Category: What’s Up!

THE TEA PARTY PHENOMENA:  “Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?” CNBC’s Rick Santelli asked while standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 19, 2009. “This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” Santelli went on to suggest that he would organize a Chicago Tea Party in July, where capitalists would dump “some derivative securities into Lake Michigan.” The video of his tirade became a YouTube hit, and thus the Tea Party was born.  Within weeks, Tea Party protests were sprouting up all over the place. The Tea Party name, a clear reference to the American colonists’ dumping of tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxes imposed by King George, stands as an acronym as well: Taxed Enough Already.

Rick Santelli, however, can’t claim credit as the sole mastermind of the Tea Party movement.  Before Santelli’s appearance in Chicago, Keli Carender, a Seattle at-home mom also known as Liberty Belle, had been using her blog to get the word out about the populist “Porkulus Protest” she was organizing against President Obama’s proposed $750 billion stimulus package.  About 100 people showed up for her. Similar events inspired by both Santelli and Carender followed in Denver; Mesa, Ariz.; Tampa, Fla.; and other cities. Tea Party organizers claim that the first nationwide Tea Party protest took place on February 27, 2009, with coordinated events occurring in more than 40 cities.  The Tea Party movement claims no national leader or figurehead although some say that Sarah Palin assumed that role when she delivered the keynote address at the first Tea Party Convention in February 2010, in Nashville.  Some 600 people attended the full convention and another 500 sat in on Palin’s speech only.  “America is ready for another revolution,” she said. Palin also said that the movement is “about the people, and it’s bigger than any one king or queen of a tea party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter” referring to President Obama.  The Tea Party movement claims to be a grassroots movement but FreedomWorks, a powerful conservative organization headed by former congressman Dick Armey, seems to play an important role behind the scenes and serves as clearinghouses for information on protests.

While Democrats are usually the target of the Tea Party rage, Republicans have not always been spared.  For example, in New York, many Tea Party members endorsed third-party candidate Doug Hoffman in the 2009 special election for the House seat vacated by John McHugh, over the moderate Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, pro-choice and a backer of gay marriage. Their plan backfired: Scozzafava withdrew from the race and Democrat Bill Owens narrowly won that election.

The ranks of Tea Party members grew in Congress throughout 2010.  The movement’s first major victory of the year occurred in January 2010, in Massachusetts when Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in the Senate race to fill the seat vacated after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.  Brown tried to distance himself from the Tea Party during the race, but as he positioned himself as an outsider who would vote to block health-care reform, the movement claimed him as one of their own. In July 2010, Republican Representative Michele Bachmann got the go-ahead from House Leader Boehner to form a Tea Party Caucus.  Twenty-eight Republicans joined the group.  In the November 2010 midterm elections, voters elected Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio to the Senate.  However, voters rejected some high-profile Tea Party candidates including Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, a conservative and controversial social activist, who upset highly regarded political veteran Representative Mike Castle in the September primary, was defeated in the general election by Democrat Christopher Coons. Sharron Angle, another controversial Tea Party member lost her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Tea Party movement has significantly altered the political landscape and has been instrumental in the 12% approval rating of Congressional Republicans.  The overall result is that the Party of Lincoln is no longer a Party of Lincoln and it has gone so far to the right that the Party has established a reputation of being against women’s rights, voter rights, gay rights and citizenship rights to name a few.

CONTINUED IN PART III

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What has happened to the Republican Party?  In 1960, Jackie Robinson was a Republican and President Eisenhower, like Teddy Roosevelt before him, was still able to claim that he was the leader of, “the party of Abraham Lincoln.”  Ike was probably the last Republican president who could believably say that he belonged to the party of Lincoln.  The purpose of this multi-part article is to lay out a few historical developments of the Republican Party and how it became a party of “warped principles.”

After losing in 1960, Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 due in part to his “Southern Strategy” intended to capture the white racist vote that had been a mainstay of the Democratic Party since before the Civil War.  In 1968, those votes were available since President Lyndon B. Johnson rejected everything that President Andrew Johnson stood for by signing into law the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. “We have lost the South for a generation,” LBJ said. He was right.

The 1960s completed the strange setback of the two political parties. The “radical” Republicans brought about a second American revolution with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.  These Republicans were dedicated to a strong, large federal government, to public education and to expanded voting rights.  But, a century later, Republicans became adamantly opposed to all of those things.

