Closing Down The Gubbermint

Drunk on power, ignorance and blind ambition, the crazed Republican House majority-- as well as majorities in state houses around the country-- is trampling basic American values in their rush to enact a corporate, reactionary agenda before voters wake up and realize what a terrible mistake they made. (Keep in mind that voters never embraced the Republican Party, their wild-eyed candidates or their extremist proposals; they just were sick and tired of spineless, compromised Democrats.)

I doubt New Hampshire voters knew that by electing Republican majorities in both houses of their state legislature, they were voting for the unconstitutional goal of Republicans to take away the right to vote from students. I suspect suburban women voters in Ohio didn't think Republicans in Columbus would be insisting that they take testimony from a fetus. And, going way extreme and deep, dark red, I doubt even South Carolina or Tennessee voters knew they were voting for their own currency or that Arizona voters were taking the first steps towards secession by voting for federal nullification. Rather than work seriously on jobs legislation, all the Republicans in the U.S. Congress have done since January is to pass bills to make life harder for struggling citizens-- like repealing healthcare reform, throwing a greater tax burden on the middle class to lessen it further on the super rich and, most recently, voting to defund public broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. And then there's their hysterical obsession with teachers' unions. God forbid they consider looking into the billions of dollars stolen from the economy by banksters? Oops... almost forgot, Republican leaders get a healthy cut of that loot... not much from civil servants.

Steven at the Booman Tribune summed it up perfectly Thursday:

The Republicans in Congress, and in states across the country are making no bones about their agenda: they desire to kill unions and worker's rights. They desire to kill the EPA, and kill any regulation regarding worker safety, drug safety, food safety, environmental safety-- you name it. They want to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare reform with a thousand cuts until nothing is left but private accounts managed by by their buddies at Wall Street to which you are forced to contribute. They want to privatize prisons and schools.

They want an end to financial assistance to college students and their families (except football and basketball players, of course). They want to kill any investment in alternative fuels and public transportation. They desire the awarding of no-bid contracts to their "friends," i.e., the people who contributed the most to their political campaigns. Oh, and they want to make it ever more difficult, if not impossible, for innovative small businesses to compete with the corporate behemoths that dominate our political landscape. Indeed, without a middle class how can small businesses not dedicated to serving the desires of the rich survive?

In short, the goal of the New and Improved Tea Party Republican Governors and Legislators is to drive a stake through the heart of anyone who still believes he or she is a member of the middle class. As one of their own recently remarked those of us "slobs" in the middle class are a "different breed" the implication being that we are parasites on the body of corporate wealth and power rather than the collective engine of human labor and productivity that made that wealth and power possible.

Let us stop for a moment, now that the Republican "game plan" to dismantle the government and protect their wealthy benefactors at all costs has been exposed in all its naked infamy, and consider what type of country the realization of their goals would create. Imagine a world where there is no safety net. Imagine a country where wages and salaries are steadily decreased. Imagine a country where financial panics and "great recessions" are a regular occurrence every few years. Imagine a country where the water and the food are not fit to drink and eat, and the air isn't fit to breath. To take the lyrics from a popular John Lennon song lyrics out of context, "It isn't hard to do."

The last time in our history in which government primarily served the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the "rest of us" was roughly the period between 1880 and 1932. While comparisons between different historical eras are always fraught with the risk that the past and future are too different, that too much has changed, to make those comparisons valid and useful, I think in this case, it behooves us to examine the striking similarities between these two eras, because I believe that that particular past is truly prologue to the future the Republicans and their Puppet-masters (The Koch Brothers, yes, and Wall Street, but also many, many more industries and multinational corporations who have a stake in forging a new America) wish to bring about with their heavy handed attack on the American middle class.

You can barely tell what passes for a serious Republican congressman from lone-gunman type crackpots-- yes, I'm thinking of you, Louie Gohmert-- who occasionally pop their heads out of their garbage cans from time to time to screech about some crazy shit before disappearing again for a few weeks. In this case, were mixing lunatic fringe Gohmert up with Chris Smith, a fairly rational mainstream conservative about everything but... women. He flips out when the issue is women's health and his latest tantrum is to threaten to shut down the government if Mike Pence's bill to defund Planned Parenthood isn't enacted. Smith says he has a lot of other Republicans lined up to help him shut down the government if a bunch of GOP anti-abortion riders aren't in the budget compromise. "I'm going to push so hard to make sure those are all in there," he crowed.

Smith said several Republicans would defect on the spending bill if the abortion riders are removed. He focused specifically on one amendment, authored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), eliminating federal funds for Planned Parenthood.

"Many," he said. "You look at that vote, and how long that debate went...the [Planned Parenthood] amendment may have been the longest debate that I know of on the abortion issue since I've been here."

Enough reason to keep seniors from getting their Social Security checks? Smith thinks so. I wonder if his central Jersey constituents do. And I wonder if the 10 renegade Democrats who teamed up with Pence, Smith and the rest of the GOP to defund Planned Parenthood also plan to shut down the government. You see, not all psychopaths are Republicans. There are also conservative Democrats like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Jerry Costello (IL), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Dan Lipinski (IL), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Nick Rahall (WV), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR) and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). And, keep in mind, when the voting takes place that DCCC honcho Steve Israel picked McIntyre (a crony of his from Blue Dog days) to get a portion of every contribution that comes from Democratic donors, including those deluded enough to think that a donation to the DCCC helps guarantee Choice (rather than undermining it).

Ed Potosnak was the progressive Democratic candidate in the district next door to Smith's and I expect him to run again in 2012, probably against Leonard Lance again, unless the redistricting is so strong as to throw him into Smith's much more Republican-leaning district. In any case, Ed, a firm believer in women's Choice, doesn't agree with the way Smith and his Republican allies have been going about this whole budget thing. This morning he told me that "For the GOP, March means Christmas in Washington, the continuing resolution House Republicans are pushing is lit up with gifts to special interests. A very long list of giveaways and serious policy proposals are decorating the continuing resolution without hearings or adequate consideration. These half-baked proposals include cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood as payback to their pro-life donors and corporations. The bill should be a clean and focused on temporarily funding the country until Congress gets its act together and actually follows the appropriations process by holding public hearings and negotiations. If their proposals are right for country then they will prevail during this deliberative process. We can not allow this polluted continuing resolution to hold our nation and our future hostage." That's a pretty common sense approach. If you like it more than what we're hearing from the Republicans, you can help Ed raise a campaign fund through ActBlue.