Bush's Economic Stimulus Package... Are YOU feeling stimulated?

We at Champlain College -- students and faculty both-- were energized by the big economic story this week from Washington that President Bush is pushing another tax rebate check as his big economic bailout program... There were many perspectives on campus, but all -- even self-admitted "died-in-the-wool conservatives" recognized this as (and I quote) "B.S."

Seems to me investing that money in healthcare or energy alternatives would be smart, since they are very things that are spiraling out of control cost-wise for ALL Americans, and which, combined with our trillion-dollar adventure in Iraq, are at the center of this recession -- but of course politicians won't touch these issues in substantial ways because their oil & drug campaign contributors would cut funding their exorbitant campaign travel and TV advertising budgets. So, as the corporate media take advertising dollars from these special interests just as the politicians do, it becomes very difficult for their news "reporters" to hold politicians accountable. And the stage is set for graft on a huge scale.

Forget about another cash refund. What I'd like back is the $5,000 I individually have spent -- like all working American taxpayers -- on the invasion of Iraq, and have it put back into education, health care, and social security, not to mention alternative energy research and development. Whoops. Can't do that. Instead we've got a "war" to fight, conveniently in the very place that's most rich in our disappearing economic catalyst, access to which we give away to oil companies -- that, and the money we give to government contractors for making the stuff to wage war. This $300 or $600 or what-have-you is a drop in the proverbial (oil) bucket that we'll continue to spend $1000 or more each on while we build military bases in Iraq to secure America's (oil) interests.

I can say assuredly what this plan *will not* do, though: It will not result in (oil and other) corporations paying their fair share of the cost of government (and health care and energy). We'll keep paying those costs in duplicate (ours and theirs), and the costs of the fiscal mismanagement of our resources by this regime of (oil) rich executives.

Remember 2000? Remember budget surpluses? That was before Bill Clinton's folly (NAFTA) and Bush's (the "War on Terror").