Why Republicans Should Lose. And Lose Bigly.

Set aside most Republicans’ embrace of divisiveness, violent militias, Qanon and its wacko conspiracy theories, and their head-in-the-sand approach to the climate crisis. The reason you should spurn the entire Republican Party is its blatant attempts to deny millions of American citizens the right to vote.

For more than 20 years, the party has launched an all-out attack on the voting rights of people of color and the poor. It began by raising questions about the integrity of our election process on the heels of the party stealing the 2000 election in Florida. Yet the GOP had the audacity to claim that there was widespread voter fraud throughout the nation. Acting on that claim, the Bush administration ordered an investigation which found that intentional voter fraud was non-existent.

Nevertheless, many GOP-controlled legislatures began limiting voting rights to only those who had a photo ID. And, rather than make the IDs free and easy to obtain, the legislatures not only set fees for them. They limited access, often forcing poor Americans without drivers licenses to take time off from work and travel many miles to obtain the IDs. The IDs had the effect of denying voting rights millions of Americans.

In 2013, a Republican-driven lawsuit against the federal government (Shelby Co v Holder) led to a US Supreme decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, claiming that federal oversight of state election rules was no longer necessary. Almost immediately following the decision, GOP-led states dramatically reduced the number of voting centers in areas that are predominately black. At the same time, they reduced early voting periods and voting hours. That caused voters in those areas to wait in lines twice as long as their white counterparts.

In Arizona, Georgia, and other Republican-controlled states, the legislatures have ordered a purge of registered, but infrequent, voters. That act alone almost certainly put a Republican in Georgia’s governor’s mansion, instead of the more popular Democrat.

More recently, Donald Trump his Republican Party, in an attempt to undermine the 2020 election, have argued that the election is rigged and raised concerns about the safety of mail-in ballots, saying that mail-in voting is an opportunity for Democrats and China to commit election fraud. At the same time, Republican-appointed members of the governing board of the United States Postal Service and Trump’s Postmaster General have delayed mail service by removing dozens of mail sorting machines and hundreds of mailboxes. They have called for armed militias and white supremacist supporters of Trump to show up at the polls in large numbers as “poll watchers” – an obvious attempt at voter intimidation.

In Florida, the Republican Secretary of State has defied a voter-approved referendum by refusing to restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences until they pay all costs associate with their crimes while making it almost impossible to determine what those costs might be. The Republican governor of Texas has ordered that there can be only one voting drop-off box per county, thus making voting even more difficult for those living in large cities.

In Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin and other states, Republicans have resorted to extreme gerrymandering which allows Republican officials to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Administration attempts to rig and cut short the Census are also intended to impact redistricting in order to create more districts that are safe for Republicans.

As if all that isn’t enough, Republicans have continued to bombard voters with disinformation to create fear and confusion. They have embraced Russian interference and disinformation campaigns. And, I believe, Trump’s performance in the first debate was intended to cause numerous voters to become so disgusted with politics that they stay home on Election Day due to the reality that voter suppression always benefits Republican candidates, since the majority of Americans support Democratic policies.

The only solution to such tactics is to vote. Vote as if the future of our democracy depends on it. Because it does.

It’s Now Clear That One Of Our Political Parties No Longer Believes In Democracy.

For most of our history, the US has been dominated by two political parties. Though they have been fiercely competitive, they have always seemed willing to agree on the relative infallibility of the Constitution. And they have been willing to put their faith in the electorate. But over the past few decades, something changed.

The Republican Party – the Grand Old Party that led the fight to end slavery; the party that staked its future on holding the nation together following the secession of the South; the party of Abraham Lincoln – has seemingly abandoned its faith in democracy. Instead of fighting for the right of every American citizen to vote, they have falsified claims of widespread voter fraud as an excuse to create numerous obstacles for college students, the elderly and minority voters.

Prior to the midterm election, North Dakota’s GOP-controlled legislature passed a law requiring voters to have IDs with street addresses knowing that those living on the state’s Native American reservations have none. In Georgia, the GOP gubernatorial candidate who held the office of Secretary of State used his office to purge legitimately-registered voters, to shutter polling places in predominately minority areas, and to stall roughly 53,000 voter registrations based on alleged inconsistencies with their voting registration information.

