What have the Democrats been thinking?

October 29, 2010 by  
Filed under Editorial, Events

The Democrats are about to get clobbered…we are told by the pundits…and they are probably correct.

1-The “Tea Party” believes, and tells any who will listen, that the Obama Administration has burdened us all with too much debt, created massive unemployment and invested money in large corporations rather than solving unemployment.

2-The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow unlimited donations by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to any political cause.  Justice Andrew Kennedy said we need not worry about donators being able to hide their donations because with the advent of Internet “searching” skills….it would be impossible for donators to hide their names.

3-When George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary . Paul O’Neill objected to new tax cuts and warned Dick Cheney that deficits of ½ a trillion dollars for 2002 he was told “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”  ( A month later Cheney told O’Neill he was fired.)

The Democrats haven’t told their story to the people …. And so there are even more uninformed voters than usual.

ANSWER #1 – Barack Obama was elected on November 11, 2008 and inaugurated on January 20, 2009.  In the three months before he took office over three million Americans lost their jobs-the biggest such loss in history –  and Bush signed a bill for ¾ of a trillion dollar bail out in October . A bill that had to be paid by Obama.  that arguably saved most of the giants of our financial  industry who, also arguably, were directly responsible for the crisis.  Losing 3 million jobs in 3 months was a first in our history and not surprisingly a drop like that had so much impetus behind it that unemployment couldn’t be slowed down for another six months.

WHY HASN’T THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE GOTTEN THIS MESSAGE OUT?

ANSWER #2 – This year’s election has produced unconscionable amounts of money for political advertising by both Democrats and Republicans.

However, last August, the Republican National Committee had only $5 million in its coffers and was $2mm in debt.  The Democrats, also running low, were prematurely ecstatic, thinking their opponents  wouldn’t be able to generate the large donations for the last few months of TV ads they normally do.   Guess what?  The rich Republicans figured out that donations to the RNC meant their names would be made public. But if they made the same donations to 527 and 501 ( c ) (4) organizations, sometimes called “Shadow RNCs”  .. run by Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and Michael Duncan and others, the donors names would not be known.  Present estimates are that approximately $400 million is what will be spent by these Republican organizations by November 9. (That figure does not include “regular” donations of about $350million)   Seems that Justice Kennedy was incorrect in his predictions of clarity with donations.  The money will elect Senators and Representatives who will surely have a debt to the corporations and people who  gave the money.  Such political systems have existed before in our world…and they weren’t called democracies.

HOW WOULD INDEPENDENTS REACT TO THOSE FIGURES?  HOW WILL THE SUPREME COURT ACT?

ANSWER #3-When Bill Clinton left office in 2000 there was a $3 trillion surplus.  When Barack Obama took office there was a deficit of $1.43 trillion. That’s a swing of $4.5 trillion after two terms of George Bush tax-cuts.

There is tons of empirical evidence that tax cuts don’t improve the middle class.  The majority of the Bush cuts helped the wealthiest among us more than the poorest among us.  There is also evidence that increasing taxes increases the size of the middle class…as long as the taxes are not designed to pass on to the wealthiest citizens.

Also, Obama was locked into correcting the Mother of all “Recessions” with an almost immediate commitment to another $1 trillion in domestic spending to save American jobs. Additionally nearly $700 million a year was committed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  At least we’re out of Bush’s tragic war in Iraq, and scheduled to start leaving  Afghanistan next year.

Obama got a medical care bill passed that Republicans had blocked since 1932 and every Democratic President had promised since FDR!

The rest of the industrialized world is amazed at the cost of the U.S. health care system to its citizens.  More Americans declared bankruptcy because  of health costs in their senior years than for any other cause. (Until the present loan fiasco that was corrected by the financial reform bill.)

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, not up for reelection, has dedicated the next four years to overturning  the new health care plan and making sure the President only serves one term.  So much for “hands across the aisle.”

Obama got financial reform passed that would have avoided the terrible recession we are presently experiencing had it been passed during the Bush Administration. Already Republicans are being lobbied to soften the effects of the financial reform. Republican Congressional Leader, John Boehner, who used to pass out checks from big tobacco corporations to Republicans on the house floor, was non-committal when asked if he became Speaker would he disclose what went on in meetings with lobbyists. Of course, Mr. Boehner has received $4.5 million from donors so far this year. Including Googlel, Citigroup, RJ Reynolds.

THE OPPOSITION HAS TOLD YOU WHAT THEY WILL DO DNC – YOU MUST TELL THE PEOPLE!

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