So, the latest rumble on the American economy is that Bush wants “every American who gets a paycheck” to get about $300.  Wooooohooo, hold me back!

Really, that is the saving grace?  The “Hail Mary” of American economic life is $300?  Not to be dismissive, ’cause, my goodness, that once filled the cupboards here with a month’s groceries.  Not now, tho’ we have fewer mouths; cause prices are UP, UP, UP.  But still, that is the best they can imagine?  Give everyone a handful of $20 bills and hope they go shopping?  Hmm…and then put more money BACK into the hands of the corporate rogues that George has Sunday tea with?  The corporate guys who have trashed the economy by exporting jobs to make more money for themselves?  The corporate weenies who have crushed unions, and answer to stockholders instead of seeing that their employees have good jobs or health care?  Those guys?  That is where we are supposed to see that measly three hundred bucks go?

I’ve got a lot of nothing for that.  They don’t want you to save it, or pay a bill, ladies and gents.  They want you to go SHOPPING.  Because their little “we fucked you all over so much that we don’t have any fresh ‘fuckees’ left” world is trembling.

Not doing it.  I have plenty of bills to pay, but here are some other ideas that entered my mind as I tossed and turned last night.

How ’bout some real economic stimuli—like giving the money to the Presidential candidate of your non-GOP choice?  Could you imagine the shit storm if even 30% of Americans gave the money to Edwards or Clinton?  A thing of beauty to contemplate—the horror of it on Bush and his buddies; like a bad dream at mid-day.

Or we could try mending lives broken on the wheel of American life.  What about charity?  Like Habitat for Humanity or Fisher House.  Everyone knows the first builds houses in America and elsewhere  for those folks the government cares less about.  And Fisher House spends 97 cents of every dollar helping vets of the war and their families through the trauma and difficulty of long hospitalizations, and they have scholarships for the children, too.

Or, since America is becoming so hated abroad, perhaps that $300 could buy back a bit of love?  There is the Fistula Foundation that pays for life-changing surgery for African women suffering the result of sexual trauma or too many births and the resultant damage.  These women are abandoned by husbands, and barely leave their homes because of shame, pain, and fear.  Or you could almost buy a water buffalo through Heifer International and give an entire village the power to plow, irrigate, and take charge of THEIR economic lives.   Doctors Without Borders could do a lot of things with a mere $300, too.

So, yes, if the cupboard is bare when the check gets there, fill it.  But please, please, please?   Don’t go buy yourself a toy while Rome burns, ok?  Don’t be the frivolous ‘bought off with shopping circus’ plebeians your  “masters” in Washington D. C. think you are, alright?  Save the money or spend it in a way that betters yourself AND your world.  If it sends a message back to the asshats in D.C. about what you think of their management technique, so much the better.