Kansas’ Road Likened to Mao’s

Strike Scene

Louis Lozowick

1935

THIS is the world of the Republican Party… any questions?

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Study for “Construction of a Dam”

William Gropper

1938

THIS is what we have to return to… “One for all and all for one”… “He ain’t heavy; he’s my brother”… NOT “Greed is good”… NOT “The race goes to the swiftest”… NOT “I earned it… its MINE”. In any case, the Apostle said, “The love of money is the root of all evil“, NOT “The love of social justice is the root of all evil”… my, my, my... note well that the Republicans are trying to stuff this part of our history “down the memory hole“.

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Editor’s Foreword:

This letter to the editor well-summarises what the libertarian idiots and chowderheaded “culture warriors” are doing to our country. That is, they’re cutting into “social capital”, the reserves that society built up from the time of the New Deal to the inauguration of Slobberin’ Ronnie in 1981. For 32 years, the Affluent Effluent has partied hearty by preying on the rest of us. The top 5 percent have 275 percent of their 1981 incomes in real terms… the rest of us have only 85 percent. None dare call it “class warfare”… of the country club set against all others.

However, it can’t go on much longer… lately, in December 2012, Jim DeMint, one of the more-unhinged rightwing nutters, resigned his Senate seat to head a District-based stink-tank. He’d won re-election in 2010, so, he had four more years left in his term. Recently, he said that the GOP couldn’t count on “angry white men” forever… you see, at present, the most-solid GOP bloc is white men over 70… and they’re dying off steadily. Have some patience… the rightwing scourge may soon be over. After all, DeMint resigned a “safe” seat… that says something. I believe that extremist (and wrongheaded) Tea Party policies are going to lead to further meltdowns in GOP-run states as basic government functions become unaffordable due to tax cuts favouring the Affluent Effluent. That won’t be pretty…

When the Tea Party tanks, it’ll take “social conservatism” along with it. That is, those who allied themselves with the GOP due to its anti-abortion platform will founder at the same time as the greedsters do. Whether one likes it or not, the rest of us outnumber the troglodyte Evangelical stormtroopers of the GOP. After all, Our Lord Christ didn’t use the cudgel of the state’s police power to spread His message… neither should we. That’s what HH said recently… we should follow him… NOT certain loud parties in the District. Read n’ heed…

BMD  

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In 1966, Mao Zedong initiated the Cultural Revolution in China. It was an ideologically-based movement to replace capitalism and certain traditional practises with Maoist orthodoxy. The result was a fiasco. Characteristic features of the movement were the eviscerating of universities and intelligentsia, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, public humiliation, and property seizure. The abuses continued until after the death of Mao in 1976. China’s Cultural Revolution has been seen… even in Communist China today… as an unmitigated failure.

Today, in Kansas, we see eerie parallels. Governor Sam Brownback and the Legislature are in the process of destroying education, social services, scientific research, infrastructure maintenance, and the ability of low wage-earners to improve their lot. They’re trying to eliminate the progressive income tax from which the state gets half its revenue in favour of continuing and expanding the regressive sales tax. Brownback tries to convince people that we need the sales tax to continue funding higher education, but the truth is that his reduction of the income tax created the need to do so. Another result of no- or low-income tax in a state is higher property taxes. This self-inflicted wound benefits only those with significant wealth to start with. The conservative Tax Policy Center rated this programme as the worst in the nation.

Other Brownback initiatives include reduction of university faculties, evisceration of such social services as mental health, children’s food programmes, and Medicaid, making abortion totally unavailable, expanding the presence of guns in society, and disdain for the suffering of the less well-off. He’s doing this in the name of ideology and extremist orthodoxy. So far, we haven’t suffered as badly as Mao’s China, but we’re well on the way.

