Category Archives: Teapublicans

T.G.F.M. (Thank God For Mississippi!)

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Last month, Arizona made national and international headlines for SB 1062, the highly discriminatory bill that would allow businesses to refuse service based on religious beliefs. In the short time between the legislature passing the bill and Governor Brewer’s veto, the state lost tens of thousands in convention and tourism business.The state also received threats from businesses considering expansion or new factories in the state. All of that put pressure on the governor. But what really forced her hand was the NFL’s threat to move next year’s Super Bowl out of the City of Glendale.

However, because the bill was being pushed by a national stink tank, Alliance Defending Freedom, it never died. Indeed, it has been sponsored in legislatures across the country. Before it was vetoed in Arizona, it was defeated in Kansas, Maine, South Dakota, and Tennessee.  Most recently, it was passed by the Mississippi state legislature and signed into law by the state’s right wing governor, Phil Bryant, making it possible for the state’s many bigots to discriminate against anyone based on so-called “religious freedom.”

Yet the media and corporations have remained largely silent about the Mississippi law. There have been no calls for boycotts. No threats from corporations. No loss of tourism.

What accounts for the muted reaction? Maybe it’s because the rest of the nation assumes that Mississippi is full of bigots. Maybe it’s because no one wants to vacation there. Maybe it’s because the potential workforce is so uneducated that no corporations want to relocate there. Face it, the expectations for Mississippi are incredibly low. The state always seems to rank near the bottom for such things as education and personal income. And it’s always near the top for welfare, food stamps, unemployment, unwanted pregnancies, discrimination and religion.

By Teapublican definition, Mississippi is the ultimate “taker” state. Yet, like most other states that rely on the largess of the federal government, it’s a reliably red state.

In fact, Mississippi is so reliably backwards, the name is often invoked in other backward states such as Arizona, where people who decry our lack of funding for education, our over-crowded prisons and our right-wing state government are often quick to say, “At least we’re not the worst state in the nation. Thank God for Mississippi!”

Supreme Injustice.

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The Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon et al v Federal Election Commission is the next step in our march from democracy to plutocracy allowing the rich to dominate our political system even more than they already have. In a series of 5-4 decisions with “conservatives” in the majority, the Court has ruled that money equals free speech; that corporations are people (at least with regard to political contributions); and that there can be no limits on the amount of money the ruling class can spend on elections.

For many years, wealthy individuals and large corporations have enjoyed greater influence and access to elected representatives than ordinary citizens. With this ruling, the wealthy will be able to literally buy them. The Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelman are already spending billions through a complex network of Political Action Committees and Super PACs in order to sway our elections. Now they and other billionaires will be unleashed to spend monumental sums to elect candidates that will allow them to control Congress.

It’s fitting that this Supreme Court ruling comes on the heels of the death of Charles Keating, Jr. A financier and developer who was a friend of Ronald Reagan, Keating was indicted in the savings and loan scandal that cost the federal government billions. Prior to the failure of his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, he contributed $1.3 million to the election campaigns of five US Senators in order to buy their influence to help fend off federal regulators. After Lincoln eventually failed, Keating was charged and convicted of 73 counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. Although his conviction was later overturned, he eventually admitted to four counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud.

Given this latest Supreme Court ruling, there are likely to be many more Charles Keatings – those who will use their money to control tax laws; to fend off federal regulators; to eliminate regulations altogether; to scam the government and ordinary people; and to buy their way out of any legal challenges.

It has often been said that elections have consequences. It’s true. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that our democracy is now suffering the consequences of a Supreme Court majority hell-bent on unraveling our Constitution and placing us at the mercy of a government run by a privileged few…a majority given lifetime appointments by Republican presidents.

Why “Obamacare” Won’t Be Repealed.

