DeLay Back in the Fray
O, let us rejoice, for he is back!
Tom DeLay, I mean – the corrupt egomaniac who rose to power in the U.S. House of Representatives before falling into disgrace over his habit of trading legislative favors for corporate campaign cash. Not only was DeLay a poster boy of congressional corruption during the Republican years of this decade, but he also pushed some of the goofiest, most extreme ideas spawned by right-wing ideologues.
For example, while he consistently prevented increases in the minimum wage for the lowest-paid Americans, he just as consistently saw to it that his own congressional pay was increased annually. When confronted with this hypocrisy, DeLay blurted out, “I challenge anyone to live on my salary.” He was making $166,000 a year!
Unfortunately for commentators like me, DeLay got indicted in 2005 and dropped off the political radar. But now – O, glory – he’s back! There he was on CNN recently, wallowing once again in the mud of right-wing gibberish. There should be no extension of unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans in today’s severely depressed job market, he grunted. Why? Because, asserted DeLay, such a program “keeps people from going and finding jobs.”
Shaking her head incredulously, the interviewer asked if he was actually saying that people are unemployed because they want to be? “Well,” answered this once-powerful lawmaker, “it is the truth, and people in the real world know it.”
The real world? DeLay hasn’t even visited there for decades. But bless his heart, thank goodness he’s not letting reality intrude into his fantasy world, and thank goodness he’s back on TV. I, for one, find his insights as refreshing as ever.
Boeing, Going, Gone
It was one of those bold policy decisions made by George “The Decider” Bush. In 2005, to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, Bush directed that an electronic “virtual fence” be built to detect “bad guys” trekking into our country. Of course, like all things Bush, he corporatized the project, turning it over to Boeing.
How’s that worked out, you ask? Well, $672 million has been spent so far, and Boeing was supposed to hand over the first stretch of its phantasmagoric fence to the border patrol in January. But there were … uh … problems. For example, the high tech stuff was deployed, but the components were not fully connected, so vast expanses of land were not covered. Also, the radar Boeing installed can’t seem to distinguish between a person moving through the brush and … well, the brush itself. There’s more! Boeing’s satellite detectors take too long to notify the area command centers, so by the time a live person checks out a suspicious movement, whatever caused it is gone.
Meanwhile, a Boeing vice president whines that the virtual fence job is more complex than anticipated and that the government should start over: “They really need to come up with the right calculus,” he recently explained, “and we’ll support that answer and look to be their preferred contractor to build whatever portion of what that calculus is.”
Excuse me, sir, but – huh? The fact that a vice president of this major corporation can’t even string words into a comprehensible sentence might suggest that Boeing’s ineptness goes far deeper than its inability to link electronic components together.
He is right, however, that the government should start over. And it should start by booting Boeing – and by asking for our $675 million to be returned. Also, the government should probably scrap Bush’s whole fantasy of “virtualosity” as a way to control America’s borders.
This article appears in March 26 • 2010.