In today’s climate, especially under President Obama, Republicans are railing against public schools, calling for voting restrictions, a smaller and weaker federal government, and assaulting women’s health rights.  If you hear a politician attacking due process or citizenship for all born here, or equal protection for all including gays and lesbians, you know that this politician belongs to the party that bears the same name as the party that fought to protect all those things in the Constitution.  Basically, the GOP traded Lincoln to the Democrats for Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan and the Tea Party.

Republicans initially became strongly identified as the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves and the party that won the war.  As a result, few Southerners joined the Republicans for over a hundred years probably because the memory of losing the war provided a strong impetus to remain a Democrat.  During their approximately 60 years in power, Republicans became synonymous with laissez-faire economics which held that few regulations and non-interference with business practices ensured a healthy economy for all.

At the end of World War II, America took another turn with Republicans by electing General Dwight Eisenhower President in 1952, and gave control of the Congress back to the Republicans as well.  At a time when they might have been expected to be at their strongest, in-fighting destroyed the sense of peacefulness the GOP might have enjoyed.  Senator Joseph McCarthy, despite alienating many with his anti-Communist tirade, won over some members of the Party and obtained new followers especially among Catholics who were previous strong Democrats.  The New Right was greatly disappointed in President Eisenhower because he had not reversed the New Deal that had been Roosevelt’s hallmark, and neither had he completely defeated Communism (intervention in foreign affairs was now held as a virtue by the Party).  In addition, Eisenhower’s support of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, permitting black students to attend white schools angered many that saw ‘separate but equal’ as good because it was what had always been.

With conflict came the re-election of the Democrats with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson taking the presidency.  Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 was not so much a support of Republican ideas as it was the hope that he could end the war in Vietnam. Nixon’s resignation from the office, in disgrace, damaged the Republican Party more than his progress in ending the war had helped it.  America once again turned to the Democrats by electing Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Carter’s apparent failure in foreign affairs together with a recession at home, led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Reagan embodied many qualities that the New Right splinter group of the GOP admired, e.g., strongly anti-Communist, willingness to intervene in foreign disputes, and economic policies that effectively rendered invalid the remnant of the New Deal.  Additionally, the Reagan administration was committed to opposing what they perceived as overly liberal steps taken by the courts in the direction of abortion, civil rights, and school prayer.  The economic boom of the 1980s helped Reagan’s re-election and in 1988 for George Bush; however, when the economy entered a downturn in the early 90s, this was seen as an indication of a failure of the GOP economic policies and led to the election of Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.  Ironically, the other factor that appeared to hurt the Republicans was the ending of the Soviet Union; anti-Communist rhetoric lost its appeal when the Communists became capitalists.

CONTINUED IN PART II

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On Saturday, August 11, 2012, Willard Mitt Romney selected Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential candidate.  Ryan was born on January 29, 1970, and has represented Wisconsin’s 1^st congressional district since 1999.  He is often cited for his radical economic views especially his proposed changes to Medicare.  As an option to the 2012 proposed budget by President Obama, Ryan introduced, “The Path to Prosperity” in April 2011, which included drastic changes to Medicare.  Then in March 2012, he helped to introduce the similar, “The Path to Prosperity:  A Blueprint for American Renewal” in response to President Obama’s 2013 budget.

Ryan’s Blueprint doesn’t balance the budget until approximately 2030, and adds more than $14 trillion in new debt by then according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Even Ryan acknowledges that his plan adds $5.7 trillion to the debt in the next decade alone.  The Ryan plan passed the House 228 to 191 with no Democratic votes and 10 Republican defections.  More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed come from programs for low-income Americans.  This means billions of dollars will be lost for job training for the displaced, Pell grants for students and food stamps for the hungry. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops raised their voices in protest at the shredding of the nation’s moral obligations.

Romney had already praised the Ryan budget as “excellent work,” but until now the vagueness of his own plans provided some room to distance him from the Ryan proposal or to take a non-committal position.  As a result of his selection, Romney is now co-owner of the Ryan proposal.  Here are a few facts concerning the new Romney-Ryan-budget proposal:

Medicare:  Starting in 2022, the proposal ends the current Medicare program for all Americans born after 1956 and replaces it with a new Medicare voucher program.  In addition, the eligibility age increases by two months per year until it reaches 67 in 2033.  After 2022, the current Medicare program ends for all people who have not already enrolled.  New enrollees after 2022 would be given a premium support system (voucher) to help them purchase private health insurance.  Costs not covered by the voucher must be paid out of pocket.

