The Republican Trinity: Trickle Down, Deregulation, Privatization. This Trinity has, and does, hold the reins in guiding our national economy. Since the time of the famous actor, Ronald Reagan.
After Reagan, the "centrist" part of the Democratic Party decided winning elections (and a future with rewarding future careers as consultants and lobbyists), is best done by pleasing Big Money.
Big Money, of course, doesn't give a hoot about the Dem Party's constituency. In fact, considers them a threat, where not merely pests. (And frankly, if you told me they enjoy the suffering of their Lessers, I couldn't muster a plausible counter-argument.)
So these centrists, in a time when Reagan and his ilk were pushing Trickle Down, Deregulation, and Privatization, weighed things. If we live in a cause-and-effect universe, it's plausible to think they said something like this among themselves: "Big Money wins elections; if we're lucky and Republicans get even more crazy, our constituents will be scared and have no where else to go. And we can push the Republicans deeper into Crazytown by simply adopting their current positions! We can't lose on this!"
So, whether they went hand in hand, or one Party mimicking the other, the result was that a sizeable majority of our Federally Electeds raised the Republican Trinity to a Governing Principle.
So, there's the background part.
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Now, it's been 30 years of this "Trickle Down, Deregulation, Privatization."
How hard is it to say "30 Years of Republican Economics, and look where we are!"
The "Trickle Down" became "Swim Offshore" and "Buy All the Assets." (And of our Electeds, I'm sure, business counts them as among their Assets.)
The Deregulation means BigCo, Inc. does whatever it wants. The FDA takes studies from Pharma saying "this thing is great" and the FDA says, "We approve" and the next thing you know tens of thousands are dead. The Bankers get to make up "assets," which they overprice, sell them to ordinary people, and then make money watching them plunge in value.
And who wants to even think about Big Energy and the quality of their mines and wells? Or Big Insurance, Big Chemical, ...? Yet there they are, telling their regulators everything's fine. Many of whom "get" the spirit of the times, pretty much rubber-stamping whatever crap they're given.
Then there's Privatization. "Private business will do it faster, more efficiently, and more cheaply than Government." Except, in 30 years, it's almost every time that business does it more slowly, poorer quality, more expensively, and usually with a decent dose of corruption thrown into the bargain.
Thirty years. Thirty years.
I think a generation is long enough to figure out if a particular economic theory is true or false.
Reaganomics is false. It is unhealthy. It is destructive.
Which brings me back to the title of this diary.
Will Someone Please Bury The Republican Trinity?
Because it's killing us.
We need economic stimulation and we're focused on reducing money in the Economy. We need to get out of war war war and develop a non-lunatic foreign/national security policy. Which, currently, is that we have to be able to control and contain every "threat" hundreds and thousands in think tanks are conjuring up as part of their daily job. Year round.
Mainly, we need to get the steering and rudder out of the hands of people who are quite amok.
Now, you and I can write emails to our Electeds (select all > delete), make phone calls which they never hear, stand in a Free Speech zone (but not too near and with a friendly demeanor) ...
Hell you can get 10 million people in DC. And good luck with that project.
But, within our conventional politics, I don't see any way out of our national spirit-death-spiral without -- not A leader, or 3 leaders -- but something on the order of the Progressive Caucus finally standing up and saying:
"Are you and your family better off after 30 years of Republican Economics?"
I understand the Progressive Caucus has been big on words and signing shit, but when it comes down to votes...
I think they need to come to see themselves as a faction which changes the balance of power in this country. And they'd have the voters behind them. Perhaps they should be the focus of our efforts.
And remember, Better Democrats is the only, the surest, the quickest way to get More Democrats.