Category Archives: Politics

The Growth Of Hate.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the US, reports that the number of hate groups has grown by 67 percent since 2000. The SPLC website states, “Currently, there are 1,007 known hate groups of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.” It lists as reasons for the increase “anger and fear over the nation’s ailing economy, an influx of non-white immigrants, and the diminishing white majority, as symbolized by the election of the nation’s first African-American president.”

Based on those criteria, I would suggest that nation’s largest hate group is the Tea Party. After all, the Tea Party is virulently anti-immigrant. It displays its racism on rally posters showing President Obama dressed in Nazi attire with a Hitleresque moustache. It continues to make unsubstantiated charges that the president is a socialist, a communist and a dictator. The Tea Party has launched relentless attacks on government institutions from the Environmental Protection Agency to the US Postal Service…even first responders and local school boards. Virtually every Tea Party meeting is devoted to tales of government conspiracies and fears of a “New World Order.” Moreover, Tea Party members continue to display guns at rallies and talk of “Second Amendment remedies.”

All of this paranoid nonsense is fueled by obstructionist Teapublican members of Congress, anti-government lies spread by Fox “News” Channel and right-wing hosts of hate radio, in addition to vicious attack ads paid for by a few angry billionaires. The resulting growth of hate has not merely divided our politics. It has pitted friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, one race against another and the wealthy against the poor.

At its worst, this growing culture of hate can be seen in the recent “Stand Your Ground” slayings which have seen a teen killed for wearing a hoodie, another teen ruthlessly murdered for the volume of his music, and a military veteran killed for texting during movie previews and for throwing a bag of popcorn.

It may seem that these events are unrelated. They’re not. They are likely all symptoms of a growing national anger created by our toxic political environment and enabled by easy access to guns.

We have to ask ourselves, “Where will it end?”

Has Our Education System Failed Teapublicans?

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Over the last several years, it has become obvious that Republicans and their Tea Party Parasites lack basic comprehension skills. For example, when the President made a speech talking about the role of government, he said, “…look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

It was obvious that President Obama was referring to the fact that businesses benefit from government-provided infrastructure. But Teapublicans couldn’t grasp that. All they heard was “you didn’t build that.”

Likewise, during a lengthy Senate hearing on Benghazi, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had tired of answering the same loaded questions over what led to the attack on the consulate, she finally said, “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. Now, honestly I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information.”

Teapublicans failed to comprehend the content of her testimony. All they heard was “what difference does it make?”

More recently, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report that, among other things, noted the impact of the Affordable Care Act (for you Teapublicans, that’s “Obamacare”) on the labor market. The CBO report stated that the ACA would result in as many as 2.5 million people voluntarily leaving their full-time jobs because they would no longer be bound to those jobs for employer-based health insurance. The impact, according to the CBO, is that up to 2.5 million jobs openings would be created by 2024.

Teapublicans, of course, failed to comprehend the report. They believed that 2.5 million jobs would be lost…not created…and immediately labeled the ACA a “job killer.”

No wonder theTeapublicans are so angry all the time. They seem to lack the basic hearing and reading skills to comprehend the spoken word and written reports. Obviously, our education system has failed them.

GOP Identity Thieves.

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Last week, it was revealed that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has created numerous websites pretending to be fundraising sites for 18 Democratic Congressional candidates. For example, if you Google Kyrsten Sinema, you may be led to a site headlined “Kyrsten Sinema for Congress.” But unless you notice the small subhead that reads, “Make a contribution today to help defeat Sinema and candidates like her,” your donation will actually help Sinema’s opponent.

That’s a dirty trick that would make Tricky Dicky Nixon proud!

It’s the same kind of scam that ticket resellers use to sell you theater tickets or concert tickets at exhorbitant prices. They buy a URL designed to make you believe it’s an official site for the theater. They let you choose your seats and pay for them online. Then, when you receive the tickets, you discover they are for nosebleed seats you could have purchased for a third the price.

