Despicable

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., was a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher back in the day. As a human being, he belongs in the Hall of Shame. On Thursday, the House passed a bill that, in part, would extend unemployment benefits for laid-off workers. The Senate planned quick action on the bill, because the benefits are due to expire this weekend. But that plan was wrecked by one person: Bunning. The Kentucky senator, who has a reputation of being a pain in the behind, even to his Republican colleagues, unilaterally blocked action on the measure because he said the overall bill would add $10 billion to the budget deficit. This is the same guy who had no qualms about grabbing hundreds of millions – probably billions – of dollars in pork-barrel spending for his state over his long Senate career, deficit be damned. He's also the same guy who created the tax-shielded Jim Bunning Foundation, a “non-profit” organization whose main beneficiary has been none other than Jim Bunning. According to a 2008 report in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Bunning raked in $180,000 in "salary" over 12 years for a "job" at which he reportedly worked one hour a week. Nice gig if you can get it. At the same time, the foundation gave out a little more than $136,000 to real charities. And no one was going to argue with Bunning, because the three-member board that oversaw the foundation consisted of Bunning's wife, an old pal of his and a guy who used to work for him who is now a lobbyist whose clients received pork barrel cash from the senator. Sweet. The guy's a real humitarian, unless of course you're a poor, unemployed person who is scratching and clawing to pay the mortgage, keep food on the table and pay the heating bill this winter. He clearly doesn't a damn about those folks, despite the fact that his home state has an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent, one of the highest in the nation. But what does Bunning care about what those folks think? He's retiring and not facing re-election. I guess I'll just be left to hope that Bunning develops gangrene in a most uncomfortable part of his anatomy. Is that mean?

Open mouth, insert foot

It's only Tuesday, but at the risk of being proven wrong, I'm going to go ahead and anoint South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer as jackass of the week. During a recent speech at a town hall meeting in rural South Carolina – where his message was no doubt warmly received – Bauer related a story allegedly told to him by his grandmother when he was but a small boy. Grandma, said Bauer, told him to stop feeding stray animals. "You know why?" asked Bauer. "Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a human ample food supply." I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to interpret Bauer's remarks as meaning that he believes we should cut off the food supply to poor people before they have a chance to reproduce. Bauer later explained that he was trying to explain that government social programs have bred a "culture of dependency." Why he didn't just say that, instead of suggesting that hordes of lazy, worthless poor people are suckling at the public teat and then producing more and more poor people who will take those good Republican tax dollars, is beyond me. Maybe he's just an idiot. It doesn't take a whole lot of reading between the lines to hear Bauer telling a no-doubt heavily white audience that the black people are bleeding them dry. Even if Bauer is not a dope, he certainly comes off as someone who doesn't give a damn about the less fortunate in his state, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the entire country. But, of course, Bauer, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, is more interested in attracting the votes of the rich and, let's go ahead and say it, rednecks who don't like black people, than he is in courting the downtrodden. Poor folks aren't his "base." But it might be interesting to see how many of South Carolina's large number of right-wing evangelical voters stand behind Bauer if there are more stories cropping up about his personal life. Prominent gay activists have outed the anti-gay-rights Bauer as being, himself, gay. For the record, Bauer is a 40-year-old bachelor who was once a varsity cheerleader at the University of South Carolina. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Go ahead and protest, but think a little, too

As I was driving to the grocery store after work Wednesday, I noticed some young folks who I assume were W&J students protesting at the corners of Lincoln and Beau in Washington. It appeared they are not pleased with the president and were taking considerable pains to point out that unemployment is currently very, very high. The impetus for the protest, I assume, was the first anniversary of President Obama's election. Yet, it's been only about nine months since Obama took office, and blaming him for the country's high unemployment rate is shortsighted and rather thoughtless. Certainly, the jobless rate is painfully high and will, no doubt, creep higher in the coming months. At the same time, however, it should be noted that other economic signs are trending in a better direction. We've recently seen encouraging reports about housing. The national economy actually grew in the last quarter. And just today, there was positive news about retail sales, giving businesses hope that this holiday sales season won't be a huge downer. Also today, there was even a report that the number of new jobless claims was lower than expected. The overall unemployment rate is expected to hit 10.5 percent in the coming months, but analysts expect that to start improving by next summer. A little history, semi-ancient and recent, might be in order for the campus protesters. The jobless rate was close to 11 percent during the first term of Ronald Reagan, but I doubt anyone who currently is pillorying Obama wants to be reminded of that black mark on the record of the hero of modern conservatism. To Reagan's credit, the rate got better. Under Obama, it's likely to do the same. I'd also remind the demonstrators that when George W. Bush took office, the rate was 4.2 percent. At the beginning of 2008, it was still only 4.9 percent, but it was 7.6 percent when Bush left office and already well on its climb to where we sit today. I have to confess that when I saw the protesters Wednesday evening, I wondered to myself how many of them come from wealthy homes from which Mommy and Daddy dispense checks for more than $40,000 annually so that they can enjoy college life at a top-notch school. I also wondered how many of them had heard their parents griping that Obama wants to tax them into the poorhouse. Young people are very impressionable. But at the same time, this group apparently was paying no attention during the previous eight years when "W" took a strong economy and ran it right into the ground, in part thanks to his "war of choice" in Iraq. No one could fix in 10 short months the economic devastation that Obama faced on the day he took office. He deserves more time to see if his policies can help to lift us from our current mess. If he fails, those protesters at W&J will have plenty of company in voting Obama out of office in 2012. Bottom line, I'm glad that the young demonstrators were taking an interest in our government and exercising their freedom of speech, but it's a shame that they seem to be taking their marching orders from Fox News.