IT IS NOT PERMANENT

Post Script: Since this was first written, Sen. Chas. Schumer (NY) has chastised Gov. Jindal, et.al., by saying that the stimulus money was not a buffet, wherein states could pick and choose what monies they would or would not take: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/schumer-multiple-choice/. In other words, get a life, get with the program or get lost. Sen. Barney Frank has hinted that there may well be a legal precedent for this condition, although I do not know about that: taking off-the-cuff television remarks at face value is risky.

Then the President gave a speech on the economy: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29375944/) and never directly mentioned the controversy with the governors at all…which I thought was both polite and politic. Not everyone was completely happy with some sought-after details (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090225_getting_warmer/), and FactCheck.org bemoaned some shortcomings (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29377101/), but Howard Fineman, commenting immediately after on MSNBC-TV, said the speech “exuded confidence”. And the next morning there was this: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/25/obama_speech/?source=newsletter

In the Republican rebuttal (not many “re”’s and lots of “buts”)and offered by none other than Gov. Jindal himself, there was no clear follow-up to any of the substance of the President’s remarks, but rather offered a long and rambling apology for past governmental failures and yet more supports for tax cuts. It had all of the (pardon me) “earmarks” of a lead balloon, and did not even please some traditional conservatives: (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/jindal-fox-ncot/). The basic message seemed to be that “the right is right and everyone else isn’t.”, and I was reminded of a scene from an Eddie Murphy movie, when his character responds to criticism by holding his hands over his ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you! Nah-nah, nah-nah!” As for Jindal’s reminiscence about walking down a grocery store aisle with his father, and his father making the statement, “Americans can do anything”, I thought Jindal might try walking down an aisle of a Wal-Mart and look at all of the products from China.

Most baffling, however, was a response I received to this article, after I posted it on another site (http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/), from a man from the red state of Tennessee. He told me that he had had a long, heart-to-heart talk with his congressional representative, who “educated” him in the complicated ways of government (That sounds patronizing: “Hi! I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you!”). She explained (?) to him that to accept the unemployment funds would require the state to set up laws and regulations that would later require his state to pay out funds it would no longer have. Or something. (Curiously, TN is among some red states that are broke or nearly so, and they do not have the money even now. This makes the point moot, because you cannot spend money you did not not have in the first place. Or something.). He therefore told me I should “investigate more” (I did) before I “judged” (I didn’t). I got the distinct impression that a) he got led down a primrose path by his representative, and b) he didn’t carefully read anything I said about the permanence, any more than Bobby Jindal paid careful attention to the President’s remarks.

Lately, many politicians (Jindal, Frank, Obama, Biden) have said repeatedly that we “need to be clear” and that America’s affairs should be transparent. Apparently they are nowhere near “clear”, because it increasingly appears that the only persistent condition that is permanent in America (i.e., from the understanding of my friend in TN) is that some continue to insist upon selective perception and hearing only what might soothe them. Or something.