Category Archives: Government

Gavel Envy?

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Ever notice Speaker of the House John Boehner’s enormous gavel?

The thing must be a foot and a half long and weigh a couple of pounds. Which leads me to wonder why would he choose to wield a gavel that looks like it belongs to a circus clown, or in a kangaroo court?  Certainly he must be compensating for something. The question is what? Lack of manhood? Lack of power?

Personally, I’m betting on both.

Boehner is on record as saying his job is the worst job in Congress. Given the fact that he doesn’t believe in compromise (he can’t even bring himself to say the word), it’s little wonder he finds the job so difficult. Yet, when he had the opportunity to hand his oversize gavel to someone else, his oversize ego wouldn’t let that happen. So here we are, back to 2010 all over again; a recalcitrant House majority with an uncompromising leader who says he will no longer negotiate with the president. What could possibly go wrong?

The 112th Congress finished with approval ratings hovering around 10 percent. With the Tea Party caucus and Boehner’s leadership, the 113th could reach zero.

The Worse-Than-Do-Nothing Congress.

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In 1948, President Harry Truman labeled the 80th Congress the “Do Nothing” Congress since it refused to pass most of the bills of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and the Truman administration. Instead, it focused on passing a few bills to benefit big business.

Believe it or not, the recently ended 112th Congress was worse!

Not only was the 112th unproductive. It was counter-productive. At several points in the last two years, its approval rating among voters was 10 percent. That’s right, 10 percent! That makes it even more unpopular than communism which has an approval rating of 11 percent in the US.

Among the 112th’s few accomplishments was lowering the credit rating of the US government for the first time in history. By blustering and balking at raising the debt ceiling and threatening to pay debts that Congress had already spent, it nearly collapsed the world economy. And instead of focusing on creating jobs and improving the US economy, it spent most of its time trying to discredit President Obama.

It passed no bills to build infrastructure, to increase exports, to bring jobs back home from overseas, to reform immigration, to regulate the type of military-style weapons used in the Newtown massacre, or to bring fairness to our tax codes.

Indeed, the 112th passed the fewest bills ever.

The 112th rabidly talked of lowering the deficit and reducing the national debt, but it succeeded only in kicking the can down the road for 11 months. In doing so, it created an artificial “fiscal cliff” that nearly dragged us back into recession. Teapublicans in the 112th bragged that they didn’t know the meaning of compromise. Dominated by a rabid Tea Party caucus led by likely escaped mental patient Michele Bachmann, the 112th even refused to follow its own leadership.

Incredulously, it even refused to vote for financial aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy! An inaction that prompted several of its national leaders to say that if you donate to GOP campaigns, you must be “out of your mind.”

So goodbye, 112th! You will be forgotten, but not missed.

UPDATE: Following its failure to negotiate a long-term solution for the “fiscal cliff,” Congress’ approval rate is now in the single digits. Understandably, Congress is less popular than head lice and cockroaches! 

“Fiscal Cliff” Bill Includes More Largess For Wall Street.

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Avoiding the “fiscal cliff” should have been a simple matter of extending the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. After all, this was the central issue in the presidential campaign. But the GOP (Guardians Of Privilege) have never passed up an opportunity to take from the poor and give to the rich.

So buried in the bill are a few very expensive gifts for the rich and the powerful.

For example, Section 322 is a $9 billion provision that allows banks and multinational corporations to defer taxes when they engage in “active financing.” Their lobbyists claim it’s necessary to help them compete overseas. But critics say that it’s a merely another windfall that encourages the banks and manufacturers to create more jobs overseas.

Yet another payoff to Wall Street is Section 328 which extends tax-exempt financing for the area around the former World Trade Center for another year. Originally intended to help fund reconstruction following 9/11, much of the financing has been used to build luxury apartments, instead. It even helped finance the construction of Goldman Sachs’ new headquarters (as if they actually needed the help).

Of course, news of the bill’s passage sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring. As a result, hedge fund managers and the other Wall Street executives can rest assured that they’ll be in line for seven figure bonuses again this year.

So congratulations, fellow taxpayers. Thanks to lobbyists and the GOP, we just gave the wealthy and the powerful a late Christmas gift.

And all we got in return was the shaft!

From The Age Of Enlightened Minds To The Age Of Dimwits.

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The so-called Tea Party “Patriots” are fond of comparing themselves to the Founding Fathers in order to promote their self-serving, narrow-minded philosophy. Indeed, they named themselves after those courageous souls who dared to stand up to the British at places such as Boston Harbor, Lexington and Concord.

Yet today’s teabaggers couldn’t be more different from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

The Founding Fathers were committed to education, to science and reason. By contrast, the Tea Party is committed to superstition, faith and brutish behavior. The Tea Party believes in slashing funding for education. Its followers dismiss science, and they consider those who are well-educated to be anti-American elitists.

According to Jon Meacham’s wonderful biography Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power, Jefferson was an avid student of history and philosophy. He believed that “…reason, not revelation or unquestioned tradition or superstition, deserved pride of place in human affairs.”

