If you read all of the talking points being presented by GOP representatives at this year’s CPAC conference you will hear how the GOP needs to be more inclusive and reach out to those groups who consistently vote for Democrats in no small numbers, like racial minorities and women.
“The Republican Party does not need to change our principles, but we might need to change just about everything else we are doing,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. It was time, he said, “to recalibrate the compass of conservatism.”
Sally Bradshaw, a party strategist in Florida who is an adviser to former Gov. Jeb Bush, said Republicans needed to recruit stronger and more diverse candidates to win races. “I think you’re going to see a very renewed, aggressive effort by this party to put on a different face,” Ms. Bradshaw said.
Henry Barbour, a member of the Republican National Committee from Mississippi who is also on the panel, said the party should not dilute its conservative values, but it needed to broaden its appeal to compete with Democrats. “We did get whipped in the presidential election, and that’s not something that is taken lightly,” Mr. Barbour said. “The demographic changes in America are real, and they are a wake-up call to the Republican Party.” SOURCE
A blind man could have spelled this out to the GOP and in fact this message has been trumpeted every year for at least the last 12 years. But more than being inclusive to the diverse makeup of this nation’s population, there is one area where they need to start being exclusive if Republicans really want to “broaden its appeal to compete with Democrats” and “recruit stronger and more diverse candidates to win races.” Ostracize those who express insensitive and backward-thinking comments like this one audience member attending a CPAC panel discussing minority outreach.
“I’d be fine with that,” Scott Terry of North Carolina said when asked if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites.
During an exchange of views at the panel meeting, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal. After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, [Terry] said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?” Several people in the audience cheered and applauded Terry’s outburst.
After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association. SOURCE
Son of the South, Scott Terry, claims to be a descendent of Jefferson Davis
At one point a woman, who the Tea Party identified as a representative of Voice of Russia, asked Terry the question “How many black women were there?” regarding the GOP’s roots, Terry retorted, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.” Is spousal abuse in the future of this man’s wife?
Terry no doubt doesn’t speak for the majority of the Republican party but his affiliation with it and the failure of the GOP to disassociate itself with such people is evidence that changing direction for 2014 and beyond will likely not come anytime soon.
A 3rd party candidate that would incorporate the views of people like Scott Terry will never win any national election so they attach themselves to the more conservative of the two prominent Parties in order to get some traction with their values. Yet it is this low-brow mentality that will always associate racial and gender bias with the GOP and prevent any grand sweep of gaining woman and minority votes.
Their reluctance to cut ties with such people is indicative of Party leaders who still think they need this portion of their base to win elections. It seems clear however that by keeping such people appeased does more damage than it serves their interests. Those who have left the GOP to side with Democrats and those who traditionally vote Democratic are not likely to be wooed by a Party that tolerates a point of view that claims to be superior to those who don’t look like them.
Ironically it is this backward class of people who profess to elevate a Constitution that attempted to view all people equally even though the framers’ words fell short of their actions. It is most likely this reality about the origins of our Constitution that such people cling to rather than the spirit it evokes from freedom loving people of both genders and all races around the world today. What Reagan epitomized as “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere” is really nothing more to the Scott Terry’s of this country than a dimly lit lantern on a dung heap for white men only to revel in a past that exists no more.
In an attempt to present himself as someone who is courageous and manly, House Speaker Boehner tried to cast the President as a coward, afraid to make the necessary spending cuts Republicans want with entitlements programs.
“I think he’d like to deal with it [fiscal problems], but to do the kind of heavy lifting that needs to be done, I don’t think he’s got the guts to do it,” House speaker John Boehner said in an attempt to bait the President to buck his party on the issues of Social Security and Medicare. SOURCE
You know, when you want to talk tough in politics first you must have a set of policies that engender the people to your point of view. The GOP already has a strike against them in this category.
But then you have to select someone who reflects this tough mindedness who can convince the country that they are the strong leader that will put this country back on the path to recovery.
So why would you send this guy out to browbeat the President on budget issues?
Strike Two
If you’re going to send someone in orange skin out to challenge the commander-in-chief, the orange M&M is likely to be more intimidating than the crybaby-in-chief.
And how would such an encounter wound up between these two?
The depressing state of the current political campaign has been so egregious that even I can’t weigh in much longer. However that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with this silly season. In the vein of the bible decoding scams I started playing around with the letters of the presidential and VP candidates’ last names to see if there was anything striking that could be divined from them. I know. Get a job right? If only.
Anyway, I was a little surprised that with the limited choices I had at how well the words I could create seem to reveal prophetic traits of the candidates.
The only rule I made for myself was that I had to use ALL of the letters of their last name to form real words.
So starting with the VP candidates here’s what I came up with
BIDEN – In Bed Politically speaking, when you are in bed with someone you are supportive and aligned with their ideas and policies. OMG! Does this speak directly to Biden or what? As Obama’s Vice-president Biden has been nothing but a loyal advocate for the POTUS.
RYAN – Now this one is really prophetic. Who is Paul Ryan’s role model? AYN Rand
Romney = R Money (Republican money). Need I say anything more other than what this 1984 photo of Romney’s Bain Capital group conveys? (Take my word for it. Those really are conservative greenbacks coming out of their orifices)
Obama – A Moab. We all laughed at the Tea Party-types when they chided Obama supporters for treating him like the anointed one but check out this revelation.
Moab was the illegitimate offspring of Lot’s daughter who became pregnant by having sex with her father after she and her sister got him drunk. Ironically, Moab was the patriarch of the line that eventually gave us King David and ultimately Jesus himself. One can only conclude, with the logic of Orly Taitz, that the messiah has returned.
