Lack of care about our country

A brief memo, reported by the L.A. Times, circulated among Senate Republicans, outlines internal political strategy on the bailout. It says

Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To: Subject: Action Alert -- Auto Bailout

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.

Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bailout late Thursday night, over its insistence on an immediate union pay cut. I would say it shows how the Republicans now are putting politics, and the destruction of labor / unions over the continued health of our total economy. Seen on video, my conclusion this is a group of bitter older white men who have driven the Republican Party, and our country, to the brink of devastation.

(As anyone can tell, I have become very discontented with the Republicans and their lack of morality or their care about our country's survival.)

Suggested Readings

Here's a list of suggested readings for those who want to get an idea of what happened to bring us to this lousy place:

In MarketWatch by Paul B Farrell. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/eleven-reasons-america-new-top/story.aspx?guid={D23E1901-728E-4A3C-99D1-7E80F74C3AE3}

Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up. http://www.counterpunch.org/martens01212008.html

Henry Blodget Why Wall St Always Blows It. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/blodget-wall-street

Peter Drier: The Mortgage Mess... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/the-mortgage-mess-and-the_b_93289.html

http://artnews.posterous.com/economic-meltdown-101-how-we-g

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/stiglitz200901

What are they thinking?

Because of their blocking the auto bailout bill, it would appear that the Republican GOP, which by its actions has pretty much written off New England and the Mid-Atlantic, has now ceded the Midwest. They used to consider Indiana as a given, Ohio a must, and Michigan as something they wanted to have. By their actions, now, all three are gone, along with Wisconsin and Minnesota. Some "big tent", right? I guess until a strong leader arises, sometime down the line, they will continue their contractive stance and try to discredit Obama and his government and will stick to local state principles against the general good.

Letter Sent To PowerLine

Dear Mr John H. Hinderaker , Scott W. Johnson , and Paul Mirengoff :

One of the problems the Republican Party (and Conservatism) faces is restoring peoples' faith. By this I mean the Republican Party supposedly stood for the principles of fiscal responsibility, minimum interference in individuals' lives, limited government (not the same as minimum interference in people's lives), prosperity and the restoration of morality in government. The Republican Party has failed on all of these accounts. It is easy to blame George W. Bush for this, but the Party went along with him for two terms without protest. This has brought us to the brink of disaster as a country.

Fiscal responsibility has been abandoned and our country's debt is the highest it's ever been. We see meddling in peoples' lives on a regular basis, including adopting the right-to-life position and the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. Limited government has been a joke since Reagan, with the current government being the largest ever. Prosperity is another joke with even the richest people I know wondering where the bottom is. As for morality in government, the Republicans certainly racked up a majority of the criminal and moral infringements in the last two terms. Not that the Democrats haven't had their faults.

Neil Gabler has written that the true Republican tradition is McCarthyism, scaring people, and he makes a good case of it. The concomitant of this is that, instead of criticizing everything the Democrats do, presenting positive believable programs would make the Republicans believable once more. Instead, from McCain to Palin, to your own blog, you harp on the negatives, nitpicking everything the Democrats do (the latest contretemps being what Obama said or didn't to the Governor of Illinois when it's obvious he wouldn't "pay to play", as caught on the quote from the wire that Obama was a "F-blanker." It's easy to criticize when you're not really doing deep thinking about this great country of ours; it's too easy to blame it all, and I mean everything wrong, on the Democrats and not assume any responsibility for the Republicans.

I urge you to abandon the McCarthy scare tactics, trying to besmirch the Democratic Party as it tries to fix our country, which is why they were voted in, because you ought to face it, by being negative you border on being self-destructive, and if you want to face more economic loss and more fiscal destruction of our country, just keep it up, forget about really helping, and find you're losing everybody but the ignorant and the truly angry.

I think Republican and Conservative principles, if truly enforced, can be a fine moral structure to run a country on; but you have to mean it, not just propagandize it; and you have to make it believable and workable.

Foreign Cars

At a recent gathering, three of us stood around discussing bailouts for the auto industry in Detroit.

One person, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, blamed the unions for the current mess; the other two believed it was more complicated than that. But one of the people, inspired, looked around and said, "How many people in this room has an American car? How many of you bought an American car?"

