Honestly, I’m not sure when (if ever during my remaining lifetime) the public is going to become so outraged over the BullCrap coming out of Washington DC, and mostly instigated by a republican party gone so far amuck that they are unrecognizable to someone my age who can genuinely remember the days of Eisenhower and the sixties.  I’ve been railing against “trickle down” economics since the day Ronald Reagan was elected.  It made no sense then, it’s made no sense in the years since, and it makes no sense going forward.  Yet, after another sound thrashing from the (national) polls, here we have the republican party continuing to prostitute themselves to the very wealthy and the corporate elite in America.  The “trickle down” theory was presented as an economic philosophy that would advance the “world” of the working class as the wealthy in America would “trickle down” the tax benefits they received from progressively larger tax breaks through the creation of better jobs and higher wages.  The reality is that this philosophy is really a “trickle up” economic plan that is SQUEEZING as much wealth out of the middle class into the bank accounts of America’s wealthy class and corporate executives as the foolish American public will continue to allow.

Today, in the republican leaders of Congress’s all out effort to prevent their benefactors (pimps) from losing tax breaks that are obscene when you look at them up close (like Oil Companies cashing in to the tune of tens of BILLIONS in breaks while making profits that seemingly break records quarter after quarter) you’ll hear the “water carriers” like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lars Larsen, Bill O’Reilly (and the like – people who’ll say whatever the Koch’s and the others behind the scenes pushing our fossil fuel economy tell them to say – abusing their place on our public airwaves) tell us the $85 BILLION in across the board cuts triggered by the “sequester” are nothing more than a “drop in the bucket” compared to the size of our economy.  However, the only sure thing I can see about this is that those people won’t feel it at all – the people who will feel the effects of this STUPID form of governing are, again, mostly going to be people at the “bottom rungs” of our economy.  I’m certainly not opposed to cutbacks in our government, it’s just the RIDICULOUS way everything has to happen in Washington DC these days because the republicans are so adamant about holding on to a tax system that clearly favors the wealthiest among us.

I (and many others) have seen this coming for years.  It just keeps getting progressively worst.  The only time I can remember when there was a plethora of jobs being created and a healthy economy for the people in the middle class during the years since Reagan was elected was in the years of the Clinton administration.  However, when I look back on those years I can see the workings of this invisible group of RICH right wing, racist individuals at work chipping away at the foundation of our nation which emerged after World War II and the aftermath of the New Deal – which the Kochs and the others involved in this “attack” HATE with passion.  (I’m beginning to think the only thing they HATE more than the New Deal is having a Black President)  These people are smart, they’ve got UNLIMITED financial resources, and they’ve been at this for well over 30 years and they’re not “going away” until the American public WISES UP!

As successful as many progressive Americans view the Clinton years, two things happened which are compounding our problems almost exponentially as we evolve into the “21st Century.”  First, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has turned THOUSANDS of independent media outlets into a dangerously few corporate GIANTS who are suppressing information in an alarming manner.  Clinton went along with this STUPID law and now we’re all paying the price.  The second MAJOR BLUNDER was the repeal of the Glass Steagall act toward the end of Clinton’s second term.  This was the action that has allowed the so-called “Too Big to Fail” banks to emerge – again with seemingly endless supplies of financial resources which they’re using to manipulate the system and it also allowed much of the exotic trading and speculation that is fueling the financial markets and has turned Wall Street into a glorified GAMBLING Casino.  There is so much wealth on Wall Street now that any push back is met with MASSIVE financial resources aimed at destroying the careers of any politician who would dare to attempt to re-regulate their casinos.

These people have a stacked Supreme Court which burdened us all with the “Citizens United” decision that is the worst case of judicial overreach in my lifetime coming from the people who constantly complain about judicial activism.  The Robert’s Court overturned something like 100 years of congressional attempts to control campaign finance abuses by, essentially, opening the spigots of the bank accounts from people like Charles and David Koch who have BILLIONS to burn in order to protect their fossil fuel empire and other wealthy individuals and corporations who have a stake in manipulating our electoral process.  (Kind of the same theory as the NRA gun lobbyists claiming the way to stop gun violence is to produce MORE guns!)  Citizens United has empowered wealthy elites from outside the U.S. to be able to use their money (surreptitiously) to influence our future elections.  This is ABSURD, yet the “liberal media” (which is firmly in the control of about nine “conservative” corporations) says virtually NOTHING about it from the standpoint of informing the general public.  News Corp, which is run by a right wing Australian (who’s donating MILLIONS to republcan candidates for office around the country) owns the Wall Street Journal, Fox “News,” and many other “news” outlets which are going to broadcast or print a perspective that comes right out of the republican caucus.  Fox “News” is so blatantly ABSURD as a “news” outlet, that it’s embarrassing to me as an educator that the American people tune into that network AT ALL.  The head of Fox “News” – Roger Ailes – is nothing more than a republican operative.  The result of this situation (again, I believe it’s the result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) is the divisive nature of our present political discourse where we’ve gotten to the point that virtually NOTHING of significance will be accomplished in the next two years.