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As of last week, more than 6 million people have signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges and that number is expected to grow to as many as 7 million by the end of today. Roughly one-third of those people were previously uninsured. Another 4.5 million people have gained health insurance as the result of the expansion of Medicaid (tens of millions more would be eligible if Republican governors had not blocked Medicaid expansion in 24 states). 3 million young adults under age 26 have been added to their parents’ health insurance plans. And millions more have benefited from the ACA provision that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, there have been few negatives.

Contrary to GOP claims, millions of Americans did not lose insurance when their insurance companies chose to cancel their policies rather than make them comply with the ACA. Indeed, many more Americans now have insurance as a result of the law. According to a survey by the Rand Corporation, the number of adults aged 18 to 64 without health insurance has declined from nearly 21 percent in late 2013 to 16.6 percent as of March 22. And contrary to the GOP, “Obamacare” is not a job-killer. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that it will actually create jobs.

In reality, millions of Americans have already benefited from the law and millions more will. Thanks to the ACA, there are fewer Americans who will have to rely on the Emergency Room for basic health care services and pass the costs along to those who do have insurance. Thanks to the ACA, there are no lifetime caps on the amount insurance companies will pay for an individual’s care. Thanks to the ACA, millions of Americans will no longer be facing financial ruin as the result of catastrophic illness.

Yet Teapublicans are still trying to stop “Obamacare.” The GOP-led House has voted to repeal or change the ACA more than 50 times. And Teapublican candidates are making “Obamacare” the central issue of their campaigns. They claim that the law will bankrupt the nation despite a CBO analysis that found the law will save billions of dollars. They claim that, if elected, they will repeal and replace the law. Yet they offer no replacement. They simply want us to trust them that they will come up with something better – better than the idea that they once promoted before President Obama embraced it.

The only thing the GOP has to offer is going back to what we had – a broken system that left more than 50 million Americans uninsured; a system that was the primary cause of personal bankruptcies in America; a system that led to double-digit inflation of health care costs; a system that encouraged US companies to send American jobs offshore.

But, trust me, no matter what happens in this Fall’s elections, we’re not going back. The millions of Americans who have already benefited from the ACA simply won’t permit it.

Are Women Mere Hosts?

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Are they the property of men to do with as they wish? Are they mere vessels designed to do little more than nurture the male seed? Are they organisms good only for child-bearing and child-rearing? Do they not enjoy any civil rights of their own? That, in fact is the view of fundamentalist Muslims. It’s also, apparently, the view of fundamentalist Christians and many Teapublicans as expressed by Virginia State Sen. Stephen H. Martin in a recent Facebook post.

“You can count on me never to get in the way of you ‘preventing an unintentional pregnancy.’ I’m not exactly sure what that means, because if it’s ‘unintentional,’ you must have been trying to prevent it.  And I don’t expect to be in the room or [sic] will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive,” wrote Martin. “However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.”

Martin may have been trying to mimic the comedian by the same name and trying to bring some levity to the subject of abortion. But even if that were true, taken in context with the many disgusting and demeaning comments by Teapublican men about “legitimate” rape and “sluts,” his statement reveals a problem with accepting women as equals.

In fact, there are many other indicators of anti-woman bias byTeapublican politicians. For example, they voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to allow women more opportunity to sue for discrimination. They voted to allow employers to exclude contraceptives from employer-provided health insurance. They voted against a bill to ensure equal pay for equal work that would eliminate the disparity between pay for women and men. They voted against a bill designed to reduce the number of sexual assaults in the military. They voted to defund women’s health clinics operated by Planned Parenthood. And they have asserted their rights to control a woman’s body by repeatedly voting against a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to carry an embryo to full term.

All of this makes one wonder: Why are we spending trillions to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan when we have so many here?

Illusion Of Justice.

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Since the founding of our nation, Americans have always taken pride in our rule of law.  In civics class we learned that this was what distinguished our country from others; that it provided protection from unreasonable search and seizures; that it guaranteed us a quick and fair hearing before a jury of our peers; that it protected individuals from power grabs by government; and that it gave our citizens a non-violent way of settling conflicts. As our nation expanded westward, communities took pride in instituting the rule of law by hiring marshalls, creating courts, ending vigilantism and restricting the carrying of guns. Such things were considered the necessities of polite society.

