The tomatoes are up in their 200-cell tray. Most are crooked yet, their frail stems bent from their thrust beyond the swollen seed coat, through the sphagnum mix and into the light. If my husbanding is patient and dutiful, by July their stems will be sturdy enough to bear the red-riot fruits of summer.
Outside our rude greenhouse, the rest of ramshackle armed-camp America is being pruned of its 20th century New Deal tissue. The new class of no-class Robber Barrons are convinced that the hard-won social gains of yore must be scuttled and delivered into private “markets” where Wall Street skimmers and insurance scammers can take their cut. It’s an old fetish.
Former President RonaldReagan’s budget director, David Stockman, was clear in his 1986 “The Triumph of Politics” that “huge tax cuts and big defense increases” would require “storming the twin citadels of the welfare state — Social Security and Medicare.” Since huge tax cuts and funding the military-industrial complex’s murder and mayhem agenda are “the crack cocaine of American politics” this bipartisan project grinds on regardless of tawdry electoral theatrics. Former President Bill Clinton was having the Social Security “private account” numbers generated when the scheme got derailed by Ms.
Lewinsky’s bespotted blue dress. Former President Barack Obama’s pursuit of his “grand bargain” citadel demolition likewise fell short. (Obama’s presidency did however succeed in herding mill.