting sufficient armor to the troops in Iraq, but spends billions on high tech weapons and his version of Star Wars space gadgets. Bush claims he will cut the budget deficit in half in five years, but the numbers say that he will instead add half a trillion dollars in debt.

These numbers make the head spin. However, too often folks conclude that George Bush and his crowd are simply incompetent. That they are too stupid to fight wars, or to come to the relief of disaster victims. Stupid, they may be, but that's almost irrelevant. The Bush men are pirates, and as such, they are a very successful crew of barbarians, indeed.

Pirates are thieves, marauders, pillagers, lawless criminals who roam the globe in search of plunder. That is their business - it's what they do. It's the job of the pirate chief - whether its Bush or Cheney or whoever - to guide the pirate ship to the most lucrative treasures, and haul them away, and to split up the spoils among the crew. In Bush's case, the pirate crew is the high tech war industry, which isn't concerned with body armor and other low-return items; the energy gang, who make out like bandits in an environment of world chaos; the masters of pure finance capital, who would much rather manipulate markets than finance anything productive; and the reconstruction industry, Dick Cheney's bailiwick, which thrives on destruction. Put all these guys together, and you've got a global looting spree with no regard to the consequences, foreign or domestic.

Who said that pirates were good citizens? These are a breed of men who create nothing, who hate the rule of law because it impedes their pillaging. But they do love government, because that is the greatest pile of loot of all. George Bush and his crew are looting the treasury of the world's biggest economy. That's what I mean when I say they are very successful. It does not matter if they are incompetent in things that they have no intention of doing. As thieving pirates, however, they are very, very good.

The Bush crowd is acting according to their nature. It's as if Blackbeard and his pirates were in charge of the Carnival Cruise line. The world is in for a bad trip. For Radio BC, I'm Glen Ford.

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