10 May 2013

Douglas B McGaw

Emporia KS

Topeka (KS) Capital-Journal

http://cjonline.com/opinion/2013-05-10/letter-kansas-road-likened-maos

Romney is Another Obama… The Only Difference is that He’s a Mormon

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Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination. His final speech on the last day at the Republican National Convention in Tampa FL met with a storm of applause. As one watched the convention, it was easy to get the impression that Romney was already president. The question of whether America is ready to elect its first Mormon president is still open. It happens in politics, just like in business, that a product becomes more popular due to the scale of its advertisement. However, the advertisement doesn’t change the product’s quality. This is Romney’s main problem. Even Romney’s rather unusual “confessional orientation” doesn’t matter as much. Why not elect a president from the ranks of the LDS movement? After all, four years ago, America elected its first Afro-American President, Barack Obama.

Sergei Mikheyev, the director general of the Centre for Political Status, said, “The fact that Romney’s a Mormon will play a certain role in the election, but this role won’t be decisive. The religious views of the voters themselves are likely to have an influence on their choice. Let’s be frank, the Mormons’ reputation is a bit tatty, but at the same time, there are many undisclosed Mormons amongst famous and influential people in the USA. In any case, America is a country of sects, although they wear many different visages. That’s why America, where everything intermingles, turning into an undreamt of mélange, may elect a Mormon as president”.

Romney’s main problem is that he’s a “hard sell” to most Americans. He can be inconsistent, and very few people are able to discern where one Romney, the moderate centrist, ends, and the next one, the radical rightwinger, begins. Hardly anyone notices a fascinating fact. Just before the last day of the RNC in Tampa, the American press published an opinion poll of likely Republican voters, which revealed an interesting fact… Romney’s one of the most unpopular GOP candidates in the past 30 years! Even George W Bush was better “liked”. Bush, by the way, didn’t receive an invitation to the RNC in Tampa; he had to be satisfied with an “appearance” via a video link. It was too problematical for them to claim the legacy of the last Republican President. The Democrats, by the way, at their convention, will give much attention to Bill Clinton.

Compared to Paul Ryan, the favourite of the Radical Rightwing Tea Party and “conservatives”, Mitt appeared quite “moderate” at the convention. On the one hand, Ryan’s candidacy will attract Teabaggers, but on the other hand, it greatly disappoints moderates and “independents”, who may stay home on Election Day. Romney needs all the help that he can get in this election campaign, but his ratings numbers are abysmal. His “approval” numbers run from 15 percent all the way up to 40 percent. It’s been a struggle for him to get even that. In the end, if we average out the polls, they show that Obama beats Romney by anywhere from 1 to 8 percent. If we factor in that the contenders for the White House in the last four elections were separated by a difference of 1 to 6 percent (Obama’s margin in 2008), then, it appears that Romney may have a slight chance to win 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

However, looking at the Republican Romney-Ryan ticket, the “friends of Barack” should be satisfied… the facts are such that the chances of Obama’s re-election aren’t decreasing, but increasing. Unless the economy collapses, which is unlikely, it looks like he’ll be lucky again. It’ll be a replay of 2008, where he had the luck of being matched with John McCain, an unelectable old codger. This time, it’ll be a somewhat different kind of luck. Lucky for them, the Republican economic programme is so confused that it resembles a mushy concoction, a problematical mixture of unrelated ideas and programmes. On the one hand, they promise to cut taxes, reduce government, and boost spending on defence, on the other, they promise no cuts in Social Security and Medicare. How they could reconcile this on the basis of the current tax base, it’s difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the current election is all about the economy, jobs, and money in your wallet.