Silence. Silence greeted him. Everyone, including the ditw-Republican, owned foreign cars, Japanese or German.

Yet all pretty much considered the idea of a bailout to be feasible. For the jobs, of course. For the economy.

Republicans want to destroy unions

The Republicans have been very focused on bringing down the unions. They will use any excuse to do so. For example, in this recent round, they blame the unions for the cost of medical insurance and pensions. As if the management of the automakers didn’t acquiesce and enable the unions. And isn’t it the job of the unions to get the best, the most, for their membership? Are the workers supposed to get only what management wants? At any rate, being surprised by all the attempts to break the unions is kinda naive. This has been going on a long time. The important thing is to separate out the facts from the BS and propaganda. A friend of mine, staunchly Republican, blames all of the problems the auto industry is facing on the unions and the health plan and pensions; when, actually, the German automakers, who have equally good plans for their workers, perhaps even better, seem to make a profit, perhaps because their government finances these plans. At any rate, why is anybody surprised at this Republican tactic? It seems to me this kind of naivete was rampant when the Democrats were the minority and people were wringing their hands at those awful Republicans doing such terrible things.

Second thoughts on "shadow government"

After letting the words used by Jeb Bush sink in, "shadow government" doesn't sit too well with me. It sounds vaguely threatening, like "You're shadowing me." It has an element of menace in it. It isn't openly an "opposition" government; no, nor is it concilatory; it's there to criticize. The consistent thing about guys like Jeb Bush, in line with the old Republican philosophy, is to be against something, not for it; to be in a position to scare people, not to advocate good positive things. Putting people and ideas down is the tack they have taken; witness McCain's whole campaign; witness Sarah's natural proclivities. So Jeb Bush starts off by surfacing and proposing that the Republicans start a "shadow government" to watch, and criticize, and follow what Obama's Administration does closely. What bothers me about this, deeply, I might add, is the fact that it is not being supportive in any way. No one is saying, if we want to survive, we have to work together, guys. No, the implication is that "they" (Democrats) are the enemy. And in this terrible time, when the country is literally falling apart, and everybody is unsettled, these isolated Republicans are settling in to be critical. As if they aren't losing their savings, too; as if they are exempt; as if, should the country really fail, they wouldn't be affected. Quite a blind spot. isn't it. They aren't even pretending to help, to support, to work with their counterparts to make things better for everybody, themselves included. How antedeluvian, how "old school", how traditional, how like McCarthy and all of the Republican demogogues, to stand back and continue criticizing the Democrats who are working very hard, very earnestly, to fix what went wrong with this country. So Jeb Bush is nothing more than another toxic Republican, joining in the long line of negative right-wing naysayers and destroyers, no better than Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly. Pretty disgusting, I'd say. Stand on the sidelines and criticize while the Titanic goes down; criticize everything the crew and captain does. Disgusting, guys, absolutely disgusting.

We stood back and criticized, and watched them make mistakes, as well as successes. We criticized them for their mistakes, made fun of them, and trampled on them when we could. And when the wave came and engulfed us all, Republican and Democrat, Independent and Libertarian, it all became real and they were weakened, and we knew we had plenty to atone for. But it was too late. The damage had been done.

Jeb Bush Surfaces, Finally

At last. For sometime now I've been waiting for Jeb to surface and now he has with the wonderful catch phrase of setting up a "shadow government." Jeb, you may remember, was the popular Governor of Florida and the heir apparent before his brother beat him to the Presidency. Jeb was the smart brother. He wants to lead the opposition, of course. He's already denigrating Obama's victory by saying that OBama had a significant advantage because of his fundraising warchest; yet he's also saying in the next breath, so to speak, that the Republicans can't be “the old white-guy party,” and need to reach out, especially to Hispanics. He told NewsMax.com, “We have to actually be proposing solutions to what appear to be intractable problems as it relates to education, healthcare, infrastructure. Across the board there are ways that we can show that we are truly on the side of the people that are concerned about the future of the country, without abandoning our principles.” And what are those principles? Some of the Republican staples, such as lowering taxes, reforming education, and reform in general. It's only the beginning, folks, of a long and sustained campaign and it will be interesting to see him cross paths with Sara Palin in times to come. I still believe Jeb Bush is the man to watch.