Molly Ivins: Use your noggin

[Dudley_DUright]

One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts. I realize that is superficial, shallow and unbecoming to a semi-serious-minded liberal like myself, but there it is. The other is that he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to public policy.

And therein lies our thesis for the day: Politics as showbiz versus what actually happens to real people's lives as a result of stupid public policies. When 200,000 poor children get knocked off a federal health insurance program because a state decides it can't afford the one-fifth co-pay, what happens? In fact, children rarely die, because when they are finally horribly ill and burning up with fever, their parents take them to an emergency room, where they receive excellent care at a very high cost to the rest of us. In the meantime, their teeth aren't attended, and their hearing and eyesight are never checked. As a result, many of them try to function in school with tooth pain or without being able to see or hear clearly. Those little kids aren't celebrities, but they're just as real as Arnold Schwarzenegger. They have bangs and bright eyes and dreams.

When a state does something really dumb, like pass a three-strikes law, people wind up doing life for minor crimes -- so minor it's mind-boggling -- stealing a sandwich, pilfering a mop. What they usually need is treatment for alcoholism or addiction so they can become productive members of society. Instead, they rot behind bars at a cost to the taxpayers of $40,000 a year per head, draining the state of resources to improve the schools and teach all those bright little ones who would take California into the next generation of high tech.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's top adviser is, of all people, former California governor Pete Wilson, the man who caused the mess Gray Davis got the blame for. "Blackout Pete" is the guy who made utility deregulation the centerpiece of his administration. Wilson said deregulation would mean lower prices, a new age of better, cheaper, more reliable energy. The magic of the marketplace would inevitably lead to lower prices. You can look it up.

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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15510&CFID=9257853&CFTOKEN=49781231

[Rhiannon12866]

1. She is always good.

Thanks!:-)

[Catshrink]

2. "a condom stuffed with walnuts"???

Molly Ivins is awesome!

[Rhiannon12866]

3. I know, some of her similies put me off, as well

but she told it like it is. It is important to place the blame where it belongs, on Pete Wilson, not Gray Davis. He inherited problems from Pete Wilson's administration. This is the same Pete Wilson who is representing Arnold. He may not be the best governor in California history, but he was the choice of the people. Carol Mosley-Brown said it best when she stated, during the second Democratic candidates' forum, that if the Republicans lose, they just keep trying the election over until they win.:grr: