It’s January 2015 (news flash!) and we’re on the brink of true divided national government – Congress in the hands of one party, the Presidency controlled by the other, and a 5-4 split on the Supreme Court. If electoral politics may be considered by anyone to be a true measure of the nation’s policy aspirations, it’s hard to see how we have reached this outcome. We hear from our corporate media that the American people are tired of gridlock and dysfunction in Congress, and yet the electorate has rewarded the faction most responsible for these maladies with control of the Senate and an expanded majority in the House. Is there any expectation on the part of those who voted in the last election that Congress will function more smoothly and more effectively as a result?
Perhaps it’s simply that our Congressional elections are really 435 tiny local races rather than one big, national one; that each district decides on the basis of who’s running and who’s most likely to show up at the polls. My home district, New York’s 22nd (the fighting 22nd!) is a pretty good example. Our representative, Republican Richard Hanna, ran unopposed last year. The Democratic Party won the seat for the first time in a generation in 2006, lost it in 2010 and again in 2012, and apparently decided it wasn’t worth spending any more money on. Hanna is far from the most reactionary member of his caucus, but he is a conservative Republican in the traditional sense, holding a 95% rating with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an “A” rating from the NRA, so it would have been nice to have someone else to vote for. So much for that.
Hanna presents himself as a moderate, at least between elections, as do some other upstate Republicans (like the recently elected John Katko, who unseated Democrat Dan Maffei this past November). But the effect of their presence has not been to moderate their caucus; they generally support their leadership. (Katko claims he will be independent, but I’ll believe it when I see it.) When you cast your vote as a member of the House of Representatives to elect leaders that will willingly drive the country over a cliff economically (through austerity budgets), environmentally (through inaction on climate change and support for domestic oil production and the Keystone pipeline), and in the realm of foreign policy (with support for interventionist policies around the globe), it makes little difference what you call yourself. You are part of the problem.
So … happy new year, friends. Let’s work to make 2015 better than the lousy year we just left behind.
luv u,
jp
At least, that’s what’s left to us after a remarkably lackluster election in which about 37% of the American voting populace voted. That’s the lowest turnout since 1942, and it bears remembering that a lot of voting age men were in he military at the time. So if we can’t summon the will to vote, do we have the right to complain about the outcome? Sure, the Democratic party — including many of last Tuesday’s also-rans — is less than inspiring. But there is a small difference between the parties, and small differences can sometimes have an enormous impact on the nation’s most vulnerable. We owe it to them to go and mark the ballot, even if it means voting for some jerk-ass.
That can only serve as an endorsement of the GOP’s strategy of doing absolutely nothing and letting nothing be done by anyone else. Here we are, at a time when interest rates are at historic lows, letting our national infrastructure rust away when we could be rebuilding it under very favorable terms, putting people to work, and investing in the future. Instead, we’ve opted for austerity at both the federal and the state level, laying off people instead of putting them to work, squeezing the air out of the economy years after the financial crash.
I know – that doesn’t sound like a gee-whiz, hyper positive, up-with-people rallying cry of the sort we have all grown to expect since our kindergarten days. It’s merely the truth – the vote is a right people have died defending in this country (see Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney), and we need to exercise it. We also need to encourage those around us to do the same thing. Because if we stay home, sit on our hands, choose to watch the game instead of marking the ballot, our opponents – those who are part of the wholly-owned corporate subsidiary known as the Republican party – gain even greater influence and power. Elections always have consequences.
I use that term “conservative” in the very expansive sense that is in common usage now, descriptive of the type of “conservative” who appears to favor facing off against federal law enforcement officers with firearms. That’s the kind of conservative we saw praising Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his militia-inspired neighbors as he took his somewhat bizarre and incoherent stand against the Bureau of Land Management. It was the classic reactionary fairy tale, and our friends at FoxNews, the Drudge Report, and Limbaugh central sucked it up with great relish and spewed it out over the airwaves so that everyone in America knew the name of this rambling, aged, white-hatted patriot.
it before implementation of the Affordable Care Act, sure, you can keep that dog – it’s grandfathered in. The insurance companies simply can’t continue selling those policies now that the law is in effect because – and this is important – THEY SUCK TOO BADLY, and because of that, they do not comply with the law.
Then, of course, the Austerians came to power in 2011 and set us on the righteous path of Japan in the 1990s – the path we are crawling along today on our bloody hands and knees. Millions are still out of work, millions more under-employed with zero security, many more working their asses off and still needing SNAP benefits, still needing the support of food pantries. These millions of people are now the favored target of the Austerians. If people are in need, surely it’s their fault and not the fault of policymakers who will do anything rather than invest in economic growth. SNAP has grown to $80 billion a year! they exclaim. What’s their solution? Allocate money for, say, public works projects while interest rates are low so that we can repair and replace our aging infrastructure, invest in our future, and create jobs? God, no! Cut SNAP by $40 billion.
to continue and even enhance their extremism, as that is the only way they can please their hard-right constituencies back home. Around that core is another probably 40-50 House republicans terrified of being challenged by tea party types in the next round of primaries. Boehner needs these folks to maintain his speakership, so he goes along as do most of what remains of the GOP caucus. Hence, a list of demands is attached to a 60-day continuing resolution – not even a budget – with the same treatment threatened for the debt ceiling vote in a couple of weeks.