Many see Romney as a moderate conservative. When one takes into account that the American South is an especially-rabid hotbed of the Radical Right, as shown by its support for the so-called Tea Party movement, and that it’s the Baptist “Bible Belt” of America, where Mormons are thought of as worse than heretics or schismatics, it’s not so simple for him. If you averaged all the polls amongst American Christian believers {that is Radical American Sectarians, in real terms: editor}, it turns out that a quarter to a third of them aren’t ready to accept a Mormon in the White House. Whilst Mormons claim to be Christians, outside of their sect, members of the LDS movement still face a prejudiced and/or suspicious attitude. Mitt Romney isn’t just a simple rank-and-file Mormon… he’s former “clergy” of the LDS movement, the head of a ward (parish). I must say that Mormon “clergy” are more like businessmen than real clergy. Later, he became a bishop, the head of a stake (this includes several dozen wards).

Mitt shows signs of flexibility and political consideration. However, his Democratic rivals and opponents believe that he’s notorious for waffling, concealment, distortion, and God knows what else. For example, David Axelrod, who was the chief architect of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, who’s now one of the leading lights in his current election campaign, called Mitt a “charlatan”, saying, “He takes two positions on every issue, one more moderate, and the other on the Far Right, but that doesn’t make you a centrist. It makes you a charlatan”. Amazingly, even fellow Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry claimed (prior to Romney winning the GOP nomination), “[Mitt’s] a buzzard, a Fibber, and differs very little from Obama in his gutter ideology”. Indeed, everywhere, Mitt seems to say exactly what he thinks people want to hear. He’s a furious Tory in one state, a moderate in another, and politically malleable in a third. However, any road, he’s still a Mormon.

The only trouble is that he doesn’t present any real alternative to the Obama’s economic course. This delights Obama’s camp, for it makes it easier for Obama to compete against Romney. As Professor Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, said, “Romney doesn’t have much chance of winning. It isn’t because he’s a bad candidate, but because it’s difficult to defeat a sitting president, who has powerful administrative resources at his disposal. To do this, he should be someone outstanding, but Romney isn’t that. I think the strategy of the Republicans is only to give a formal opposition in this election; they’re focusing on seriously preparing for the next election, when Obama’s second term expires”.

Romney’s a graduate of Harvard Business School; he’s a lawyer, businessman, and politician, a very wealthy man, the head of Bain Capital, a major investment firm. In 2002, he was head of the Winter Olympics Organising Committee in Salt Lake City UT. He managed to eliminate waste in collected funds, and instead of a projected shortfall of 375 million USD (12.1 billion Roubles. 300 million Euros. 235 million UK Pounds), the Games gained a profit of almost the same amount. Mitt and his wife invested in about a million dollars of their own funds in the Games. When Romney was the governor of Massachusetts in 2003-07, he conducted an economic policy that was similar to Obama’s current economic policy. When he took office, the state treasury had a shortfall of 600 million USD (19.4 billion Roubles. 477 Euros. 378 million UK Pounds) to meet current outlays, and there was an estimated deficit of 3 billion USD (97 billion Roubles. 2.4 billion Euros. 1.9 billion  UK Pounds) for the following year. Yet, he raised taxation over expenditures by almost 700 million USD (22.7 billion Roubles. 556 million  Euros. 440 million UK Pounds). He solved his budget problems by closing tax loopholes for corporations, increased excise duties on petrol, and introduced higher fees for driving licences, gun licences, and marriage licences, and so on. By the way, his state was the first one to introduce a mandate that all citizens obtain health insurance. Obama was only able to do something similar on the national level after three years. In general, everything or most of the things that Romney did in Massachusetts, the Obama administration is doing now. Does America really need a second Obama, with the only difference is that he’s a Mormon?

31 August 2012

Andrei Fedyashin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_08_31/Romni-vtoroj-Obama-tolko-mormon/

25 August 2012. Which Do You Want… Do You Want the America of FDR or Do You Want the America of Rush Limboob and the Tea Party? Choose Well…

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THIS is why I refuse to vote for ANY Republican candidate for ANY office. THIS is what “rugged individualism” and “economic freedom” means to the GOP. Remember this when you vote in November. Obama‘s no prize package, but the alternative is FAR worse…

BMD

Will Big Money Save Mitt Romney and the GOP?