I routinely take on the right-wing crowd here in my part of red-state Texas by countering their skewered views about Obama, health care reform, the economy and climate change. During my hiatus I still take time to respond to this crowd in the local newspaper’s Opinion page. Their arguments are so open to factual criticism that it doesn’t take much effort to knock down their straw man positions. The following is an example of these rejoinders.
You’ll first need to do a quick read in the Denton Record-Chronicle’s “Letters to the Editor” column today of Danna Zoltner and D.J. Anderson’s letters. Here are my comments found at the bottom of the page responding to these two.
To Mr. Anderson and Ms. Zoltner
The so-called “job creators”, who are sitting on plenty of revenue that could create jobs are doing so not because they’re waiting for Obamacare to be repealed or they’re uncertain of what the tax structure will be. These kind of things can be overcome when there is plenty of demand.
The economy will grow from the middle out by making sure you don’t reduce the middle class or their spending power. The unemployment problem isn’t the result of any imagined high tax rates but because there is insufficient spending to create demand.
Any economists worth his degree will tell you that demand is what creates jobs and when you kill public sector jobs as the only means of reducing the deficit you kill income from families who spend it in the private sector. As their spending reduces then their demand is taken out of the economy and eventually it impacts many private sector businesses that relied on dollars earned by teachers, cops, firemen, along with engineers and assembly line workers at companies who developed and built things that relied on government contracts to keep them profitable.
Rather than take money away from the middle class that are barely able to stay above water with wages that have increased only fractionally to that of income earners in the top 5% tier, why not tax that 5% during these difficult times who can better adapt, at least until the economy is back on its feet. The austerity measures that the GOP wants to impose have already proved to be a failure where they’ve been employed in Europe.
Trying to pay down the debt with spending cuts only in areas that benefit millions of Americans and that puts money back into the economy will fail as long as there is no effort to also trim the massive Defense budget or increase taxes prudently. Author David Korten says “our social deficits (rising poverty and inequality) and environmental deficits (starting with the climate crisis) do more to erode our society than the fiscal deficit does.
All this could be done without negatively impacting the income and thus the spending power of the middle class, the economists at the IPS assure us. By reinstating this spending, Mr. Anderson, is how you “build the economy from the middle class out.”
While corporate profits are at all time highs most of this money remains in the pockets of the very wealthy rather than creating jobs with. In fact, due to the European debt crisis it has been reported that now only 23 percent of the firms polled in June plan to add to staff in the next six months. This is down 13% from earlier this year in March and early April.
Back in 2010, while middle income families were losing their jobs and watching their paychecks and health benefits shrink, “American businesses sucked in profits at an annualized pace of $1.66 trillion between July and September. These profits allowed about a 6% increase in CEO pay last year while the average workers income increased only about 1%, “not enough to keep pace with inflation”.
And Ms. Zoltner, though you may be concerned that “the American taxpayer has gotten precious little for the administration’s investment in battery-powered vehicles, in terms of permanent jobs or lower carbon dioxide emissions”, efforts to change this are in play. Despite your mimicking of the naysayers, Ford, according to Bloomberg news, is “debuting five battery-powered models this year, spending $135 million to design electric-drive parts and double battery testing capacity”.
“Ford has said hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and all-electric cars will account for as much as 25 percent of its new vehicle sales by 2020, from less than 3 percent last year. The second- largest U.S. automaker is competing in the nascent market for electrified vehicles with Toyota, General Motors, Nissan and startups such as Tesla and closely held Fisker Automotive.
Ford said it plans to hire “dozens” of additional engineers for electric-vehicle development. It’s also renaming its 285,000-square-foot (26,477-square-meter) advanced engineering center in Dearborn, Mich., the “Ford Advanced Electrification Center.” SOURCE
You know, it took years for the fossil fuel industries to finely provide abundant cheap energy. Efforts that required plenty of government subsidies along with private investments. I am curious why you and others who think like you, are not willing to allow the same to occur with clean, abundant alternate forms of energy.
They are part of the crowd that Bill Clinton eloquently pointed in his speech at the Democratic Convention earlier this month who are essentially saying, “We left [Obama] a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”
It’s the Turd Blossom Special
Bringin’ my trickle down back
Well, I’m going down to Florida
And get some sand in my shoes
I’ll ride that Turd Blossom Special
And lose these George Bush blues
(a paraphrase from Johnny Cash’s Orange Blossom Special)
Though there wasn’t much substance coming out of the Republic Convention in Tampa this last week, there was a clear signal that the Karl Rove style of politics was back in play for the Republican Party. Rove, who was the architect of George Bush’s presidential wins, has become the poster boy for deception and deviousness in contemporary politics.
Their message for themselves is that they are pro-business and that Democrats are anti-business. While positing the notion that the wealthy pay the greater share of taxes they portray Democrats as supporting freeloaders who pay no taxes. Romney asserted in his speech that rather than address global warming issues he promised to help “you and your family” even though the Tax Policy Center said Romney’s tax plan would increase the tax burden on middle- and low-income Americans. VP nominee Ryan promised that they would “protect the weak” and “make the safety net safe again” while implying that it was Obamacare that was threatening the soundness of Medicare. Yet data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has demonstrated that Ryan’s voucher plan for Medicare will increase costs for the elderly poor.
It was a White Hat vs Black Hat comparison that Leni Riefenstahl and Joseph Goebbels would be envious of. This theme becomes enhanced by the pundits who serve as a megaphone for the GOP.
Bill O’Reilly attempts to portray the Republicans as thinking pragmatists and Democrats are still bleeding heart liberals.
Speakers at the Republican convention have largely been selected to negate Democratic propaganda, while the speakers at the Democratic convention next week in Charlotte are largely on stage to inflame the liberal base.
