Question of the day
September 12, 2009
What are we to make of today’s Glenn Beck and FreedomWorks’ sponsored ‘Tax Payer March’ in Washington D.C.?
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A mess I’m staying away from!
I’m glad they are in DC. I thank them for their efforts to keep my taxes low. Already in my neighborhood they are helping to keep my taxes low by giving the DC government reveneue from:
tickets from their illegally parked sedans.
room tax at the upscale Omni Shoreham Hotel
restaurant tax at New Heights and Open City.
Keep on keeping on!
What do I think?
Good for them in expressing their right to assemble and freedom of speech. I don’t have to agree with their message or viewpoints, but God bless them in having a nice and peaceful day.
What do I make of it? The lying American Right is trying to start a populist revolt against tax increases for the protesters’ bosses’ bosses’ bosses.
The American right is exploiting the racial fears of white working class folks to advance a pro-rich-people agenda. That’s the real story of the Republican party and movement conservatism. It’s not really, at its heart, about populism. It’s about elitism — the good old-fashioned economic kind: the Republicans are the Party of the Rich.
“It’s about elitism — the good old-fashioned economic kind: the Republicans are the Party of the Rich.”
Sadly, the same is true for the Democrats too. Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Schumer, Sen. Boxer, Sen. Dodd, are all quite well off financially and tied in to the Wall St/Corporate power brokers. Sure, they toss a bone to the masses every once in awhile, but the system is set in their favor as well.
The policy history of the Democratic Party is way, WAY friendlier to the common man than the Republican Party’s history, dpt. The NLRB? Social Security (Wall Street hated it because it was competition)? Medicare? Medicaid? Head Start? The Peace Corps? The Civil and Voting Rights acts? The Republicans opposed them all, because they cost their constituents (the rich) either money or relative power.
I really wouldn’t say the D’s have a better policy history than the R’s. For decades and decades in the South it was the Democrats who were tied to racist whites (during Reconstruction the Republicans were the pro-black carpet-baggers, remember?). It was a Democrat who funded the creation of the bomb and it was a Democrat who dropped the bomb (twice). Today the Democrats have a platform that has excellent parts but also explicitly enables attacks on those who are literally the poorest members of our society. As a party they are 100 percent committed to protecting the brutality, exploitation and the routine violation of human rights that is the status quo. There are enough Democrats in office to pass truly meaningful healthcare reform, but they won’t. Because they are just as beholden to the rich as the Republicans.
There is a more or less long list of “accomplishments” from the Rs, but what is the point of compiling these lists. Seeing which one is shorter and going with that party? The problem in this country is that we are willing to play the game where we figure out which party is “better” or at least “less bad” and then we give our support and energy completely to them, all the while working our brains overtime to try to prove that the other guys are bad, bad, bad. The truth is we are choosing betweeen four quarters and a dollar bill. When we wake up and realize this and demand something better from our leadership, that is when “change” worth “hoping” for will finally come to town.
Magdalena: thank you.
Everything on the real Republican agenda serves their constituency – rich people. They don’t really care about abortion or gay marriage (or, for that matter, race): haven’t you ever wondered why, when Republicans gain power, the help-rich-people stuff gets enacted with dispatch, and the culture war stuff gets a lot of noise made, but no real action? It’s because what they care about is serving their constituency: Rich people.
Racial Quotas and Abortion and Gays Getting Married is what they use to get socially traditionally people riled up enough to vote for the very people who actually are making their lives (in the million little ways that actually make a difference in their lives from day to day) worse.
And I agree we need to demand better from our leadership, Magdalena. I’m working with my friends and leaders in the Democratic Party to help the people that the Democrats traditionally have helped: the poor, small farmers, working class, unions, etc.
The Republicans’ POLICIES are designed to defend the interests of the rich: it’s time the Democratic leadership remembered their constituency: virtually everyone else.
One more thing: if the Democratic leadership began talking like Harry Truman on the “kitchen table” issues (“the Democratic Party is the party of the common man, and the Republican Party is the party of special interest: always has been, always will be…”), rallies like today’s would be even more thinly populated because the Democrats would give most of those folks a reason to turn their backs on the Republicans once and for all.
“The Civil and Voting Rights acts? The Republicans opposed them all”
I’d double-check the history on this. Republican support was key for this in the face of plenty of Democrat opposition.
“if the Democratic leadership began talking like Harry Truman on the “kitchen table” issues ”
But they won’t because they are in the end just has beholden to the corporate elite. Look at Dodd, Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer’s et al ties to corporate America and Wall Street. Even President Obama has strong financial ties with greedy corporate types:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708a.html
Look at the progressive hot bed of the Bay Area, CA. Corporate wealth and the disparity between the rich and poor is as severe here as any where in the nation. Yes, progressive leaders like Willie Brown, Pete Stark, Wilma Chan, Nancy Pelosi, Don Perata, Barbara Lee, Gavin Newsome, etc. reign over a region the has extreme differences between the elite and the corporate types compared to the poor and the working class. Neighborhoods are segregated and violent, schools are segregate, violent, and failing, and all of this under the leadership of progressives in love of the common man.
Have more faith in the Gospel than either political party.
In fact, I do have more faith in the Gospel than either political party, dpt – but that said, the Democrats get closer to gospel values on so many more issues that the “pox on both their houses” thing doesn’t go very far with me.
http://catholicsforobama.blogspot.com/2009/09/joe-wilson-in-cathedral.html
Joe Wilson in the Cathedral?
Saturday evening, September 12th and the faithful gathered at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC for the annual Mass for the Blessing of Human Labor, which has been held on or around Labor Day for better than fifty years. The Archbishop was presiding and in attendance were leaders and rank and file members of the labor movement. Entering the Cathedral, I joked with my companion that some of the people participating in the anti-tax/anti-Obama rally earlier that day might inadvertently be attending.
Maybe not as much as the more high class Red Mass that will be celebrated next month for the legal profession and the judiciary, but it was a solemn affair – the Archbishop incensing the altar, the deacon singing his parts, the choir at its best. Yes, some of the union members in attendance came in their work clothes as is custom, but it was no clown Mass with liturgical dance during the canon.
All was good until around the middle of the Mass, when one person decided some “audience participation” was needed. On my part, first shock, and then hearing whispered to me “Is Joe Wilson in the Cathedral?”
Is this where we have come? First during a presidential address to a formal joint session of Congress and now at Mass in the Cathedral?