Medicaid:  Starting in 2013, the federal share of all Medicaid payments would be converted to block grants to be allocated to the states.  The total dollar amount of the block grants would increase annually.

Repeal of Obamacare:  The Romney-Ryan budget: (1) repeals the requirement that most legal US residents obtain health insurance; (2) repeals establishment of health insurance exchanges and subsidies for some individuals and families who purchase coverage through the exchanges; (3) repeals expansion of Medicaid coverage to include most nonelderly income below 138 percent of the federal poverty level; (4) repeals penalties on certain employers if any of their workers obtain subsidized coverage through the exchanges; and (5) repeals tax credits for small business owners that offer health insurance.

Medicare Part D:  The Romney-Ryan proposal cancels the expanded subsidies aimed at closing the “Medicare doughnut hole.”  This doughnut hole is a range of spending in which many Medicare beneficiaries are financial responsible for the entire cost of prescription drugs until the expense reaches the catastrophic coverage threshold.

The Ryan budget “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment,” the bishops wrote in an April 2012 letter to the House. “These cuts are unjustified and wrong.”  Ryan responded that he was helping the poor by eliminating their dependence on the government but has failed to explain how he would make them self-sufficient.  At a time when state and local government layoffs are the major factor in unemployment, the Romney-Ryan proposal would cut aid to governments by at least 20 percent, far below historical levels, in addition to other cuts to mass transit and highway spending.

The Romney-Ryan budget proposal also cuts food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by 17 percent or $133.5 billion over a decade.  As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated, there are only two ways to achieve that savings: Romney could simply take the benefits away from 8 million of the 47 million who now receive food stamps or he could cut everyone’s benefits. For a struggling family of four, that would mean a loss of $90 worth of food a month.  Most people who get SNAP benefits use them up in the first two weeks of a month, and many turn to food banks by month’s end. Cutting benefits so sharply would lead to a significant increase in hunger especially among children.  Compounding the problem is that those families would find themselves unable to pay for health care and they would face reductions in housing assistance, job training and Pell grants for college tuition, all of which the Romney-Ryan plan would cut.

At first blush, voters may applaud the idea of small government, but as the Romney-Ryan proposal is implemented, voters of all income levels would feel the effects such as plans to take away a new sewage treatment plant, asphalt for their streets, and the replacements for retiring police officers and firefighters.  All of the planned Romney-Ryan reductions are necessary for greater tax giveaways to the rich and extravagant benefits to powerful military contractors.

In addition to the Romney-Ryan proposal that assaults Medicare, we should be reminded that Ryan was one of the principle players to partially privatize Social Security after the Bush victory in the 2004 presidential election.  Moreover, Ryan voted for some of the biggest drivers of the deficit including the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and the Medicare prescription-drug benefits, none of which were paid for.  Ryan also voted against the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles recommendations that would have significantly cut the deficit.

Ryan has never held statewide office and has absolutely no foreign policy experience which doesn’t put him in an ideal position to assume the presidency should anything happen to Romney if elected.  Romney has criticized President Obama for not having private sector experience but the same is true of Ryan.  Ryan briefly worked for his family’s business as a “marketing consultant,” but for most of his adult life, he has spent as a congressman, congressional aide, or speechwriter/analysis at Jack Kemp’s Empower America think tank.

Sixty-two percent of the Romney-Ryan budget proposal comes from low-income programs in addition to the substantial cut in spending already in place from last year.  But the Romney-Ryan budget does contain a substantial tax cut for Romney and the 1% which is probably the major reason Romney said he was “very supportive” of the plan. “It’s a bold and exciting effort,” he said, “and it’s very much consistent with what I put out earlier.” It is also consistent with his publicly announced lack of concern for the very poor.

The contrast between the Obama and Romney economic vision to create jobs and sustain the middle-class will be clear and voters will now be able to see with painful clarity just what the Republican Party has planned should Romney win the presidency.

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