I created this bumper sticker right after the 2004 Elections. At the time, I thought it was pretty grand [though it doesn’t seem to have changed many of the voting patterns around where I live]. Looking back, it seems kind of naive. But it helps me find my truck in the parking lots where there are lots of other black Dodge RAM’s. Now, I’m thinking that I didn’t quite have it right. Back then, I thought Bush and Cheney were mostly incompetent and maybe just a little bit crooked. Now, I think otherwise. I’d probably say Vote Honesty, NOT ideology!. Maybe I’d even say, Vote Honesty, NOT corruption!. Or just Vote Honesty!.
I got twisted in my last post about their editing the CDC director’s testimony to the Senate. I sent letters to the CDC, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the New York Times. I commented on all the blogs that mentioned Dr. Julie Gerberding‘s testimony. Here’s what I said:
… Dr. Gerberding may not have been responsible for the redaction, but she gave the report from her own mouth, the same mouth that swore at her medical school graduation to "do no harm" – the Hippocratic Oath. So it’s not just what she didn’t say that matters. It’s that she didn’t say it knowing that her medical integrity was being severely compromised by reading her "watered down" opening statement. That’s a really big tree. Our government’s lawyers, our foreign policy bureaurocrats, and now our government’s physicians are willing to allow this cancer on the land to erode their own time-honored, ethical standards. Dr. Gerberding’s reorganization of the CDC has been widely criticized and many of the top scientists have left the agency, just as career lawyers have fled the Justice Department. But she, at least, went to Congress with a principled report. She just didn’t give it.
Some fine people have addressed the forest – Joseph Wilson, Paul O’Niell, Richard Clarke, James Comey, Jack Goldsmith. But too many who know that they’ve been indelibly compromised have either fled government, or worse, quietly gone along with things that should have taken them to the papers screaming bloody murder. To paraphrase one of our best and brightest,The woods [may be] lovely, dark and deep,
But [we] have promises to keep,
And miles to go before [we] sleep,
And miles to go before [we] sleep.
Ranting may soothe the soul, but it doesn’t change the painful truth. They don’t care. They don’t, in this case, care about the public health consequences of Global Warming or preparing for them. They care about protecting the Oil Industry and the Automotive Industry from have to deal with their part in Global Warming. In the case of the Iraq War, they don’t care about our pointless sacrifice of our children for no good purpose. They care about the Military-Industrial Complex and their foothold atop the Middle Eastern oil fields. With the Justice Department, they don’t care about administering justice, they care about intimidating minority voters who might vote Democratic. They didn’t care about Valerie Plame Wilson, her life, or her job at the CIA, they just wanted to "dis" her husband.The word careless literally means "without caring" but is used to denote sloppiness. The word reckless literally means one who has never wrecked, but is used to mean something very similar to careless. The careless and reckless government we now have isn’t really based on an ideology, instead it’s just a number of selfish alliances with exploitive businesses fanned with a conservative rhetoric that means very little. Which brings me around to my point. This group of yokels came largely from the American Enterprise Institute, a supposed conservative think-tank. The American Enterprise Institute was started in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown of the Johns-Manville Corporation. Brown was involved in covering up the toxicity of asbestos, his company’s biggest product, for decades, while countless died from various forms of Asbestosis. 
While AEI claims to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate, it actually remains a major vehicle for Big Business to roll on unchecked. The painful truth? Our government has fallen into the hands of the Tycoons, and doesn’t really care about anything else. It’s a Monopoly game, and they’ve got hotels on all their properties.
While AEI claims to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate, it actually remains a major vehicle for Big Business to roll on unchecked. The painful truth? Our government has fallen into the hands of the Tycoons, and doesn’t really care about anything else. It’s a Monopoly game, and they’ve got hotels on all their properties.
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