The Senate passed a "stimulus package" this week that will piss another $150 billion down a hole the size of the Pacific Ocean. The "trickle down" effect of this package means that most Americans will get anywhere from $300 to $600 apiece.
Don't get me wrong. The vast majority of Americans can desperately use this money. That's part of the problem. We're all broke. Recent consumer studies have shown that most Americans are using the "gift cards" they got (and gave, on credit) this past Christmas to purchase food and other basic necessities. However, George W. Bush, who lives inside a magical fairyland never visited by want or reality, has told Americans to take this infusion of cash and head to the shopping malls. It's your lucky day, Mr. Bush says, so treat yourself to something nice, get your fingernails painted green or make a payment on a flat screen TV so your Paris Hilton porno DVDs will look more realistic.
And yet, even as a few Benjamin Franklins head our way, the taxpayers of American are on the hook for a staggering national debt—to the tune of $30,000 per person. As of Feb. 12, the total public debt of the United States was $9,247,718,628,520.46. (That's $9.2 trillion). That total increases daily by $1.48 billion. Add to that the $270 million we are spending daily in Iraq for no reason other than to save the face of the Republican Party. The $150 billion that Congress and Bush have so benignly green-lighted is actually money the United States does not have, and money we, each of us Americans, will eventually have to pony up. Our economy, in other words, is predicated on the gambler's prayer: Lord, let me break even, I could sure use the money.
Under George W. Bush, who allegedly received a master's in business from Harvard, America has become the world's most insolvent nation. In the olden days, they used to put people in jail if you couldn't pay your debts. But now they just foreclose on your home, car, flat screen TV, Paris Hilton DVDs, etc. However, nations don't suffer the same penalties. They simply print more money and keep pissing it down the above-mentioned hole the size of the Pacific Ocean.
Why this geographical marker?
Well, this week also brought news of the existence of a "plastic soup" of man-made waste floating in the Pacific Ocean. This massive "trash vortex"—as one oceanographer called it—covers an area twice the size of the United States. It is comprised of trash that has been dumped off ships and oil platforms, as well as thrown into the ocean from land. Because glass- and paper-based litter eventually biodegrades, for the most part, the "vortex" in the Pacific is made almost entirely of plastic. This massive waste blob floats just below the ocean surface and is undetectable by satellite photographs. But when it shifts course and comes near land, a veritable tsunami of plastic is deposited on whatever shore it touches.
The U.N. estimates that every square mile of ocean on earth is home to 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. They also estimate that plastic litter kills one million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals a year. The birds, mistaking plastic items like syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes for food, swallow them and die. Some plastic ends up inside the mahi mahi and swordfish for which you were planning to splurge with your stimulus check, no doubt. If it gets inside the fish, it gets inside you.
The connection between the stimulus package, our debts and the plastic blob in the Pacific may seem tenuous at first. However, think about the mountain of consumer goods that needed to be purchased to create such prodigious debts in the first place. Then think about how we purchased them—with plastic, mostly. And what they were made of—plastic, mostly.
