Is politics just a ruse? Did rich ruling interests prominent in both parties long ago bring the parties together in conspiratorial fashion and decide three things: (1) they wanted be assured of being the dominant ruling voice in America, and (2) that they could never be assured of that unless the masses believed the government was working - or trying to work - for them, and finally (3) that a conspiratorial, public and phony tension needed to be perpetuated between the Republican and Democratic parties, where Republican mantra would clearly side with wealthy interests and Democratic mantra with middle- and lower-class interests, but where the bottom-line result of such conspiratorial governance was to guarantee Decision #1 over the long term?
I hate conspiracy theories, and conversely like the phrase that asserts that the easiest explanation is usually the correct one, and conspiracy theories are never the easiest explanation.
But how else do you describe the country, almost since Vietnam, going in directions, often enough, which don't conform to public opinion when we live in a democracy which should afford a government of the majority, with key protections for the minority, and the individual?
No one wants the debt we have. Allow me to beat on the Republicans for a second. We had right around $1 trillion in debt when Reagan took office. We have $8.6 trillion and rising fast, now. And far and away the largest spikes in that graph have been during the Republican administrations of Reagan, Bush II and Bush I.
Did the public want Reagan's tax cuts? Of course they did!! Did they want and expect Reagan to not cut government in an equal offsetting amount to the tax cuts? And, in fact, did they want Reagan to dramatically INCREASE spending on things like Star Wars and a huge ratcheting up of new munitions, like cruise missiles? No!! They didn't! Those things were hugely unpopular! Reagan ran, campaigned against "Big Government". He gave us all these catchy phrases which put in the simplest, almost slang terms, that the problem with government is that it had grown too large and was taking too much of our income in the form of taxes. Well, the government debt is the government's responsibility. And the more you increase that debt, the larger the debt payment, and therefore the more you make that area of government, that particular budget item, i.e. debt service, LARGER. So if you don't fully offset a given tax cut by a shrinking of the budget by an equal amount, then you have GROWN government by keeping all else the same, yet GROWING that federal budget item which is service on the national debt! And so you have grown government!! Literally. And Reagan and Bush I and Bush II grew government more than all of our other presidents combined. For all of you out there who still want to equate the word "Republican" with "conservative", chew on that for a while and admit how incorrect that equation is.
And yet, each of them asked for your vote, my vote, by preaching smaller government.
Is it a ruse? Do we keep buying it over and over and over again? Is it like the likable but cheating boyfriend, the sweet but cheating girlfriend that we just can't kick to the curb, and continue to take back time and again?
And then the Democrats take over, in the Congress, anyway. Allow me to beat on the Democrats for a second. There is, sad to say, now, the usual pre-election lying. "Vote for us. Place us in the majority, and we will fight for the middle class (oh, how I hate that phrase); we will provide oversight and be a check and balance on the executive; we will govern in a bipartisan fashion with our friends on the other side of the aisle (oh, how I hate that phrase, too)." And what do they do? Well, they've been there for two months now. I'm a software developer, and I can build a pretty complex application in two months. The House rammed through a few "middle-class" bills, like a minimum wage increase and cut in college loan rates. But on currently, as nearly all would agree, the most important and pressing national issue - Iraq - they did to the Republicans what they had viscerally and sanctimoniously criticized the Republicans for time and again - locking them out of the process of drafting and amending legislation.
The Democrats, both in the House and the Senate, allowed floor votes on only a Democratic resolution regarding Bush's troop surge, without allowing Republicans to offer amendments and have those amendments voted upon, much less allowing a completely alternative Republican resolution or resolutions to be voted upon. When the pre-election lying sounds too good, you can absolutely bet that it is. They were lying through their teeth. Like Reagan and W, with Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, it was "vote for me [us] so that I [we] can do a, b and c" just so that after the election they have a free hand to do x, y and z.
And then Charlie Rangel, the most powerful man in the House when it comes to government spending, as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, comes on Fox News and when pressed by Chris Wallace about whether he wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts can only, in cowardly fashion, say "no" but that he might "redistribute" them, whatever that means, then quickly changes the subject to an attack on the Bush administration regarding the Alternative Minimum Tax, how it's going to increasingly hurt middle-income Americans, and how that problem is nowhere on Bush's radar screen. Well, come on, Charlie! You're Chairman of the committee that can do something about that! Roll out a bill that addresses AMT and send it to the President! It's your area! Don't just blame the President. Oh, and when you "address" AMT, i.e. reduce it, then tell us what other area of the federal budget you are going to shrink or tax you are going to raise so that we don't add to what is currently the 3rd largest budget item after defense and HUD - our debt service! Debt service is 3rd at 9% of the budget, and the sum of all remaining federal spending is just 14%! Quite literally, if you want to reduce the annual budget deficit, then reduce the annual debt service, and the only way to do that is run surpluses, and use the surplus to pay down the principal. It's no different, in that respect, from the minimum payment on your credit cards. Drop the principal; watch the minimum payment come down.
And this is what I mean when I say that everything is so convoluted, makes so little sense, regardless who is in power, that one simply must wonder if it doesn't make sense because we believe the game rules to be different than they are (conspiracy theory) or our form of bicameral, two-party governance is now so dysfunctional it isn't capable of addressing our important national issues. The lion without a heart, and without a brain, and without teeth.
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