Okay, War is around the corner. I think old Saddam should beware the Ides of March. Or maybe this will go down in history as the St. Patrick's Day War. Or maybe George the Second is trying to make sure that in the future, there will be a March holiday. Supposedly, he is not one that really was grand about school while he was in it, so perhaps he remembers how long March seems to elementary school kids, with no holidays to break it up (unless your Catholic and happen to be going to a parochial school, and get lucky and Easter comes early), so he is thinking of March having a "VI (Victory over Iraq) Holiday".
Anyway, every one thinks this has to do with Saddam playing hide and go seek with his Weapons of Mass Destruction, and George the Second trying to get back at Saddam for trying to off George the First when he visited Kuwait after the war. (I dunno, if some one tried to assassinate your dad, would you be a bit ticked off at him?) But I figured it out, this war has nothing to do with either, it has to do with housing.
You see, George ran as a compassionate conservative. Which, I am told, has nothing to do with sex or preserving natural resources, but something to do with poor and middle class people getting the impression that rich people are all as mean and nasty as Leona Helmsley and interested in nothing but holding on to as much money as they can and getting more. It seems rich people are getting a bit of a complex, and want the people who are struggling just to get by to know that the rich actually do care what happens to them, as if the struggling ones don't buy the stuff the companies that the rich people own sell then the rich can't quite be as rich as they are. And there is this little thing that is called "class warfare" and "revolution" that has this nasty habit of coming up every time there is a large mass of people frustrated with not being able to find a decent job or make a living. So some one took a public relations poll and found out that "compassion" is a very warm and friendly word, which makes people think of their Mom's holding them in her lap when they were sick and singing softly to them. As opposed to "conservative" which is a rather harsh word that makes people think of some one saying "you can't have any more because we have to conserve it". Which led them to sort of think maybe if they put the two words together people would think of their Mom's holding them in her lap and singing "you can't have any more because we have to conserve it".
Anyway, these Compassionate Conservatives have stopped issuing Section 8 vouchers nationwide. Now, Section 8, is a Federally financed program for low income people to help these people find housing out in the community. It has been the Holy Mecca for people seeking housing assistance, because instead of getting stuck in some public housing project, they can use the voucher to go find an apartment out in the community, near where they want to live, school their children, and work. In other words, it allows people, who other wise would not have the opportunity, to live as a some what normal person would. Section 8 vouchers allow people to make choices, something that is rather dear Americans, as making choices implies freedom. Section 8, by all reports, has been a tremendously successful program. People on Section 8 reportedly make more money, hold jobs longer, and move off welfare quicker, than people in traditional public housing. There are many theories for this, but in my opinion, it probably has to do with the fact you don't have people "ghetto-ized". They are not around people who are all at the bottom, instead, they are surrounded by neighbors who work, raise kids, and have lives. Therefore, there is a social pressure, to try to do as well as your neighbors. Sometimes, trying to keep up with the Joneses is a good thing.
The other thing about Section 8, is that it puts money back into the community. People in public housing pay their rent to a housing authority, which does not pay taxes, has no motivation or interest in making sure its complexes are clean, safe or attractive to its tenants, because it's tenants have no other place to go. They are stuck there, till they find a good enough job to get them out. The maintenance doesn't have to be that quick, because who can the tenant complain to? The housing authorities have no incentive to try to keep their utility bills down, because housing authorities are reimbursed for utility bills by the Federal Government. So for most public housing residents, they pay no utility costs. This means they can run their home as hot as they want, use as much electricity as they want, run the water all the time. There is no metering, no cost to them. Section 8 tenants live in private housing, which means they property is owned and operated by a person or company that DOES pay taxes, taxes which go back into communities and help support their schools, roads and institutions. The property owner has an interest in trying to get people to live there, as that is how they make money, so they want their property to be clean, safe, and eye-catching. The resident is responsible for the utility costs, which means he or she has an interest in being wise with its usage, and conserve. Once again, there is a responsibility on the Section 8 recipient to live much as some one with out that assistance has to.