It’s obviously fraud, but no one in authority seems inclined to prosecute.

Of course, authorities are even less likely to prosecute a political party or campaign committee. In politics, virtually anything goes…especially if you are a Republican or a Republican-leaning Super PAC. While advertisers of products and services are held accountable for claims made in their advertisements, the same cannot be said for political ads. If you’re a political campaign committee, you can lie, slander and libel your opponent(s) with no repercussions. The candidate simply says that he, or she, was unaware of the lies. And the campaign committee is dissolved as soon as the election is over.

You can’t sue an entity that no longer exists.

Of course, Republicans and Independents would like to believe that both sides are equally guilty. They’re not. Republicans mastered the art of lying and scamming during the Nixon administration and they’ve been using these tactics ever since. And what’s too despicable for them to do or say themselves they leave for Fox “News” Channel, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and others to do.

No one on the left remotely resembles these liars and scam artists.

A Memorial To Gun Victims?

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A new study by Dr. John Leventhal, professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, found that firearms kill more than 3,000 children each year in the US.  Another 7,000 are wounded badly enough to be hospitalized, most from assaults. And those are just the statistics for children! Overall, there are more than 11,000 homicides per year in the US involving a firearm and more than 19,000 suicides involving a gun according to statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

No other advanced nation comes close.

To put these statistics into perspective, the number of children killed by guns in the US in a single year exceeds the 2,977 people who died in the attacks on 9/11. The 4,486 US soldiers killed during the 6 years of the Iraq War is less than half the number of gun homicides that occur in the US in a single year. And the 2,287 US soldiers who have been killed during the 10 years we have been engaged in the Afghan War is roughly equivalent to two and a half months of gun homicides in the US!

Put another way, as of May 2011, there were 58,272 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, representing the number of US soldiers killed during our 14 years of military involvement in Vietnam. The number of gun homocides in the US would exceed that number in approximately 5 years. And, if you included gun suicides, the number would be exceeded in just 3 years!

Do you still think we don’t have a gun problem in this country?

Yet despite the overwhelming reality of these statistics, American politicians refuse to act. The shooting of a US Congresswoman and the mass murder in Tucson, Arizona wasn’t enough to force common sense gun control. The mass murder in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater wasn’t enough. Even the slaughter of 26 children in Newtown, Connecticut wasn’t enough to prompt Congress to act. They couldn’t even pass a measure calling for universal background checks of gun purchasers when polls showed that a vast majority of Americans supported it.

It makes one wonder what it will take to bring Americans to our senses.

I would suggest that we create a memorial to gun victims listing all of their names. Make the memorial as visible and as powerful as possible, something similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Add the names of gun victims week by week; month by month; year by year. It may take a while, but eventually most sane people will realize exactly what our lax gun laws are costing us.

At least I would certainly hope so.

The Real Cost Of Fossil Fuels.

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The chemical spill in West Virginia that polluted the drinking water of more than 300,000 people should remind everyone of the real cost of fossil fuels. As you know, conservatives are fond of saying that subsidies for research and the expansion of alternative energy are unfair; that they disguise the true cost of solar, wind and other forms of clean, renewable energy. Of course, they never mention the massive direct subsidies our government gives to the coal, oil and gas industries (estimated at $14 billion to $51 billion per year) or the indirect subsidies (the cost of damage to our environment; the cost of health problems that result from breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water; the cost of clean ups of spills; the cost of regulation).

If all of the indirect costs were added, the total subsidies for the fossil fuel industries are almost incalcuable and they’re certain to grow as we deal with the damages caused by climate change.

By comparison, the indirect costs of renewable energy are almost negligible. Wind generators require materials for manufacture and fossil fuels to transport them to their eventual sites. They also reportedly cause the deaths of some birds. But those deaths are dwarfed by the number of birds killed and endangered by oil spills and from drinking chemical pollutants. Solar panels also require manufacture and transportation. But that’s it.

