The Republicans have stonewalled the president and the Democrats at every attempt to improve the present unacceptable condition of the United States of America. The country is nowhere near full employment, poverty is rising, the rich are growing richer, the middle class is experiencing a loss of wealth, retirement is becoming an impossible dream, and a watered-down but still necessary version of a universal healthcare law is being challenged by Republicans who don't need one themselves, and don't care for those who do.
And therein lies the treason.
The Republicans' motive for tearing down initiatives that can only improve their country is greed, as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman writes in his book, End This Depression Now (the book). It's not enough that most of them are in the privileged top 1% of Americans or that their friends are. They want to put more distance between themselves and the other 99% by cutting aid to the poor and unemployed, and by cutting taxes to the rich. Growing income inequality in the United States is a fundamental problem and the Republicans are working like the devil to increase it!
As the Republicans have eroded public education they have preyed on the ill-educated with their professed faith in God and Jesus Christ yet, I ask, is this how Christians treat one another? And they have obfuscated the masses with their messages about protection of American jobs in the coal industry rather than supporting policies to counteract climate change which is already intensifying storm damage, droughts and wildfires across the United States. Is this leadership?
Republicans took the nation to the edge of a cliff last summer when they refused to allow expansion of the debt ceiling. Why? To supposedly make a point that "fiscal responsibility" is the right way to make America better again. First, fiscal responsibility during a depression, as Krugman states in his book, means increasing federal spending to aid unemployed Americans, to aid underwater homeowners, to aid ailing states, counties and municipalities, to support health, education and welfare programs (rather than cut them when they are most needed). That's what it means to be fiscally responsible when times are tough. Second, if Republicans truly want to rein in federal debt then why object to ending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, the ones who don't need tax cuts? Why? Because of their greed.
Republicans support less regulation and oversight of banks and tax cheaters, as this New York Times editorial explains today (Gut the regulators).
And if you want to really stack the deck in your favour, you appoint Republicans to the Supreme Court to vote in favour of your political ideology, even if it dismembers the pillars of a fair and more equal society. That's what George W. Bush did for America, among other things.
If you feign your support of Christianity, if you make it harder for the masses to get an education, if you baffle them with bullshit and pretend to support job creation, you can regain control of all three branches of government and do pretty much what you want. And just in case someone challenges what you want in court, you make sure the highest court in the land is a Republican one. That is the Republican agenda of 2012, my friends.
If you feign your support of Christianity, if you make it harder for the masses to get an education, if you baffle them with bullshit and pretend to support job creation, you can regain control of all three branches of government and do pretty much what you want. And just in case someone challenges what you want in court, you make sure the highest court in the land is a Republican one. That is the Republican agenda of 2012, my friends.
Republicans used to get that what was good for America was also good for them. The only catch was that it would take time, generations perhaps, for the full manifestation of that approach. Today's Republicans only care about what's good for them now. They couldn't give a crap about the future. So, the rest of the country can be damned.
