An Onion moment at the Byron Review and the Mankato Free Press: April Fools. . .no, really

Reading the district newspapers this morning, we come across this lead from publisher Larry Dobson's column in the Byron Review:

I kicked around the idea of doing a special April Fools edition of the newspapers this week, since the Byron Review actually comes out on April 1 and the Dodge Center Star Record and Hayfield Herald are distributed the next day. I played around with a few ideas like, "Escaped bear moonstruck by statue at Byron High School forces school closing," "Homesick Dutchman says Dodge Center windmills remind him of home," and "Oslo runestone leads archeologists to Norse treasure buried in Hayfield." I had collected photos and drawings for Heather, our graphic design genius, to doctor up in Photoshop as illustrations of my absurd and ludicrous ideas. Everything was progressing nicely until I started reading last week's national and international news and discovered nothing I could make up, dream up or imagine could top the absurd and ludicrous stories coming from the Bush Administration!

Dobson cites stories like Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking. . . .

. . .This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY’s performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.

Mr. Diveroli, reached by telephone, said he was unaware of the action. The Army planned to notify his company by certified mail on Thursday, according to internal correspondence provided by a military official.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.” Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate.

AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy. . . .

Dobson points out:

No one knows how many of our Afghan allies died as a result of depending on this dangerous and unreliable ammunition. American soldiers may also have died as a result of failure of this ammunition in combat situations, whether they were using it themselves or it was being used by Afghan troops with them.

We know American soldiers who have been deployed to Afghanistan. That fact makes this personal, unlike the abstract conservative ideology which fuels the "the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy."

This isn't the first time we've learned about the notion of not getting the very best to soldiers in the combat zone.  Friends deployed to Iraq have shown us pictures of Hummers outfitted with "Hillbilly" up armor improvised in attempts to protect the vehicles from IEDs.

While the marketplace may dictate nickle-and-diming in order to secure profit, securing a war zone probably should be driven by precepts from military science, not ideological constructs about the purity of the marketplace.

Fortunately, the Onion Presidency is drawing to a close. Let's hope that the headlines written by the humor magazine's editors to satirize the next administration never resemble--or surpass--the tragic classic from January 17, 2001: Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'.

We read another echo of that sadly enduring story in the Mankato Free Press's editorial pages today. The Onion contained this nugget:

The speech was met with overwhelming approval from Republican leaders. "Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. "Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. . . .

And today's MFP on funding one of those programs under Hastert's watch:

The 2005 Deficit Reduction Act has finally been interpreted to mean Medicaid funding will no longer be used in some cases of child protection. A recent ruling by the federal Department of Human Services determined that child welfare case workers salaries will no longer be paid through the Medicaid program. The figures are significant. Blue Earth County spent $450,575 on case managers in 2007.

Fortunately for children in dangerous family situations, the funding will be made up by counties and to some extent the state of Minnesota. That’s because even though the federal government no longer provides the money for the services, it mandates that they be provided.

The federal, state and county governments work together on funding a number of social services, but the latest shift in cost seems to be particularly onerous. Sens. Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar are urging the federal government to retract the rule that put counties in the bind of paying for these crucial services. Congressman Tim Walz has authored a bill that would delay the rule a year, hoping a more sympathetic president will do away with the rule altogether.

But for now, the situation is one that may begin to play itself out over and over again. As Congress and the president continue to enable a federal spending system that, according to the Comptroller of the Currency, is not sustainable, these kinds of cost shifting will become more prevalent.

At some point, elected federal leaders will have to decide which spending is essential, and which is there simply to appease an interest group. They will have to decide if financial incentives to create jobs which may or may not come about are more important than helping protect children in abusive situations. They will have to decide whether such federal mandates should be funded by a local source, or whether they should eliminate the mandate.

There will be in the near future thousands of such little decisions that must be made, especially if we want tax rates to remain stable. That in itself will be a difficult task, given the growth in spending for the programs like Medicare that we have already said we will fund.

Cutting taxes also doesn’t seem to have “grown” us out of the spending dilemma we face.

Now why would that be? The MFP editors seem unwilling to consider that perhaps some of the tax cuts themselves were enacted to appease special interests.  Looking only at spending, without reviewing revenue options, sets up a false dilemma.  Not that all tax cuts should be rescinded,f ees increased, no any unnecessary spending maintained, but a wider mix can be kept on the table in budget discussions.

Those who champion an ideological silver bullet over ammunition that can actually be fired might need to think again.

Note to readers: The opinion developed above, like any on this site, is solely that of  Bluestem Prairie and should not be construed to represent policies advocated by Congressman Walz (we know you want to, Brian Davis). Walz is more fiscally conservative than we are.

Update: We add an item from CQPolitics to the mix: Transportation   Issues on Campaign Back Burner. Apparently, talk about rebuilding the infrastructure doesn't play well on the presidential campaign trail, since we have to figure out a way to pay for it. And who wants to hear about that?:

The 12-member National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission released a report on Jan. 15 that said the federal government needed to spend $225 billion a year in infrastructure for a half-century to build the kind of transportation system the nation needs to stay competitive, but it’s often considered political suicide to champion spending money.

The article ends:

Transportation experts feel fairly certain they can count on Obama and Clinton even if they don’t discuss transportation on the stump. They are worried about McCain, one of a handful of senators who voted against final passage of a highway bill in 2005. He maintains a hard line against Amtrak and resists federal spending, they said.

      

McCain’s campaign did not return calls for comment.

      

“Both Obama and Clinton have at least talked about the need to reinvest in America. I don’t think they go nearly far enough, but they have clearly showed some commitment to the issue,” Wytkind said. “If McCain is elected it will be George W. Bush  all over again, maybe even worse. I defy you to find anyone with a worse record.”

The article mentions that Dwight Eisenhower campaigned on building the Interstate system. Now the politic landscape seems littered with people who consider I35 to either be God's holy way or the demon road of NAFTA. Some mornings we're convinced that America's Finest News Source has simply taken over politcal discourse in this country.