Archive for John Boehner

The Twenty Four Billion Dollar Fiasco!

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , on October 17, 2013 by playthell
Boehner John Republican Caucus Boehner’s Republican Caucus is a Hot Mess

 The Cost of Governing by Crisis

Although the nation narrowly averted a catastrophe last night when the Congress passed a bill to end the federal government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, thereby saving the nation from financial ruin, it was a very costly fiasco.  The credit rating agency Standard and Poors have calculated the cost of the government shutdown and near default; we lost 24 billion dollars out of the American economy and reduced economic growth by one percent!   This money could have been put to use refurbishing the US infrastructure, or providing research funds for President Obama’s alternative energy project, or much needed improvements to the nation’s schools, to name a few.

It is doubtful whether the Tea Party fanatics will be chastened by this boondoggle.  If the comments of Texas Senator Ted Cruse – a shameless, reckless, charlatan – is any indication these arrogant ignorant churls have learned nothing.  Hence we will be confronted with a similar Scenario shortly after the New Year begins, since this budgetary fix only extends to February.  A lot can happen to alter the picture by then, but the way it looks right now we are headed back into the same quagmire from which we barely escaped.

Despite the fact that President Obama confidently assured us this kind of crisis would not happen in the future at the conclusion of his press conference announcing the end of the present dust up with the Grand obstructionist Party, events may prove his assessment a bit too optimistic.  Trying to reason with these people is like attempting to negotiate with suicide bombers, because in their twisted minds there is no positive role for government to play beyond police functions and the maintaining the military.

It is a backward view of the role of government that can only impress anarchists and numb skulls. If we look at the anti-government fanatics in the GOP we find an abundance of impassioned but clueless ideologues, and among these are people who are convinced that life will be just fine without a well-functioning government. It is a puzzling phenomenon, especially if you have flown across this country from coast to coast as I just did twice.

From my window seat I marveled at the size and complexity of this great nation: the many miles of highways, the railroads, the great cities and suburbs, the forest and rivers, the towns high in the mountains, the enormous amounts energy required to fuel this massive economy, the millions of gas guzzling cars and trucks, the many farms required to feed this nation, the massive factories that dot the landscape, etc.  It takes a special species of fool not to recognize that such a vast continental nation needs a massive federal government to manage its affairs.

One needs only look at the chaos in the little agrarian nation of Somali in order to recognize the importance of a strong central government.  And I suggest that those Republicans who wish to live in a country with no government should emigrate there, just as Somalis who wish to live in a country with a strong government routinely immigrate here.  But the truth is that all these people love government when they benefit from it by getting funding for their pet projects.  None of them are willing to lead a fight to close a military base in their district, or to end farm subsidies if they are from an agricultural state.   and none dare mention reducing social security, veterans or Medicare benefits.

The best example of this hypocrisy is the “sweetener” in the bill just cobbled together by Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell.  Even as old Mitch was making an emotional speech against government spending he had attached a multi-billion dollar allocation for his state – an act of shameful duplicity.  Yet it serves to demonstrate the indispensable role of federal funding to the well-being of the states and exposes the folly of the anti-government rhetoric and actions of the political incompetents in Grand Obstructionist Party.

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s early show Morning Joe and the model of a “reasonable,” Republican, seemed genuinely shocked to learn that the bi-partisan bill hammered out by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that saved the nation from default, and the myriad calamities that would have spawned, contains a 2.5 billion dollar allocation for a river dam’s project in Kentucky.

The fact that this project is located in McConnell’s home state raises eyebrows among observers of Republican politics, and the hackles of Republican politicians who just shut down the federal government in a protest against government spending.  Already McConnell’s adversaries in the Tea Party are sharpening their axes in preparation for his beheading, and it serves the hypocritical rascal right!

A Scurrilous Scoundrel
Mitch McConnell

Caught with his hand in the Pork Barrel!

 
 Playthell G. Benjamin
Harlem, New York
October 17, 2013

Who Won in the Cliff Deal?