In Texas, there were accounts of electronic voting machines changing votes from Democratic candidates to Republicans. In Florida and numerous other GOP-controlled states, the voting rolls were purged of tens of thousands of voters for failure to vote in previous elections or failure to update their voting information following a move. Many students were not allowed to vote where they attend college, instead being required to vote in their parent’s state of residence.

Want more evidence of the GOP’s contempt for democracy?

Consider the fact that, as a result of extreme GOP gerrymandering, Republicans were able to elect more candidates to legislatures despite Democrats receiving substantial majorities of votes. Or consider that, as Arizona, Florida and California continued to count legal votes following Election Day – many of them absentee and mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling places – Republicans screamed fraud. They demanded the counts be stopped. They even claimed that election officials put in place by Republican governors and legislatures were attempting to steal the election for Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats insisted that every vote count regardless of party.

And, in at least three states where Democrats were elected governor, GOP-controlled legislatures have pushed laws to diminish and restrict the power of the governor’s office before the governors-elect can be sworn into office! Can there be any greater affront to the will of the voters? To democracy itself?

Republicans must be held accountable for their actions. Voters should demand that all states commit to automatic or same-day voter registration such as Minnesota. They should demand an end to gerrymandering through the implementation of independent redistricting commissions such as those in Arizona, California, Idaho and Washington. They should demand modern, reliable and tamper-proof voting machines that create a paper trail for recounts. And they should punish any political party that tries to undermine the will of the people.

How The Senate And The Electoral College Distort Voter Representation.

After the 2016 presidential election, Democrats rightly raised questions about the Electoral College, a anachronistic remnant of the compromises made to unite the northern and southern states following the American Revolution.

After all, Republican candidates had been awarded the White House following two of the last five presidential elections despite the fact that a majority of Americans had voted for the Democratic candidates. To understand the problem, it’s helpful to look at what led to the creation of the Electoral College during the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Among the thorniest issues faced by the Founders were determining how to democratically elect our government and how to prevent “tyranny by the majority.” (Remember: the whole idea of democracy was new back then.) The Founders eventually settled on a structure based on the Iroquois Nation – a bicameral Congress with the House of Representatives based on the population of each state and a Senate comprised of two members per state.

It was an idea that has served us well for most of our nation’s history. However, things have dramatically changed since 1787.

When the Constitution was drafted, the most populous state had 10 times as many people as the least populous state. But the most populous state (California) now has more than 68 times more people than the least populous state (Wyoming). As a result, California has 19.77 million people per senator while Wyoming has only 289,657 people per senator. That means a person living in Wyoming has more than 68 times the representation in the Senate as a person living in California! The difference is nearly as pronounced for Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. This should also explain why some people want to divide California into 3 states.

The inequity also extends to the Electoral College.

The Electoral College was created because the Founders were somewhat wary of the democratic process. They didn’t fully trust the citizens’ ability to make decisions as important as choosing the officers of our government. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton described the Electoral College this way: “A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated tasks.”

The founders assumed the electors would be chosen district by district. But only California, Maine and Nebraska use this “congressional district method. Most use a “winner-takes-all” approach. That clearly ignores votes of the minority.

And the way the number of electors are decided makes matters worse.

The number of electors is based on each state’s combined total of senators and representatives. As a result, there are a total of 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 representatives and 100 senators, plus 3 electors for the District of Columbia. Therein lies the problem.

Since the red states – particularly Wyoming, Montana, Alaska and the Dakotas – are over-represented in Congress, a vote in Wyoming – with 3 electoral votes and a population of less than 580,000 – has 3.7 times the influence of a vote in California – a state with 55 electoral votes and a population of 39.54 million. That’s why the maps you see after presidential elections are so deceptive. Most of the map is red. But that only represents the geography controlled by each party. A map or chart showing votes based on population would be mostly blue.

Combine these issues with Gerrymandering – creating legislative and congressional districts to marginalize the impact of opposing voters – and you have an electoral system that is very much rigged for the benefit of the GOP.