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With both Republican and Democratic conventions approaching, the American presidential campaign is getting nastier day by day. As it happens, most of the scandals in the campaign circulate around the opposition GOP. In fact, any minor slip on the part of any minimally-noticeable Republican politician causes hell in the media. Whilst on a trip to Israel, a group of GOP lawmakers drank heavily, and they went skinny-dipping in the Red Sea. They weren’t debauched, they weren’t on an official mission… they didn’t even offend anybody nor did they desecrate a holy place. They were enjoying themselves in their leisure time. However, the row following the incident went as far as getting the FBI involved in the investigation in order to determine whether there was any impropriety. As a means of defence, GOP House leaders reprimanded their own members.

Then, Todd Akin, a Republican congressman running for the US Senate in Missouri, made a remark about “legitimate rape” (whatever he meant by that). This blunder gave a pretext to all kinds of feminists and other liberals to launch a massive attack on all the basic principles the GOP stands for… including the issue of abortion, which was the context for Akin’s unfortunate remark. Despite requests for him to step down from prominent Republicans, including Mitt Romney, Todd Akin defended his right to go on with the Senate race, saying, “The good people of Missouri nominated me, and I’m not a quitter”. The fact that the whole Republican campaign, and not only his personal Senate race, can easily be (and already is) pictured as a “war on women” doesn’t seem to bother him.

These are just two of too many examples showing how eager the liberal media community in the US is to grasp on any silly blunder made by the Republicans… and this definitely works. All the recent polls… both on the state and national level… give little grounds for Mitt Romney to hope for election. The choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate only highlights Romney’s predicament Romney. During the primaries, Romney underwent attacks from the right; he had to put up an intense struggle with Tea Party-leaning contenders. This even produced the impression that, in November, Republican right-wingers would lack enthusiasm, and Romney’s feared that they’d simply sit out the election. Obviously, such considerations must have been behind the choice of conservative darling Paul Ryan as the vice-presidential candidate. However, the problem is that, in November, it’s not Tea Partiers that’ll matter, but rather independent voters. To this end, the choice Romney and his team made is hardly helpful. All the polls show that choosing Ryan had little, no, or even a negative impact on Romney’s ratings.

Nevertheless, there’s still one aspect that may seem inexplicable in such circumstances. For a third month in a row, Romney’s outpacing Obama in fund-raising, and, by the time of November elections, is likely to break Obama’s record of 2008. Nevertheless, one must note that Obama was running on a wave of strong anti-Bush sentiment and his own popularity, and his victory was predetermined long before the election. The current situation is far from that of 2008. Obama lost some of his popularity, but not to the extent George W Bush had by the end of his tenure. Romney doesn’t possess even half of Obama’s personal charisma. Therefore, if anything IS predetermined in the current race, it’s Obama’s re-election. Then, why should one invest in the probable loser? One simple explanation, which is hardly an explanation at all, is that Romney’s supported by the richest segment of society; therefore, he’s able to raise more money than his opponent does. However, this is hardly the case…  even big business, which generally favours Republicans, wouldn’t spend so much without any hope of getting something in return.

The only plausible explanation is that American presidential campaigns aren’t simply sponsored by big businesses, they’re part of big business, which evolved in full compliance with the Olympic (Olympics, by the way, also have nothing to do with sports, being part of big business, too) motto, l’important c’est de participer (It’s [more] important to participate [than to win]). The very fact of big money’s participation in the campaign is a matter of PR and commercial advertising, therefore, it doesn’t really matter for the sponsors whether the particular candidate wins or not. Their mission is different… it’s to keep him in the spotlight as long as possible, and scandals like the ones surrounding GOP lawmakers in Israel or Todd Akin’s silly remark, whilst ruining Romney’s chances for election, raise the stakes of his campaign’s investors.

21 August 2012

Boris Volkhonsky

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_21/Will-big-money-save-Mitt-Romney-and-the-GOP/