Richard A. Stitt: GOP Agenda -- Ignore, Obstruct and Sabotage

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt

I suppose half a loaf is better than none, but the stimulus package that passed but not yet signed into law is so watered down that it's a farce. You might call it a pyrrhic victory for Barack Obama because at least he's getting something started. But thanks to the obstructionist GOP, Obama's start will receive no cooperation from them.
 
As far as helping ordinary working folks, the bill has a pittance of a tax cut that will do little to create jobs quickly. For example, last year, Bush and Congress passed a stimulus bill that allowed $1,200 tax rebate checks for married couples and $500 for individuals. After the distribution, the Bureau of Labor Statistics hyped up the income "boost" with a chart showing personal incomes went up more than at any time in 25 years. The kicker of course, was that it was only for one month. But the income increase quickly dissipated and the economy continued to sink further while job losses escalated.
 
The $800 and $400 tax cuts in the Obama Administration's bill are not tax rebate checks, however. They are incremental, resulting in about $17 per week for Americans, starting in June, and will phase out early next year. A $17 per week increase will not trigger consumer spending and increase the gross domestic product (GDP) nor will it stop the deficits. More, much more, will still be needed to turn things around.  
 
Though $789 billion is only a start, there have been some promising trends: retail sales are up slightly; home foreclosures have abated, especially in hard-hit California; government may step in and subsidize troubled homeowners' mortgages; fewer people filed for unemployment benefits last week. Looking at the long-term effects, most economists believe another $1 trillion may be needed to reverse the job losses and allow banks to begin lending to small businesses.
 
Republicans may have won the first round of rhetorical salesmanship because they depicted the stimulus bill as a huge spending project. When only three Republicans can dictate the terms of a bill that pared the paltry $1,000 for couples and $500 for single people down to $800 and $400 respectively, you know you're in trouble. But, a win, even if symbolic, for President Obama is important to establish an impetus for Congressional battles that lie ahead.
 
Dropping limits for executive pay is another slap in the face aimed directly at the working people of our country. Now, we are expected to swallow the malarkey that obscene bonuses for these swindlers are henceforth to be called "retention awards."
 
These CEOs, unlike hoi polloi who actually have to work for a living, have no worries about putting food on the table for their families or Mercedes Benzes in their 6-car garages. Their financial losses are written off and are manipulated through arcane accounting and tax codes, written by lawyers and legislators, to allow them to pay little or no taxes at all. Of course, all you ever hear from the tax-cut-forever Republicans is that business taxes at 35% are the second highest in the industrialized world. That's true, but only on paper. In reality, most of their income is sheltered from paying anything close to 35%.
 
Whereas most Americans who have been brought up with an ethic that rewards hard work, the current crop of corporate parasites, hucksters, and swindlers, many who have come from elite Ivy League schools, have no ethical standards and view the world as a depository where the masses are treated only as commodities that are to be exploited and then tossed aside. It is a perversion of the utilitarianism expounded by philosopher John Stewart Mill's hypothetical nature of economic theory about which he warns, "the danger that democratic government might prove antagonistic to the causes of individual freedom and of the common welfare."
 
Under the stewardship of the Republicans and G.W. Bush, it became crystal clear that the common welfare meant maximizing corporate profits no matter the cost to liberties and freedoms manifested in the U.S. Constitution. Proof of this concept occurred when the Bush Justice Department dismissed the international Geneva Accords that prohibited torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners as "quaint and obsolete." They then established the doctrine of inherent or unitary executive powers that gave G.W. Bush absolute authority. Authority that one associates with totalitarian, autocratic regimes.
 
There are precepts set forth in our U.S. Constitution and state and local statutes that ordinary citizens follow and obey, and then there are the codes of noblesse oblige by which these malignant politicians and mavens of industry live where people such as G.W. Bush and the cronies he appointed to oversee federal agencies always believed they were entitled to special treatment and inherent privileges.
 
That is why each and every one of these corrupt scions of the financial institutions asking for bailouts can sit before a Congressional committee and take the grilling and the heat. They are totally callous and dispassionate to the sufferings of millions of Americans whom they have put in the poorhouse due to their avarice. Their composure at these hearings reminded me of the film "Animal House" and the fraternity initiation ritual... "Thank you Congressman Barney Frank, may I have another?" After they walk out of these public hearings, they can scarcely stifle their guffaws of contempt.
 
Added to the watered-down stimulus bill are cuts to aid the 46 states currently running deficits, cuts in school construction, cuts in health benefits, and elimination of funding for school lunches for impoverished kids.
 
The message the Congressional Republicans received from this farcical bill that they savaged is this: "If the Democrats were this easy to roll when only 3 Republicans demanded and got huge concessions, just imagine how much easier it will be if we get 10 or more Republican colleagues to join future legislation opposition. It looks like we, the Republicans, are still in charge. The proof is in the spineless leadership of Pelosi and Reid. It's like taking candy away from babies."
 
The Democrats have had a 12-year learning curve, the last eight under G.W. Bush, absorbing in-your-face, no compromise, take-no-prisoners Republican bullying and intimidation. There will be a point, soon I hope, when President Barack Obama will have to accustom his administration to the reality and truth that Republicans put their party first and foremost over the health, welfare, and security of the American citizens.
 
Once he reaches that point, he will understand exactly why John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have been glaring piercing daggers of rage and contempt toward him. Their Republican cohorts in both houses are gearing up for a war of words and propaganda that they hope will succeed in denigrating Obama and his policies to try and get our country back to work.
 
The recalcitrant GOP can only be dealt with by confronting them with ceaseless public relations efforts and warnings to the Republicans that his administration cannot and will not continue to be sabotaged by incorrigible and unrepentant obstructionists.
 
President Obama will eventually mow down the barricades that Republicans, like recidivistic prisoners unable to be rehabilitated, continue to throw in the path of the progress our country desperately needs.
 
Barack Obama will prevail because he is a statesman, a communicator and a leader who puts our country and our citizens first, qualities that are alien to the so-called Republican leadership who cannot rehabilitate themselves because they became inured to the failed, dysfunctional, incompetent, and devastating policies of G.W. Bush.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Richard A. Stitt
Austin, TX

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