That is why, despite Democrats having numerical advantages in 2016, Republicans now control the White House, the Senate, the House and a majority of statehouses.

13 Ways The GOP Suppresses, Manipulates and Marginalizes Votes.

For years, GOP strategists have tried to sow doubt in our electoral process. They claim that there is widespread voter fraud; that thousands of Democratic votes have been cast by dead people; that ACORN illegally registered Democratic voters with names like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; that college students have illegally voted in both their hometowns and their campus towns. And, of course, there is Donald Trump’s absurd claim that millions of undocumented immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton. Yet no government or independent study has revealed more than a miniscule amount of illegal voting.

A five-year voter fraud investigation conducted by the George W. Bush administration “turned up virtually no evidence” of organized fraud. Out of hundreds of millions of votes cast, the investigation yielded 86 criminal convictions. But many of those were the result of people misunderstanding eligibility rules or filling out paperwork incorrectly. And, in one of the most comprehensive studies, the Loyola Law School found only 31 credible instances of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014 – one out of every 32 million votes cast.

So why do Republicans continue to adhere to the fantasy of voter fraud? The fear of millions of undocumented immigrants voting makes it easier for them to erect barriers for minorities, poor and elderly in the spirit of Jim Crow laws. Following are examples of tactics used by Republican-controlled states to suppress Democratic votes:

1. Denying Felons The Vote
Each election, approximately 1.4 million Americans are denied the right to vote based on felony convictions, despite having completed their sentences. The GOP has used these restriction to deny others their right to vote. Consider what happened in Florida in 2000. Weeks before the election, Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. of State, Katherine Harris hired a Louisiana firm to compile a list of felons to be removed from voter lists. In Democratic-leaning counties, people with names similar to those of felons were not allowed to vote. As a result, it’s estimated 57,700 people, mostly Democrats of African-American or Latino descent, were incorrectly prevented from voting – more than enough to overcome Bush’s 305 statewide margin over Gore.

2. Electronic Voting Machines
During the same 2000 election in Volusia County, Florida, electronic machines deleted 16,022 votes for Gore. Election officials and Diebold blamed the problem on faulty memory cards, yet at least one investigative journalist concluded that the issue was likely intentional and more widespread. Yet the conservative-controlled Supreme Court’s decision prevented further investigation. In 2004, there were allegations of similar problems in Ohio, the state that tipped the election to Bush over John Kerry.

3. Strict Photo ID Laws
In at least 19 states, Republicans have passed strict photo ID laws forcing tens of thousands of voters to obtain new IDs available only at MVD locations – often many miles away. This is particularly problematic for the poor and elderly who do not drive or own a car. They are forced to take days off from work and find someone to drive them, in some cases, 100 miles or more. To illustrate the impact of such laws, the Charlotte Observer reported that, in North Carolina, as many as 800,000 registered voters lacked the necessary photo ID, and more than 556,000 had no ID at all.

4. Blocking College Students from Voting Where They Attend School
Numerous states have passed laws which force students to travel to their home cities or states to vote. And, in some of the states that require a photo ID for voting, they have denied the use of student IDs.

5. Barring People from Voting over Small Discrepancies
This technique most often affects women who have recently married and changed their last names. In some states, women have been denied the right to vote because their drivers’ licenses listed their maiden name as their middle name instead of their given middle name.

6. Scrubbing of Registered Voters Who Have Not Voted in Consecutive elections
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently ruled 5-4 that Ohio can purge voters who have failed to vote for six years and have not confirmed their residency. The ruling protects similar laws in six other states, including several that will be electing governors or U.S. senators this fall. According to some observers, the ruling disproportionately affects minorities and the poor – especially those who rent.

7. Reducing The Number of Polling Sites for Largely Democratic Areas
In 2016, there were 868 fewer voting sites nationwide as a result of the Supreme Court decision to gut the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. There were 403 fewer sites in Texas alone. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina also dramatically cut the number of polling places, resulting in people waiting hours in line. And, in Georgia, Reuters found at least two Georgia counties where the changes disproportionately affect blacks.