The solution?  Well, the solution is clearly that one of the two parties needs to be TOTALLY defeated.  While I’ve never felt that “one party rule” is healthy – that is clearly the objective the republicans have been working for over these past 30+ years – as Karl Rove calls it – “The permanent republican majority.”  Well, hopefully, the American people haven’t lost sight of how disastrous that would be.  They fought off the latest attempt to pull this off by defeating Mitt Romney in 2012 despite something like 3 BILLION being spent by the wealthy elite of America to get the Black guy out of the White House.  Obviously, they’ve (the republicans) hardly slowed down since that election.  And, they’ve got the power to stop everything because of their control of the majority in the House of Representatives – hence, the sequester.  Those who want to pin the sequester on President Obama evidently forget that it’s the result of republicans blackmailing the president (and the nation) over the “debt ceiling” in 2012 which led to it.  (which will likely be the next big fiasco as the debt “crisis” comes to a “head” again in the next month or so)  So, as I’ve been saying for several years now, there’s only one solution for people like me who consider themselves “progressive” (OK, Liberal – as I’ve stated many times on this site, years ago I thought I was a conservative – it’s just that compared to these republicans I’m a “flaming” liberal) and that is the TOTAL defeat of the republican party at the ballot box.

That will, if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years, not be easy.  Even though there are a lot more people who identify with the democratic party (certainly with the traditional ideals of the democratic party going back to the days of FDR) the republicans have been VERY BUSY manipulating voting districts (gerrymandering) around the nation in a way where they’re planning to be able to win and keep control of congress and the White House with less than a majority of votes.  (As I write, they’re busy trying to change the rules in some key swing states to take advantage of their gerrymandering – vis a vi – electoral votes – to further strengthen their position in national elections with a minority of votes)  In fact, they actually pulled this off in 2012 in the House congressional elections.  Nation wide democratic House candidates received something approaching 2 MILLION more votes than republican candidates, yet the republicans continue to have a strong control of the “lower chamber” of congress.  I believe the solution is to start targeting the leaders – like Mitch McConnell who is the leading republican obstructionist in the senate.  He’s terribly UNPOPULAR in his home state and he’s due to come up for re-election in 2014.  I don’t have much money, but I’m prepared to start donating to the cause to defeat McConnell once a viable democratic candidate is on the scene.  Then there’s John Boehner, the Speaker of the House.  The guy’s shown signs of alcohol issues, he spends more time on the golf course than in the House Chamber and he comes from Ohio – where, I have to believe there’s someone there who could challenge his position.  There’s many like myself who would donate small amounts that might, in total, allow someone to unseat Boehner.   And, the guy in Wisconsin who ran along side Romney, Paul Ryan – certainly the good people of Wisconsin can come up with a challenge to get him out of office.  (I’ve donated more money to Wisconsin democrats than any place else because I consider the good people of Wisconsin who stood up to the Koch’s and Scott Walker to be ground zero in the fight to repeal this republican nightmare that has been destroying America since the day George W Bush was installed into the White House by the Supreme Court)

You would have thought that after GW Bush was out of the nation’s capital that the American people would have had enough – two unfunded, incompetently prosecuted wars along with an economy in meltdown should have been enough to give us a break from this tax breaks for the wealthy philosophy of government – actually, people who openly profess to HATE government wanting to “run it” so that they can destroy it from the inside.  It’s so crazy that, again, I’m embarrassed that enough American citizens can’t figure this out.  And, it’s true that this latest “crisis” – the sequester – will not directly affect many Americans ( at least in the near term) – the problem that I see is the a large percentage of those affected will be middle class Americans or Americans who are suffering in poverty.  From a cutting standpoint, in my mind, exactly the WRONG place to be cutting.  The only encouraging thing I can think about all of this is that I’m finally hearing rhetoric from the president which implies that maybe he’s now got his fighting shoes on.  This will eventually need to be brought to a “head” and, undoubtedly, the republicans in the House are going to “shut down” the government again – just as they did in the 1990’s when Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House.  The reward for all of this anti-government tea party crap needs to come at the ballot box in 2014 – and, my hope is that Boehner and company will inspire the vast majority of Americans who consider them incompetent to focus on removing as many republicans from congress as possible in 2014.  It will be an uphill battle due to the issues I’ve related above – the media controlled by right wing corporations, the gerrymandering of congressional districts, and probably most important the money that will be spent on behalf of the politicians willing to prostitute themselves to the republican sheep mentality due to the Citizens United decision.

Every year going forward that one Supreme Court decision will make it more difficult for “we the people” to actually control who our elected officials are.  I guarantee you, right now as I’m writing this, people like the Koch brothers are regrouping from the 2012 defeat and they’re planning on how to best use their BILLIONS to make it the democrats who are sent packing in 2014 and beyond.   I’ve said this many times on this site – and, somehow I hope President Obama and the democratic leaders in congress read my words:  This is WAR!  It’s a war for the heart and soul of this great nation I love.  (To the benefactors of the republican politicians, America is nothing more than a source for their great wealth!)