MY RANT – I AM ENTITLED TO ONE PER YEAR

There are numerous topics one may wish to explore here but, accepting the label”political wonk ” as I have, one ought to expect that much of my posts will be devoted to political issues and , of particular interest, how politics affects our every day world. While keeping the discussion relatively balanced – OK, a bit to the Progressive Left -a serious attempt to hold to the originating stipulations has been fairly successful. However, with all that has  transpired over the past year with the election and inside the Beltway with all its what can only be described as chaos, I take the liberty of posting a total  RANT.

While it may not be as balanced as it should, perhaps this venting will awaken some to ask deep and serious questions about where government as we know it is heading and whether or not most will finally abandon the posture of lemmings and begin to take a stand. With all that has been taking place inside the Beltway over the past year and especially within the past several weeks, it is painfully evident that our system of government is broken. Indeed, I contend it has been for a number of years but lately the evidence is overwhelming. While one can point fingers, it is fact that there is plenty of blame to go around and, though I agree with that, I must contend that the GOP  and its Tea Party cohorts are the prime suspects.

In 2008, I was uneasy for the young senator from Illinois who was elected President . Not because I didn’t think he was the right candidate – Mr McCain would have been a complete and utter disaster – but for other concerns. At that time there were several reasons, most of which were born out over the next four years. It was frightfully difficult for him but, after four years of calculated obstruction, many felt that the reelection of the President would allay much of that. I sensed the worst was yet to come and so far that seems to be a correct assessment. I fault the democrats for some of it – mostly based , in my opinion, on the complete and total lack of leadership in both the House and the Senate. I also believe that the administration has been given some rather poor advise on the the domestic front. The biggest issue was and still is the overly conciliatory nature of how they conduct  business. I give the team the first two years but after the 2010 mid term election and that insane lame duck session in which so many poor choices were made, one would think they would have learned what the GOP underlying agenda was. And if they didn’t, the Minority Leader of the Senate spelled it out in no uncertain terms at a press conference less than two weeks after that election ! And so the obstruction and hostage taking continues and they are driving us to total economic collapse, even when solutions to some issues are quite plain.
A good lead in to the other side of the aisle – the GOP. It used to named the “Grand Old Party” but now, with less than 10 % approval rating, the tag should be the “Grand Obstructionist Party” and if anyone doubts that and doubts that this is a calculated, planned and orchestrated strategy on both the national and on the state levels, then all I can say is please watch something else besides Hannity and listen to someone other than Limbaugh.
In a recent interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Colin Powell made the comment that there is a dark vein of intolerance in the Republican party. He was addressing the issue of continuing racism in our country and particularly in the political arena, citing recent comments by John Sununu and Sarah Palin. And, while I agree with the former Secretary of State, I sense that there is far more than just racial intolerance involved. There is an outright disdain for forward thinking and for those who understand that government is about all the people, not just those who pay you to advance their agenda. The level of hatred for progress is unfathomable !
Case in point. The incoming Republican administration was handed a budget surplus for FY 2001 of $452 billion dollars. After two terms, the administration presented the new president with a budget deficit of over $11 trillion dollars, raising the national debt by 27% and the deficit by over 40 %  With unpaid for tax breaks costing over $2 trillion and two unpaid for wars, we sank deeper in to debt.  With the complete abdicating of oversight responsibility, the Administration allowed Wall Street  to be equally as reckless in its trading, mortgage lending and general financial dealings. The 112th Congress, in an effort to pay for all of the recklessness of the previous  eight years without raising ANY  tax revenues, decided to find the funds at the expense of cutting Medicaid by $810 billion, privatizing Social Security, eliminating Medicare by converting it to a voucher system with an annual cap of $15,00, cutting the SNAP by $133 billion, reducing Pell grants to a level 30% of the current level, eliminating the federal emergency unemployment fund and cutting all remaining non defense discretionary funds by 35%. Take note – these are all budget items which directly affect some of the more vulnerable populations in the country – the elderly, the children survivors, the disabled and even the returning disabled veterans and their families. This plan, the Ryan Path to Prosperity Plan – would by all CBO accounts, add $240 billion to the overall deficit. There are  other elements of the GOP strategy which are equally disheartening. The House GOP Women’s Caucus – 24 members – polled 22 members voting AGAINST the Violence Against Women Act, polled 15 members voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Act and 13 members voting against the Paycheck Fairness Act (Cf., International Business Times and the Congressional Record ). The House refused to fund the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau and has blocked confirmation of its Director for months.
There are many other elements which demonstrate just how far removed the everyday people the republican party has strayed.
One in six children go to bed and then show up at school the next morning hungry and yet the plan is to now totally eliminate the SNAP program. Educationally, we are, among the thirty-four industrialized nations, seventeenth in science and twenty-fifth in math and yet the GOP plan is to reduce or eliminate Pell assistance and indeed, the entire Department of Education – all this while facing the fact that of sixty per cent of jobs coming in the near future only twenty per cent are matched by the U S workforce. An interesting statistic, considering job training programs will not survive the budget cuts either. ( The Stem Crisis ; Harvard University Program for Education Policy and Governance).
How can the 113th Congress , as it continues  the obstructionism of the 112th, dare to hold Disaster Relief funds hostage to more cuts in the safety net, while the GOP had no problem pushing funds for relief in the Gulf States – RED GULF STATES – in the aftermath of  Katrina  ??
Why is it that we tolerate members of Congress taking an oath to the likes of Grover Nordquist whose policy is completely devoid of a basis in the reality of how government works and what role tax revenues play in that ?  Should  they not be  bound by their Oath of Office first and above all else ??
And a final observation – how long are we, the people, going to tolerate the machinations of the Tea Party whose agenda is not to obstruct the administration but  “… to reduce the federal government to the size of a bath tub and drown it..”.
It would be a sad time of it if the “Nullification” legislation or Secession legislation being introduced in so many of the  Tea Party Red States would actually be enacted. The nation would truly be destroyed and, while I do not usually succumb to overall panic, I believe that this is the way we are headed – that “Road to Perdition”, as it were and people need to rise up, rid us of these domestic terrorists and demand a government focused on the needs of the nation and the promotion of the general well being – yes, that IS IN THE CONSTITUTION.