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , , , on January 3, 2013 by playthell

             Barack After the Cliff Deal - January 2, 2013

President Obama comments on the Art of the deal

 A victory for the political process and the American people

As is to be expected from hard core ideologues on both sides, the deal hammered out by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to prevent the nation from going over the fiscal cliff and smashing the fragile economic recovery on the rocks of uncertainty is being vociferously denounced and condemned as a sellout.  For instance right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is a psychiatrist, called the deal “a complete surrender” on the part of Congressional Republicans.

Since Dr. Krauthammer has long struck me as a man desperately in need of his own services – as in “doctor heal thyself” – it does not surprise me that he would say something crazy. Yet his views are echoed throughout the Tea Party crowd that voted against the deal.  And the response from the left echoes the hysteria on the right.

For instance Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, declared “no deal is better than the one currently on the table.” And Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan based Democrat called the deal a “tremendous victory for Republicans.”   Obviously the naysayers do not fully grasp the nature of compromise, which requires one to give up some cherished goal in order to get the other side to agree to something else you want.

It also means that you don’t always get to choose what you will have to give up; often it is demanded as a concession by the opposition in exchange for ceding something you want from them.  That’s how the game goes.  Neither side can get their way so you negotiate the best deal you can.

That’s how a functioning government works in a system with a threefold division of power where each branch of government serves to check and balance the power of the other.  The American government was designed this way because the architects of the US constitution was determined to prevent the rise of tyrannical rulers such as existed in Europe, with their doctrine of “The Divine Rights of Kings.”

That’s why they specified that those who govern must have the consent of the governed.  That’s also why they wisely placed the military under the control of civilians who are elected by the people, and it has prevented the rise of a military caste that can take over state power.  However they left us with a solution to the problem of gridlock: vote for one party to control the presidency and the Congress.

This will insure that big things will get done.  But so long as we have political parties that are ideologically disparate in their vision of the role of government, we will have these bitter partisan conflicts that threaten to paralyze the critical work of governing this complex nation.  Hence despite its ignoble beginnings in a racist, sexist, genocidal, slave holding republic it remains a good system for self-government…maybe the best in the world.

Although neither side got everything they wanted in the fiscal negotiations, they managed to come to an agreement that steered the nation away from financial disaster while realizing some of their goals.  The Republican goals were simple: prevent raising taxes on the rich while slashing benefits for the poor and middle-classes.

Since cutting entitlements that the majority of Americans have come to rely on is unpopular, the Republicans pander to the prejudices of the electorate by promoting anti-gay and immigrant policies, cultivating fear of “big government” and foreign enemies, and stoking the racist prejudices and fears of working class whites.

While this proved to be a losing strategy in the presidential elections, it is still an effective strategy in certain congressional districts that elected far right Tea Party types who support economic policies that are against their interests.  And it is these recalcitrant ideologues that have rendered the Republican controlled House dysfunctional and reduced John Boehner from the Speaker to the Weeper of the House.

Unable to control his caucus Boehner had to pass the baton to Mitch McConnell to hammer out a deal with Vice-President Biden in the Senate and then pass the Bill down to the House for a vote.  It was an ass backward process that has reduced him to a figure of ridicule among political pundits around the world, and will guarantee him the contempt of future historians – especially when his leadership is compared to the brilliant leadership of Nancy Pelosi who preceded him in office.

Under Speaker Pelosi we got historic legislation that saved the American economy from collapse and set the nation upon a path of reconstruction and reform that will benefit the American people for generations.  On the other hand, the 112th Congress under John Boehner’s leadership is one of the least productive in history.  It is the epitome of what President Truman called a “do nothing Congress!”  In order to understand just how bad this Congress is one need only compare its legislative record with that of the 80 Congress that Truman was referring to.  The 80th Congress passed 900 bills, while the 112 Congress has passed less than a third of that number!

When we consider the fact that the Republican majority has voted 33 times to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, with the same predictable result, while neglecting to even deal with critical legislation appropriating funds to create massive public works projects devoted to reconstructing infrastructure that is critical to our economic revival, it is reasonable to conclude that these Congressman,  and those who elect them to office, are the political equivalent of the inmates taking over the asylum.  This is why some historians are already calling the 112 “the worst Congress in history.”