8. Reducing Voting Hours in Democratic Areas
This was an enormous problem in Cleveland during the 2004 presidential elections. People in largely black, Democratic areas were forced to stand in lines for hours. In Indiana, state and local Republicans expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, according to an IndyStar investigation.

9. Reducing The Number of Early Voting Days
After the 2012 election, President Obama noted the long waits in Florida and Ohio which were the direct consequence of GOP efforts to curtail the number of days and hours people had to vote. He ordered a bipartisan election commission to determine how voting could be smoother, faster and more convenient. The commission urged states to expand the period for voting. But many GOP-controlled states moved in the opposite direction, reducing access to the ballot instead of expanding it. For example, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed legislation eliminating early voting hours on weekends and evenings when it’s most convenient for voters. Wisconsin Republicans then reduced the early voting period from three weeks to two weeks and only one weekend. Then they eliminated weekend voting altogether.

10. Intimidation
In some minority areas, where people have routinely been victimized by police harassment, GOP-led governments have placed armed police near the entrance to polling places to discourage people from voting.

11. Misinformation
GOP campaigns and GOP-led governments have sent out mailings that deliberately provide the wrong date and wrong locations for voting. And, as demonstrated during 2016, they used social media and GOP propaganda outlets to make false accusations against candidates.

In addition to suppression, there are at least two things that have allowed the GOP to manipulate and marginalize Democratic votes:

12. Gerrymandering
Though it’s true that both parties have used Gerrymandering to their benefit, the GOP has taken it to extremes – mostly to marginalize minority votes. For example, 30 years ago, the Supreme Court prohibited a then-common practice known as racial gerrymandering, which consisted of spreading minorities across voting districts, making it virtually impossible to elect their preferred candidates. So the Court required states to create “majority-minority” districts — districts in which the majority of the population belonged to a single minority. Unfortunately, the GOP quickly discovered that, instead of giving African-Americans more political power, such districts could actually deprive them of power. By concentrating the minority vote into a few districts, minority influence could be minimized elsewhere. The impact of Gerrymandering can be shown with statistics from the 2016 election. On average, Democratic candidates won by about 112,000 votes while Republicans won by 97,000. And Hillary Clinton garnered nearly 3 million votes than Trump. So clever Gerrymandering allowed Republicans to take control of the White House, the Senate, the House and a majority of statehouses.

13. Electoral College
The strength of the GOP is in the least populous states. Yet, despite their lower numbers, the structure of the Electoral College gives those states an outsized influence on the vote. For example, in 2016, the voters of Wyoming had 3.6 times the influence on the Electoral College as voters in California and other populous states.

And, if all of this isn’t bad enough, some GOP strategists have begun pushing for restricting voting to only those who own property! It leads one to question: If the GOP is pro-democracy and confident in its policies, why does it go to such great lengths to keep people from voting and to make its opponents votes count less?

The Inequities Of Our Political System.

We’ve heard a lot about wealth inequality and how it’s destroying the United States. But it’s merely a symptom – a symptom caused by the growing disparity between the parties in our two-party system. Consider the following:

• Since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, more than 90 percent of talk radio has been controlled by right-wing conservatives.
• The conservative Sinclair corporation now controls the largest number of local TV stations, forcing its stations to air conservative talking points within local newscasts.
• The guests on network Sunday morning news shows are disproportionately Republican.
• Republican-controlled states have instituted repressive voter ID laws, reduced voting hours in minority districts, reduced polling places in Democratic districts, purged voter rolls, and gerrymandered districts to minimize Democratic votes.
• The majority of Americans now live in large cities, which mostly vote Democratic. But, thanks to the Electoral College, Republican-controlled rural areas have disproportionate representation. For example, based on population, an Electoral College vote from Wyoming counts 4 times as much as an Electoral College vote from California.
• The structure of the US Senate also disproportionately benefits red states. And the disparity is growing worse. By 2040, about 70 percent of Americans will live in the 15 largest states. Yet they will be represented by only 30 senators while 70 senators will represent 30 percent of the population.
• The Supreme Court decisions in Buckley v Valeo and Citizens United v FEC have unleashed billions in dark money for election campaigns which mostly benefits Republican candidates.

