I am opposed absolutely to capital punishment.

That posted, could I, in anger, or grief, kill another human being, and could I do that without the first tinge of remorse? Absolutely. That and much, much worse. But that is me, acting as an individual. To borrow from the Bard’s Shylock, “ . . . And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” My act would most assuredly be vengeance acting most grotesquely, most vengefully, and it would have nothing to do with justice. I want my state to pursue justice, most especially when I don’t give a damn for it. I said pursue, for true “justice” likely can never be adequately defined, let alone realized. Plato marched a path all about the notion, only to find that when he’d come full circle, all he’d really accomplished was to have marched in a circle, leaving the matter first raised by Cephalus, and carried on by his son Polemarchus, as unanswered as at the outset.

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Three recent C-SPAN programs left me emotionally worked to a lather; “lather,” as in a rabid dog.

I want to know: Where’s our storm the Bastille moment over the Bush/GOP follies of the past seven years? Where’s our Mr. Bush, meet Marie Antoinette . . . No, no, no. I’m chickening out when I proffer the late Ms. Antoinette, when my heart intended Dr. Guillotine.

The three programs illustrated, keeping the above metaphor intact, to the most exquisitely honed edge, how the needs of this country are so incredibly immense, almost, perhaps actually are, overwhelming, and how, instead of attempting to meet the beginning consonant of any of them, Bush and the GOP has tossed bundle after bundle of desperately needed billions upon hundreds of billions more into a roaring fire, with little more concern than if they were roasting marshmallows.   

The programs that set my pot to boiling are yet viewable at www.c-span.org — May 9: “America 2050 Panel Discussion on National Infrastructure Improvement Plans”; May 12: “Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Panel on Social Security/Medicare Reform”; May 14: “Senate Special Aging Committee Hearing on Alzheimer’s Disease.”

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One of the May 9 “Infrastructure” panelists spoke truth when he observed that Americans care little, if anything at all, about infrastructure. “Infrastructure doesn’t even show up on their list of concerns. But talk to them about roads and streets and water lines and burst sewer mains . . .”

Perhaps only those caught up in reruns that transported them to their favorite vegetative-state somnolence missed the collapse of the I-35 W Bridge in Minneapolis last August 2. That was a warning writ in billboard font that, from the Gulf to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, as a country, we’ve played the grasshopper, playing through summer, blissfully disregarding the truth of the approach of the winter of our disrepair.

But it’s not just the physical safety of our 50, 60 and 70 year old bridges or the crater-size potholes in our roads and freeways that shred tires, throw front ends out of alignment and destroy suspension systems. It’s not only the cracked 110-year old water mains in New York and elsewhere. According to the presentation and the several studies presented as evidence, the US is trillions in the hole for the infrastructure holes we’ve never scribbled on our to-do lists.

There isn’t a single world-class airport anywhere in the country. For airports, not figuratively, literally we’re Third World. Only two seaports, LA/Long Beach and New York/New Jersey are in the Top 10. For Internet broadband access, the US is well behind the connectivity of every industrialized nation.

So what?

If you know someone who doesn’t know that we’re behind every industrialized country educationally, do a confrontation: stop by and smash their TV. The cost of all of this is not only costing every one of us for repairs, for frayed nerves . . . It’s destroying our capacity to compete in a world that is full of those who are racing to put us in their rearview mirrors. Our lack of present broadband capacity is preventing rural business folk (wheat farmers to ranchers to small business owners) from competing on the global markets. Can you spell trade deficit? That broadband deficiency could even cost you or a loved life itself; linking medical records and symptoms to the most current technologies and those with the expertise to transmit just the right diagnosis and therapy.

The May 12 panel was a replay of sorts of the reports that — the first time around — should have been a 2x4 across the front of our heads. This country is so far up the financial creek that an outboard motor — forget paddles — probably couldn’t save us; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In a few short years those entitlements will equal most of the federal budget. Remember before George Bush took (“took” intended as precisely that: took) office in 2001, how both Alan Greenspan and President Clinton hoped the “surplus” might be used to “fix Social Security?”