In terms of who won and who lost in the deal it’s a mixed bag.  Clearly the rich won by getting a 200,000 dollars exemption above the President’s original proposal to raise taxes on all income over $250, 000. And they also gained on inheritance tax rate.  The President was forced to concede these things in exchange for extending unemployment benefits to 2 million Americans suffering long term unemployment; it also preserved the earned Income Tax Credit for low wage workers, as well as preventing a tax hike on 98% of taxpayers and extended the college tuition credit.

The President also saved the Alternative Minimum Tax, maintained the payment structure for doctors who serve Medicare patients and kept the farm subsidies which prevented a sudden and dramatic rise in the price of milk.  The compromise prevented the drastic cuts to important government programs, including the military, if the automatic cuts had kicked in.

When all things are considered the objective observer must see outcome as a win for the President…especially when we consider the fact that he forced many Republicans to break their pledge to never vote for a tax hike.  And he achieved this without cutting a single dime from the bedrock entitlement programs that workers, led by the unions, struggled so hard to achieve in the twentieth century.

These programs dramatically raised the living standards of all working people in this country…including some lower management types.  However the appropriate response to this victory is a “whew!” we just avoided going over the cliff and began preparing for the even nastier and more dangerous battles over fiscal policy that lay just down the road.

Judging from the howls emanating from the Grand Obstructionist Party’s firebrands it’s gonna be a bloody mess that might yet result in economic disaster as we face the Debt Ceiling and the Sequestration law.  Although this compromise may enrage the ideologues at both ends of the political spectrum – like the idiots who still argue that the President should have gone over the cliff – it is a victory for the American people and a vindication for the political process.

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Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem New York

Janurary 3, 2013

Is this the Worst Congress Ever?

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , , , , , on July 30, 2012 by playthell

The Weeper of the House

 On The Quintessential Do Nothing Congress!

As the economic crisis lingers on and threatens to get worse, the US Congress looks more and more like Jack the Bear: makin tracks bit getting nowhere.  There is no better illustration of this than yesterday’s  legislative deliberations in both houses.  The Senate, which has a Democratic majority, was finally able to pass a tax bill without Republican opposition; but it was meaningless because the Constitution requires all revenue bills to originate in the House.

Alas, the House was tied up all day in a heated debate about a typographical  error in a bill, although everybody conceded it was an error.  If Harry Truman could win a second term running against a “do-nothing” Republican Congress in the 1940’s, running against the present Congress should be a walk in the park for President Obama.

After all, the Congress Truman ran against passed 90 bills, the present Congress has passed only 100 bills since the 2010 election!  It is hard to recall a Congress as unpopular as 112th Congress.  In fact, it is hard to find a dreaded public event that was more detested.

For instance, Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado has compiled a chart which shows that this Congress is the most unpopular in history!  With a shameful 5% public approval rate congress is more unpopular than British Petroleum was during the worse days of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is more unpopular than Sugar Willie Clinton, after we learned that White House intern Monica Lewinsky was polishing his knob in the Oval Office.  It is more unpopular than Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal; less popular than the banks during the recent crash; less popular than the IRS and President Chavez of Venezuela. This Congress is even more unpopular than Communism!

Although the average American may be mad at the Congress in general; it is the Republicans who are the stumbling block preventing the Democrats from going about the people’s business they were elected to address.  And the crux of the problem is located in the Tea Party controlled House Of Representatives, who confuse compromise with capitulation. Yet our two party system and three fold division of governmental power is designed for comprise…it cannot work otherwise!

Thus the Republicans have well earned the title GOP: “Grand Obstructionists Party!”   The fact that the American public does not understand the distinction between the roles the two parties are  playing in our politics is an indictment of the major American media.  Overrun by verbose airheads, the profit driven corporate owned broadcast media sounds like a tower of Babel to the average voter; it often confuses more than it enlightens.

The highly respected Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein – who have  just completed the most thorough study to date on how the Congress operates titled “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks” – have called the media “unindicted co-conspirators – in confusing the reasons for the present dysfunction in the US Congress.

Instead of clarifying who done what, the general lot of media commentators make it appear that both parties are equally to blame for the protracted fiasco that has paralyzed the 112th Congress.  There is no ambiguity in the minds of Mann and Orenstein who the guilty party is.  Like all good investigators they just follow the evidence.