Once in operation, neither add CO2 to the atmosphere. Neither can cause toxic spills. Wind and solar generation is decentralized so there’s less chance of widespread power outages. Both eliminate the need for daily trainloads of fuels. They require no pipelines. There is no need to remove entire mountaintops. No need to pump toxic chemicals into the earth in order to extract wind or sun. And there is no need for waste disposal. When the wind generators and solar panels become obsolete, most of their materials can be recycled.

Best of all, they create jobs in the US, and they would create a lot more if Congress would provide manufacturers with the incentives and protections needed to fend off state-sponsored manufacturers in China. They also reduce the need for fossil fuels, which should make our reserves of oil and gas last well into the future.

So why do Congressional Republicans continue to rubber stamp subsidies for oil, gas and coal while denying much smaller subsidies for alternative energy? The answer, as always, is money.

The majority of fossil fuels are extracted from red states, such as Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. Most refineries are also located in red states – Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Oil, gas and coal companies have very deep pockets from decades of favored political status and profiteering. They have one of the largest lobbying groups in Washington. The companies and their billionaire owners are willing to spend whatever it takes to retain their monopolies. Moreover, the Citizens United ruling by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court made it possible for corporations to offer large donations to political campaigns. And politicians are more than willing to accept them.

The Politics Of Division And Deception.

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For many years, the GOP has used so-called “social” issues, such as proposed anti-abortion legislation and “sanctity of marriage” laws to divide the voting populace and fire up their base. The Democratic Party has focused on issues like social safety nets, minimum wages and availability of health care. And the debate has left our government largely paralyzed.

In some ways, arguing about the issues that divide the rank and file of the two political parties is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s not that the issues aren’t important. But compared to other issues, they are mere distractions…the political equivalent of a con artist bumping your shoulder while picking your pocket.

The con artists are working for large, multinational corporations and the very wealthy. In order to grow and thrive, these companies need two things: A plentiful supply of natural resources and cheap labor. Over the course of history, those needs have led the wealthy to finance exploration, nations to build wide-ranging empires, and corporations to destroy collective bargaining movements.

Following World War II, the desire for access to oil, rubber, timber, tin and other resources led the British, the US and the Soviet Union to attempt to divide much of the world culminating in the Cold War. The desire to acquire resources led us into conflicts in the Caribbean, Central America, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It was the cause of the Spanish-American War, the war with Japan, the war in Vietnam, and the war in Iraq. It led our CIA to orchestrate the overthrow of elected leaders in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Similarly, the need for cheap labor led mining companies to create company stores and to build entire towns designed to trap workers into becoming hopelessly obligated to the owners. It caused companies to hire thugs to brutally beat striking workers. It led to shooting wars between corporate interests and labor unions. More recently, it led corporations to move factories to Southern “right-to-work” states then on to Mexico to China to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The executives behind these actions aren’t evil. They’re just doing business. They claim that it’s not their responsibility to worry about social or environmental problems. They believe that their only responsibility is to increase the return on investment for shareholders by decreasing costs and increasing productivity. To them, picturesque mountains merely cover the precious minerals they covet. Pristine forests are merely the lumber needed for construction. Impoverished people in distant lands are simply motivated laborers.

And so it goes.

While we argue over the debt ceiling, corporations and billionaires quietly park their profits in off-shore tax havens then lobby for a tax “holiday” that will allow them to bring the money home at greatly reduced tax rates. While we argue over extending unemployment benefits, corporations lobby for more subsidies and government giveaways. While we argue over food stamps, corporate agribusinesses pocket billions in taxpayer funds. While we argue over Social Security retirement benefits, too-big-to-fail financial institutions steal trillions from 401ks, IRAs, pension funds and foreclosed homes. At the same time, all of these corporations continue to lobby for reduced government regulation and oversight.