The strategy for the Republicans is persuade the mind, right here. The strategy for the Democrats seems to be to persuade the hearts. Hearts versus mind is the theme this year. SOURCE
In character as usual, O’Reilly says all of this after he has informed his viewing audience how truly objective he and those at the FOX network really are.
“As you may know, we cover politics a bit differently here. We are not much on party propaganda or political bloviating,” the guy who looks just like Bill O’Reilly explained.
[Our convention coverage] will not be the Republicans are good and Democrats are bad or vice versa. We are not in the business of promoting any political party.”
And though Rush Limbaugh is technically correct when he says, “I never once said that I want anybody at this convention to go out there and say Obama’s a bad guy” he has done nothing but portray the President as a bad guy since he was inaugurated. In terms of good and bad, what do you consider a person who has been characterized as one who “hates this country” and has been “indoctrinated as a child” by his “communist” father and his “leftist” mother. Does this imagery conjure up the word “good” for the majority of Americans?
When people like conservative columnist Walter Williams rehashes over and over again how “the top 10 percent of income earners pay 71 percent of the federal income tax burden while 47 percent of Americans pay absolutely nothing” they are implying that all incomes have risen equally. They haven’t. Like him or not, Paul Krugman is accurate when he says, “The Rich Are Paying More Taxes Because They’re Much Richer Than They Used To Be.“
CBO: “The Share Of Income Going To Higher-Income Households Rose, While the Share Going To Lower-Income Fell.” An October 25, 2011, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report found that the top fifth of all earners saw their share of after-tax income increased by 10 percentage points – with almost the entire gain going to the top 1 percent – while the other four-fifths of earners saw their share of after-tax income fall. The report included this chart which depicts the gains made by the top fifth and the losses by the rest.
What ultimately evolves by design here is how the GOP turns victimization on its head. Casting the very wealthy and entrepreneurs as victims strikes at a perception that any ambitious American would find repugnant. And perhaps rightfully so. We all openly or secretly aspire to be financially secure and envision ourselves as masters of our fate by owning our own business. But what is getting downplayed and even omitted here is how the American Dream is being lost not through government spending aimed at easing economic hardships and providing federal jobs, but rather through economic globalization that takes jobs to cheaper labor markets abroad and policies that reduce taxes which deprives revenue for vital social services.
The long-held Libertarian notion that any form of wealth distribution is evil has risen its ugly head again and gained a foothold in the American conscience following the collapse of the financial markets and the government bailouts of those who played fast and loose with investments and savings of Americans aspiring to claim some of that ownership held almost exclusively by the top 1%. Free markets failed to live up to expectations but Libertarians were quick to redirect the focus on government actions aimed at offsetting the great recession of 2008. Poorly informed and frightened workers were captivated by the mantra of the Tea Party who voiced this discontent and who became quickly supported by Bush-era neo-conservatives in a thinly veiled attempt to regain the power they thought would never end prior to 2006 when they lost their House majority.
Profits are first and foremost at the heart of any business and if it requires evading taxes and sending jobs overseas, then so be it. Yet profits have never been higher for many businesses or taxes lower than they are today. And still we are led to believe that the free markets and the wealthy class are under siege. The Democrats are portrayed as those who support “people with miserable, meaningless lives” and “people who don’t count,” according to Rush Limbaugh, even though Paul Ryan wants everyone to see Republicans as champions trying to “protect the weak”.
If it all seems so confusing that’s because it is intended to be. The architect of this approach to circumvent fact and disorient voters is the person George Bush affectionately called “Turd Blossom” – Karl Rove. From the time “he founded a political consulting firm, Karl Rove & Company, in Austin, Texas in 1981 … Rove “earned a reputation for being a savage political strategist, willing to engage in dirty tricks.” The idiom of Rove can be seen in the brief Tweet from Romney pollster Neil Newhouse responding to the media’s objections to its welfare ad when Newhouse stated ”we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact ckecckers”(sic)
Rove’s back
Newt Gingrich has also contributed to a view that capitalizes on misinformation and deception through some of his earliest efforts in political office aimed at destroying the credibility of Congress in the hopes to achieve a majority of Republicans to further extreme right-wing goals.
“What was Gingrich’s strategy? He was both passionate about his goals and coldly analytical in his means. The core strategy was to destroy the institution to save it, to so intensify public hatred of Congress that voters would buy into the notion of the need for sweeping change and throw the majority bums out. His method? To unite his Republicans in refusing to cooperate with Democrats in committee and on the floor, while publicly attacking them as a permanent majority presiding over and benefitting from a thoroughly corrupt institution. (p.33)
It’s true that you can’t fool everybody all of the time but it is also clear that the goal of the GOP has been a costly and passionate attempt to do as much “fooling” as they possibly can. It has after all been their “top political priority … to deny President Obama a second term.” To do that you have to distort the facts to make people forget what the policies were prior to Obama’s election that have resulted in one of the highest misery index ratings since Ronald Reagan.
Are fringe elements within the Republican Party represented by the myth of Sisyphus, thought by Albert Camus to personify the happy fool?
For those who stay up with the news it should come as no surprise to discover that many on the religious right who are deeply imbedded within the Republican Party view a pregnancy from a rape as an act of God, or as VP nominee Paul Ryan puts it, “a method of conception”. One that should not be tampered with by an abortion. Many of these people are also opposed to measures that could prevent such an unwanted pregnancy in the form of the pill and the day after pill contraceptives.