Now we seem determined to return to the lawless days of the Wild West.

The National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers it represents have written and pushed laws to encourage the carrying and the use of guns. It is now legal to carry guns in virtually every state. They have pushed for and passed the so-called Stand Your Ground laws that allowed George Zimmerman to go free after shooting a black teenager who was “armed” with a bag of Skittles and an angry white guy to get away with murder because he didn’t like a teen’s music. Most recently, a retired cop has invoked the Stand Your Ground defense after shooting a fellow movie-goer following an argument in which he claimed threatened after a bag of popcorn was thrown at him.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), aided by GOP legislators have written and passed laws requiring states to privatize prisons despite their increased costs. Our state legislators have passed laws requiring lengthy sentences for non-violent crimes. At the same time, our government continues to wage a war on drugs that has sentenced drug users to lengthy prison terms. The result is to turn prisoners into profits, proving that crime pays – for corporations.

ALEC and its GOP servants have passed anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 requiring local law enforcement to check papers in order to fill the private prison facilities with immigrants whose only crime was to cross an invisible border in search of work to support their families. Now the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is pushing to defund the department that defends immigrants from detention or deportation to further pack corporate-owned prisons.

Misinformed conservative voters elect people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio despite his many instances of using his position to racially profile individuals, to prioritize the arrest of hard-working immigrants while ignoring cases of violent crimes, and to use his office to harrass, intimidate, bully and incarcerate those who disagree with him. And Sheriff Joe is not alone. Each year, there are hundreds of cases from across the country in which law enforcement officers have abused their power. Unfortunately, most of these cases are never pursued because the victims are minorities and lack the video evidence and money to pursue justice.

In the US today, money is often the key predictor of sentencing. White color crimes, such as those committed by the mortgage lenders and hedge fund managers who crashed our economy in 2008, are seldom prosecuted. (Not a single person has been tried and convicted from one of the biggest thefts in world history.) When they are prosecuted, teams of high-priced lawyers are often able to get their clients acquitted. But poor people, especially minorities, can’t afford such representation. Usually, they’re appointed a public defender and offered a plea bargain. Is it any wonder, then, that minorities represent 60 percent of our prisoners, while accounting for only 30 percent of our population? And, according to a survey requested by Frontline, in the 20 states that have Stand Your Ground laws, whites are 354 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person.

With such statistics, it has become increasingly apparent that justice is becoming more of an illusion in the US than reality.

The Costs Of Deregulation.

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For nearly 40 years, those politicians who represent big business have been pushing an agenda of deregulation. They want to “get the government out of the way of business.” And they have been amazingly successful.

Since the push for deregulation began, we have deregulated airlines resulting in lost service, rising airfares for many, the demise of regional airlines and the mergers of the few remaining large airlines. We have deregulated commodities resulting in the run-up of costs for everything from electricity and precious metals to oil and grains. We have deregulated banking resulting in predatory loans by banks that are considered too big to fail.

Even for those industries that have not yet been deregulated, we have seen a series of coal ash spills, chemical spills, oil spills, manure spills, fertilizer explosions and mining disasters. We have seen Medicaid and Medicare fraud, abuse in private prisons, tax fraud, commodities fraud, and, of course, the worst economic disaster since 1929…the collapse of our banking system.

Our corporations have imported flammable clothing made in sweatshops overseas. They have imported toys colored with lead paints that are poisonous to children. We have seen the poisoning of our food system by corporations that cruelly confine animals in small cages then pump them full of antibiotics to offset the inevitable danger of diseases. We have seen thousands of consumers poisoned with carelessly handled meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. We have even seen our pets poisoned with pet foods containing uninspected ingredients from overseas.

