A BROKEN RECORD!

OK, you got your extended Bush tax cuts for the rich; you now control the House of Representatives; and you've been Speaker of the House for over a month. In those weeks, you have WASTED TIME on failed social initiatives like H.R. 3, triing to extend the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and trying to repeal the Affordable Health Care for America Act. NOW, WHERE THE HELL ARE THE JOBS YOU SAID WOULD BE CREATED WHEN THE REPUBLICANS GAINED CONTROL, MR. JOHN BOEHNER?

Ho hum. Different day; same old shit. The highly unstable and paranoid Glenn Beck is spouting a new conspiracy theory putting Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood together with socialists and communists; Ann Coulter's out shooting her mouth off about how more reporters should be jailed; Rush Limbaugh is trying to link the President with terrorists; the birthers are still questioning President Obama's citizenship; and congressional Republicans have done not one thing - not one thing - to relieve the nation's unemployment problem.

Not that we expected them to, of course. That confounded party, temporarily strengthened with new blood from the Tea Party sham, is far more interested in more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy than they are in job creation. So long as big corporations can make ever-increasing profits and the rich get ever increasingly richer, they don't care one bit about the poor working (or non-working) stiff who comprises the overwhelming majority of this country.

Republican priorities are very clear: blame the President for everything, make sure he is not re-elected, hold his programs and agenda hostage by withholding funding for much of it, further deregulate business, tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. They claim to want to reduce the deficit, and they love to accuse the President of adding to that deficit, but they refuse to cut the vastly overbloated defense budget. Instead, they are aiming almost exclusively at entitlement programs. And their insistence on tax cuts for the wealthy belies their so-called concern for the deficit. They will only ADD further to that deficit!

But meanwhile, not one effort has been made toward creating new, good-paying jobs for the American worker.

Republicans are obsessed with power for the sake of having it. They don't really care about the average American. They have no agenda for that group. Conservatives USED to care about the well-being of all the people, but today they just want power to ensure that nothing is done by the government to endanger the ability of the very rich to make even more money. Everyone else can go to hell. That is why so many of them are lining up for a shot at winning the presidency next year. Once again, they will say or do anything to tarnish the current President just so they can recapture that office. But once again, they will fail, just as they did in 2008. By continually reaching out to only a small segment of the population, the very wealthy, they will again be failing to offer anything of substance for the majority of the country, so they will fail. Meanwhile, all the rest of us will be struggling, mainly the ever-shrinking middle class, the unemployed, and the growing amount of poor.

The Republican platform is a broken record of unrealistic and unfulfillable promises based on the dismally failed notion of trickle-down economics. Robert Reich had a piece a few days ago in his blog which stated the Republicans have not had a credible or workable new idea for more than 80 years. He was totally correct. The Reagan, Bush I and Bush II eras, the great conservative reign, all prove the fallacy of the trickle-down theory. All boats do NOT automatically rise with the tide of increased corporate profits and tax cuts for the rich. Instead, the flow has been trickling upward the entire time. It is now starting to gush.

So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record myself, I'll once again ask: Where the hell are the jobs, Mr. Boehner?

I will keep on asking, too!

THE MORNING AFTER

The great "bellwether" election of 2009 is over, and, regardless of how the Democratic or Republican Parties spin it, the end result was really a headache for both.


Yes, the Republicans recaptured the Virginia and New Jersey governorships, but they also lost a U.S. House seat they had held since before the Civil War. They will undoubtedly celebrate loudly and feed us a lot of ballyhoo about the election being a nationwide referendum against the Obama administration, but that is a load of hogwash, as voter exit poll surveys clearly showed. This was NOT a vote against Obama so much as a vote against an unpopular Democratic politician running a negative campaign in a state rife with corruption and unemployment (NJ), and a vote for a more personable candidate the public was warmer to than his detached, standoffish opponent (VA). Not only that, but BOTH states have had a long tendency of voting against the party holding the White House in gubernatorial elections.