Following this ludicrous position that puts God in play with the act of rape I have finally seen a pattern with these people who are unwilling to intervene in what they perceive as the will of the Almighty. The recent tropical storm Isaac, turned hurricane by the time it hit the Louisiana coastline 7 years to the day when Katrina played havoc with New Orleans, raised the interest of Scott Lilly over at the Center for American Progress blog. In so doing he showed yet another area where the Republican Party has pretty much taken a hands off approach to such divine action, as some within the Party see it.
It’s late August. The Republicans are having their national convention. A huge tropical storm is bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast. So what’s new? We have had major hurricanes bearing down on the United States during four of the past six Republican conventions: Andrew in 1992, Frances in 2004, Gustav in 2008, and this year, Isaac.
But the Republican problem with hurricanes seems to go well beyond convention timing. A number of hurricanes have erupted into huge political issues, and it has almost always been at the expense of Republican candidates. This is not a coincidence: Republicans seem determined to underfund, undermanage, and understaff the government agencies that respond to hurricanes, putting lives and property at risk, as well as their political careers. SOURCE
Lilly concludes that Republicans seem determined to underfund, under-manage, and understaff the government agencies that are designed to deal with hurricanes, before and after because …
“they have become so good at convincing themselves that the public sector doesn’t matter that when they run into problems such as hurricanes they simply don’t know what to do. If you admit that you need government to solve that problem, you might have to make concessions in other places, as well. On the other hand, if you treat agencies that manage such problems as though they don’t matter by appointing incompetent administrators and starving them of the resources necessary to provide adequate service, you end up in the kind of mess we have seen repeatedly in Republican handling with hurricanes.kind of mess we have seen repeatedly in Republican handling with hurricanes.”
This would explain the laissez-faire, Ayn Rand mindset of the Tea Party officials within the GOP. They are more concerned with the notion that some “invisible hand” controls our fate and avoid the God issue altogether. Rand was after all a devout atheist. But this won’t do for the fundamentalist christians who view the bible as the inerrant word of God and that in all things, God is in control.
We do not expect to understand fully the purpose for our trials until our Lord calls us home to be with Him. But we do know that He loves us too much to harm us, and that He is far more concerned with our welfare than we are. God’s choices are always right. He is capable of carrying out any project to a successful conclusion without the possibility of fault or failure. Nothing in His universe happens by chance or accident. For every effect there is a cause. God “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-12). Yes, God is in control. Source
I’m pretty sure that victims of Katrina and brutal rapes would have to be brainwashed to believe that part about God loving us too much to harm us. Looking a little deeper within this frame of reference we discover another bible-thumper who claims that God, not man, is responsible for a serious deviation from the natural cycle of global warming.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on Voice of Christian Youth America’s radio program Crosstalk with Vic Eliason yesterday to promote his new book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, where he repeated his frequent claim that human influenced climate change is impossible because “God’s still up there.” Inhofe cited Genesis 8:22 to claim that it is “outrageous” and arrogant for people to believe human beings are “able to change what He is doing in the climate.”SOURCE
Now I have been convinced for years that the biblical account of God is nothing more than the creation of man’s mind and therefore holds no validity for me. I do love the poetry in the Old Testament and some of the inspiring homilies found within New Testament pages. But the notion that an omniscient God who had already eradicated most of his creation in a fit of rage, save Noah and his family, only to later allow “his only begotten son” to be crucified by the spawn of Noah, just doesn’t appeal to the rational mind that supposedly is a product of our creation. The only thing I can logically conclude by those who refuse to act intelligently about the natural and man-made consequences we face is something my mom once accused me of when I was about five years of age.
I tried to watch electricity come out of a frayed wire. As I was focused on watching myself plug in the wire at the electrical socket I discovered too late that my other hand was resting on the exposed wires at the other end. When mom came running into the room after hearing my blood curdling scream and discovered what I had done, she told me “You must have been AWOL when God was handing out the brains”.
And then, bless her heart, she did something that we have since learned NOT to do to a burn which serves as a perfect metaphor to explain how the extremist in the Republican Party respond to critical issues today. She put butter over the open wound which does more harm than good.
I think voters need to step back and take a serious, measured look at what our real choices are for President this fall. Hard working Americans who have become victims of this recession are not dead beats looking for a free lunch. They see their plight as temporary but would feel better about it if there was some genuine empathy from one of the candidates who could be President but appears to have no idea what it’s like to be struggling economically when times are hard.
While corporate profits reach record highs, wages remain stagnant
The high unemployment rate that just refuses to recede back to that 4-5% rate that most economists view as the norm continues to drain savings accounts, puts families out of their homes and clearly brings into perspective that the idea of an American dream is no longer a reality for most people as it once was. More people have slipped from middle incomes levels into the ranks of poverty as a result of the financial collapse on Wall Street back in 2008.
As a consequence, the need for state and federal aid has grown in the form of unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid benefits. Older workers are discovering how difficult it is to find comparable work that they once held before being laid off and are often forced to collect Social Security benefits at the earlier retirement age of 62, putting an added burden on that trust fund when receipts are shrinking from fewer income earners in the job market.
This isn’t a condition any of these people sought or feel comfortable with. It is taxing and humiliating on individuals to go through the paperwork and expend the time applying for benefits while simultaneously trying to compete with 4-5 other people looking for that one job that will put them back in the work force. Many have put off taking such action until there is nothing else left for them to do after they’ve emptied their savings, sold their home and moved in with relatives, all while cutting back on food and health needs to sustain them. It is a depressing state that has a deteriorating affect on their physical health, leading to greater economic woes for them and their family.
Nobody wants what Paul Ryan recently suggested about having “a safety net that turns into a hammock that lulls people into dependency in this country”. That’s a fear smear used by the political right to mischaracterize necessary welfare programs in this country that fill the void when free markets fail. All anyone really wants now as they did during the Great Depression was “the right to live, Mister,Give me back my job again.” Jim Garland’s 1941 lyrics to All I Want was part of the social protest movement expressed in the music of the Almanac Singers that consisted of Garland, Wood Guthrie and Pete Seeger
We worked to build this country, Mister,
While you enjoyed a life of ease.