Despite a growing trend of corporate negligence, fraud and abuse, we hear the constant drumbeat of Teapublicans screaming “over-regulation!” They claim that government oversight and litigation is costing American jobs. They want to give corporations access to the world’s most environmentally sensitive areas in order to extract oil and minerals while leaving behind a toxic wasteland of poisons and destruction. They want to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic Ocean and along our entire coasts. They want to permit a foreign-owned mining company to extract uranium from the Grand Canyon. They want to permit a foreign-owned oil company to transport the world’s most toxic oil across the length of our nation. They want…they just want.

Even as this is being written, the corporate tools otherwise known as the Republican Party have a case before the United States Supreme Court that would emasculate the Environmental Protection Agency…an agency that is underfunded and overburdened by the callous actions of greedy corporations. If the Republican Party and its Tea Party Parasites have their way, they will not only render the EPA mute. They will further weaken the USDA by allowing meatpackers as well as fruit and vegetable packers to self-inspect their produce. They are already in the process of passing laws forbidding unauthorized recordings of the mistreatment of animals and the mishandling of produce.

There is nothing inherently evil about corporations. Many are socially-aware and contribute a great deal to our society besides jobs. But far too many are only concerned with their bottom lines and will trade long-term consequences for short-term profits. Further reducing or eliminating our watchdog agencies will benefit no one except corporate shareholders.

Illusion Of Democracy.

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The passage of SB 1062 by the Arizona legislature and subsequent veto by Governor Brewer drew national attention. But there’s one aspect of the incident that has gone largely overlooked…the fact that the legislation was not written by an Arizona legislator. It was written by a national stink tank, Alliance Defending Freedom and pushed by the ultra-right wing Center for Arizona Policy. In fact, most state legislation is no longer authored by legislators. The bills are written by lawyers working for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, lobbyists for large corporations, the National Rifle Association and other conservative stink tanks.

Is it any wonder, then, that our Congress and our legislatures don’t seem to represent the will of the people?

The system of state legislators and congressmen sponsoring bills written by outsiders gives the illusion of representation. But the bills are written for the benefit of a few and to push a narrow ideology. They seldom benefit the majority. For example, the Iowa House recently passed a bill to legalize silencers for guns. How many Iowans will that benefit? The Ohio legislature passed a bill limiting voting hours. How many voters will that benefit? Other states have passed strict voter ID laws despite a lack of in-person voter fraud. The result will be to prevent many of the poor and the elderly from voting. Who will that benefit?

As a result of gerrymandering, issues with voter registration and the dark money used for campaign finance, a study by the non-partisan Electoral Integrity Project as reported by The Washington Post now ranks the US 26th in the world for electoral integrity and worst of all Western nations. And the situation will only get worse if Republicans and their stink tanks continue to push bills intended to rig elections.

How do we stop this blatant takeover of our democracy? Here’s an idea: Let’s ask candidates to reject any bills written by outsiders. Let’s demand that they solve problems for the majority of their constituents. Let’s treat all bills designed to limit civil rights with the same outrage as that for SB 1062. Let’s threaten to boycott states that pass such laws. Let’s refuse to do business with corporations that have co-opted our democracy.

Let’s make our votes count while we still have them.

If Obama’s Foreign Policy Was More Like Reagan’s…

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Following the Russian confrontation in Crimea, the neocon politicians and right wing media have compared President Obama’s foreign policy to that of their idol’s – Ronald Reagan. Since I don’t remember those days as fondly as they do, and I remember conversations during a trip to Europe in which Europeans stated that they feared the US far more than the USSR, I thought it would be interesting to actually compare Reagan’s foreign policy with that of Obama’s.

Here’s what I found:

If Obama was more like Reagan, he would have immediately cut and run from Afghanistan as Reagan did from Beirut following the deaths of 241 Marines in a terrorist attack. He would illegally sell weapons to our enemies as Reagan did to Iran in exchange for the money needed to support death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua. He would embrace torturers and killers resulting in the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent peasants. And he would encourage his National Security Advisors to break the law resulting in 14 convictions and at least one other indictment.