The May 14 panel was devoted not just to Alzheimer’s, but to all the economic costs that attend to the disease. As boomers approach their final whimper, the toll caring for us, before we exit the stage, is gonna take a trillion dollar toll on everyone. The problem of course will be that we will not have a trillion dollars; likely not the first part of a trillion. What then?

The panel included Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

(I first need to make two positions clear. Way ‘round the bend I loathe Republicans generally; not only those holding office, but especially those who voted GOP in 2004 and 2006. I see the office holding GOP and those who pull the levers to put them in office as more of a threat to the liberal democracy that was the spirit behind the Declaration of Independence and the crafting of the Constitution than any outside terrorist organization. Bush and all who made a Bush administration possible have done more damage than a million bin Ladens ever could have. That said, it does not imply that I cannot, or do not, respect certain members of that party for highly specific reasons.    

Not at all for his political ethics do I respect the former Speaker [It is not for me to weigh in on his personal life, or any part of it. Moreover, I submit that no one retains a moral right, legal ones notwithstanding, to do so either.] That stipulated to, whether the topic is history or the federal bureaucracy or the medical bureaucracy or the operation of either of those monoliths, Newt Gingrich is a walking encyclopedia of facts and factoids, and ideas worth considering.

My most heartfelt recommendation: Toss his analyses and suggestions out . . . ONLY after you’ve thoughtfully listened to what he has said, and ONLY after you have objectively considered what he has offered.)

Essentially Newt was propounding on behalf of not merely emotionally embracing all current technologies but embracing as a national philosophy the proposal that the technological nation is who each and all of us are truly who we are and how we define ourselves. Contrary to the “government-is-always-the-problem” mantra hummed by the overwhelming majority of Republican office-holders and much of their constituent supporters, Gingrich asserted that government has a “vital role to play” in the transformation. Furthermore, also as a sort of reality-check rebuke to the party line, he suggested that increasing taxes for specific objectives as well as using tax incentives must not only be a part of the process, adhering blindly to a “no-new-taxes” ideology was stupid, made no common sense. “If you can solve a problem that isn’t going to go away, that is going to cost several times as much by waiting until there are no options left, by spending a dollar today, then common sense tells you to spend the dollar today.”

But it was key-note speaker, Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell who provoked my “to the barricades” rant. “Finding the money isn’t the problem. Finding the money has never been the problem . . . when the political will is gathered around a cause. The example he slammed on the table is a four-letter word, “the first letter is ‘I’ and the last letter is ‘Q.’” 

Every week, when this country could be marching to greatness, when we could be leading the way on every front — humanitarian, human capital development, scientific, technological (In 2000 the US held 70% of the wind-machine patents; today we’re down to less than 4%!) and medical breakthroughs, across the board infrastructure maintenance and development, education, on every subject in every venue — into this young century, we are pouring $2.5 billion down a flaming rat-hole!!!!!

And it’s going to get worse, not better. A parade of retired generals have testified that our military is broken, we can push neither men nor machines much farther until the collapse is total. A parade of experts have testified that we are not safer, as a product of Iraq, we are in fact considerably less safe than we were, or could be, or should be.

And John McCain claims “We’re winning.” And I scream at the top of my lungs in my empty room: “How is that Sir? Our butt is being kicked on every front that counts, we’re staring into the black abyss that we’re throwing the younger generation into, and “We are winning”? Exactly what sort of prize is it that we are winning? By what god-awful, stench-laden, buried deep in the septic tank standard are you defining “winning” sir?

I am not, nor was I recommending, or in any other fashion intimating, that any person or group storm the White House or threaten POTUS. It was and is an emotional outburst: Why? Why did we do this to ourself? How? What made it so damned easy? The brass ring was there. All we had to do was grab for it. We even did grab for it . . . once. We even held it in our hands. Then we threw it into the dirt.

George Bush, to find common ground with those who sacrificed everything, decided to sacrifice golf. And you’re gonna counsel me to not rail? While I’ve gotten mad, my country has gone stark raving mad. And I shouldn’t be angry, why?

Forget it. I am angry. I’m just so damned angry that I could _(fill in blank)_!  

— Ed Tubbs