The GOP has used all of these advantages to divide our nation and to redistribute wealth upward to corporations and billionaires – taking money from the poorest among us and funneling it upward. This point was made all too clear by the GOP’s latest tax scam.

The greed and cynicism of the GOP is only made worse by the continuing failures of Democratic Party leadership.

For many years, the Democratic Party could count on two things: Its voter turnout operation and its superior data operation designed to target those voters most inclined to support its candidates. Though a majority of Americans have long supported Democratic policies or, at very least, leaned toward those policies, the party has lost its previous political advantages. And it has failed to effectively energize voters to turn out to the polls, especially during mid-term elections. It has failed to create a “brand” – a coherent message that concisely explains why people should vote for Democratic candidates.

The party’s failures were on full display this week when Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared on Late Show with Stephen Colbert. When asked what the Democratic Party stands for, Schumer sidestepped the question and simply referred to the failures of the Trump administration. No one should settle for that answer. Schumer’s dodge was made even more painful when Schumer’s interview was followed by a performance by the Black Eyed Peas with their new song, Street Livin’, which details many of the problems faced by black communities – one of the largest groups of Democratic constituents.

Seriously, Democratic leaders, it’s long past time to tell voters what you’re for. Not just what you’re against.

Why Democrats Lose Despite Having A Majority.

The 2016 presidential election again demonstrated that a majority of US voters align with Democrats. Hillary Clinton did, after all, win the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Had she not lost 5 key battleground states by a total of approximately 100,000 votes, she would be president. And Combover Hitler would be relegated to an ugly footnote in American history.

In fact, in 2 of the last 3 elections won by a Republican, Democrats received a majority of the votes cast. That was made possible by a combination of voter suppression, Republican gerrymandering and the antiquated Electoral College (a vote in the sparsely populated state of Wyoming is worth many times that of a vote in California or New York).

Further, Republicans have a structural advantage when it comes to the news media, especially in rural areas. Since the end of the Fairness Doctrine, right wing conservatives have been able to spew their lies, conspiracy theories and anti-government hate with impunity on AM talk radio and Fox News Channel. They have also created numerous websites that cloak ideology in the guise of news.

Moreover, Republicans have unified while Democrats bicker among themselves. If elected Republican officials dare to vote their conscience against the wishes of the Party, they are labeled RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and they are faced with well-financed candidates who are even more conservative during the primaries. Democrats, on the other hand, have difficulty keeping their members in line. Indeed, they have long taken pride in describing themselves with a line by Will Rogers – “I’m not a member of an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

In addition, when in office, Democrats have been unwilling to do anything that will cause substantial harm to the nation. Unlike Republicans, they have not used the filibuster to block every initiative of a presidential opponent. They have not shut down the government. And they have been far less likely to use parliamentary tricks in order to get their way.

Far too often, voters are left with the feeling that Democrats do not have the courage of their convictions.

Of course, Democratic voters are not blameless for the mess we now face. For decades, they have been willing to turn out in large numbers for presidential races. But many have failed to vote in local and state elections – a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Republican leaders who for decades have focused their attention on such races with the knowledge that candidates who are successful at the local level eventually become successful in more important races.

It is this strategy that has allowed Republicans to control statehouses and governorships across the country. And, in turn, that allows Republicans to pass laws to gerrymander districts and to pass laws that suppress the votes of minority voters who traditionally vote against them. In these efforts, they are aided by greedy corporations that use ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) to pass one-sided legislation that undermines working class voters.

During such assaults on our democracy, the leaders of the Democratic Party have remained relatively silent, choosing to believe that the future is in their favor; that the growing numbers of people of color, especially Latinos will turn the tide.

Don’t count on it. Because of the structural imbalance in the media, far too few people understand what Democrats stand for. They can tell you that Republicans stand for “smaller government and lower taxes.” But if you ask 100 people, even 100 Democrats, what Democrats stand for, you’re likely to get 100 different answers. Worse, the most common answer will be the label created by Republicans – “tax and spend Democrats .”