You’ve stolen all that we built, Mister,
Now our children starve and freeze.
So, I don’t want your millions, Mister,
I don’t want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.
Charities of every kind are over-burdened with the needs to meet this new population who just a few short years ago were themselves contributing to food banks, work programs and life support organizations that routinely meet the needs of society’s poor and disenfranchised groups. As a society we are just not wired to become dependent on others, looking for a “free lunch”, and will go out of our way to avoid relying on the kindness of strangers.
It would be nice then if the presumed Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney, would stop disparaging these people, portraying them as a “culture of dependency” and showed some empathy by ending his demeaning narrative towards those policies and programs that offer some solace in these economic hard times until the promises of the free markets correct what they essentially caused. Without some government assistance at this time, this doesn’t seem likely anytime soon. Paul Ryan’s entry into the race as Romney’s VP will have no affect on this dynamic. It will in fact bring it more into focus since Ryan is the poster boy for wanting to privatize Medicaid/Medicare.
“There is no such thing as a free-market. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.” – economist Ha-Joon Chang
In order for the “invisible hand” of the free markets to work its magic, more people will likely lose their homes, their savings and their hopes of an ideal American dream first . Unfettered markets will rely solely on the forces of supply and demand from the private sector to revive the economy. Without government stimulus to generate demand and speed up the recovery, those currently unemployed will have to hope that a high level of entrepreneurship springs into action quicker rather than later. The prospects for that happening soon are not promising.
And while waiting for this to occur the victims of the great recession are finding it more difficult to rely on state and federal assistance to tide them over. The free markets do not accommodate families struggling who are waiting for the “job creators” to provide employment opportunities. This puts them deeper in debt and prevents them from rejoining the ranks of consumers if they are mostly reliant on private charities.
If people are not buying then demand is weak and employment either remains the same or shrinks, creating even less demand needed to turn the unemployment crisis around. Thus the new unemployed population that developed when the banks too big to fail went under have to hope that the failed premise of trickle down economics Romney and Ryan offer will deliver this time where it hasn’t in the past.
The deck remains stacked in favor of Wall Street. A Romney Presidency will gain them a card dealer who deals to them from the bottom of the deck.
President Obama has been criticized by apostles of supply side economics for his use of the Keynesian approach requiring government intervention during economic hard times. These efforts were effective in stopping the rapid rate of job losses and even began to turn the tide shortly after being applied. But the stimulus package passed by Congress shortly after Obama’s inauguration, without any Republican backing, was too little for an economy that had deeper issues than nearly anyone on either side predicted.
As a result, the Republicans exploited this short-sightedness and portrayed it as a failure of policy, even though they battled to insure its failure. Angry voters who watched Washington bailout Wall Street while Main Street went under easily bought in to the straw man offered by forces eager to regain their prominence under the neo-conservative policies of the Bush/Cheney days
Acting behind the scenes to promote the anti-government, anti-tax fervor of the small libertarian contingent in this country which came to be known as the T.E.A. Party, they repackaged trickle down economics in a thinly veiled manner that allows even greater revenue loss to prop up the social safety net that is saving millions from falling deeper into debt and poverty. While middle-income families who still have a job are led to believe that it is the expense of maintaining this social safety net that’s causing their economic concerns, the wealthiest amongst us are getting richer from lower taxes and less regulation to keep their greed in check.
This is the select group of people who Mitt Romney comes from and Ryan supports to the detriment of the middle-income victims of failed free-market policies. The gaffes Romney makes and continues to make about the working class in America and his feigned concern for them is becoming legendary. Yet he retains a modicum of persuasion over those who will ultimately be adversely affected by his hoped-for victory come November because of a level of hate for Obama that can’t be rationally explained. In the end however this may not save him because Romney still lives in a fog about his own culture of wealth as writer Jonathan Chait has noted.
Romney has taken no steps at all to put a middle-class sheen on his background, and he’s allowed Democrats to define him by his wealth and heartlessness. He seems to have fallen into the trap of believing that the sentiments about wealth that prevail among movement conservatives reflect the beliefs of Americans as a whole. SOURCE
Polls are clearly showing that this may well work against the presumed GOP nominee for president. Not only do more people like Barack Obama than they do Romney, they also don’t identify with his wealth culture. It remains to be seen if Ryan’s inclusion into the Romney campaign will alter these poll results more in favor of the man who continues to demonstrate his failure to connect with the average American.
So why are those Independents who will eventually decide the outcome of this election still waiting to make their choice? Obama has understandably been disappointing for not being more aggressive going after the culture of greed that caused our current state of affairs and has been too willing to compromise with people who have made it clear that compromise is itself a dirty word. The GOP has focused on this weak aspect of his leadership to undermine the president in all things. But the choice between Obama and a man who has no clue what it’s like to be unemployed and struggling to meet the daily needs to survive seems like a no-brainer.
It’s not that wealthy people are automatically out of touch with poorer working class families. Not all of them are. In his inaugural address John Kennedy warned that “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” But Romney clearly showed his ignorance of poverty in America when he implied at Otterbein University in Ohio earlier this year that financial success was simply a matter of “borrowing money if you have to from your parents”.
Reinstating Obama means we will still at least have a sympathetic ear and a foot in the door to accomplish greater things we were led to believe would come to fruition shortly after his inauguration. He will remain in place to block any draconian measures by a GOP-controlled House or Senate that attempt to severe necessary benefits for the most vulnerable in our society – the elderly, children and the handicapped.