Although Thomas Mann and Norm Orenstein are funded by think tanks with disparate ideological orientations – the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute – they both agree that the gridlock in Congress is due to the actions of intransigent right-wing Republican ideologues that are committed to insuring the failure of the Obama presidency.  And they show how the GOP is willing to damage the public interests to do it…like the way they forced the US to a near default and caused the nation’s credit rating to go down for the first time in our history.

Norm Orenstein says this is the most dysfunctional Congress that he has witnessed in the 40 years that he has been studying them.  And he views the fact that so many Americans are unsure which party to blame as the crux of our problem –an observation that echoes Tom Jefferson’s warning about the dangers of an ignorant electorate.

In such circumstances voters often decide to just throw the majority party out – and since the Democrats control the Senate and the White House they are in danger of getting the axe even though the Republicans are the guilty party.  Hence as bad as things are now: They could get far worse!

GOP Congressman Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan
 

Social Darwinist Leaders of the Republican Obstructionists

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Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

July 30, 2012

Blues For The Weeper

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , , on July 20, 2011 by playthell

 

 Man on a Hot Seat

 

John Boehner Can’t Deliver His Caucus and Chaos May Follow

Like Beckett, who rose from the King’s butler to the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Boehner, a small town boy from Ohio who became Speaker of the House of Representatives, must reject the call of his benefactors and rise to the demands of his high office. In the case of Beckett that meant serving God and placing the interests of the Church above the King.  In Speaker Boehner’s case it means putting the interests of the American people and the welfare of our nation above the partisan concerns of the Grand Obstructionist Party.   Unless he is every inch the soulless dullard that he appears to be, John Boehner must now be torn between his loyalty to the radical budget agenda of his party and saving our nation from economic collapse.

Republicans are beginning to look more and more like the Communist Party of Russia, whose official ideologist at the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse said they had chosen ideology over reality.  One need only listen to the rhetoric of Republican Congressman to recognize that they are clearly choosing fealty to their anti-tax trickle down economic dogma over the clear and present danger of destroying the “full faith and credit” of the US government.  Having signed the pledge authored by the anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist as the price of their office, they now seem determined to remain true to this pledge no matter what. This is especially so for the eighty-five freshman in Congress who owe their existence to the ultra-reactionary “Tea Party” faction.

In their blind ambition to regain control of the House, the Republican establishment made a Faustian Bargain with these self styled right-wing anti-government fanatics.  Pugnacious paranoid and economically illiterate, they seem convinced that the dire predictions of economic apocalypse, should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling, is nothing more than a self serving fiction conjured up by a lying President and his puppet who runs the treasury department.   John Boehner knows better.

Considering his tears at the time of his elevation we know that Boehner also understands the gravitas of his office, and he is aware that history will judge his performance against every House speaker who preceded him and those who will follow. His immediate Predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, may be the best ever…and who knows what the future will bring.  For this reason Boehner wants to make a deal on the budget but may not be able to deliver the votes due to the Tea Party faction, some of whom seem to believe that a US default will be a dream come true because it will finally put an end to government spending and force a radical restructuring of the social safety net.

In justifying their reckless decision to force the nation into default, these iconoclasts claim the legacy of Ronald Reagan as their guide, exposing the fact that they are as ignorant of history as economics.  Ronald Reagan raised the budget ceiling 18 times and severely castigated the recalcitrant Republicans in Congress.  He warned of the economic chaos that would result from a US government default and wrote in his diary that he had threatened to veto every piece of legislation that congress put on his desk if they didn’t give him a “clean” bill to raise the debt ceiling!   Hence their evocation of the legacy of Reagan to justify their self-destructive behavior is as bogus as their economic philosophy.

Political Scientist have long argued that a people will eventually get the government they deserve, this is especially true in a participatory democracy like the US.  The Democrats must stand firm and reject the House vote, handing the speaker a humiliating defeat.  This will foil the reactionary agenda of the GOP, and if default is the result it will teach Americans that putting people who hate government in charge of governing is dangerous folly!   Should this come to pass it will be tragic for the nation, suicide for the Republicans and crying time for the Weeper of the House.

 Ronald Reagan

A highly skilled politician, Reagan would be appalled at the Tea Party fanatics

 

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 Playthell  Benjamin

Harlem, New York

 July 20, 2011

 

Man on a Tight Rope!