Tea Party adherents, on the other hand, reject reason and cling to an inaccurate version of history in order to make our nation fit their narrow-minded ideology. An ideology based on the Articles of Confederation rather than the Constitution which replaced them, and on a plutocratic interpretation of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that seems to reject government intervention in the free market. Yet many scholars reject that interpretation, pointing to the fact that, time and again, Smith warned of the dangers of businesses forming cabals and monopolies in order to fix the highest price “which can be squeezed out of the buyers.”

In order to realize the best possible future for our nation, who are we to follow? George Washington or Eric Cantor? Benjamin Franklin or Sarah Palin? Thomas Jefferson or Michele Bachmann?

You decide.

NRA Living In Fantasy World.

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Showing a willful failure to grasp reality, the NRA today called for armed guards at every school in America. It’s an attempt to set the way-back machine to the 19th century – a time when “justice” came from the end of a gun.

It simply doesn’t work in the 21st century.

Armed guards at schools won’t be able to deal with body armor-clad lunatics armed with semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines who have the element of surprise in their favor.

Arming teachers is an even worse idea. Teachers should be focused on one thing: educating our children. Untrained people with guns are more likely to add to the chaos of an attack than to end it. Of course, there’s also the question of access to guns. If the teachers keep guns readily available to use against a potential intruder, the guns are too likely to fall into the hands of inquisitive children. And if the guns are locked away in safes, they will be inaccessible when they’re needed most.

So in answer to Wayne LaPierre and the rest of his cowboy wannabes:  No, the answer to gun violence is not more guns. The only realistic answer is to diminish the paranoia that has led ordinary people to arm themselves against criminals, their neighbors, and their government. We also need to carefully limit access to those weapons that allow the criminally insane to shoot large numbers of innocent people easily and quickly without even having to stop to reload.

Who’s Really Behind Gun Violence?

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Certainly the NRA and other gun rights groups deserve a lot of the blame. Over the past 30 years, they’ve evolved from organizations intended to preserve hunting and to promote gun safety into lobbyists for gun manufacturers.

But the real blame for increased violence belongs to those who have fostered paranoia. Paranoia about crime. Paranoia about minorities and immigrants. Paranoia about a potential financial crisis. Paranoia about non-Christians. Paranoia about a world catastrophe. Even paranoia about our own government.

The loudmouths on Fox News Channel and right wing radio have convinced the weak-minded that non-white, welfare-abusing “takers” are out to get them and the fruits of their labor. In their little minds, Democrats and liberals are destroying the United States. They believe that our nation is headed toward bankruptcy and socialism or worse.

The result has been a dramatic spike in sales of “tactical” weapons (aka military-style assault rifles and shotguns) and semi-automatic handguns since 2009. There has also been a six-fold increase in non-Islamic domestic terrorist groups since 2009. And we now have thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of “preppers” who are stashing food, water, weapons and ammunition in preparation for what they consider the inevitable failure of our nation.

Moreover, the vast majority of gun sales and paranoid activity has taken place in the Southern US, mostly since the election of our first black president.

Coincidence? I think not.

Will GOP Lemmings Follow The Tea Party Over The Cliff?

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In 2011, the Tea Party led our nation to a fiscal precipice by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agreed to cut so-called “entitlements.” The resulting impasse led to a lowering of our credit rating and widespread uncertainty, causing consumers to curtail spending and businesses to suspend hiring.

Following that debacle and ensuing unsuccessful attempts to reach a budget deal, Congress instituted sequestration cuts beginning in January of 2013 that were intended to be so onerous that neither side would want them to take effect. With negotiations still stalled, we now face massive cuts to the defense budget and social programs unless Republicans can convince their Tea Party members to accept revenue increases (most notably, higher taxes for the wealthy) and fewer budget cuts.

They’re unlikely to be successful.

These Tea Party “Patriots” are willing to collapse the world economy in order to maintain the “purity” of their ideology. An ideology that maintains the federal government’s only purpose should be to protect our shores. They believe that everything else the government does is a waste of money and an intrusion into their personal rights.

Education? That should be left to parents and private or parochial schools. Welfare? It’s everyone for themselves. No matter the circumstances, it’s your fault if you fall on hard times. You need to take personal responsibility. Regulations? Those are just another big government intrusion; corporations and people should be free to do as they please.

These Tea Party buffoons actually believe that our citizens will do better if they don’t have to pay taxes to build schools, roads, railways, and airports. They believe that national parks should be sold to the highest bidder; that pollution is a figment of liberal imaginations; that the Federal Reserve, welfare, unemployment benefits, government pensions, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be abolished.

They see a future so austere, that millions of government workers will be laid off without benefits. Of course, they fail to understand that such cuts will force thousands of businesses into bankruptcy and tens of thousands of workers into charity soup lines. If they were interested in facts, the Tea Party wouldn’t have to search long to see the effects of such austerity plans.  The economies of Greece, Italy and England are all struggling as the result of much less significant budget cuts. The consequences have been recessions, riots and political upheaval. But none of that matters to Tea Party Patriots. The only things they seem to care about are their absurd ideology and, of course, themselves.