Obama would escalate military spending on wasteful and unnecessary weapons programs tripling the national debt. He would bluster and threaten other military powers demanding an end to confrontation then reject their concessions as Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s initiative for total nuclear disarmament.

In defiance of international treaties, Obama would provide chemical and biological weapons to a brutal dictator for use against his neighbors and his own people as Reagan did for Saddam Hussein. He would break international treaties and norms in support of other repressive regimes. He would publically joke about using nuclear weapons. He would order the invasion of a tiny island nation despite the protests of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Nations General Assembly.

Obama would channel military aid and propaganda materials to fundamentalist Muslims that would later be used by terrorists against the United States. He would support terrorists known for skinning captives alive and throwing acid in the faces of women who failed to wear burkas.

Yes, those were the “good old days.” Let’s have more of that.

Men (And Women) Of War.

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Now that the political upheaval in Ukraine is reaching a critical juncture, the usual warmongers are blustering and calling for military threats. At the same time, they’re blaming President Obama for “weak foreign policy.” Exactly which foreign policy do they consider weak? The policy that ferreted out and killed Osama bin Laden? The policy of targeting al-Qaeda leaders with drone strikes? The policy of providing air support for Libyan rebels? The policy of mandatory inspections and destruction of chemical weapons in Syria?

Or is it the policy of allowing the people of other nations to select their own government and leaders? Is it the peace negotiations with the new moderate President of Iran who requested a dialogue to end the severe economic sanctions in exchange for Iran ending its ambition for nuclear weapons? Or is it the resumption of US-led peace talks between Israel and Palestine? All of these are positive steps that stand as a welcome contrast to the Bush administration’s “you’re with us or against us” black and white approach to foreign policy.

The world is not merely black and white. It’s nuanced and complex. For example, Russia still has thousands of nuclear warheads with the capability of extinguishing all life on this planet. The US, Great Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons. And all but North Korea have long-range delivery systems for their warheads. As a result, military threats and war are seldom the best solutions.

Without using nuclear warheads, which could escalate into the complete destruction of our planet, our options are limited. We have seen what happens when we involve our military in nation-building projects such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. We have seen what happened when we used our CIA to overthrow leaders in Chile, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and too many Caribbean and Pan American countries to count. We have seen what happens when we serve as the world’s largest arms and munitions dealer.

All of these tactics have created anti-American sentiment, anti-American terrorists and legions of heavily-armed militias who are determined to fight us and each other. Yet this reality seems lost on the neocons who still cling to Cold War beliefs and the ideals of the Project for the New American Century…a plan to expand the American empire by using our status as a superpower by bullying and threatening other nations to obtain an endless supply of cheap raw materials and underpaid labor.

It was neocons from both parties who led us to arm the Shah of Iran to help him oppress his people in exchange for selling us cheap oil. It was Teapublican neocons like Donald Rumsfled who armed Saddam Hussein to fight Iran. It was the neocon Richard Perle who convinced Ronald Reagan to rebuff Mikhail Gorbochev’s attempts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It was the neocons who led us to arm and educate the radical Islamists of western Pakistan to fight the Soviets. It was neocons like George H.W. Bush, Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and Richard “The Dick” Cheney who arranged to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the illegal funding of death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was the neocons who supported the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in hopes that the Taliban would allow US oil companies to build a pipeline across Afghanistan so that they could gain access to Caspian oil and gas. It was neocons like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Condoleeza Rice who used the attacks of 9/11 to lead us into Iraq in order to ensure access to Iraqi oil.

More recently, neocon-lite Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for direct military involvement in Libya and Syria despite the fact that many of the militias involved in the war to overthrow Assad in Syria are allied with al-Qaeda. McCain, Graham and other warmongers from both political parties have called for increased sanctions on Iran – even as serious negotiations are underway – a move that would be likely to result in war with Iran. And now, the neocons are calling for confrontation and intervention in Ukraine. They are claiming that the problems in Ukraine are the result of the Obama administration’s “weak” foreign policy.