Given these obstacles, what are Democrats to do?

First, quit apologizing for your beliefs whenever you are confronted by conservatives. You are on the side of working people – the largest group of American voters. You also have a great track record. After all, it was Democrats that passed Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. It was Democrats that rescued our economy from the Great Depression and the Great Recession. It is Democrats that have been the party of fiscal responsibility while Republicans have blithely rung up huge deficits and debts.

Second, show that you have the courage of your convictions. Show that you are willing to fight for the people who elect you.

Third, vote! Don’t sit out any election. And don’t let any Republican candidate go unchallenged. Don’t concede a single federal, state or local office to a Republican just because you think you might lose. History is filled with accounts of long shots who have won elections and gone on to accomplish great things.

Fourth, stop bickering among yourselves. Support those who will support the majority of your beliefs. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. You may not think a particular Democratic leader or candidate is perfect. But they’re almost certainly better than the Republican alternative. (How many of those who voted for the Green Party now wish they would have voted for Clinton?)

Fifth, police the candidates who run under the Party banner. Don’t support a candidate who doesn’t, for the most part, toe the Party line. You don’t have to agree with everything a candidate says, but you should be able to agree with a majority of what the candidate says.

Sixth, and most important, communicate your beliefs. Make the label Democrat stand for something. Make your message succinct, clear and memorable. Then plaster that message everywhere. In other words, create a brand!

Then, and only then, will the Party that represents the majority of Americans control the majority of elected offices.

The Video Fantasies of James O’Keefe.

Given motivation, a hidden camera, editing software and enough time, anyone could create videos showing targets saying almost anything. An edit here and an edit there and you could make it seem that a NASA official said the moon landing was a fraud. Or you could make it seem that the Pope said there is no God.

Such is the work of James O’Keefe and his Breitbart-sponsored pals.

In 2009, O’Keefe released videos purporting to show employees of the community organizing group ACORN giving advice regarding prostitution. Not surprisingly, the group’s political enemies went wild resulting in Congress denying any further funds to the group. Even though the videos were later proven to have been fraudulent and misleading, the news came too late – long after most of the organization’s offices were closed.

Then, in 2015, O’Keefe turned his sights and his hidden cameras on Planned Parenthood, creating another set of highly-edited and misleading videos that seemed to show Planned Parenthood officials offering to purchase and sell baby parts from aborted fetuses. The videos are still reverberating in the blogosphere and among right-wing political pundits causing the GOP-controlled Congress to sponsor legislation aimed at cutting funding for the organization even though O’Keefe’s work was again shown to be fraudulent.

One would think that two such efforts would have relegated O’Keefe to the trash heap of history alongside the likes of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and other disreputable right-wing operatives where he could no longer cause harm to well-meaning people and organizations. But he’s back with yet another unscrupulous hit job. This time he’s attempting to show that Democratic officials have engaged in unethical campaign tactics, the promotion of violence and vote rigging leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

In other words, O’Keefe is trying to prove the Democratic Party is guilty of doing the very same things the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are doing!

Yet the comparison is unconvincing. On the one hand, we have some highly-edited videos produced by a known fraudster. On the other hand, we have a long history of GOP efforts to gerrymander legislative and congressional district; of federal court cases surrounding voter suppression efforts by the GOP; of the beatings of protesters caught on video at campaign rallies; of GOP elected officials arbitrarily removing the names of minorities from voter registration lists.

United Corporations Of America.

Now that Congress has been bought by large corporate interests and billionaires, you can clearly see the GOP agenda intended to pay back campaign donors.

Some of the very first bills brought forward by the GOP include a bill demanding that President Obama and the State Department approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The stated goal is to “create jobs.” But given the fact that the pipeline would only create 35-50 permanent jobs (aside from the temporary jobs needed to build it and those who would be needed to try to clean up the toxic leaks), it’s really a blatant payback to the Koch brothers for supporting GOP candidates.

Of course, we’ve seen yet another Repeal Obamacare bill intended to throw red meat to the right wing base.

