Vicious Circles
by matt at 7:00 am on November 30th, 2004 in Bush Man Date
Yes, I know about the schools, the election, and how women get beaten a little bit less often than when another brutal regime was in power, but then again, they didn’t allow record poppy production.
After paying a terrible price to learn that what happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan, the lesson is too quickly forgotten. The poppies being harvested now will find their way to syringes in this country causing problems too great for any of the President’s “faith-based” programs to fix. So while wealthy users like Rush “Big Pharma” Limbaugh and others can abuse their drugs of choice, go to rehab, pay a fine and go on their way, street junkies will find no shortage of heroin, but few options (beside jail) for cleaning up.
You have to admire/revile a group of people who don’t do enough to stop production of heroin destined for this country who are still viewed as being tough on crime, while they cut money for drug treatment in favor of throwing addicts in jail yet call themselves “compassionate.”
But this isn’t the only such situation.
The Bush administration is going after more money for abstinence-only programs that preclude any mention of birth-control or safer sex.
“We don’t need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease,” said Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of federal abstinence funding.
Again, through passive-aggressive social policy, the Republicans create a problem that disproportionately affects a group of people who hold no power and don’t vote. Voters are fooled into thinking that abstinence promotion is a viable plan (despite the statistics that show it doesn’t even work half of the time), and those in power can still rail against the abortions that result to score political points and raise money from the failure of their misguided policies.
In the coming days, we’ll take a look at issues that Democrats can use in a similar manner. And not long after that, we’ll see if the Democratic leadership can have any success in getting it done.