And, no matter how they may try to spin it, the Palin-Bachmann-Limbaugh-Beck-Pawlenty far-right conservative anschluss of New York's 23rd Congressional District was an absolute failure. Yes, the far-right wingnut "base" attempt to oust a moderate Republican from the race succeeded, but they failed to win a majority of the voters in that heavily Republican and conservative district. Typically, off-year elections are dominated by out-of-power party enthusiasts rather than independents or average voters, so, actually, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman (a Glenn Beck protege) should have won that House seat. But no, wingnuts: you LOST. And the reason you lost is because you fielded an ideological carpetbagger in a blatant attempt to purge and upstage the moderate Republican candidate. Naturally, wild-eyed fools like Beck and Limbaugh will spin this as an example of what they'll call "RINO treachery" by moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozafava, who, upon being dumped by the far-right Hoffman, publicly endorsed the Democratic challenger Bill Owens, who ended up winning the election. In reality, the only treachery here was by these far, far-right wingnuts, whose views are NOT shared by the majority of the country, having grabbed nearly total control of the Republican Party and pushing moderate candidates out. This should serve as a giant warning to the Republican Party to purge these ultra-conservative fanatics, rather than moderates, from the party if they ever hope to win another national election. For with wingnuts at the helm, the GOP ship will certainly be smashed against the cliff going forward, and that should be a source of huge concern to every Republican!


The Democrats will revel in their New York win, but they should soberly take stock and realize that the victory would never have occurred without a Republican split. This win was NOT a resounding endorsement of their national performance or of President Obama's policies! For one thing, far too many progressive and Democratic voters stayed home. For another, just as Nancy Hanks predicted in her recent post over at The Hankster, the Republicans DID manage to peel off a few independent votes and this does not bode well for the President's or the progressive agenda in 2010. President Obama is not being perceived as a strong, effective, and decisive leader. His efforts at bipartisanship have hurt rather than helped him, for they have borne no fruit. Joblessness is still rising, and hurting people want ACTION---NOW! Many are starting to wonder why huge banks and auto companies got bailouts but the average citizen got very, very little in return. Conservative Republicans, aided by timid "Blue Dog" Democrats' (DINOs) inaction, are gaining some ground by spinning this disastrous Bush-bequeathed economy into "the Obama recession", and they won't let up. People have GOT to start seeing some big results from the Obama agenda, and that means he and his Democrats must begin to push and lead boldly rather than proceeding along with the "Republican Lite" methodology they have been using. That means JOBS programs - NOW - and passing meaningful health care reform WITH A STRONG PUBLIC OPTION - NOW! Democrats must UNITE and boldly enact legislation benefitting average people, as they did from 1933-1968, rather than playing the Republican game of cozying up to big business. And that also means getting a more people-oriented and fiery Senate Majority Leader than that wimpy Harry Reid, too!

This country elected Barack Obama one year ago for bold, decisive CHANGE on behalf of the people. He has managed to save the economy, but it is still very sick and ordinary peoples' lives are still negatively affected. If he wants to get anything major accomplished in this term, and to hold onto good Congressional majorities, he must rekindle his base and implement a progressive, for-the-people agenda and stop pussyfooting around with conservative Republicans!

WHAT THIS COUNTRY REALLY NEEDS...

Thomas R. Marshall, Vice President under President Woodrow Wilson, was a colorful and witty man, slightly irreverent at times. Once, while presiding over the Senate, a Kansas Republican Senator by the name of Joseph L. Bristow was babbling on and on (as Senators often do) about a long list of things he felt the country needed at that moment. As Bristow droned on, Vice President Marshall leaned over to some nearby law clerks and said, in a voice just loud enough to carry across the Senate floor, "what this country needs is a really good five cent cigar," which caused the chamber to erupt into laughter. I'm not sure if Marshall or Bristow ever got all they wanted back then, but I do know there are a number of things this country sorely needs today, and I have listed a good many of them below.

