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Opinion

All quiet on American political front

Joshua Delano
Opinion Columnist 

With all the extremism in today's politics, you would think more people would be pushing to get to the middle. With immigration and elections coming up, there are plenty of election year ploys to distract the general public from the extremism of both the right and left. 

President Bush is putting on a good face, doing more press conferences, and he even called on White House press corps reporter Helen Thomas for the first time in three years. The conflict in Iraq needlessly goes on while American lives are lost, so the U.S. market can bring in more dough to stockholders in Chevron, Shell and Halliburton. 

Forecasts aren't looking bad for the defense contractors either, although they seem to stay out of the news. Likewise, the pharmaceutical industry thrives off testing its drugs in Third World countries, especially in Africa, to work out the kinks. They don't have the litigious itch or capability that Americans do seeing as how we love to sue over the deaths of loved ones. 

Tom Delay is still kicking and doesn't seem to be letting the legal process slow him down, although lobbyist Jack Abramoff just got fewer than five years in prison for his misdeeds.

Is there any hope in the upcoming elections or any semblance of change? Not likely. Reform is a buzzword that is pushed around simultaneously with vote-seeking candidates promising progress and prosperity at the same time. 

Seemingly, there doesn't look to be any definitive "strategery," as President Bush would call it, by either one of the parties as far as a policy platform goes. The more sound bytes and face time on TV the better. And raise more money, money, money so you can get elected and bring back the bacon to your home district. 

So will we see any independents rise and bring about more centrist policies, or will there be more of the same? I doubt we will see any real reform come about in addressing Medicare and Social Security. 

However, K Street and Wall Street will benefit the most since they have the ability to give the most and garner all the attention especially from incumbent members of Congress. 

Revolution will be out of the question because, although Americans are more informed about their politics and policy than at any other time in history, we are still too politically inactive as a whole to even do anything to change the current system.

Delano, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at louisianacoastalpreservationpac@yahoo.com.