So we are left wondering if President Obama and Democrats can convince John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans to ignore the austerity zealots.

Will Fox News Channel and the loudmouths on hate radio turn off the propaganda machines long enough to let sanity prevail? Or will they simply follow the Tea Party “Patriots” over the fiscal cliff like the small-minded lemmings they appear to be.

Some Elephants Have Short Memories.

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The symbol for the GOP is the elephant; rather ironic when you consider how short Republican memories seem to be.

When George W. Bush was named president in 2000 after Al Gore won the popular vote and the GOP was found to have committed massive voter fraud and voter suppression in Florida giving the electoral vote to Bush, what did Democrats do?

Did Gore give speeches to supporters telling them that the election was stolen (which, in fact, it was)? Did large numbers of Democrats threaten to leave the country? Did the Democrats in Congress block every Bush appointment and initiative? Did they arm themselves with assault weapons and begin planning to defend themselves from the GOP agenda?

No. They chose to work with the new administration for the good of the country.

Now consider events of the past 4 years. After President Obama and Democrats won in a landslide in 2008, Republicans claimed voter fraud. They raised questions about Obama’s birthplace, implying he does not qualify to be president. They called him un-American and worse. They blocked presidential appointments and exercised the filibuster hundreds of times.

Now, after President Obama has been overwhelmingly re-elected despite GOP attempts to suppress minority votes, they claim that he won only because he “gave stuff to voters.” More than 850,000 conservatives have signed petitions asking their states secede from the Union. And gun sales are soaring.

It’s time these so-called “patriots” take the lead from Democrats. They need to finally start acting like adults and stop making excuses. They need to recognize that most voters agree with President Obama’s solutions for the economy and the “fiscal cliff.” They need to work with President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate to improve the nation.

The Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

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Since the end of the FCC Fairness Doctrine, we have been subjected to a massive propaganda campaign led by Fox News Channel and the loudmouths on hate radio. But that’s just the propaganda that’s most noticeable.

Billionaire plutocrats have funded a less noisy, much more sinister effort. It involves the use of so-called “think tanks” – conservative organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and Americans For Prosperity that generate research studies to “prove” the worth of conservative ideas.

These studies are then shopped to the media, to Congress and anyone else who might be willing to listen. Too often, those who listen include the mainstream media looking to fill airtime in our 24/7 culture.

As a result, viewers and listeners are convinced (with the help of media pundits and commentators) that cutting taxes for the wealthy will create jobs; that providing tax subsidies for multinational corporations are a panacea for fixing our struggling economy; that privatization of schools, prisons and other institutions are more efficient and cost-effective; that shipping manufacturing jobs oversees actually benefits our economy; that “entitlements” such as Social Security and Medicare are no longer affordable; that private retirement accounts are better than pensions; etc., etc., etc.

Most of these studies are phony science – intended to benefit only the plutocrats who funded them.

Of course, there is even more to the propaganda machine. There are the lobbyists who have the ears of Congress. There are the plutocrats who contribute to political campaigns in order to gain influence after the candidates are elected. And most sinister of all, there are corporate-sponsored organizations such as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) that write legislation to benefit their sponsors then push legislative members to vote it into law.

The only way to combat such highly-organized and well-funded propaganda is to be very skeptical. Seek out information from a large variety of sources. Look at the origin of the studies. Follow the money. And be particularly wary of anything that benefits the well-connected and the well-heeled. Then get involved. Let your representatives know that you are paying attention. Ask them difficult questions. And hold them accountable.

The Real Makers And Takers.

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Teapublican rhetoric aside, the real makers are in the bluest of states and the vast majority of takers are in the reddest of states.

Washington DC, Delaware, Connecticut, Minnesota and New Jersey contribute the most per capita in income taxes to the federal government.  On the other hand, West Virginia, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Montana pay the least.

Overall, the states that contribute the most total revenue are California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois.

So if the government-hating red states of the old Confederacy really want to follow through with their threats to secede after President Obama’s re-election, they may want to consider how they’re going to pay for the federally-financed benefits they now enjoy.  Without subsidies from the blue states, they can expect their benefits to plummet and their taxes to skyrocket.

As for the Union, the blue states will be just fine.  In fact, by eliminating most of the “taker” states, taxpayers in the blue states will likely enjoy lower tax rates while rebuilding their infrastructure, improving education and strengthening safety nets.

My message is this:  All of you so-called “patriots” should do a little research to determine who’s really paying for your military, your border patrol, your prisons, your welfare, food stamps, healthcare, schools, highways, etc.  If afterwards, you still want to secede, go for it.  Don’t trip over your racist anti-Obama signs, your “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, your Federalist papers, Bibles and assault weapons on the way out.