It is because of our inattention that a mere 85 individuals now own as much wealth as half of the world’s population…the equivalent of the populations of China, India, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil combined. It’s why unemployment has grown and why most salaries have not. It’s why a few corporations now control most of our food supply. It’s why those same corporations are able to poison the food supply in search of ever larger profits. It’s why the incidence of chronic disease has skyrocketed despite government-funded technology and research that give us the ability to end it. It’s why our climate is rapidly changing while we continue to subsidize the companies responsible for changing it.

As long as we focus on the distractions instead of the actions, things will only get worse.

Congress Versus The American People.

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Politicians, especially Republicans, are fond of saying that they have faith that the American people will always do the right thing. Hmmm…that raises a number of questions.

If politicians believe the American people are so smart, why don’t they do what the people want them to? Why have they refused to vote for universal background checks on all gun purchases when more than 90 percent of Americans demand them? Why has the House refused to support bills that would create the jobs Americans want? Why has the House delayed action on immigration reform supported by more than 70 percent of Americans? Why has the House refused to vote for equal pay for women? Why has it refused to raise the minimum wage? Why do Republicans refuse to vote for gay marriage? Why do they refuse to decriminalize marijuana? Why have they failed to vote for tax reform and equal enforcement?

Why do more than 80 percent of Americans despise Congress?

At least we have an answer for one of those questions.

Senatorial Amnesia?

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It is well-known that there were more filibusters during Obama’s first term than in the entire previous history of the Senate, forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resort to the extraordinary measure of changing Senate rules. As a result of the GOP obstruction of presidential appointments, federal judicial offices are grossly understaffed and overworked.

Yet GOP senators Marco Rubio and Richard Burr recently blocked two more judicial nominations. What’s shocking and somewhat amusing about their GOP-stopping moves is that both of the nominees were recommended to President Obama by the very same GOP senators who blocked them!

Come again?

You read that correctly. Senators Marco Rubio and Richard Burr each recommended a judge then took the extraordinary step of “blue slipping” the candidates after President Obama nominated them. One of the nominees, William Thomas, would have become the first openly gay black man to serve as a federal judge. He had been awaiting confirmation since late 2012 until the president finally withdrew the nomination.

That, of course, raises a few questions. Did Rubio not know that Thomas was gay when he recommended him to the White House? What possible impact could Thomas’ sexual orientation have on his ability to perform as a competent judge?

And what of Burr’s recommendation? He refuses to say why he blocked Jennifer May-Parker. Did he learn of something that would disqualify her as a federal judge? Did he contract amnesia or dementia forgetting that he had made the recommendation? Did he nominate her only because he secretly disliked her and wanted to torture her by leaving her nomination twisting in the wind? Or is he blocking her nomination simply as the result of his Teapublican anti-Obama fever?

These are all fair questions.

Whatever the answers, such behavior is worse than bad politics. It’s outright nincompoopery! And now Rubio expects us to take him seriously as a potential presidential nominee? More important, given the behavior of the GOP for the past decade, why would voters take any of their candidates seriously?

Another Perspective On The Racist Frat Party At ASU.

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The weekend before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the clueless frat rats at the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Arizona State University decided the best way to celebrate was with a “blackoutformlk” party. Those who attended the all white party wore basketball jerseys, hip hop clothing, some reportedly even wore black face make-up. They also drank alcoholic drinks out of hollowed-out watermelons and flashed gang signs while posing for the camera.

Understandably, local civil rights leaders were outraged and threaten to boycott all ASU athletic events. They want those involved expelled from the university and the fraternity banned from operating on campus. (The fraternity had already lost its house on campus after a fight in 2012 when up to 20 white frat boys brutally beat an African-American member of a rival fraternity.) ASU officials say the matter is “under investigation.”

Obviously, the party says volumes about the fraternity. But it says even more about the members’ families.