The GOP-led Congress has also passed bills intended to, once again, deregulate Wall Street and to eliminate the Consumer Protection Agency. Of course, this is a nod to the GOP’s big Wall Street donors and right wing billionaires. If signed into law, the result would be to unshackle too-big-to-fail banks and investment funds to fleece ordinary investors of their IRAs, 401ks and pension funds.

We’ve seen attempts to withhold funds from the Environmental Protection Agency. This, of course, is another bill to pay back the Koch brothers and large corporations, freeing them to extract resources without regard to the environment. And once the resources have been harvested, the public will be left to clean up the corporate mess.

And let’s not forget the other kind of GOP payback to which we have become so accustomed. The GOP is blocking confirmation of Loretta Lynch as Attorney General in an attempt to force Democrats to sign a well-intentioned human trafficking bill that has been amended to further restrict a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. This is the same kind of nonsense we’ve seen since President Obama took office in 2009…a period that has thus far seen the GOP block dozens of cabinet and judicial nominees along with 375 bills, including 7 jobs bills and 2 bills for veterans’ benefits. (Indeed, half of the filibusters in US history have come during the Obama administration.)

Yet, instead of replacing the bums with people who might actually represent their constituents, a low voter turnout resulted in the GOPstoppers picking up control of the Senate!

And lest you think that this generation of GOP politicians is particularly disgusting, remember that others in the GOP have done worse. For example, Richard Nixon resorted to treason by undermining President Johnson’s peace talks with the Vietnamese in order to win a close election with Hubert Humphrey. Ronald Reagan intentionally aligned himself with racist Southern Christians (the KKK has long been associated with Christian believers) to defeat Jimmy Carter. And George W. Bush relied on his brother to suppress thousands of votes in Florida in order to steal the presidency from Al Gore.

Although GOP cheating was less obvious in 2004, there is considerable evidence of widespread voter fraud in Ohio, the state that allowed Bush to defeat John Kerry.

More recently, Teapublicans have gerrymandered congressional districts to make it impossible for Democrats to win. They have passed restrictive voter ID laws to prevent minorities, the poor and the elderly from voting. They have cut early voting hours and the number of polls in Democratic-leaning areas to make voting more difficult. They have skirted, or outright ignored, campaign finance laws that forbid cooperation between campaigns and PACs or so-called “education” groups. And their hand-picked conservative Supreme Court Justices have acted to strike down decades of precedent in order to open the floodgates of corporate and special interest money in support of GOP candidates. In doing so, two of those “justices” (Thomas and Scalia) refused to recuse themselves from the cases despite the fact that they personally stood to benefit from their own decision – a breach of ethics that would not be tolerated at any other level of the justice system.

As a result, things are only going to get worse.

Democracy Lost.

In recent years, much has been written about growing inequality. It is, indeed, one of the most important issues of our time. And the effects of big money on our democracy have been devastating.

Sure, you may still be able to vote to elect those who are supposed to represent you. But that, alone, does not constitute democracy. Not only are the choices of candidates limited to two individuals – the only two who were able to climb their way up the political ladder in order to receive their parties’ blessings and, more important, their campaign funds. All too often, those who are elected are promised large campaign donations by corporations and industries in exchange for political favors. It is not necessarily quid pro quo, but the expectation for a return on the investment is there. So, too is the pressure.

In reality, such high stakes lobbying has long been a part of politics. But, over the past 35 years, things have gotten even worse.

In the late seventies, large US corporations began to see their hold on the world economy slip. New, lower-priced, high-quality imports – many of them made with robotics – from Japan and Germany began to push aside American-made products. US corporations responded by relocating manufacturing – first to the South, then off-shore – in search of lower-priced labor.

Perhaps, the most destructive response was the move to tie CEO compensation to the value of the companies’ share prices. This ushered in an era of ever-increasing CEO salaries and even more lucrative stock options for CEOs – a legalized form of insider trading. The result was for US corporations to seek ever lower-priced labor in countries where there is no regulation and no employee benefits. At the same time corporate profits have soared, employee salaries and corporate investments in the future have diminished – almost guaranteeing that the future will belong to foreign-based corporations. But why would our CEOs care? They and their money will be long gone before it matters.

