Not Politics As Usual

Speaker Boehner revealed that the Republicans picked this very irresponsible fight over the debt ceiling when he replied to President Obama’s prime time speech on the subject. In an effort to try to portray Mr. Obama as being inconsistent and unwilling to compromise Mr. Boehner said that Mr. Obama’s original position was that the debt ceiling must be raised clean, without any conditions. What Mr. Boehner did not say is that the debt ceiling was raised clean eighteen times under Ronald Regan and seven times under George W. Bush. The reason why the debt ceiling was routinely raised without any strings attached is that the debt ceiling is merely an authorization to pay the debts incurred when Congress authorized the expenditures. In other words, these are current debts that must be paid. The debt ceiling has absolutely nothing to do with any future debts that may be incurred as a result of congress authorizing future expenditures.

The Republicans disingenuously analogize the national debt with household debt. Mr. Boehner did this when he said we must live within our means. It was a false analogy because he was talking about decreasing our future spending rather than debts that have already been incurred. If you default on all your debts the banks will foreclose on your house and your car will be repossessed. If you default on debts other than your house and or your car your credit rating will be downgraded and the interest you pay on your mortgage, your car loan, your credit card debt and all other debts will increase. In which case your monthly payments on all of those loans will increase. That is the reality and that is the proper analogy.

Frankly I think Mr. Obama should have stuck to his original position and insisted on a bill raising the debt ceiling with no conditions. The time to argue about spending is when the spending is being authorized or denied rather than after the money has already been spent. Mr. Obama, however, gave in to the Republicans by dropping his original demand and by addressing the question of how to decrease the federal deficit. He offered four trillion dollars in spending cuts but insisted that there be an increase in revenue as well. The Republicans predictably rejected this proposal because closing the tax loopholes to increase revenue would mean that corporations reporting almost obscene profits, hedge fund managers who pay capital gains taxes rather than income taxes, and the wealthiest people in our nation would have to share some of the burden by paying their fair share of the taxes. But the Republican intransigence does not end there. They are even rejecting Harry Reid’s proposal to cut two trillion in spending with no increase in revenue.

So why did the republicans create this phony issue? Why are they so eager to run our economy off of a cliff? The answer has two components, the first of which is revealed in statements made by Carl Rove and other Republicans who have said that the Republican Party should make it impossible for any Democratic President to govern. That is one of the major reasons why the Republicans have used the filibuster a record number of times in the senate to block bills that would increase employment, and it is why they have picked this fight over the debt ceiling. The second reason why they have picked this fight is because they want to destroy all entitlement programs, including programs such as Medicare and Social Security which people have been paying into throughout most of their adult lives. The Republicans are obviously more than willing to cause another great depression in order to accomplish those goals! When a group of people, certainly a minority in this case, intentionally set out to harm our nation and overthrow a duly elected government it is called treason. Not in my worst nightmare have I imagined myself accusing a politician, let along a political party, of being traitors, but no party in modern history has had a significant number of its members threaten our country in this manner before. The only defense for what the Republicans are doing is insanity and that defense also makes them unfit to govern.

What they are doing on the state level is every bit as bad. The Republican Governors and legislators are preparing to steal the elections of 2012 by passing restrictive voter registration laws that disenfranchise citizens who are likely to vote for Democrats. In Wisconsin the Republicans are feeling a real urgency to disenfranchise such voters because of the recall elections. The Republicans in Wisconsin are requiring picture identification in order to register to vote, and they are making it almost impossible to get picture identification by severely restricting the source of such identification to the Department of Motor vehicles which has closed many its offices and has very limited hours in which its remaining offices are open. The effort to disenfranchise people who are likely to vote for Democrats, however, is not restricted to Wisconsin. There is a concerted effort on the part of Republicans to make it far more difficult to vote in a large number of states, including but not limited to Tennessee, Colorado, South Carolina, Kansas, and Florida. This is something we cannot allow. The requirement for picture identification and proof of citizenship will disenfranchise the elderly who do not drive as well as college students and the poor. The saying that when one person’s rights are trampled the rights of all people are in danger could not be truer in this instance.

In a democracy ballets replace bullets. If you take away the ballets all you are left with are the bullets. Before you get your panties in a wad over this statement let me say I am not advocating violence. What I am saying is that these unconscionable restrictions on voter registration are a direct threat to our democracy. We are better than this! We must not let the aspiring despots do this. We must remember that George W. Bush was able to steal a Presidential election by disenfranchising people likely to vote for Democrats in Florida. This is not politics as usual. This is an assault on our democratic form of government, and, believe me, I would be saying the same thing if the Democratic Party was using such tactics.

