"Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country."
- John Kerry, 3rd Presidential Debate
Oh, Mr. Kerry, how right you were.
Like thugs congregating in a dark alley, the Bush administration bribed Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote its policy. And that is what it is--a bribe. Don't be afraid to say that word. That's what it is. A BRIBE. Quid pro quo. A kickback. Listen to any episode of The Sopranos and I'm sure you'll come up with more words to describe what Bush has done.
And as Williams tells us, "there are others." What a sad revelation it is that President Bush has been dolling out our dollars in a hush-hush fashion to make people promote his programs. He has a paid gang of loyal thugs, ready and willing to talk the talk for him while he mulls over who to pay off next. How pathetic that he has to buy support for his agenda because the programs are so bad.
At least Tony Soprano used his own money. Bush used our money. $240,000 of taxpayers money used to make the Boss look good.
What if the President wasn't a thug who felt the need to pay off operatives to keep his street cred? What could $240,000 buy if it wasn't lining William's pockts?
$240,000 of our money could have bought this. Take your pick from the list: @
1. Training for 6,000 teachers in Afghanistan
2. Medicine for 53,333 people for 6 months in Nairobi Kenya
3. 4,800 former child soldiers to receive schooling & psychosocial support
4. Running 21 hospitals for street children in India for a year.
5. Feeding 800 street children in Calcutta 3 meals daily for 1 year
6. Buying 923 bicycle ambulances for Nepal's poverty-stricken areas
7. Giving a quarter of a million Africans AIDS medicine for one day
Want to go local? Maybe the Bush administration could have used that $240,000 to do one of these things:
1. Save a school's music program.
2. Give 1,600 women without health insurance a life-saving mammogram.
3. Send 28 American students to public university for a year.
4. Give 6,153 soldiers deployed in the War On Terror a chance to call home and say "I love you."
5. Distribute nearly 960,000 bags of food (nearly 5,000 tons) to America's hungry.
6. Distribute 12,039 copies of The School Safety & Security Book to our schools.
7. Fund The Small Farm Viability Project for at least another 4 years.
8. Fund almost all of the March of Dime's Prize for Genetic Research or fund about 16 grants for increasing access to and quality of health care for women and infants.
Any of one of the aforementioned things would be more morally acceptable use of taxpayer money. Instead, that bribe money is lining William's pockets. Paying off the media is fascism at its finest. For all the good that money could have gone to, it was used to bankroll a journalistic prostitute. Bravo, President Soprano. Bravo.
@ These calculations and items are derived in part from Sarah McLachlan's fascinating video, World on Fire.