I have asked this question before and I will ask it again. Why do Republican voters, whose financial net worth is far less than one million dollars, continue to routinely vote for politicians that have nothing but unbridled contempt for those who fall far short of millionaire incomes?
Since January, 2011 the Republican Party has embarked on a radical mission to dismantle the social programs that were passed into law in the 20th Century. The GOP extremists want to return to the heyday of the reckless and irresponsible economic policies of the 1920s that led to the worst depression in U.S. history.
The social programs that were implemented in the 20th Century passed during a time in which there was a Democratic ethos of caring capitalism. By making investments in programs and initiatives for working Americans, tens of thousands of boats were lifted. Hard working folks had the opportunity to move up the ladders of education and attendant higher incomes. These investments ensured a secure future for a solid and thriving middle class America.
But today's radicals on the right want nothing to do with the caring part of capitalism or with floating any boat, for that matter. In fact, the extremists have no clue what the definition of care is.
On Friday the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to gut Medicare. It did so while giving yet more tax cuts to millionaires and by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Just one day after Congress concluded its fight over this year’s spending, the House voted 235 to 193 to approve the fiscal blueprint for 2012 drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Budget Committee. Besides reconfiguring the Medicare program that now serves those 65 and older, the proposal would cut the top corporate and personal income tax rates while also overhauling the Medicaid health program for the poor.
Republicans have been lusting to kill social programs for decades. But they have never been successful in their cynical attempts to throw the middle and working class, as well as the poor, into abject poverty because both the majority of the American people and the Democratic Party have pushed back hard to protect the American value system as we know it.
But today the GOP has apparently injected itself with steroids in order to serve its masters of the universe who play with the lives of everyday Americans as if we are pawns on a chessboard. The steroid injection comes from powerful corporate interests that can now, thanks to a recent ruling handed down from the Supreme Court of the U.S., give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates without having to reveal who they are.
Corporate interests certainly have exercised their ruthless clout by the clandestine efforts of the Koch brothers in Wisconsin.
In blind support of their corporate masters the right wing tea party puppets have vehemently embraced the crusade to pillage and plunder away the American way of life as we know it. Perhaps the tea party people, most of whom are not millionaires, did not realize that they and theirs would be among the pillaged and plundered.
The Pirates of Capitol Hill.
The piracy part includes the GOP Texas Legislature too.
More tax cuts would be gluttony in a time of starvation. That is not America. That is a nation about to be plundered, and a people laid to waste.
But Texas has already laid to waste the rights of women and the right to vote.
As we very well know by now, the GOP has serious issues with legal and transparent elections. That and conservative's documented record of serial lying.
I reviewed 100 such statements on PolitiFact's website. By my count, of the 70 that originated with an identifiable individual or group (as opposed to a chain email or miscellaneous source), 61 were from the political right. That includes Rush Limbaugh saying President Obama is going to take away your right to fish, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer saying beheaded bodies are being found in the desert and Sarah Palin claiming death panels will stalk the elderly — 90 percent of the most audacious lies coming from conservatives.
And that word is used advisedly here. There is little that is truly conservative about what we are seeing.
No, this is extremism, true believers so rigidly committed to their ideological crusades that they feel justified in vandalizing reason and sacrificing integrity in furtherance of their cause. The end justifies any means. So, as was the case with Jon Kyl, if you can't prove your point with the facts at hand, make up some facts and prove it with those.
It says much about the intellectual state of what passes for conservatism and the intellectual state of the union itself that this sort of behavior has become business as usual, just another day in the Zeitgeist.
Not to mention the Republican predisposition to protect the unborn fetus while throwing born children to the curb.
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.
It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.
But things are about to get much worse.
Texas children are living the worse part as I write.
When the GOP won the 2010 election it seemed to have forgotten that President Obama is still the President and Harry Reid remains the Senate Majority Leader. The GOP won the U.S. House specifically because voters were rightfully frustrated over the slow job growth brought on by the devastating Recession of 2007. And yet after having served over 100 hundred days in office U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has yet to propose one new job initiative.
And this is precisely why over half of the American people regret giving the House to Republicans.
The new survey finds that as the Republican-led House approaches the 100-day mark of its tenure, about as many Americans say they are unhappy (44%) as happy (43%) that the GOP won control of the House last November. Just a third (33%) say they are keeping their campaign promises while 52% say they are not.
The Independent's view.
Independents are now divided in their reaction to the election: 43% say they are happy the GOP won control of the House while 39% are unhappy. In November, independents by a wide margin (48% to 27%) expressed a positive reaction to the Republicans’ victory.
Maybe folks are beginning to wake up and realize the GOP has never been about job creation initiatives. Instead the GOP has been laser focused on its single minded mission to achieve smaller government by gutting if not dismantling altogether social programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. The GOP will push emotional wedge issue hot buttons in order to confuse and distract voters. It always has and always will because the Republican Party has become morally bankrupt. Its political operatives will throw barrels of gasoline on the flames of fear and hatred. It will stir its toxic brew of lies, fabricated paranoia, miserable pessimism and misinformation 24/7/365 with more than a little help from Fox "News" and right wing hate talk radio.
Abortion! Gay Marriage! American Muslims are plotting and scheming against us! ACORN cheats! Defund PBS! Kill Planned Parenthood! Kill collective bargaining rights for middle class workers! Kill school budgets! Slash CHIP! Keep women dumb, scared, pregnant and barefoot much of the time. Take away her right to choose.
So much for creating new jobs. In fact the GOP behavior of late demonstrates its determination to kill jobs instead. And as far as spending cuts are concerned, Medicare and all of the hot button issues mentioned above, like PBS, are the kinds of programs and initiatives the GOP will put on the chopping block.
But never, ever will the Teapublicans require one plutocrat to pay one extra penny in taxes.
Meanwhile, as we have witnessed from Paul Ryan's(R-WI) cynical and anti-American scheme for Medicare, the GOP will continue to punish the poor and middle class while further enriching an already overly bloated class of billionaires.
Worse, the GOP is not even remotely embarrassed or bothered by its mean spirited, contemptuous, cynical and anti-American agenda.
Maybe the Teapublican Party is remorse free because it knows its corporate masters will pony up gazillions of dollars to run smear ads against its more honest and less ruthlessly radical opponents.