Yesterday's Pandemic fog-blast from the President contained a toxic additive that was masked by all the sugary sweet tidbits of money flying everywhere. Billions here, billions there, blah, blah... Most of what was announced yesterday is either programs already initiated by Congress or programs that had previously been gutted by the White House budget. Mr. Bush probably doesn't even know that he was sent onstage to act like he was proposing to do what someone else has already done or that he was contradicting his own budgetary demands.
The real poison pill in this pixie-dust brew is that now it seems we must protect the pharmaceutical companies from consumers so that these companies can get on with their glorious humanitarian efforts. Evidently, my President is telling me that he has to protect the Pharmaceutical Industry from me because I, and all other citizens, pose a litigious threat so grave as to threaten the pharmaceutical industry's capacity to pursue the development of drugs that can save our lives. So, our President must remove our ability to seek justice when we believe we have been injured by a pharmaceutical company in order to protect us. We are all Fallujans!
Number one: thanks, but no friggin' thanks. This is the worst brand of socialism ever forced down the throat of Americans. The pharmaceutical companies would be immune to accountability for anything that happened to a customer or customers because of their greed, negligence or just bad luck. One person, or one class of people will no longer be afforded the opportunity to seek their justice as it might prove injurious to the rest of us. Therefor, justice and liberty are deemed too expensive and we will opt for the what the White House has decided is a healthier course, which includes the financial health of the corporation. Talk about an inoculation. Regardless of the cause of the offense, we will no longer be able to argue before a court for a fair compensation, a fair accounting, from some of the world's largest and wealthiest companies.
Let's see, we have already put the gun makers behind a bullet-proof wall and set the banking industry in a blast-proof safe. Now the President is proposing that we slip his Pharma-buds into a justice-proof condom.
Number two: the opportunism of the pharmaceutical companies knows no bounds, nor should it. These are American corporations and are constructed to function without the burden of conscience. However, just because companies operate without concern for persons doesn't mean that the Oval Office operates in the same fashion. In fact, it means the opposite. The primary role of the President in this case is to represent the needs of the people, not to trample them underfoot in lockstep with the corporations.
We have a socialist in conservative's clothing occupying the Oval Office. This is government run rampant and is the absolute demonstration of totalitarian tactics imposed for a socialistic result. When government decides that some parties are to be held accountable, such as soldiers working in a military prison, and some parties are above accountability, such as wealthy campaign-donor corporations, then we are not feeding from the ether of social or political conservatism. Rather, we are being gassed with the toxins of demand and control from a government that spends without limits, wars without conscience and rules in absolute fear of having to be accountable for its actions.
Mr. Bush's proposals for addressing the potential bird-flu pandemic are nothing more than his administration's efforts to appease and protect their pharmaceutical industry supporters while attempting to cloak the White House in glory that is not theirs to claim. We are being showered with something from the President's podium, and it is not the sweet ether of liberty. It is the poisonous fume of servitude. When the soulless corporation is granted the rights and the citizen is constrained, there is no freedom. Only profits and subjugation remain.
Here comes the sun, and I can almost recognize it through the heavy deadly orange-gray fog.