Democrats and Republicans Each Fail in Specific Ways
Republican failure will come from being on the wrong side of history and that’s a catch-phrase for restricting voter-access, attitudes toward white supremacy, narrowing women’s access to abortion and questioning the election of our current president. That’s a pretty broad list, and far from comprehensive, but will do for now. Democrats fail because they can never agree with one another, witness Joe Manchin and a number of other ‘conservative’ Democrats. That particular failure, which I think is a politically positive philosophy in thoughtful surroundings, has kept Republicans in the driver’s seat no matter who controlled the three branches of government.
Will Rogers nailed it nearly a hundred years ago: “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Not much has changed, Will.
Plenty of rhetoric, but only Democrats have solutions
America needs jobs and has shown ample evidence that those jobs will only be taken at good wages with adequate benefits. Where are those jobs? The answer is every aspect of the Green New Deal. Good union-wage jobs installing American made solar, re-thinking and re-building the electric grid, going after a creaking infrastructure and making community colleges free. None of this can be done in China. It’s an all-American show and because it’s government funded, the contracts can specify union wages and benefits.
What’s not to like?
For starters, there’s nothing there for Republicans. So, they’ll cry 'deficit spending and runaway inflation,' even though the federal deficit rose most steeply under Republican leadership.
"Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump got it back to a trillion."
But I’ve written before about the two kinds of spending: asset-based and wishful-thinking based.
Wishful-thinking based spending includes tax cuts (a cut in revenue is essentially an increase in spending), military industrial (52% of our budget to lose wars), farm subsidies, oil exploration subsidies and a whole bundle of poverty subsidies that would be unnecessary with a decent minimum wage.
That spending is gone with the wind and returns nothing.
Asset based spending includes building schools and infrastructure, environmental repairs such as clean air and water, transportation such as inner-city rail and high-speed trains, along with reducing the costs of university education. If it cared to, America could go 100% solar, wind and thermal in five years.
That spending leaves a product behind that has value. It’s estimated that Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System returned three bucks for every dollar invested in the first years after completion. Renewable energy would reduce the costs of heating, cooling and industrial power by 80%
We can do it if special interests get out of the way
They won’t get out of the way voluntarily, as the past half-century has proven. It’s going to take demonstrations at both the national and state level. But the fruits of winning are the very survival of mankind.
If you think that’s hyperbole, look around you as fresh-water aquifers disappear, wildfires destroy the west and the balance of the country falls victim to floods, tornadoes and hurricanes.
We can do whatever we choose to do. Black Lives Matter and the Me-Too movement were the proof of that, and I’m stunned at how they changed minds on racism, police brutality and sexual misconduct. Those were (and are) not small matters. Is our economic, social, or environmental and physical well-being of any lesser importance?
I think not. I hope you think not as well
We must have huge demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court when they strip the guts out of the Voting Rights Act, open the floodgates of corporate money in politics or allow abortion restrictions in Texas. There are consequences to these rulings that make all lives less free. When the House and Senate argue that we cannot afford $3.5 trillion to save our precious nation, how dare they say that, having wasted $10 trillion trying to nation-build in an area of the world we don’t even begin to understand. That kind of paralyzed thinking proves that they no longer understand or value our own nation and its needs.
Throw the bastards out. They don’t deserve our confidence. I would rather be represented by citizens grabbed off the street instead of these smug, greedy ass-licking losers in ill-fitting toupees. Preferably, those citizens would be among the working poor or homeless—men and women who understand what a helping hand means.
Getting back to the debt issue
We can print the money to build assets. We borrow it from no one and owe it to ourselves rather than China or investors in government bonds. We have a choice. Either take our country back from these criminals or stand helpless as they pillage and rape their way into a dystopian American future.
Mark Twain warned us about congressmen…
...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.
Image Credit: The Atlantic