For all his misgivings in his first term they still remain outdone by what he did achieve. Obama is likely to be more receptive to the change we still need in Washington in his second and final term as President. This may not inspire the hope for many that voted for Obama in 2008 but it remains a lifeline for working families and the indigent poor.
That door slams shut however if Romney is elected. The alternative of a Romney/Ryan ticket promises to return the status quo view of economics that sent markets dropping like lead balloons four short years ago. The only form of hope likely to be left then for most Americans will be that their lottery numbers hit and trickle down economics will at least contribute more to the foods banks and free health clinics.
“It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as it is seeing the rich asking for more money.”- G.K Chesterton
Not all change is good but it is inevitable and some of it is necessary. The political and Christian right in this country risk appearing backwards as they dig in their heels to fend off 21st century changes.
Hostile anti-Obama protesters feel threatened by policies they feel will undermine their traditional American way of life which tends to exclude other cultures and religions.
I have been guilty many times in the past of labeling most extremist on the right as ignorant slugs whose grasp of reality, history and many facts often reflect some levels of mental deficiency. But I have come to the conclusion that such people, though at times poorly informed, are not always ignorant. In fact many of them are just as intelligent as the liberals they attack for being intellectual elites. There are of course those who still hold to debunked notions of global cooling and the President being a practicing Muslim, but these do not make up that larger population I want address this post to. Liberals are not without their ideologues but unlike their conservative counterpart, change is not something to dread but to embrace and rebuild with.
So what I am finding then is not for lack of a brain from those on the right wanting to “take America back” to a period in our history that has long ago disappeared or who proclaim God is punishing this country with terrorist attacks and mass murders by madmen because we have strayed from some earlier set of values. It is, I honestly think, a conscious decision they have made to limit their contemporary views to only those notions they locked into at a more immature age, with perhaps some childhood anxiety disorder holdovers. It’s as if they have gotten a glimpse of a future that resembles nothing like their accustomed to and have made a conscious decision to freeze time in their mind and refuse to allow it to take its natural course. They then proceed to create an apologetic culture over time to confront the reality of inevitable change.
When you look at the language of Tea Party types and fundamentalist Christians you see notions spelled out in ways that sound more familiar in a junior high school setting; having a more sophomoric argot to them. Ideas are expressed in more simplistic ways that accommodate an adolescent view and seem trivial in light of broader experiences. Their mental faculties have not been diminished physiologically and they are quite capable of expressing an intellect with high IQs in most areas. But in their socio-religious view of life their growth appears stunted and all too ready to reject a social dynamic that develops layers of knowledge over time. The concept of WASPs – white Anglo-Saxon protestants – comes to mind when considering many on the right today as they try to deal with the changing make up of American families in the 21st century.
Why does the changing traditional image of American families seem threatening to many conservatives today?
The simpler, broader concepts of “mom, apple pie, God and country” still holds a pleasant but narrow image from a past era for today’s hardcore right-wing contingent within conservatism. To such people however, mom is never a teenage girl who had an unwanted pregnancy, diabetes from too much apple pie is beyond comprehension, the Judeo-christian concept of a universal creator remains the only acceptable view (orthodox interpretations primarily) and many still see the country as it existed for many years as the domain for white male property owners. Capitalism has been woven into biblical scripture and wealth is nearly universally seen as the ultimate end to one’s pursuit of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. To discredit those who have vast fortunes is to engage in a social blasphemy of sorts.
This state of mind is, I feel, an intentional choice because it preserves a familiarity of the bygone era. We all harbor this to some degree. We also all tend to resist most changes. But for many on the Christian and political right in this country today, the magnitude of change we are inevitably experiencing as a democracy with its emphasis on freedom is change that cannot be tolerated. No amount of critical thinking seems to be capable of altering this dogmatic stand either.
When it comes time for us all to go out into the world on our own, beyond the control of those who have filled our minds up to this point, we inevitably run into challenges to those perceptions that were narrowly defined in our subconscious during the brain’s formative years. By the time I was seventeen I was sure Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, was the one true religion. Americans, especially Texans, were the greatest people ever and the envy of the world and that equal economic opportunity was there for everyone who expended the right amount of energy, no matter what your gender, religious beliefs or race were. Naturally I heard this from the authority figures within a paternalistic white American, christian culture and since I was a physically white male American born in Texas and raised in the Catholic church, I failed to see how women and other people of differing races, cultures and belief systems seldom shared this view. How could I? I had never interacted sufficiently, if at all, with such people.
But then somehow the mechanisms of control lost sight of me and allowed me to gain a higher education and this, to the shock and dismay of many, opened doors that had heretofore been closed. Some of them had in fact been nailed shut. Perhaps this was the dread of former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum expressed in his campaign about higher education.
I found that these countervailing views that grabbed me at a young adult age seem to fit in areas that my traditional upbringing could not quite reconcile. Not everything I began to absorb satisfied a hidden hunger. In fact I found some objectionable, at first. But there was enough there that allowed me to see that perhaps I had in fact not been given all of the information that was out there to make an informed decision. Just coming to the realization that an open and honest debate on issues was an option was something of an awakening for me.
Deeply held views that demonized and rejected gays, held minorities and women to an inferior status and saw all other manifestations of religious faith as broken and even corrupt, began to fragment. As this became more unsettling to me, my parents and others would try to assure me that though some customs and tradional views they raised me with were not absolutes, I was not to concern myself with such doubts because the older notions had been around “forever”. Surely, they presumed, this must carry greater weight that time often honors. To think outside this preset mold I was warned was to invite Lucifer and Stalinists thoughts into that world that had been carved out for me.
