Sunday, July 17, 2011

Which Republican Party Do You Support?

by David Glenn Cox

Political confusion flags by zardoyas
We all want to live in a better world and we all want to lead a better life. Governments and political systems are established to provide an opportunity for the people to obtain this better world and this life. When government fails to do so, it then becomes time to look again and to reevaluate what is correct and what is incorrect in that government. 

Governments are servants of the people and when they fail to provide for the people they are intended to serve, then, they should be fired. We can label or pigeon hole governments as free or independent or Capitalist or Communist or any label in between. The Chinese operate under what is called "Two systems one China policy," A one party Communist dictatorship with a Capitalist economic system. Saudi Arabia is ruled by a king with a council of ministers, in Great Britain each new Prime minister presents the new government for the sovereign's approval, but it is merely ceremonial. In Saudi Arabia the king is all powerful and it is the ministers who are ceremonial.

On paper governments can be called whatever they desire to be called, but that doesn't make it so. The former Soviet Union was called a Socialist Republic, a one party state with a managed economy, when it was in fact, a paranoid totalitarian state that never survived its own revolution. Living under the Stalinist adage, "you are loyal Comrade but are you loyal enough?" Everyone from commissars to street car conductors lived in fear of the state. No one actually thought of the state as benevolent or kindly and yet the trains ran and the crops were harvested. All was not perfect and all was not lousy.

Governments hide their intentions and cloak their true aspirations; Barack Obama's so called health care reform was in fact health insurance reform. It was sold to the public as offering more coverage when it was actually a means to stifle hospital bill defaults by forcing customers to buy what they couldn't actually afford in the first place.


Opponents of the program sold the idea to the public that this was Socialism, that big government was taking over health care, but why? Why were Republican members of Congress so vehemently opposed to a program lobbied for by the hospital associations? Was it a question of status quo, did they fear doctors would receive lower payments? Would the big drug companies be forced to lower costs?

All of these were factors but it was also important for the Republicans in Congress to deny the new President a political victory. It was more important to scuttle the new administration than to actually do anything constructive. Did the Republicans go to the media and expose this health care reform as a swindle for poor Americans or exclaim to them that it would only exacerbate the problems? No, the Republicans went to the public prepared to scare them. 

Death panels and end of life conferences, while all but a few Democrats kept their mouths shut tight and refrained from telling the public that this Democratic President's vision of health care reform was far worse and far less generous and much the same as Richard Nixon's managed health care reform package. More expensive, less effective, a health care reform package that was said to be all inclusive, solving all America's health care needs when it didn't even include 9/11 responders. It was a hodge podge, a mish mash designed to hide a special interest group gaining an advantage in the market place.

This President was selling sh*t for Shinola and the Republican's only answer was that it was the wrong color brown. Neither party was interested in telling the public the truth and neither party had the best interests of the public at heart, both sides where protecting their special interest crony's while trying to score style points. The Republicans selling the public a myth of Socialism, yet Socialism would have covered everyone. Socialism would have eliminated private insurance companies entirely. Yet, Socialism was not even offered a seat at the table because it would have taken money from the pockets of the special interest groups that both parties in Congress were busy trying to protect.

Free trade has decimated this country's domestic economy, weakened its industrial base, and swelled its trade deficit while lowering the standard of living for hundreds of millions of Americans. The board game Monopoly is instructive; imagine the houses and hotels for your game are purchased from another game across the room where they cost only 10 percent of what they cost in your game. The money leaves your game and cannot be replaced, the banker makes a profit selling the houses and hotels back to you but soon there isn't any money left on your table and everyone goes broke, except of course, the banker.

In this country, we wake up on the first of each month with a forty, fifty or sixty billion dollar trade deficit. The bulk of that money is gone, the profit from buying third world and selling first world is accrued in the hands of the very few. This country is literally bleeding to death and so the government must expand the money supply, adding plasma to hide the loss of whole blood. Does government do this simply to aid the populace or just to keep the swindle operating? Banks expand the money supply even further with credit cards and debit cards and easy credit terms but not to aid anyone but themselves. Their goal is to disguise the disappearing money supply.

Since the collapse of America's economy the Federal Reserve has been lending money to member banks for as low as one tenth of one percent interest. One million dollars borrowed for $1,000 interest, the Fed is lending to the banks at more than $30,000 below the cost of the treasury bills printed plus ten years interest owed. Not one member of Congress has so much as made a peep about this wholesale robbery of the American Treasury. 

Barack Obama then appointed his cat food commission to lay out a path towards deficit reduction, a commission loaded to the rafters with opponents of Social Security and Medicare. The committee's plan was filled with ideas right out of John McCain's 2008 Republican National platform. Despite the fact that the Cat food commission report did not receive enough votes to pass through its own committee, Barack Obama declares it a good starting point for budget negotiations. 

It smacks of a foregone conclusion, a sham, a who do and a fraud. Not a word about reigning bankers in or redirecting some of these funds towards a legitimate jobs program. No, instead the President says that budget negotiations must be tackled before any jobs program. This after Obama said that in these negotiations "he will probably irritate many in his own party," I feel certain that Benedict Arnold would have said the same thing.

Bill Clinton's last budget called for $371 billion spent on defense, George W. Bush's last defense budget was $771 billion. Then we elected Mr. Obama because we all wanted hope and change, and his defense budget for this year calls for spending $813 billion plus all the extras, of course, the little off budget goodies. The numbers are so hazy and smoky that no mortal man can total it all up. A tripling of this government's defense budget in the space of twelve years, fighting perpetual wars of aggression for defense of empire.

From the CIA factbook, "Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. The war in March-April 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq, and the subsequent occupation of Iraq, required major shifts in national resources to the military."

Obama's position? Cut social spending, while reauthorizing the three trillion dollar Bush tax cuts for America's wealthy, oh wait, not the wealthy, what Obama calls the middle class. Any carpenters or tradesmen out there making five thousand dollars per week? The Republican's demand, no new taxes but they shouldn't worry because Barack Obama has cut more taxes for American business than even the patron saint of Republicanism Ronald Reagan. Obama recently proposed cutting lease rates for oil companies on federal lands, wasn't that nice of him? A time of national budget crisis and he wants to cut the rates the world's wealthiest corporations pay for your national resources.

So another Presidential election is in the offing, Barack Obama versus Michele Bachmann or Tim Pawlenty or Sarah Palin? Really? This is what is considered a genuine two party political system? Why not Carrot Top, Pee wee Herman and Gilbert Godfrey?

This is a clown show, masquerading as a political system, the powers that be want Barack Obama reelected and so they stack the deck until the sane are forced to vote for Obama. Yet that isn't a viable option either, it becomes a question of which Republican Party do you support? The extremist, insane Republican Party or the regular Republican party of madness, loony tunes and tea baggers? That isn't a political system at all, a choice between Candidate A. and candidate A-.

A sitting corporatist, right wing Obama, the Trojan horse with no plans to deal with unemployment other than to offer more tax cuts. Satisfied with playing checkers with America's military forces with no end of war in sight, Obama whose plan to fight foreclosure is maybe if we ignore it, then perhaps it will go away. Climate bills? Dead! Labor bills? Dead! Barack Obama that nice man behind the smiling face and soothing voice, Obama the leader of the other Republican Party. Under the administration of Barack Obama the Federal government of the United States is in open conflict with the elderly, the poor, the working class, the sick, the student, the child, the unemployed and the about to be unemployed. Corporate America and their government versus the rest of us.

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves"
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." 
Winston Churchill

"Hence, I have no compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."
Malcolm X

The only obvious difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush is being told that you're about to be fucked in complete sentences with a nice warm smile.

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