Do you remember that "Talk Me Down" segment Rachel Maddow included in her show during the 2008 presidential election (which I found incredibly annoying)? Lately, I feel like Glenn Beck, imbued with a growing sense of panic about the direction this country is headed economically and politically, and I need someone to talk me down!
Please convince me that the growing disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots"; the broadening attacks on the rights of workers, women, voters, public education, and immigrants and their descendants; and on access to healthcare are not part of a grand Corporate/Conservative scheme to replace democracy with a plutarchy that operates under the guise of a theocracy as part of an unholy alliance of fundamentalism and corporate greed.
None of our once-prized institutions are free of corporate taint--not Congress, the presidency, the judiciary, the Church, or the media. Although history suggests there is nothing new about kings bowing to popes or merchants buying lordships, America's politicians once made a semblance of pretending they were not carrying water for their corporate benefactors. With corporate benevolence now sanctioned by the Corporate-sponsored Supreme Court, few bother masking where their allegiance truly lies.
Take Michelle Bachmann:
In my perfect world,” she explains, “We’d take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we’re the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax.” [...]
A system in which 47% of Americans don’t pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy, she says, “because there is no tie to the government benefits that people demand. I think everyone should have to pay something.”
Although not as extreme, Tim Pawlenty's economic proposal (ridiculed as absurd) is little better and quadruples Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%:
Proposal would make 2011 tax law permanent and would also: (a) repeal individual alternative minimum tax; (b) impose rate of 10 percent on first $50,000 of taxable income ($100,000 for married couples filing a joint return) and 25 percent on amounts
above that threshold, indexed for inflation after 2011; (c) exclude interest income, dividends, and gains from sales of capital assets from gross income; (d) repeal deduction for investment interest; (e) repeal 3.8 percent additional Medicare tax on investment income; (f) impose an alternative tax rate of 15 percent on sole proprietor, farm, partnership, S corporation, and rental income; (g) repeal the estate tax; and (h)
reduce the corporate tax rate to 15 percent.
I believe republicans--with assistance from a few democrats--are working to sabotage the economy, thereby sabotaging Obama's reelection chances, in an effort to preserve their fading viability. All these anti-worker, anti-voting, and anti-immigration proposals conservatives are pursuing are meant to bolster those efforts.
And this is when I start to feel like Glenn Beck, squawking about the peril we and our democracy face!
Allowing a republican to take the White House in 2012 could greatly erode the gains democratic-minded citizens have made in the last century. The evidence is visible in nearly every state where a republican moved into the governor's mansion in 2010.
We've seen roll backs on child labor protections from the early 1900s in Maine; roll backs of unemployment compensation; roll backs of workers' rights to fight for better conditions and pay; new road blocks between women and their bodies; roll backs on the rights of the accused. We've also seen unprecedented grasps at power, with the Michigan governor giving himself the right of a king to appoint unelected stewards and the Wisconsin governor bestowing unilateral power on himself to appoint officials.
Despite these seemingly unjust and unconstitutional measures, conservatives on the Supreme Court have signaled that justice is dead in the United States. Today's Supreme Court validates every challenge to these usurpations of American rights, demonstrating the need for honest elected officers in Congress willing to pass laws to ensure the integrity of these justices.
As disappointed as I have been in several of Obama's decisions, this election is about more than gay rights, abortion rights, the environment, or Medicare. It is about ALL OF IT--it is about the future of our country.
I am convinced that MOVING FORWARD depends on electing the democratic nominee, who will most likely be Barack Obama. Allowing a republican to take over the presidency by sitting on our hands or voting for a nonviable candidate jeopardizes all we believe in and have worked for as progressives.
Anyone who argues--as someone did on here recently--that Obama is no different than McCain or Bush or that democrats are no different than the republicans is as deluded as the people who think Sarah Palin would make a wonderful president or that Michelle Bachmann is "smart."
Those are the arguments people made in my state as they voted for Chris Christie or in Florida when they voted for Rick Scott or in Wisconsin when they voted for Scott Walker. And many of these people deeply regret those votes today.
I believe in marriage equality, green energy policies, the DREAM act, repeal of DADT, universal healthcare, abortion rights, humane treatment for undocumented workers, a fair living wage, and almost all the same things the most progressive among you believe in.
It is because of this that I urge you not to succumb to your disappointment and place everything you have fought for over the years in jeopardy, as well as undermine your opportunity to achieve our common goals.
Obama has not lived up to my expectations, and I wish I had the proverbial magic wand to put someone in office with intelligence, common sense, and shared goals--like Rachel Maddow, perhaps! But the only magic we have is our right to vote, and throwing it away in protest will not make one thing better in 2013, 2014, and so on.
What will make it better is to work with our friends in the unions, in Planned Parenthood, and in the many groups fighting for human rights in this country and the world for the change America deserves.
Yet we are seeing those organizations that support our goals--ACORN, Planned Parenthood, the Unions--getting shackled by conservative politicians and voters. Conservatives and corporations are even launching attacks against Internet freedom.
Cast your vote in 2012 not for Obama but for the survival of these important entities, so we can continue pursuing the monumental goal of truly having a just, equal society.