It took about two-thirds of my life to finally accept that much of what I was taught as a child and young adult was subject to debate and some of it, not all, was unlikely to stand up to scrutiny. I had what I call “a road less traveled” epiphany. Rather than view this as a failure of family upbringing or a conspiracy of some sort, I found it beneficial to accept this as part of the maturation process in life. Those adolescent ideas and ideals that got me through my young life served a purpose that allowed me to focus on less complicated matters that tender young brains were better able to handle. The real failure I have discovered comes in believing too deeply that much of what we are taught are absolutes and are inflexible. It takes a certain amount of courage to step outside that box we have become too familiar with where pushing the envelope was often discouraged. The status quo was held up as my security blanket.
Think of the temper tantrum young children throw when their notion of getting a toy is altered because the condition of good behavior gone bad has effected this outcome (provided you have a parent willing to enforce discipline). Your world is momentarily shattered and you engage in a kicking, screaming fit to re-established that happier moment before Mom or Dad enforced the conditions that prevented you from getting what you wanted. Such behavior seems harmless at such an early age but when such mechanisms carry over to the adult world, especially regarding critical matters that will effect long term outcomes for ourselves and others, it can create some conflicts that lead to acts of aggression on local and even a global scale.
When immature christian thinking sees Islam as nothing more than an evil based upon their view of what is or isn’t a “true” religion, then the positive aspects of the Muslim faith are ignored and even twisted to suggest some hidden agenda exists with the consensus. When immature heterosexuals claim that the legality of marriage was only intended to be between a man and a woman, they ignore the vital element of relationships that strengthen self-esteem and make us productive members of society. When immature patriots think only older, narrowly defined traditions masked as “original intent” have greater value than those conditions that the social dynamics of today present us, they blind themselves to modern reality and pigeon-hole all cultures to fit out-dated concepts. All of these reactions limit the gifts and talents that others can bring to the table in making this a more just and free society.
By using the language and promoting the notions that had meaning for us as an adolescent and expecting it to always bear fruit as an adult is a trap that is easy to fall into. The failure to allow new and varied experiences to refine what was thought to be chipped in stone is a trait that will prevent the human race from advancing and sustaining a quality of life that ensures ours and the other species’ survival. Not all change is good and we need to move cautiously where angels dare to tread. But the converse is equally true and we need not be afraid of expanding views once deemed sacrosanct.
We need to take with us into the future those elements that have and will continue to serve us as the needs of a 21st century confront us. All others need to be either respectfully laid to rest or disposed of in the unceremonious manner that we take out the daily trash with.
“Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.” – Immanuel Kant
How much confidence does a political Party exude when they only have a bumper sticker slogan for dealing with the complex issues we face as a nation?
The GOP hype that continues to over promise and under delivers
As we approach the November elections were are faced with selecting a candidate from one of two Parties that seem more bent on propping up wealthy interests than with promoting an environment that focuses on fundamental fairness for all people. Clearly the GOP is more cast in this mold than Democrats and this seems evident in their approach in their efforts to win come November. We seem to hear less touting of their own candidate and his policies than we do of their negative campaigning against President Obama. Their hollow message is summed up in three words and plastered on bumper stickers and websites across this nation – “Anyone But Obama”.
This is a scheme that offers nothing more than a return to the status quo we bled from under George Bush and Republican majorities in the legislative branches. Restoring political power to a Republican Party that has been hijacked by extremists could easily result in a return, perhaps in spades, to policies that created our worst economic nightmare since the Great Depression nearly 85 years ago.
The extreme view they hold that all government is bad and only free markets can save us from ourselves is one that created the environment that allowed Wall Street to plunder the savings and investments of millions of people and ultimately causing the collapse of the economy. The GOP and Mitt Romney have no plans to reduce health care costs in this country or any intention of keeping risky speculative financial interests from engaging in ventures that prompted bailouts back in 2008. What they do have a plan for is to squeeze the middle class and the poor to pay more and more of the taxes that focus more on subsidizing private capital interests, leaving more for their profits to pay themselves and their stockholders. This is a condition that has steadily increased the income gap in this country over the last 30 years.
Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth
Mitt Romney has campaigned on his experience as a businessman, claiming he knows how to create jobs. Yet this country needs someone with more than mere business experience. Businesses focus on their bottom line and the interests of a few - their shareholders. Many like Romney also hold to the view that trickle down economics, that allows the rich to get richer, will pass on some of this wealth in the form of more jobs, better wages or a combination of both. Yet those Republicans who have won office lately have killed many pubic sector jobs that contributed to the economy and built up a strong middle class while showing little gains in private sector jobs.
People want to blame the President or praise him when the job reports come in each month but job creation in this country doesn’t rest solely at the feet of the federal government. How effective have GOP governors and legislatures been in creating sufficient jobs? Where some states have shown job increases they are too often of the quality that pays lower wages and has fewer benefits than in times past. Republicans reward so-called job creators by supporting policies that have seen many employers ship their industries to foreign job markets where people work for wages that barely meet subsistence levels for them.
” …one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts,evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.” - It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J.Ornstein
The GOP has also been more willing to allow wealthy business interests to conceal their tax revenue in off-shore accounts and both Parties continue to create loopholes in our tax system that allow some of the wealthiest people in this country to pay less income tax than wages earners who make under $100,000 annually. Tax reform may be talked about a lot but where the rubber meets the road there are no signs of tread marks anywhere to be found. It’s one of those issues that keeps getting kicked down the road.
The Democrats have done their share of inaction too and the President has not kept all of his promises but these pale in comparison to a Republican Party that is bent on establishing a wealthy oligarchy in this country who continue to privatize the public commons and whittle away at the vital programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid until only for-profit interests have complete control of all the natural and monetary wealth in this country. Instead of demurely responding to the Republicans, the Democrats need to relocate their FDR, Truman and JFK roots and proudly support those programs that built up the greatest middle class in modern times.
