What’s Happening to the Republican Party?

I just went through the archives of my own political blog (http://thepoliticaledly.blogspot.com) and discovered that one blog entry I have been meaning to write for about 18 months now has never been posted. I’m now seeing what I had intended to write may have entered its end game.

Here’s a summary of my idea: I have no idea why the Republican Party has not split into several smaller parties. It’s made up of several conservative elements that, at best, have little in common: 1. There are the Fiscal/Small-Government/Anti-Tax Conservatives, who worry about the size of the government and the way it spends money. 2. There are the Anti-Abortion/Christian-Right Conservatives who worry about the morals of the country. 3. And there are the Big Business Conservatives who worry about government regulation stopping Wall St. from gambling with your money. The interesting thing to me has been that these three groups do not really have overlapping interests, and when the Republicans get into power they tend to ignore the interests of the first two kinds of Conservatives completely, even though they may voice agreement with them strenuously during campaigns. In fact, often the interests of the third kind of conservative are at total cross-purposes of the first kind (think of how Fiscal Conservatives and Big Business Conservatives each see bailouts and you will know what I am talking about.) I’ve been wondering when the first two groups would realize that the Republicans really don’t care about them at all, and are in fact simply using their votes at the ballot box to push the interests of the third group.

Well, I may be rather late with that idea. From one piece of news I saw this week, and some political signs I spotted yesterday on my way to drop my kids off at my mother’s for a few days, it seems to me that the Republican Party may in fact be in the process of splitting up.

Here’s the main news item that made me start to wonder about this:

…In recent weeks, a number of party officials — including Karl Rove, the former adviser to former President George W. Bush, and Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the party — have set up an independent committee to help Republican candidates this fall. Top Republicans said they have advised donors to send checks not to the Republican National Committee but to the committees financing Senate and House candidates.

-Adam Nagourney, “G.O.P. Squirms as Spotlight Focuses On Its Leader,” April 6^th, 2010 The New York Times

When it becomes necessary for people to start donating to someone other than the leading committee of the party in order to get money to the candidates for political office representing that party, then you know there is trouble. And this article is dripping with it.

However, there were the political signs I saw on my way to my mom’s house yesterday that helped cement my feeling that the Republican Party is in its end-game before something big happens. I have to drive through part of the Central Valley of California to go from my Silicon Valley home up to my mom’s place up in the Sierra Mountain Range. I kept seeing these signs for former 11^th District Representative Richard Pombo for Congress (19^th District), and after I saw my second or third one I figured out why I kept looking at them. I expected them to say “Richard Pombo, Republican for Congress.” They didn’t. They state “Richard Pombo, Conservative for Congress.” (Emphasis added.) I decided to check his website today (http://www.pomboforcongress.com/home.html) to see if maybe I got it wrong, but nope, there it is—Conservative for Congress. You can’t tell from his website, but as far as I can tell from the Wikipedia entry on him, it looks like he’s running for the Republican Primary, but he’s just too embarrassed to admit it.

So here’s how I see it: The Chairman of the RNC has been embarrassing the party pretty bad lately through his comments and actions (think “Bondage Club”), and pulling “The Race Card” whenever he gets called on it. The “Tea Partiers” and the “Birthers” are pulling the party in directions it doesn’t really want to go, namely into the Financial/Small-Government and Loopy-Racist directions instead of the comfortable and very well-financed Big Business zone. The big question now is if there is a Republican candidate that can ride in on a white horse and appear to be the binding force for the party, or whether it will simply continue to break up into its constituent parts.

And that’s a big “if” no matter how you look at it.

Republican Hypocrisy Continues…

I’m going to keep this one short. I’ve got a much longer post that will be coming soon (I was working on the longer post, but a computer failure brought it to a standstill for over a week.)

On February 25^th, the New York Times published an article on how the Democrats wanted to push the President’s agenda forward. In response, Mr. John Boehner (pronounced “BAYnor” not “BOHner”, no matter how much we wish it were), the MINORITY leader of the House, said the following at a meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor:

You’ve all heard all the talk about fiscal responsibility. And based on everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government is back. My questions for my Democratic colleagues are how are you going to pay for this?