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , , , on April 7, 2011 by playthell

Headed for a Shutdown?

John Boehner is a caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.  He knows that should the intransigence of the Republican majority in the house cause a shutdown of the government on Friday it will be widely viewed as evidence that the majority leader can’t control his caucus.   He can also take no comfort from his knowledge of the fate that befell Newt Gingrich, the last Republican leader who caused a shutdown of the Federal Government and virtually assured the reelection of Bill Clinton.  Beyond these unpleasant facts there is the very real possibility that the majority of the electorate will finally conclude that the Republicans simply cannot govern because they hate government. That is certainly my position; I have been arguing this for some time. Hence I believe that, being the sober political horse trader that he is in his heart of hearts, Speaker Boehner wants to make a deal as desperately as a drowning man wants a lifeline.

Alas, as I have noted elsewhere, the Republicans struck a Faustian bargain with the Tea Party fanatics in order to gain a majority in congress; now the monster they created has come back to devour them.  That certainly seemed to be the case when Speaker Boehner emerged from the white House meeting with the President today and started talking like he had lost his mind.  Surely the Devil made him do it!   That’s the only other thing I can think of that would make him flirt with the disastrous option of shutting down the national government because they can’t have their way.  After all, that’s how spoiled kids behave when they stomp down sand castles because they didn’t get what they wanted.  We have a right to expect something different and something more from our statesmen.

The position of the Grand Obstructionist Party is that although they control neither the Senate nor the White House, they are still going to impose their will through their ability to obstruct the government from doing the people’s business.  Dr. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC – whose nightly program is a treasure trove of vital information that citizens must know in order to make intelligent decisions – showed a wide variety of Right Wing Republicans telling their constituents in no uncertain terms that they plan to shut down the government if the Democratic Senate and the White House do not acquiesce to their draconian cuts.  For people who are always going around quoting the Constitution, the Republicans appear not to understand, or accept, that our government was designed to require compromise and consensus – a point the militant professional left does not appear to understand either.

The Country Club Republicans understand this well enough, but the Tea Party crowd is clueless. These militant airheads – who know as much about American history as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman – consider compromise treason; and have taken fanatical hard line positions from which they refuse to budge.  They have even threatened not to raise the debt ceiling; this would be an unmitigated disaster!    If the US government defaults on its debt obligations the entire international finance system will collapse, creating a worldwide depression and ending economic recovery at home.

President Obama has presided over the myriad crises he inherited from eight years of Bush league rule with Solomonic wisdom, consummate political skill and compassion, but he has been opposed every step of the way by the Republicans, who employed some of the dirtiest tactics in the history of American politics.  Yet from the poll results it does not appear that millions of Americans have any idea what he has achieved on behalf of the nation.  This is explains how they could vote in a Republican controlled congress that made Texas Congressman John Doe Chairman of the Energy Committee that oversees the oil industry. This is the same man who called the $20 billion dollar clean-up fund President Obama demanded that BP establish to compensate those who were injured by the Gulf oil rig explosion, and the disastrous spill that resulted, “a Chicago style shakedown” and apologized to the management of British Petroleum.  It was such a shameless act of contempt for the public interests that the CEO of BP quickly disassociated himself from the Congressman’s comment!

Clearly the Congressional election results have emboldened the Republican ideologues on the radical right, who take this as a sign that they can get away with a frontal assault on the public interests under the guise of “getting big government off our backs.”  In spite of the persistent attacks on President Obama about his inability to solve the unemployment problem, the Republicans have not made job creation a major priority; beyond cutting taxes to wealthy individuals and giant multi-national corporations – measures that President Obama was forced to go along with or witness millions of economically desperate unemployed workers lose their benefits – they have offered no plans for job growth.  Their solution to everything is to cut taxes and let the magic of the “free market” do its thing; despite the fact that there is no evidence that this policy works, and none of the leading economist – including two Nobel Laureates -believe it will work.