Why don’t Democrats just say it? They really believe in active government and think it does good and valuable things. One of those valuable things is that government creates jobs — yes, really — and also the conditions under which more jobs can be created.
Decades of anti-government rhetoric have made liberals wary of claiming their legacy as supporters of the state’s positive role. That’s why they have had so much trouble making the case for President Obama’s stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009. It ought to be perfectly obvious: When the private sector is no longer investing, the economy will spin downward unless the government takes on the task of investing. And such investments — in transportation and clean energy, refurbished schools and the education of the next generation — can prime future growth. E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
We have serious issues with people going without basic medical care, children who experience starvation, elderly having to choose between needed medications and paying the rent or utility bill each month and an environment that threatens us all as toxic pollutants continue to contaminate the air we breathe and the water we drink. In the meantime the GOP has no problem finding money to subsidize oil companies who have had record profits, protect health insurers who fail to cover anyone with a pre-existing condition or who use less of your premium dollar to pay for services, and defend financial institutions “too big to fail” who continue to devise products that risk throwing the economy back into a tailspin and losing what gains we have made to recapture jobs and the housing market.
The republican form of government that was handed us by the framers of the constitution two and half centuries ago is ours to keep as Franklin suggested, if we are willing to fight for it. lf we don’t, the special moneyed interests will. These hounds are already at your doors dressed up as patriots screeching about “taking our country back”. But are they talking about a time when we emerged from a Great Depression and a World War where there was a large and vibrant middle class? Or do they refer to the one they nostalgically pine for in pre-Civil War days when only white male property owners were allowed to vote and control the mechanisms by which we are governed?
If the GOP does regain the seats of power following the fall elections, it will be the results again of a successful campaign by the power brokers in this country to keep the public uninformed about issues that negatively impact their own self interests.
We have been pumped so full of smoke up our backsides for the last couple of years by GOP/TeaPartiers and their media mouthpieces about how a policy of “austerity”, through government spending cuts, would reduce the deficit and stimulate economic growth, without having any real evidence that such a tactic honestly works. Raising taxes of course would not be necessary in the GOP/TeaParty way of looking at solutions because the lowering deficits, vis a vis lower government spending, would instill confidence in the free market. This confidence would then encourage the business community in this country to start expanding their business and create jobs. This would have the added benefit, they claim, of generating the revenue we need to pay down our deficit rather than raising taxes to tackle this nasty, lingering problem – wink, wink.
Well set aside any doubts or assurances you may have had, depending on your politico-economic perceptions, and observe some reality based evidence that shows the austerity method of the GOP/TeaPartiers is NOT a fiscal plan of action that will do a better job at economic recovery than what Obama and his administration have been doing thus far. In fact, it will most likely have the reverse affect. Paul Krugman points out that “Keynesians have been completely right, Austerians utterly wrong — at vast human cost.”
Let me set the record straight here too. I am not saying that what Obama has been doing has been been spot on. It hasn’t. It’s weakness is that what stimulus got passed back in early 2009 was way too small because the new administration was making too many concessions to the GOP/TeaParty who have been touting austerity policies since the President took office. Rather than making the stimulus package bigger, Obama kow-towed to the shrills of the GOP and invested too little to generate a more vigorous, sustaining recovery.
But had he not listened more to the Keynesian views of those within his Party and caved completely to the advocates of the economic views of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, who opposed governments intervening to aid economic recovery, our economic disaster would have sunk even deeper into the abyss, creating even higher unemployment rates and greater loss of homes and retirement savings.
So where’s this evidence that brings home the salient point of austerity’s failure? Across the pond in Great Britain.
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron’s embattled coalition government.
The Office for National Statistics said Britain’s gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 after contracting by 0.3 percent at the end of 2011, confounding forecasts for 0.1 percent growth. – SOURCE
Since taking over the British government in May 2010 here’s what the conservatives have achieved with their deep spending cuts to deal with their recession.
GDP continues to drop. The economy has only grown by 0.4 percent since the government came to power
the biggest fall in construction output in three years
Britain’s service sector which makes up more than three quarters of GDP continues to make no substantial ground
Industrial output and construction have shrunk to levels not seen since Q1 2009
Even though the Bank of England has warned that there is a risk of another contraction in the second quarter of 2012, Prime Minister Cameron, a favorite of American conservatives, intends to stay with his austerity program by not providing “further monetary stimulus through quantitative easing asset purchases.” This means “Britain will continue on a death spiral of self-defeating austerity”, says Krugman.
This is what the leaders of the GOP/TeaParty have in store for this country if they can convince voters to put them back in control of both houses of Congress and the White House
… the [Republican] party has spent almost three years demanding immediate and painful austerity measures. The GOP put [Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)] in charge of ‘committing us’ to a “Path” of sharp, short-sighted cuts that economists say would make unemployment worse, as the IMF says austerity policies have always done. SOURCE
How quick this news spreads to all voting blocs in this country will be interesting to watch. Many on-line services are already posting on this immediately following it’s release early Wednesday by Britain’s Office for National Statistics. But what will be critical is how quickly AND how frequently this economic reality gets played out on the MSM networks.
I suspect that what we will see is what we have been seeing for years. That corporate-owned media outlets who support austerity programs will give this very little to no attention. Though business profits have done very well under Obama’s economic policies there are those ideologues within the GOP that insists killing public sector jobs is the only sure road to a more rapid and full recovery.
“Austerity during a serious recession is economically insane. It is a pro-cyclical policy that makes the recession more severe.” -Bill Black
