Bush's News Conference

I've just finished watching the news conference given by our non-elected White House P resident George W. Bush, and am reminded why despite my enormous credit card debt I find the money to donate to organizations that oppose his policies. A few random reactions off the top of my head:

• I don't believe his rationale that Iraq poses such an imminent threat as to necessitate war. Yes, Saddam Hussein is an aggressive threat who likely is concealing a lot of terrible weaponry. But North Korea is now openly flaunting the international community to develop nuclear weapons, will be able to use nuclear blackmail over political and economic allies like Japan and South Korea, is believed to have missile capacity to launch a nuke to the U.S. west coast, is known to support weapons programs of rogue states and to export its weaponry, and is ruled by a dictator every bit as cruel to his own people as Saddam Hussein. Sounds like a pretty big threat to me, yet for North Korea Bush only speaks of diplomacy and consulting with other countries in the region. Once again, Bush has again failed to make a case that the Iraqi threat is so dire as to require war, and left once again the suspicion that his obsession with Saddam has more to do with oil and with avenging his daddy's honor.



• He again failed to make the case for me that war is the only way to keep Saddam from using his concealed weapons. An alternative policy of keeping Saddam boxed in with heightened inspections and international pressure, while at the same time offering political incentives to Iraqi elements that might like to be rid of Saddam themselves, seems equally plausible and less risky to me. True, Saddam might find a way despite the intensified scrutiny to use his weapons against Israel or other neighbors, or to hand them off to terrorists for use against the West. But it seems equally plausible that our imminent invasion could spur him to do the same--use them or lose them.



• Bush was again unconvincing in pointing to the intelligence data we supposedly possess about the great extent of Iraq's weaponry. As a couple journalists asked, if this evidence is so clearcut, why are our allies not as convinced of his threat as we are? And if our intelligence is so detailed--how things are moved, how often, that chemical agents are stored in cars parked in suburban areas, etc.--and we share this information with inspectors, how come they can never seem to find anything?



• Bush's rosy picture of how the disparate elements of Iraqi society will miraculously form a peaceful and democratic federation after the iron rule of Saddam is removed, and which in turn will inspire democracy throughout the region, is truly embaressing. The man simply comes across as uninformed and unintelligent. You don't have to look any further than the continuing chaos in Afghanistan after we 'liberated' it to see the grave difficulties we would face in Iraq. And the Iraqis need look no further than our scant interest in Afghanistan now to see how little assistance we will really offer after we've had our way with Saddam.



• I almost choked when he proclaimed how he had taken an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. His 'Patriot Act' and other undertakings of his Justice Department have taken a sledgehammer to much of the Constitution.

To the millions around the globe who protest his war plans, Bush simply said he was glad they had the freedom to express themselves. He certainly gave no indication that he listened to them or thought about what they said. He did, however, have a teary-eyed moment in which he said what he does hear: the thousands of prayers said for him every day. Well, I'm praying for you, Mr. Bush, and please hear my prayer: I pray that you call off your foolish war; I pray that you stop ruining our reputation in the community of nations, stop ruining our environment, stop ruining our economy; I pray, in fact that you resign. Please. You were not elected, and you are not up to the job.

Another Chip Off The Block

The debt is now down to $22,826.32. Whoopee!

Flower Show

Spent some money this past Sunday. Went to the Philadelphia Flower Show (2 advance purchase tickets @$18.00 each= $36.00), where we enjoyed dozens of beautiful displays to help chase away the blues of this cold, snowy, endless winter. We also spent close to $100.00 on various plants and seeds. None of this was put on charge cards, so our debt did not go up.

Our urban house has a small back yard, and every year we spend a couple hundred dollars creating a garden to enjoy from spring until autumn. Yes, we could make a very colorful garden with just some flats of inexpensive pansies, petunias and impatiens for a couple dozen dollars, but we enjoy the creative pleasure of designing a garden with many different visual elements. Our garden is a small extravagance which gives us much enjoyment all summer long.

Still, it is an extravagance, and with a debt of $22,914.72, there is no such thing as having truly 'disposable income.' The rational thing to do with whatever money is left over after meeting our monthly expenses is to use it to further pay down the debt. Well, to hell with rational. I never claimed to be rational. Besides, if everyone started making rational spending decisions, our national economy would crash so hard it would make the Great Depression of the 1930s seem like losing a dropped quarter down a sidewalk grate. Consumer spending makes up three-quarters of our economy, and a good part of those consumer dollars are spent on irrational choices.

The money we spend on our garden falls into the category I call 'experiential' rather than purely material. Our plants will provide us pleasure this year through the constantly changing tableau they give us, but then they will fade away, leaving us only with memories. Experiential purchases can be sensory, like flowers or meals in restaurants. They can be educational, like books or taking classes. They can be risks taken to better your life, such as borrowing money to start a business. Much of our credit card debt is made up of such items (read more about what makes up our debt here).

I can be pretty judgmental when it comes to what people spend their money on. Our debt has been built on our desire to live our life the way we want, to travel, to learn, to participate in making the world better, and I am comfortable with the risk of having taken on this debt in pursuit of those goals. But I know people who have built similarly huge credit card debt simply through the purchase of objects, and to me this seems foolish, selfish and meaningless, filling your life with things in place of truly living it.

But how can we draw a line between righteous purchases and foolish ones? Our garden is mostly a private pleasure, enjoyed only by ourselves and a handful of friends and neighbors. Yes, it feeds our souls, both in its inherent beauty and in giving us a creative outlet, and through feeding our souls it helps us be better people. But is that enough? Why not donate that money to charity, or at least use it to pay down the debt so as to free us to do more with our lives?

I criticized people who would spent $76,800. on a Patek Philippe watch when you can get one for five bucks, or even $800 if you wanted to go crazy (read it here). But I defend our spending $200 on our garden when $25 worth of inexpensive flowers could suffice. Someone having trouble putting food on the table might jeer at our priorities.

There are no simple answers to these questions. The best we can do is to be fully aware of how we spend our money, to examine our personal reasons for buying something, the alternative uses for the money we are spending, and the consequences our purchases have on the environment, the economy and society. Consumption is not inherently bad. Self-interest is not inherently bad. We do not necessarily need to feel guilty for having more money to spend than other people. Nevertheless, thoughtless consumption, greed and self-absorbed disregard for others is bad, and I fear it is increasingly rampant.

There has been a lot in the news over the past year about greed and corruption in corporate boardrooms. Scandals like Enron, Worldcom and Tyco, where corporate CEOs seem more concerned with enriching themselves at the expense of their employees, their stockholders and society in general, have led to calls for codes of ethics to be more strictly applied and strictly enforced in the way companies are managed.

I'm all for that. But I also believe that we as consumers must develop a code of ethics as well. One of the goals of DebtorsPrison is to develop tools and guidelines we can use to examine what we buy and why we buy it. The marketing wizards who push more and more products down our throats don't want us thinking too hard about our purchases. We need to take back our brains, our hearts and our souls.