On the other hand, what is incontestably true is that the measures proposed by Republicans will result in the lost of several hundred thousand jobs by people who are now gainfully employed performing vital work in the public sector.  Even a cursory glance at the proposed cuts to the federal budget offered up by the Grand Obstructionist Party will reveal that they are guided by ideological obsessions rather than economic imperatives.  There is no sound economic evidence that would suggests cutting government spending and throwing people out of work in a recession, where a low demand for goods and services is the root cause of economic stagnation, spurs economic recovery.  Yet when speaker Boehner was asked about the fate of fired workers he said if they lost their jobs “So be it!”

The most reliable model we have for dealing with this recession is that which brought us out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  This policy was called “Keynesian economics,” in recognition of the British economist John Maynard Keynes who was its author.  This policy holds that in an economic recession brought on by the recurrent crisis in capitalism the government must become the “employer of last resort.”  This policy kills two birds with one stone – unemployment and lack of demand – and gets money circulating within the domestic economic, which is essential to jump starting the economy.  Although this model has a record of success that is well known to historians and economists, the Republicans prefer the Laffer Curve, which holds that all financial breaks and subsidies should go to the wealthy because only they possess the wisdom to create jobs.

They gave this spurious ahistorical theory the name “Supply Side Economics,” which is just a high falutin term for the old “trickle down” theory of economics.  “Supply Side Economics” was introduced by Ronnie Reagan, a man once called “an amiable dunce” by the powerful Washington Lawyer and former cabinet member in the Carter Administration Clarke Clifford.  And as the Republican strategist and statistician Kevin Phillips, who helped elect Reagan, would later conclude: Reagan’s economic policies resulted in the most dramatic transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history! It also created the largest deficit in history!  Yet this nonsense persists in spite of the lack of any evidence that such policies will work – and the fate of the nation hangs in the balance!

There is every reason to believe the current budget that Republicans are proposing would produce the same results as the Reagan Administration at best; or the even more disastrous results of the recently departed Bushmen and lead to the impoverishment of even more Americans.  Furthermore the Republican budget – in which the principle interest of the Republicans is to use the Federal budget to nullify liberal policies that are now law – will seriously injure the public interests.  For instance they propose to eviscerate or eliminate Head Start, Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Protection Agency, Pell Grants to assist college students and National Public Radio.  Furthermore they want to repeal President Obama’s historic health care legislation by defunding it and also defund the enforcement of the new financial regulation laws.  The fact that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the President’s health care plan will save the government 130 billion over the next decade, and repeal will cost $230 billion, has been dismissed by the Republican shills for the filth rich, should be a wake-up call to everybody who cares about affordable health care.

All the programs that serve the working folks that the Republicans have put on the chopping block comprise a miniscule portion of the Federal government’s budget, especially when compared to the wasteful military budget.  This fact is well understood by all political factions; yet it is ignored by the warmongering Republican ideologues.  The Republican vision for America is a country where everything is privately owned, unorganized workers are held hostage to the whims, prejudices and quirks of their employers, and waging endless wars based on the flawed dangerous theory of “American Exceptionalism.”  This scenario may well be a wet dream for hawkish right wing Plutocrats, but for most Americans it portends a bleak future indeed.

Yet in the final analysis this is a disaster that Americans have made for themselves.  Looking at what the Republicans plan for the working people of this country – which is most of us when we can find a job – it ought to be clear to even fuzzy headed black intellectuals like some of those who met recently at the “Black Agenda” conference, that only President Obama and the Senate Democrats stand between the Republican ideologues and disaster for the broad masses of the American people.  It does not require exceptional intellect, extensive academic training, or a novelist’s imagination to envision what a nightmare life in America would be had John McCain and Sarah Palin – the Mack Man and Silly Sarah – won the White House and enjoyed a Congressional majority.  We need only take a look at the budget proposals of Congressman Ryan, a wild eyed fanatic from Wisconsin who Chairs the House Budget Committee and wants to cut six trillion dollars from the President’s budget – to get a glimpse of the twisted vision of the GOP’s contract on working Americans, as well as it’s assaults on all attempts to rescue our endangered natural environment.

Congressman Ryan: A wild eyed fanatic!

