Jane Smiley: Conservatives Cost A Lot Of Money

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/stories/49578

Conservatives Cost a Lot of Money

By Jane Smiley, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted March 22, 2007.

Let's put it this way: Carpet bombing is much more costly in every way than good intelligence and loyal allies. It's a pocketbook issue.

The general effect of conservative governance, I mean other than criminal malfeasance, neglect of the
citizenry, mashing of constitutional protections, trashing of the environment, bashing of real patriotism, and crashing of the ship of state into the nearest hundred-foot-high cliff (bad metaphor, but here's a contest: think of a better one!) is that it's so damned expensive.

What costs more -- routine prenatal care of a poor woman during pregnancy that she would be able to get if we had universal healthcare, or the intensive care that results when she shows up at the emergency room with preeclampsia in her ninth month?

What costs more -- finding Bin Laden with a few specialty forces and some back-channel bribes and contacts, or a war in Iraq?

What costs more -- enforcing pollution controls when they are first put into law or allowing private industry to evade them year after year as they spew pollutants into the air and fight pollution laws through the courts while the plants deteriorate, the cost of controls goes up, and the earth, air, and water are more and more contaminated?

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[Ian David]

1. We could have BOUGHT Iraq with the money we spent to attack it,

How much money do you think it would have taken to pay Saddam, his family and his Baathists to leave the country?

[whistle]

2. True, but then political corruption and military contractors would never have gotten

...their share of the money. War is a Racket!

[rfranklin]

3. Any war provides a great opportunity to profit...

and that is why "conservatives" (corporate shills suckering the right wingers)love the never-ending "war on terror." It offers a constant stream of profits as armaments are expended.

[cassiepriam]

4. But make the Bushafia very rich.

[Hissyspit]

5. .