My questions for Mr. Boehner are these: Why didn’t you show one tiny little bit of fiscal responsibility in the six years that the Republicans had control of all three branches of the federal government? Why did you let Mr. Bush increase the size of our government more than any previous President, even Mr. Reagan? Why didn’t you oppose the largest deficit in the history of the country, more than all previous Presidents combined? Why did you spend using credit like there was no tomorrow while decreasing revenue (taxes) for six straight years, and what did you expect the outcome to be?

And last, but not least, what makes you think you or your party have any credibility at this point?

New York Times article:

Democrats Vow Swift Action on Obama’s Agenda, By CARL HULSE

Published: February 25, 2009. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/politics/26web-obama.html?hp

Republicans cut off our nose to spite unions and clean air

In case you didn’t notice, the loan package that GM and Chrysler requested from the Government collapsed in negotiations last night. The reason: Republicans in the Senate objected to Union workers not immediately taking pay cuts more than they wanted to (ahead of contract negotiations) and because there were requirements to clean up tailpipe emissions. Even the current President was in favor of this loan package.

And no, I won’t call it a “bailout package.” This was a loan package. What the financial sector got was a bailout package—money without strings attached or a need to repay any of it. I am against a bailout of the auto companies. I am not against a loan to them. There is a big difference.

As a devotee of Paul Krugman (economics editorial columnist at The New York Times,) when he mentioned an article at The New Republic titled “Panic in Detroit,” I went over there and read it. Here is (to me) the most important section of that article:

One reason for the casual support for letting GM fail is the assumption that bankruptcy would be no big deal: As USA Today editorialized recently, "Bankruptcy need not mean that the company disappears." But, while it's worked out that way for the airlines, among others, it's unlikely a GM business failure would play out in the same fashion. In order to seek so-called Chapter 11 status, a distressed company must find some way to operate while the bankruptcy court keeps creditors at bay. But GM can't build cars without parts, and it can't get parts without credit. Chapter 11 companies typically get that sort of credit from something called Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) loans. But the same Wall Street meltdown that has dragged down the economy and GM sales has also dried up the DIP money GM would need to operate.

That's why many analysts and scholars believe GM would likely end up in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would entail total liquidation. The company would close its doors, immediately throwing more than 100,000 people out of work. And, according to experts, the damage would spread quickly. Automobile parts suppliers in the United States rely disproportionately on GM's business to stay afloat. If GM shut down, many if not all of the suppliers would soon follow. Without parts, Chrysler, Ford, and eventually foreign-owned factories in the United States would have to cease operations. From Toledo to Tuscaloosa, the nation's assembly lines could go silent, sending a chill through their local economies as the idled workers stopped spending money.

Now do you understand why it is such a bad idea to let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt? Local economies would also feel the pinch of this kind of bankruptcy as auto dealerships immediately went out of business. Other, related industries would also feel the pinch, as local auto parts stores become unable to replenish their stores of parts, restaurants and entertainment venues start seeing fewer customers, stores and shopping malls make fewer sales, and all of them start going bankrupt. Some estimates for unemployment go as high as 5 million people just for the big three going out of business.

Why? Because Republicans want to crush the Unions, and you bloody well don’t have the right to breathe clean air, dammit! Nothing personal, it’s just business if you can’t work or breathe.

The Republicans keep saying that it’s to get the pay of the Union Auto Workers at domestic manufacturers here in the U.S. down to the same level that they are being paid at foreign owned plants in the U.S., but they aren’t mentioning the massive subsidies that they gave those foreign companies to locate those plants here.

Now that I’ve made all of that clear, do you feel any better about Republicans? I sure don’t. All they’re doing is making sure I never vote for a Republican again. It’s clear that you can’t trust them to make the right decision—even if the right choice is very clear.

And last night, was a very clear night.

Sources:

“Panic in Detroit”, by Jonathan Cohn, published by The New Republic, 11-14-2008. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a4893b49-36df-4784-9859-2dfa3a3211bf

“$14B auto bailout dies in Senate”, by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Ken Thomas, published by Associated Press, 12-12-2008. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_go_co/congress_autos

Or: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESS_AUTOS?SITE=MOJOP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The Current Financial Situation, and Some Solutions

By Ed Smallwood

Yesterday I was watching CNN. Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Dodd was being interviewed, I can’t remember who it was that was asking the questions. What stuck out in the interview was what he said about a closed-door briefing the Senate got from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He wouldn’t comment on the exact content, after all it wouldn’t be terribly useful to keep the information in a closed-door briefing if it was all going to become public immediately afterward. What Senator Dodd said was that after Mr. Bernanke was done talking, there was stunned silence for 10-15 seconds in the room.

