Indian clinics are essential

Thanks very much for Deborah Bulkeley's heart-wrenching article about the '07 Bush budget's outrageous elimination of funds for Salt Lake's Indian Walk-in Center health clinic, along with who knows how many others. These clinics are unique in their services and essential to the cultures dependent on them. Essential.

Does anyone in the administration remember what that means, in the face of ghastly self-indulgences in Iraq, ideologically-driven tax cuts for the rich and an ongoing concatenation of tragically frivolous Bush administration fiscal actions?

Given the place that native people's concerns have in the commons, coupled with the contempt and anger directed by Bush and assistants toward elements of our shared world, it's hardly surprising that his budget would attempt to pull some sort of grandstanding stunt toward American Indian health clinics.

Robber barons occupy the White House. For all the babble about privatization and individual rights, few actions can hurt more powerless individuals than this.

Ivan Weber

Salt Lake City