As hysteria subsides, a calm second look

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you're obviously not going to be at home in Washington. We were all supposed to be dead by now. Avian flu was supposed to get most of us, or maybe it was AIDS, SARS, Hong Kong flu, killer tomatoes, poisoned peanut butter, global warming or strangulation by kudzu, all once-familiar doomsday threats to the planet. Sometimes, it's hard to keep up with the reasons we're all dead. Earlier this year, it was swine flu, and a polite cough or an innocent sneeze was enough to call the undertaker to reserve a suitable coffin against the day when none would be available, so great would be the demand. The feds announced last week, in a footnote to the latest hysteria, that vaccine stockpiled for treating swine flu, once worth $250 million, would be disposed of since this year's killer flu was a big bust. The only people who get anything out of these exercises are the government bureaucrats, who never let a crisis go to waste, which is why they have become so skilled at manufacturing crises. You could follow the money, and see whose agencies grow in the wake of hysteria. British Petroleum, or whatever the BP executives are calling themselves this week, is spending billions to clean up the mess they made, but the betting here is that this is a paltry sum compared with what President Obama and his spendthrifts will eventually spend in creating new government programs to "prevent" future disasters...more