Our corporations have used the threat of off-shoring jobs to extort our state and city governments. In exchange for their extortion, those governments have assumed many of the risks of corporate relocation or expansion by paying for needed infrastructure, cutting regulations, and delaying or eliminating corporate taxes.

Now these corporations are attempting to extort the federal government.

Unwilling to pay US income taxes on profits made off-shore, these corporations are stashing cash in foreign banks until the federal government agrees to “repatriate” the money at a greatly reduced tax rate. Of course, they’re justifying the extortion by saying that “repatriation” will lead to greater investments and more jobs in the US – the great “trickle down” fraud.

In reality, the money is more likely to be doled out to CEOs and other executives in the form of bonuses (as a reward for robbing ordinary taxpayers) and stock options.

In the meantime, corporations and billionaires have been working to rig the system. Realizing that buying Congress and our state legislatures is cheaper than paying lobbyists, people like the Koch brothers have stuffed the pockets of candidates willing to do their bidding. To pave the way, they pushed conservatives to stack the Supreme Court with ideologues such as Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. That inevitably led to favorable court rulings giving corporations the rights of people and all but eliminating limitations on political donations. They got the IRS to change its rules allowing “non-profits” to fund political campaigns. When they won control of legislatures, they gerrymandered congressional districts making it all but impossible for anyone but “their people” to win office. And they introduced Voter ID laws to suppress the votes of minorities and the poor.

In 2014, their efforts finally came to fruition. Having already bought the House in 2010, they now own the Senate. It’s no coincidence that the first bills to reach the House and Senate floors were to repeal “Obamacare” and to build the Koch…er…Keystone XL Pipeline. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also made it clear that issues such as raising the minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, unemployment insurance and student loan costs will be pushed aside in favor of gutting regulations on health care and financial services and eviscerating the EPA.

If you’re still worried about the effects of so-called “dark money” on our democracy, don’t. Last year, our democracy officially became an oligarchy.

An Ugly GOP Strategy Gets Even Uglier.

As long ago as the late sixties and early eighties, Republican leaders developed a unique election strategy. They intentionally made politics so messy; so reprehensibly ugly; so divisive that many moderate voters became disgusted with the whole political process and tuned out. The idea was that by diminishing the votes of moderates, the primaries and elections would be decided by the most rabid conservative base.

At the same time, they attacked the mainstream news outlets in order to create distrust of the media and objective reporting. This allowed partisan talk show hosts and conservative pundits to confuse voters and control the political message.

It worked.

This strategy was at the heart of many GOP victories over the past 40 years. It was never more obvious than in the events leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections. And it would have worked again in 2012 if not for an energized  Democratic majority and a bartender who captured Mitt Romney’s comments about the 47 percent.

Not content with demoralizing and repulsing a large number of moderates, the GOP and its Tea Party parasites have set about passing voter ID laws designed to diminish the participation of other segments of the electorate…including the poor, the elderly and minorities. The fewer of these Democratic-leaning voters who participate, the easier it will be for conservatives to win elections.

Combine these strategies with the financial backing of large corporations and wealthy contributors such as the Koch brothers, and we might see a conservative landslide in 2014.

Given the changing demographics of our nation and the coming minority majority, these cynical GOP strategies can’t work for long and Teapublicans know it. But they can create a lot of mischief in the meantime. You need only look at the ultra-conservative bills that have been pushed through states with a Teapublican majority in the legislature and a Teapublican governor.

Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas and others have acted like States Gone Wild with their anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-union, anti-minority and pro-gun legislation. Many of their measures are unpopular with a majority of their citizens. But the majority is helpless to do anything to stop the bills or overturn them until there’s a change in state governments. And change is unlikely anytime in the near future because of Teapublican gerrymandering designed to keep them in power for years.

The only chance for change is for moderates to become re-engaged; to tune out the relentless negative campaign ads; to look beyond the headlines; to ignore the sound bites; to approach elections by studying the candidates and their policies with the same attitude as studying for a college final; then vote!