That’s significant. It’s also very frightening, either way you look at it.
I have known for some time that things were going very wrong with the economy. I remember an interview last March with Paul Krugman in Fortune magazine where he said that he thought we would hit 6-7 Trillion Dollars in capital losses in the housing industry this year, a 25% reduction in equity throughout the United States. That is what we are just beginning to see right now. Congress is talking about an 800 Billion Dollar bailout. You can see that what Congress is talking about is roughly an order of magnitude too small to cover what Paul Krugman was talking about. In short, 88% of the losses aren’t being addressed by Congress.

Now, we also have to take into account that the International Monetary Fund is estimating our GDP at roughly 13 Trillion Dollars. The losses we are talking about are more than half of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire United States. Nobody alive has ever faced a financial disaster of this magnitude.

Is that what Chairman Ben Bernanke was telling the Senators in that closed-door briefing? Numbers so large that it stunned veteran Senators into silence? I think that’s exactly what happened.

Here’s the real problem: The simple answer to this problem was to avoid deregulating the banking industry in the first place. Don’t let this debacle happen. Unfortunately several years ago the “Regulation is Bad for the Economy” branch of the Republican party got it’s way, with Senator John McCain cheering it on. The easy and simple answers to this problem are all gone now. There is no choice but to see our economy slide downward. It’s simply too late to prevent that.

So, what do we do now?

We’re going to have to bail out Wall Street. We don’t have a choice about this. That’s what Congress is doing to some extent now. The problem with how they are doing it is that they are diluting the shares that investors have by taking majority stakes of the companies they are bailing out and putting it under Government control. They are allowing the investors a chance to keep some of the value, but not most of it. This is unlikely to work in the long term. People’s retirement savings are going to suffer, even though it isn’t as much as they could. In short, the government is bailing out the executives of the companies more than the investors.

The landscape for homeowners is even bleaker. Nothing whatsoever has been done to address their concerns. Foreclosures are happening at an even greater pace than before. More properties are going “upside down” in value than they were before, and the Santa Clara County Association of REALTORS is estimating that this will be the case until at least 2010. Some estimates I have been reading put it at 2012 or later.

Now, with it harder than ever to declare bankruptcy (thank you Republicans,) and savings evaporating, the backbone of the American Economy, the Consumer, has almost no money to buy anything. We can see this through the fact that spending is decreasing while savings are simultaneously decreasing. Until something is done to address the concerns of the average person on the street, the economy can do nothing but spiral downward at an ever increasing rate.

This is where we stand now.

What are we going to have to do?

We are going to have to make peace with the fact that our economy is going to crash first of all. We can’t prevent it. Next, we have to do what we can to prevent it from crashing so bad that it can’t recover. This is a real possibility. There is nothing magical about the economy of the United States. Other countries in a similar state that did nothing saw their economies die outright. Most of them are third-world countries now, or failed states. That’s the danger.

We have to bring back the regulations that prevented this problem from happening decades ago. This is an absolute must. Doing any less than this means that nobody will trust banks enough to loan them money to make loans. That’s how the system works. Without that key part the system collapses and doesn’t recover.

We have to protect the money of the average person as much as possible right now. We can’t expect someone to pay back a bad mortgage at an ever increasing rate for the rest of their lives, tying up their spending power in servicing bad debt just because some company got greedy. If these homeowners decide to allow the banks to foreclose, they will find it harder to buy another home later. The inventory of foreclosed homes will increase, because there will be fewer qualified buyers (you can’t have a foreclosure in at least the last 2 years to qualify for a home loan). This is dangerous in several ways. First, unoccupied homes bring down property values. Second, they are fire dangers. Houses are fuel. If you have enough of them you can end up with a wildfire in the middle of a city. Oakland can tell you why this is bad.

This means we have to do at least one of two things, probably both: we will have to forgive at least part of the bad debt to keep people in their homes, or we will have to allow people with foreclosures on their record to get credit anyway. The former is preferable, and while the FHA is doing this to a small extent, the program needs to be massively expanded. The latter solution will probably have to be put into effect as well. Why should we do this? