Political Rants

MoveOn.org is trying something new to fight the latest budget nonsense, in particular the cuts to services specifically directed at the growing poor in our country: They're putting a face on it (link takes you to their Flickr page).

Interesting idea. Reminds me of Sorry Everybody following the elections last year.

Outrage perhaps? Dismay? And yet all I feel when I read this...:

American Faces Charge of Graft for Work in Iraq

In what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts, according to a complaint unsealed late yesterday.

...This is the first case, but it won't be the last," said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office. Mr. Mitchell said as many as a dozen related cases had been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

...is a great sense of...resignation, I guess? I'm not even remotely surprised. Which makes me sad. Yes, I guess that's my predominant feeling: Sadness. Of course graft is nothing new, but the blatant, unapologetic scope of it is disheartening. Because you can be sure that everyone knew about it, and it was considered SOP by our government. Sad. We can do so much better. We can be so much better.