Seriously?

What do they want the administration to do? Invade Ukraine despite the fact that Ukraine has long been allied with Russia? Such an intervention rightly would be seen by Russia as an act of war. Since the end of the USSR, we have already broken our promises by moving NATO to the very doorstep of Russia, a move that is seen as a very real threat. We have already deployed our missile defense system in Europe, an act that is also seen as a threat to Russia by making a US first strike seem like a real possibility.

Any threat to use military force in Ukraine would, in effect, create a reverse version of the Cuban missile crisis. And there’s no guarantee that Putin is as realistic as Nikita Kruschev and as determined to avoid nuclear war.

The Project for the New American Century ended in 2006 in the aftermath of the group’s disastrous plan to invade and remake Iraq. Unfortunately, its members and proponents, including Richard “The Dick” Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes, Dan Quayle and many others continue to sell the same bad ideas. Their ideas need to be relegated to the toxic waste dump of history where they belong. While we’re at it, we should bury the racist notion of American “Exceptionalism” along with the top-down economic policy known as Reaganomics, aka Trickle Down theory, Horse and Sparrow economics, and Voodoo economics. It’s time to leave the military and economic thinking of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries behind us.

It is a new century with new possibilities. It requires new thinking and new strategies.

Why Do Democrats Apologize When Teapublicans Won’t?

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Every day, Teapublican leaders and their spokesmouths say something offensive to our president, to women, to minorities, to the poor, to non-Christians, and to Democrats. For example, Texas Senatorial candidate Chris Mapp recently said ranchers should be allowed to shoot “wetbacks.”Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin wrote that a pregnant woman is “just a host” and shouldn’t have the right to end a pregnancy. Ted Nugent called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman said he is preparing legislation to ban gay players in the NFL. Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for supporting contraceptives.

If you’re looking for an apology, good luck. You won’t find one.

While demonstrating stupidity, anger and hatefulness is part of the Teapublican belief system, apologizing and admitting mistakes is not. Perhaps the most extreme example is President George W. Bush. Having ignored more than 40 warnings of impending attacks prior to 9/11, having led the US into two costly and unnecessary wars, and having overseen the economic crash that led to the Great Recession, he said he couldn’t think of a single regret or mistake during his 8 years in office.

But when Democratic leaders make mistakes or say something offensive, even if it’s true, they tend to backtrack and apologize as quick as you can say Martin Bashir. (If you don’t watch MSNBC, you should know that Bashir attempted to do the impossible – educate Sarah Palin about the awful, disgusting truth of slavery. For that, he ultimately apologized and resigned.) This happens at every level of the party. For example, when Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack saw a video clip taken out of context from a speech by Shirley Sherrod, he fired her without even waiting for an explanation. Then, when the truth came out, he apologized to Sherrod. In another case, Congressional Democrats slashed funding for ACORN based on misleading and highly-edited videos produced by right-wing zealots.

The list of Democratic apologies and over-reactions is both lengthy and embarrassing.

It might seem like the right thing to do, but it leaves the impression that Democrats make more mistakes than Teapublicans. Worse, it makes voters believe that Democrats are gutless and lack the courage of their convictions. I think it’s great that most Democrats are willing to do three things that no Teapublican will…admit mistakes, apologize and compromise. But not at the expense of appearing spineless and lost.

So if you’re a Democrat running for office, let me give you a bit of advice. If you aren’t sure you’re doing the right thing, then you shouldn’t be doing it. And if you’re sure you’re doing the right thing, you should never apologize and only compromise when you get something equally important in exchange. Otherwise, voters will rightfully believe that the only thing you really care about is getting re-elected. And, if you’re not fighting for what you really believe, voters won’t, and shouldn’t, care if you lose.