So, it would seem that a compassionate conservative logically would be saying, gee, we have all of this property tied up in housing authorities, not paying taxes, not being productive, some of it quite lucrative if we were to auction it off (one of the largest public housing complexes in New York City is right next door to Central Park, where two bedroom condos in the same area can fetch over two million dollars). And not only that, but people don't even WANT to live in these public housing complexes (one out of three families living in New York City shelters refuse public housing, incidental reporting indicates mostly due to fears over safety, crime and drugs). And one of the biggest handicaps people have about finding work is finding work where they live, so why not shut down public housing except for that reserved for the handicapped and disabled, and give people vouchers so they can live where there is work, good schools, and opportunity?
Now, you are going, "Wow, that makes sense, and it even means more people will be paying taxes into the community where they live.. how come they aren't doing that? What is wrong with these "compassionate conservatives" ? Did George the Second forget something?"
Well, that is where this upcoming war comes into play my friends. And here is your answer.
You see, George is very aware of the housing crisis. I think his heart honestly aches as he looks out into the Washington DC landscape, and sees these ugly public housing complexes that would make even an East German communist architect throw up due to the assault on his aesthetic sensabilities. They are just that damn ugly. Most of them look like scars on the sky when you see them. And you can see some really nasty scars as you drive along the highways that pass around Washington, DC. And I think George knows there are people out there, accepting shoddy housing which they have to pay half of their minimum wage income for each month, as they wait on the Housing Authority list, which in some cases is over three years long, in towns they don't have any interest in being in, and is an hour or so from where they work, but they can't get housing in the place where they work because the housing list is closed. So when George received his reports from the CIA about Saddam and his 10 or 12 or more Presidential Palaces, a light went on in his head.
You see, George is a pretty simple guy really. He looks at his five thousand acre ranch in Texas, and thinks everyone should have one. But only one. And when he found out every town with more than two mud holes in Iraq had a Presidential Palace, he was rather upset. To him that is just a bit to much conspicuous consumption. I mean, gosh, even Bill Gates only has four homes, and one of those is in Switzerland of all places.
So George sat down with Dick Cheney, Connie Rice, and hatched a plan. And this is what I think the plan is.
George is going to go kick Saddam out. Then he is going to send in the US Army's 1125th Special Housing Brigade to audit what housing is up to snuff in Iraq, and offer low income Americans vouchers for Presidential Palaces. Now, as these palaces are rather nice, some of them with marble floors, saunas and hot baths, and gold plated bathrooms fixtures, I would imagine there will be a lottery for who gets what Palace, and then they will move to the Vice Presidential Palace, the Prime Minister's Residence, and then on to the homes of those Generals and Colonel’s Saddam had shot for not stopping the US Marine Corps from taking over Basra. Then they'll probably evict some of Saddam's family from the homes they haven't been paying rent or taxes on for the past thirty years, and lottery them off.
Now with this sudden influx of who will be come to be known as American Iraqis, George will have a rather nice voter base there who will rather pleased as punch the American President got them a voucher for a Presidential Palace with a gold plated faucet. And so, he'll send over the Republican National Committee's Foreign Outreach and Soft Money Donation Collection Squad, and remind these new residents that they can petition Congress to become a state. And the next thing you know, the flag will have 51 stars on it, and we'll have a friendly little place where we can put the 1st Armored Division right next door to Saudi Arabia, so the next time OPEC even thinks the words "oil embargo" we can remind them just who their best customer is.
So, the next time you see Colin Powell at the United Nations, looking totally exasperated because no one else in the world seems to get that a tin pot megalomaniacal sadistic dictator just shouldn't be allowed to have nerve gas or anthrax, you can feel sorry for him, cause George has him out of the loop. It isn't Weapons of Mass Destruction, its Housing.
(<$BlogItemCommentCount$>) comments