We Are The Losers

Everyone wants to conjecture about who won or lost the last Republican debate. I cannot tell you who the winner is, but I can sure tell you who the losers are; we are the losers! That is right, we the people are being had! It is not the government that is the problem. The problem is the Republican Party. What we saw on the stage last night was a con job pure and simple!

As Robert Borosage wrote in his Oct 29, 2015 Campaign For America's Future article, “The Republican Debate: Bring In The Clowns:”

“These Republicans – other than Jeb – have learned to appeal to the populist temper of the times. They are most compelling as they detail the decline of the middle class, the rise of the 1 percent, the stagnation of incomes. They rail about our corrupted politics, about crony capitalism, big corporations using big government to crush the little guy. They condemn loopholes and tax lawyers. Cruz pledges that under his tax plan “hedge fund millionaires” will pay the same rate as their secretaries (not mentioning that they will pocket an obscene tax break in the process). When talking about little guy, these folks sound like Bernie Sanders protégés; they feel the Bern.

Of course, their answer to all this is to savage government. Big government (not counting the military) is the root of all evil. Their tax plans (and imperial fantasies) would require elimination of virtually every function of government, while doling out huge tax breaks to the richest Americans. Their regulatory rollbacks would free up the banks, the drug companies, the corporate behemoths, insuring epidemics of fraud and abuse. And with the exception of Huckabee and Trump, they seem intent on cutting Social Security and Medicare, adding to our looming retirement crisis.” Also see Wealth Gap 101 in this blog under the label of “important.”

Social Security And Entitlements: As you may have noticed I frequently call the Republican Party the party of fear and loathing. When it comes to scare tactics they do not confine themselves to phony issues like Benghazi. In fact their favorite bogey men are the dreaded entitlement programs, meaning the earned benefits programs you have been paying into. And they lie like rugs about those programs. Social Security is not in danger of going broke! Every economist who has looked at this will tell you there is a very easy fix for any shortfall. Why should someone earning forty or fifty thousand dollars a year pay taxes on the full amount of his earnings while someone earning a million dollars a year pays taxes on only one quarter of his earnings? It does not make any sense. Simply raise the ceiling on the earnings taxed and the problem is solved.

So why are the Republicans trying to scare the hell out of people who are not old enough to collect Social Security by telling them that Social Security will not be there for them when they are old enough to qualify for it? Jeb Bush's brother George gave us the answer to that question when he tried to privatize Social Security. Privatization is what this villainization of Government and entitlements is all about. The Republicans want to throw your retirement funds to the Wall Street wolves. They do not care if you starve because your retirement fund fell victim to one of Goldman Sachs' “shitty deals” or you fell victim to another Madoff or Keating. In fact, they want to serve the Greedy Old Plutocrats by removing any regulations that might protect you from such “shitty deals.” As long as the brokers, bankers, and investment firms are well paid the Republicans will trumpet the success of free enterprise! This is all about making billionairs trillionaires. Why else would Paul Ryan try to turn Medicare into a private voucher system?

Taxes and Trade: I am not just making this up. Fact check it. A flat tax of ten percent or fifteen percent is a huge tax break for the rich and a tax increase for people on the lower end of the earning scale, and it will greatly increase the Federal Deficit. What so many Republican candidates advocating such a flat tax should tell you is that the Republican Party's panic over the deficit is both absurd and disingenuous. They are obviously more than willing to increase the deficit to give tax breaks to the rich. With the exception of Donald Trump no Republican mentioned the one deficit that is a problem. What I am talking about is the trade deficit! If you have a trade surplus your ability to pay your debts is self evident. That is not true if you have a trade deficit. And if that trade deficit is increasing it will not be long before your creditors will react to the risk by raising the interest rate on what you borrow, thereby increasing the amount you must pay on the debt!

The only Republican who told the truth was Ohio Governor John Kasich when he began the debate by saying: “We are on the verge, perhaps, of picking someone who cannot do this job. I’ve watched to see people say that we should dismantle Medicare and Medicaid and leave the senior citizens out – out in the – in the cold. I’ve heard them talk about deporting 10 or 11 [million ]– people here from this country out of this country, splitting families. I’ve heard about tax schemes that don’t add up, that put our kids in – in a deeper hole than they are today.”

We deserve better than this! We must vote for better than this – not just in the Presidential elections but in the state and midterm elections as well!

Back to Salem

It is fitting that Hillary Clinton should be hauled before the Benghazi committee so close to Halloween because this alleged hearing has all the credibility of the Salem Witch trials. There is no way that anyone who watched Hillary Clinton being grilled for eleven hours by gougey Gowdy, et al. can doubt that Kevin McCarthy was telling the truth when he said the Republicans are holding the Benghazi hearings for the purpose of driving down Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings.

The Republicans are trying to justify this farce by saying they discovered new information from Hillary's emails. I find that very interesting since there were no new discoveries revealed during the eleven hours of her testimony. Ah, but the Republicans never let go of any allegation! “It's the emails!” they shout. “Hillary Clinton has to be hiding something truly nefarious in those emails! She is a Clinton, you know?”

So emails became the star of the show regardless of the fact that emails were not the favored means of communication for Hillary Clinton or the rest of the State Department. “Oh look at this big stack of emails form 2011 about Benghazi, and this little stack of emails from 2012 about Benghazi. Does that mean you lost interest in Benghazi in 2012?” This was actually one of the absurd lines of questioning!

In particular the Republicans focused in on emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal, even though he was not a part of the State Department. But what the hell do facts have to do with anything? Hillary passed some of Blumenthal's comments about Benghazi on to members of her staff and others, and that was enough for Republicans to characterize Blumenthal as Hillary's advisor on Benghazi. One of the reasons Mr. Gowdy was so eager to embrace the notion of Mr. Blumenthal being Hillary's advisor is because of Mr. Blumenthal's vitriolic criticism of some members of Obama's cabinet. As a prosecutor Mr. Gowdy knows how prejudicial that criticism is as evidence, but fairness is not what Mr. Gowdy was after. I might add here that Republicans seem to have a hard time understanding friendship. Just because you do not correct something a friend says in private does not mean you agree with him. One GOP idiot even asked asked why a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, should have Hillary's home phone number and address while a colleague, Ambassador Stevens, did not.

I think the biggest problem with the hearings, however, is that few people could watch them and even fewer did watch them. What this means is that most of the people who are interested (and there are too few who are) will depend on what the lame stream media chooses to report. I have already been subjected to how absurd that is by KTLA this morning. Those dumb asses were actually characterizing as a new revelation an email from Hillary in which she said terrorists attacked the complex at Benghazi. The confusion over what was being reported to Hillary and others directly after the attack is well documented and has been discussed ad nauseam. The reports were contradictory and this email added nothing new! My point is that what happened at Hillary's hearing is less important than what people think happened. So keep a close eye on the lazy slugs of the lame stream media who know that dramatic sound bites will allow them to sell more beer than complex facts will!