What we now have is not the Republican Party of our fathers. The Republicans are a party that has gone berserk. They are a party that is more than willing to undermine our democracy and destroy our economy for political gain. We must punish them for this. We must purge our political system and cast the offenders into political infamy until the Republican Party is convinced that it must reform itself and act responsibly again. As the battle over the ceiling and the cynical efforts to disenfranchise lawful citizens illustrate we cannot afford to suffer such irresponsible and destructive behavior!

Make no mistake about it the threat posed to this country by the Republican Party is real. The oligopoly the Republicans champion is concentrating the wealth of this nation into fewer and fewer hands while everyone else is getting poorer, and the assault on our right to vote is a grave threat to very concept of majority rule. This is your fight. You hold the ultimate power in your hands. You must make a stand before it is too late to undo the damage. Contact any Republicans you have elected and let them know you have had enough. Reject the Republican bullshit and force our government to focus on moving our economy in the right direction again. Vote for Democrats in 2012 and demand that they set the proper priorities. We need jobs, damn it! We need more people working and paying taxes. If we accomplish that the deficit will take care of itself.

Burn It down

Bill Maher said it best. He said that people who voted for Republicans in the 2010 elections have no right to complain about the Casey Anthony verdict because those voters ignored all the evidence in regard to what the Republican Party was doing. Political analysts all look for some deeper meaning in the election results, and the victorious party always touts its stated agenda as the reason why the voters elected them. No one wants to believe how capricious voters can be. Bill Maher, however, hit the nail right on the head. The truth is that low information, independent voters expressed their frustration over the lagging recovery by throwing a temper tantrum. In doing that those voters gave economic terrorists control of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives. While it is true that the economic terrorists did not ascend to positions of leadership in the House it is their extreme anti-government philosophy that is mistakenly accepted as the reason why the Republican Party did so well in those elections. What passes for leaders in Republican Party now cower in fear of those extremists. So how did this happen?

In this blog I have been saying that the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt. For those who have not studied enough history to already know the fallacy of trickle down economics and deregulation the crash of 2007-2008 revealed those fallacies. The problem for the Republicans is that they accept those fallacious theories as a matter of faith, and they do not have an effective leader who is capable of adjusting to reality. With nothing constructive to offer, the Republicans concentrated their efforts on obstructing the implementation of measures we traditionally use to recover from recessions. Their goal in doing this was to stall the recovery and create a situation that would make the uninformed voters lash out at all incumbents, and it worked. The Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives as well as many governorships and state legislatures. The result was and still is chaos and legislative gridlock. Chaos is and always has been a condition favorable to demagogues and extremists, and it was the demagogues and extremists that were elected in 2010. Those extremists are now acting like economic terrorist by not raising the debt ceiling. Not even the warning issued by Ronald Reagan, who they claim to revere and have almost beatified, can dissuade those lunatics from causing this country to default on its debts. Make no mistake about it those economic terrorists actually want to cause another depression.

The reason why they want to send us into a depression is because they think they can tap into the anger this would create to advance their radical social and economic agenda. They really want to overturn Row v. Wade and to destroy Planned Parenthood, labor unions and all of the agencies responsible for protecting our air and the safety of our water and our food. Their economic agenda is to free all industry from any and all government regulation. They believe that a depression will allow them to defund the new Consumer Protection Agency, which is responsible for protecting us from the irresponsible actions of the banks and Wall Street among other things. But this is not all they want to destroy. The also want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They have already passed through the House of Representatives the Ryan Plan, which would turn Medicare into a private voucher program while providing still more huge tax breaks for the rich. George W. Bush tried and failed to privatize Social Security and Congressman Sessions has introduced yet another bill to privatize it. Furthermore the Republicans have attached to the bill to fund the FAA a rider that would destroy all of the labor unions in the aviation industry. The only thing preventing the Republicans from accomplishing those destructive goals at this time is the fact that the President is a Democrat and the Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate. That, however, could change if the Republicans are able to create a depression and the voters are foolish enough to blame the Democrats for causing it.

Do not be fooled by this claptrap about the deficit. If the Republicans were really serious about reducing it they would endorse a balanced plan that would provide increased revenue as well as spending cuts. The reason why they will not do that and are insisting on drastic cuts in expenditures is because they want to destroy all social programs and all of the agencies that would make our large corporations, Wall Street and the banks behave responsibly. They do not give a damn about high unemployment; they are more than willing to take down our entire economy and throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work in order to further their despicable agenda.

A One Term President

This is a rant. In my previous post I stated what President Obama must do in regard to the Republicans holding the debt ceiling hostage and why he must stand firm. What has me so angry is that he is giving every indication that he is going appease them. He appears to be drifting with the tide like a jellyfish with no stingers. He appears to be someone who stands for nothing because he will not fight for anything. He has broken his sword by saying he will not use the 14th Amendment in this fight, and he is hinting that he might accept a deal in which some of the benefits of Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicate will be reduced. Such a deal must not stand! The Democratic Party has to fight for the people of this country. Democratic members of Congress must tell him they will reject any compromise that reduces the benefits of Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid in any way.