When compared to this gang it should be relatively easy to recognize that the American people have been given a great gift in President Obama – a smart, deeply humane, visionary, and remarkably productive politician.   That is why I routinely dismiss the persistent bitching and moaning from pampered bourgeois black academics, armchair revolutionaries with no experience in actual struggle, clueless white paternalists on the liberal left; militant Marxists and pseudo-Marxists, black nationalists suffering from rejection anxiety, and other do-nothing obscurantist with diarrhea of the mouth. If the whiney ineffective debating society on the Left fucks around with their heads stuck up their assholes believing that Barack Obama is the enemy, and let the Republicans take the White House and the Senate in 2014, it will really be crying time for the working classes.

Unfortunately, the old axiom “A people will eventually get the government they deserve” is proving true for the people of the US.  They keep voting in the Grand Obstructionist Party, no matter how bad they screw up. It’s as if they are a tribe of Rip Van Winkle’s, who have slept through the history of the last 40 years. The present Republican budget plan is clearly an assault on the public interests and the working classes – here I am talking about white collar workers too. The Republican contempt for the public interest is being clearly expressed in the policies they are trying to enact, and the Tea Party faction is so fanatical that Speaker Boehner looks like a man on a tight rope trying to manage the Republican caucus.  Clearly, anything can happen.   Although many white workers are crying about how things are working out for them now…judging by the way they voted a few months ago, it is fair to say: They asked for it!

 

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Playthell Benjamin

Harlem, New York

April 7, 2011

Fools Fakers, Liars, Charlatans and Whores

Posted in Playthell on politics with tags , , , on November 9, 2009 by playthell

Bachmann 

Michel Bachman: A far right Psycho

 

Republicans Reveal Their True Character In Healthcare Debate

 After a century of failed attempts the congressional Democrats have finally passed a reform bill that establishes good healthcare as an entitlement of citizenship – a benefit other advanced countries in the world, and even poor little Cuba, have long ago established for its citizens. Predictably the Republicans conducted themselves like charlatans and insurance industry whores in a floor fight designed to try and derail this humane and historic legislation.  Lately I have sadly concluded that Republicans are a danger to national security.  This is no rhetorical flourish, nor an exercise in hyperbole; I am deadly serious.

The recent massacre at Fort Hood demonstrates the constant danger we face of internal conflict and domestic terrorism. In fact, despite vigorous Republican protest, we were warned by the Department Of homeland security that the greatest threat of terrorist attack comes from domestic forces, mostly on the far right. Yet top Republican spokesman – including members of Congress like Michele Bachman and Minority Leader Jim Boehner – have shamelessly pandered to these racist, nativist and violent elements in American society in their futile attempt to discredit President Obama and deny health care to millions of Americans.

 

A Typical Republican Whacko!

tax-day-tea-party-demonstrators

Ms. Piggy’s head is pregnant with ignorance!

 

These far right fanatics have so distorted the President’s vision they have convinced their working class base that a medical program which provides health care as a human right of citizenship, rather than a monopolistic profit based service industry, is the equivalent of Nazi death camps! And all the while waving their bibles and wrapping themselves in the flag as they lead their naïve followers astray.

 During Saturday’s debate the Democrats articulated the virtues of the bill – covering the uninsured; outlawing the practice of excluding people for “pre-existing conditions and stiffing the sick;” providing competition to the private insurance companies to bring down the price of premiums, etc – while the Republicans spouted empty rhetoric about “preserving freedom” and “controlling budget deficits.”  Yet these cynical charlatans are ignoring the will of the people as expressed in the recent Presidential elections, and they were cheer leaders when George II started a three trillion dollar war choice – in face of massive protests from people around the world. Ther remains a fight to be waged in the Senate before Health Care becomes a done deal, but the BS arguments we heard from Republicans in the House presages what we are likely to hear in the Senate.  Hence Democrats must stand on principle and beat those suckers down with the truth!

 The amoral Republican bunko artist also spouted a lot of duplicitous hogwash about protecting the interests of senior citizens and the “working man.” Yet the principal advocates for seniors, AARP, has enthusiastically endorsed the bill, as has the AMA and the nation’s largest labor unions.  Hence as I listen to the Republican’s claim to be acting in the interests of the working class and the elderly, I am once again reminded of the old Ibo proverb: “Beware of the stranger who comes to the funeral and cries louder than the family of the corpse.”

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Playthell Benjamin

Harlem New York

November 9, 2009