After all, people aren’t born racist. Racism is learned behavior. Most of these boys likely come from relatively well-to-do families in Arizona. You know, the only state that refused to celebrate MLK Day; the state that decided to honor King only after it had lost tens of millions of dollars from boycotts; the same state that passed the blatantly racist SB1070 anti-immigrant bill; the state with only one African-American legislator; one of the red states dominated by the Tea Party which has held numerous anti-Obama rallies complete with Confederate flags.

Yes, that state!

One has to wonder exactly what these frat boys learned at home and from watching the public debates over our nation’s first black president. One wonders how many of their parents watched Fox News Channel and listened to Rush Limbaugh with the kids. One wonders how many vicious letters to the editor they have read; how many racist comments they have heard at school and at sporting events; how many news reports and “reality” TV shows they’ve seen that focused on black crimes while ignoring white crimes; how many rap songs they’ve heard that glorify violence.

The leaders of ASU have their work cut out for them. Not only must they find an appropriate way to deal with the fraternity and educate their students. They need to find a way to turn this into a teachable moment for the rest of the state’s population.

UPDATE: The TKE fraternity has been expelled from campus. Futher actions against individuals are under consideration.

The Symbology Of Politics.

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You can tell a lot about people from the symbols they choose to attach to their bodies, their cars and their homes. In the Sixties, a generation wore long hair and tie-died clothing as the symbols of revolution. In the Eighties, Yuppies (Young Upwardly Mobile Professionals) turned to pricey brand labels and t-shirts from vacation spots intended to show their status and wealth. Today, those symbols have been replaced with symbols that establish our class status, religious beliefs and political leanings.

For example, anyone displaying the Gadsden (Don’t Tread On Me) flag is likely to belong to the Tea Party. A Stars and Stripes decal on a car almost always indicates a conservative. How angry the driver is may be indicated by an NRA insignia or a leftover “W” or Romney campaign sticker. A somewhat more subtle conservative indicator is the fish or cross symbolizing Christianity. An Obama, Hillary or Elizabeth Warren sticker indicates a Democrat. A rainbow or a = indicates a GLBT supporter. And a peace sign or “Coexist” almost always indicates a liberal.

“What do moderates display?” you may ask. The obvious answer is, “It really doesn’t matter, because they essentially no longer exist.”

So what brought us to the point where ordinary people feel it necessary to display their political or religious beliefs? After all, weren’t we all told by our parents that there are two things never to be discussed with strangers? Those are, of course, religion and politics. Obviously, we’ve transcended that advice out of, what I believe, is a sense of tribalism. The same sort of tribalism that causes someone to wear their school colors, the logo of their favorite NFL team, the branch of military in which they served, even the insignia of their military unity.

I would also suggest that the display of some symbols indicates a sense of superiority. What other purpose does it serve to display a bumper sticker warning others that the driver is subject to sudden rapture? Do you really believe that the rest of us are grateful for the warning? No, you want to tell us that you’re better than us. In other words, I contend that it’s a sign of self-righteousness. The kind of self-righteousness that Pope Francis addressed when stating that one doesn’t have to be Catholic or Christian to be redeemed; that one’s unselfish deeds is enough. If that’s true, and I believe it is, there should be no reason to show your religious beliefs.

And what is the purpose of displaying a decal of the flag of the United States? Are we to believe that its bearers are more patriotic than those who don’t? It certainly can’t be a mere label. We already know that there’s a good chance that they’re American because that’s where they live! I suspect that, like the religious symbols, the flag is displayed in order to assign a sense of self-importance. To me it attempts to say, “Because of my (conservative) political beliefs, I’m a true patriot and you’re not.”

In my opinion, we would all be better off if we threw away the partisan symbols and replaced them with a symbol of the Earth. That would indicate that we believe in true equality for all people; that we share a reverance for each other and the place where we live; that we have compassion for all sentient beings and we’re committed to protecting them.

Now that’s a sentiment I’d be happy to display!