The surest way for President Obama to become a one term President is to make any cuts to the benefits of those programs. If he does this, the independent voters will not be able to tell the difference between him and the economic terrorists. He will also lose my vote and the votes of many of the people in his base. We would rather have an enemy we know than a friend we cannot trust! I am afraid it is up to Congress to save him from himself. If he faces a revolt from members of his own party he just might grow a backbone. It would be a real tragedy if such a talented man goes down in history as one of our most disappointing Presidents. The election of 2012 is his for the taking if he has the courage to stand firm and to tell his Wall Street buddies that it is the Republicans who are hosing them by trying to set a precedent we cannot and will not permit.

All Out War

There is an all out war between the two major political parties. The Republicans are determined to make the President fail and to destroy the Democratic Party at all costs. The battle ground is both social and economic. There is an old saying that when the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. In this case it is the country and its people who are suffering. The greatest threat right now is the Republican Party’s attack on our economy. In order to enrich the rich the Republicans want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Furthermore, they are willing to cause a world wide depression in order to accomplish those goals. They are holding the debt ceiling hostage until their demands a met. This has never been done before because the consequences of this country defaulting on its debts are too destructive for anyone with a conscience to play such foolish games. Interest rates will soar and the value of the dollar will plummet if we allow the Republicans to cause us to default on our debts. Now is the time for extraordinary measures. We simply cannot allow the Republicans to destroy our economy.

Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, has said that not honoring our debts would be unconstitutional. Article 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states in relevant part, “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned.” What this means is that we cannot default on our debts regardless of the debt ceiling! No president has used the 14th Amendment to bypass congress before, but no party has been irresponsible enough to hold payment of our debts hostage before. Forget the Republican crap about the deficit. As the deficit soared under George W. Bush the Republicans raised the debt ceiling seven times without so much as a whimper. I might add that if the Republicans were really concerned about our national debt they would raise revenues by letting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire and by getting rid of the loopholes that allow the most prosperous corporations on earth to avoid paying any taxes. Even Republicans raise revenue when they are serious about reducing the deficit. If the President acts in accordance with Article 4 of the 14th Amendment and provides for the continuing payment of the national debt without Congress first raising the debt ceiling, it will diminish the role of Congress somewhat. That is probably not a good thing, but the precedent the Republicans are setting by holding payment of the debt hostage to their destructive agenda is far more dangerous than the precedent that would be set by bypassing Congress in order to meet our obligations.

The Republicans obviously have no qualms about changing the rules or about setting bad precedents in an effort to win their war against the Democrats. They shut down the government when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and they threatened to shut it down again if Bush’s outrageous tax breaks for the rich were not extended. The Democrats under Clinton’s leadership held firm. The Democrats under Obama’s leadership caved in, and the tax cuts for the rich were extended. When the Democrats tried to block Bush’s appointments of right wing Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court the Republicans threatened to do away with the filibuster in the Senate. The Democrats then caved in, and we now have the worst Supreme Court ever. Although the Republicans confirmed the one Supreme Court Justice appointed by Obama, they have used the threat of the filibuster to block over 200 hundred appointments to other positions. They have also used the filibuster a record number of times to block bills that would help us recover from this recession. The Democrats are cautious about changing rules and setting precedents, but like it or not, they are going to have to resort to Republican tactics in order to break through the gridlock the Republicans have created. Harry Reid must modify the filibuster rules in the Senate in order to get this country on the right track again, and President Obama must invoke Article 4 of the 14th Amendment if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling without the Democrats caving in to the outrageous demands of the Republicans.

There is little doubt in my mind that if the Democrats do what is right for this nation and thwart the Republican Party’s attacks on our economy and our middle class the Republican Party will have to start acting responsibly again or face extinction. This should be the lesson of the mid-term elections. The people did not see those elections as an ideological choice. Quite frankly, the voters never seem to be able to understand what those ideologies mean. What the voters know is what they are personally experiencing. They know the hardships caused by stagnating incomes as the costs of energy and food continue to increase. They know what will happen if Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are privatized. They know what will happen if the interest rates on their mortgages, credit cards, etc. go through the roof. They know they are getting the short end of the stick and are making all of the sacrifices while the wealth of this nation becomes more and more concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The people of this country are frustrated by the high unemployment and deceasing opportunities. They want results they can see and feel. They want a political party that will fight to break up the gridlock and speed up the recovery. The Republican Party is unwilling to offer anything positive. It is up to the Democratic Party to demonstrate through its deeds and its words that it is the party carrying out to will of the people.