How about:

* MILLIONS OF GOOD-PAYING NEW JOBS HERE TO REPLACE THE MILLIONS OF GOOD-PAYING JOBS WHICH WERE SHIPPED OVERSEAS OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS? *

A really good $15 box seat at a Major League Baseball game, and a big, delicious $2 hot dog once you're there (instead of the 3-5 times that price we're paying now)?

* Sarah Palin to get a new, better-looking hairstyle and go, along with her entire family, into a deep freeze?

* ALL OUR MEN AND WOMEN TO COME HOME FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN?

* Saltine crackers that can be snapped, like they used to be able to be, without crumbling into fragments the moment you pick them up?

* COMPLETE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE FOR ALL CITIZENS AT A RATE THAT DOESN'T BANKRUPT THEM?

* The rich to get poorer, and the poor and middle class to get richer?


* Fox "News" to go out of business and off the air (or at least to stop distorting and exaggerating, and start telling the truth)?

* Gas at $2 per gallon where it belongs, and no higher?

* Al Qaeda, fundamentalist Muslims, and fundamentalist Christians to crawl out of the Dark Ages and into this 21st Century?

* Corporations to stop buying out individual Congresspersons?

* Republicans to grow a heart and stop thinking only of themselves and big business?

* Hour-long TV shows with only 10 minutes commercial time per hour (like it was many years ago)?

* DICK CHENEY GOING ON TRIAL FOR WAR CRIMES?

* An outstandingly tender and delicious $20 steak dinner with mashed potatoes, gravy, and veggie or salad (and I'm not talking dried-out surloin, either!)?


* Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck all getting permanent laryngitis?

* Automobiles routinely averaging at least 50 mpg highway and 35 mpg city (and I'm not talking about little lightweight tin cans, either!)?

* An outstanding $2 bottle of beer?


I'm sure all the rest of you can mimic old Senator Bristow and come up with a number of other suggestions as to what this country needs right now. How about it, readers?

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises proclaim their neutrality."
- Dante -

Workers, consumers, and voters, unite!

This is indeed a time of great moral and economic crisis. Bankers and large multinational corporations are sitting on their money, doing nothing, and their conservative Republican allies in Congress are aiding and abetting them as growing millions of their fellow citizens are thrown out of work. You can always count on these conservative Republicans to let you down when the chips are down. With their hearts in ice, and their ostritch heads stuck firmly in the sands of unyielding principle, they refuse to budge to meet the crisis at hand. In this case, the principle immobilizing them is the belief that the federal government should not step in with extra and massive emergency spending for people to create work. Instead, they stand as stubborn mules solidly in support of more tax cuts for big business, even though that tired approach has yielded very little for most Americans over the past three decades. Today's conservative Republicans are once more standing in the way of progress for ordinary people, just as they did from 1929-1933 during the Great Depression, and again in the 1950s-1960s when many of them opposed federal enforcement of civil rights legislation. They were out of touch and wrong then, and they are equally out of touch and wrong today.

Many years ago, the conservative Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think-tank whose economic ideas heavily influenced Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and, to a lesser degree, Democrat Bill Clinton, strongly advocated the concept of free trade. They predicted it would, "over a fifteen year time span, create the world's largest market, some 360 million people." They also predicted that free trade agreements like NAFTA would guarantee American workers to be the most competitive in the world. The assumption was that, through our purchase of cheaper foreign-made goods, prices here would be much lower and foreign consumers would be able to afford and buy increasing amounts of technologically advanced American-made products, causing further job growth here. But the Heritage Foundation and its adherents were wrong. Dead wrong. Since 2001, when the export of high-paying American manufacturing jobs to cheap foreign labor markets really began to escalate, the Washington Post estimates we have lost 2.5 MILLION factory jobs here, 1 MILLION of them from NAFTA alone! Such a rapid and widespread drain of jobs and even entire plants from within our borders has proven disastrous.

