In the past year our independent friends and neighbors have been drowned in high-priced propaganda, swept by the cash tsunami for at least a short time into a conservative fantasy land. One of the real weaknesses of progressives is their ability to talk clearly about how faulty the right-wing memes are. (Of course, Europeans and Latin Americans have no such reticence.)
In the next two months folks in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan will be forced to have these conversations as part of recall campaigns. It might be really valuable to summarize points (with graphics) in order to KISS and make up the difference!
So I thought on this sunny Saturday, as we all wait for the shoes of our more pius friends to drop (as they are raptured naked up to their just rewards) it might be helpful to put down my three favorite graphics and arguing points. After all, tomorrow morning those who aren't naked and heaven-sent may actually be more amenable to conversaton.
Jump below the fold. This is going to be a short diary. Three graphics that you can paste to the water cooler or plop down next to a Micky D's Smoothy and make a point.
Don't be shy. Talk to someone. Even if you aren't trying to recall some Koch-funded jerk, it may pay off in the future.
First, that deficit. Where did it come from?
No, it was not the profligate spending of the Republican congress that chewed up Clinton's surplus and created Bush's deficit. It wasn't those (sic) greedy public employees. It was the war in Iraq that was always run "off the books" so that those same Republicans could say they were not voting for huge debts. The cost of that war is still undetermined because the extensive use of state equipment (never returned) and the long term costs of veterans' health care are huge question marks.
How about tax cuts? Shouldn't we be supporting "job creators?" Well, no.
Rick Snyder of Michigan and Rick Scott of Florida both got rich creating jobs in foreign countries. The Republicans have blocked efforts to reform the tax code to disallow credits for jobs created overseas again and again.
And finally, there's the "doom of medicare." In fact, the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act has already helped a lot. We know how to save medicare, just do more of the same. We don't need to move trillions of taxpayer dollars to the private insurance company (Republican donors) to fix it. We just need to do more of what we are already doing.