I am not a protectionist. Trade with other countries is essential in keeping peace, providing prosperity, and promoting understanding, when done properly. But such trade must be fair and equally beneficial. Post-World War II European history proves this. Before that time, dating back many hundreds of years, Europe had been a group of disunified nation-states often feuding and warring with each other. There were wide variations in standard of living. Over the years, as a result of increased trade fostered through associations like the Common Market and, later, the European Union, Europe has become more multilaterally prosperous and has been largely at peace for nearly 65 years. But this scenario cannot be achieved through the flawed or one-sided trade agreements like our government has negotiated with China or set up with NAFTA and other similar deals over the past decade. For example, according to the Economic Policy Institute, our trade deficit with Mexico and Canada stood at $9 billion in 1993. That figure grew to $112 billion by 2004 and is even higher today. American unemployment has shot up dramatically, and wages have stagnated or fallen. The only real major beneficiaries of these failed trade agreements have been a handful of corporate executives both here and abroad, and some of the foreign governments involved. American workers (and our economy) have been badly hurt, and the lot of foreign workers, most of whom are paid a pittance, has only improved marginally overall. This is not progress; it is regression.

George W. Bush and many rabid Republican free market, free trade advocates like Phil Gramm, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Dick Armey, Mitch McConnell, and many more of that for-the-rich-only squad, also promised us that massive tax cuts for the wealthy and huge corporations would foster tremendous investment in new American industry and lead to the creation of millions of high-paying new jobs here. The current Republican congressional caucus still makes these claims. From John McCain to Mike Pence, from Richard Shelby to John Boehner, we all hear this chorus of nonsense about how cutting taxes is the only way to create new jobs. The Wall Street Journal and Chamber of Commerce crowd all join in harmony. But guess again, boys---it doesn't happen that way anymore. According to an August 4, 2006 CATO Institute report, in 2001 Bush and his Republican cohorts gave American corporations tax cuts ranging from 3-5%. In 2002, corporations were allowed to write off 30% of the cost of new equipment, and this figure was later raised to 50%. In a March, 2007 report issued by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the 2001 and 2003 Bush/neocon Republican income tax cuts gave an after-tax income increase of 6.8% to the upper 1% of income earners, and 4.6% to the top 20% of income earners. (By contrast, the lowest 20% of income earners only got o.5%). With many billions of dollars freed for corporations and for billionaires and millionaires alike, where was the resultant investment and job creation? Easy: In China, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and other countries. Not here. And we were forced to then BUY products made in those countries as a result of our own manufacturing being shipped there, an added insult to our injury!

I am not at all against good profit, or the honest attainment of individual wealth. I am glad our system has produced great prosperity and millionaires and billionaires over time. But I strongly object to collusion between concentrated capital and our government to vastly increase the wealth of already wealthy individuals while leaving eceryone else to fend for themselves. I detest the fact that concentrated capital and its Republican government stooges have, in effect, misled and lied to voters and economically held down the many for the overwhelming enrichment of only a few.

So, BANKERS, CORPORATE CEOs, REPUBLICANS, BILLIONAIRES, and MILLIONAIRES, it is now 2009 and your country is in grave need. After billions and billions of increased income through corporate tax cuts since 2001, and billions and billions in individual income tax reductions, and billions and billions in increased profit you have obtained by slashing your labor costs through the production of your goods in cheap foreign labor markets, and with millions of American consumers and workers now out of work, WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING ON YOUR MONEY? Where the hell are all the millions of high-paying American jobs you promised would be created here? Were they just part of a big lie you told voters so you could get what you wanted and stuff your wallets at our expense? Will you wait until we once again have long breadlines and soup kitchens and riots in the streets before you act? I repeat, billionaires and millionaires, and especially you free market, free trade Republicans, and I do so for all of us voters, workers, and consumers (and THIS time, we want an HONEST answer): WHERE ARE THE JOBS?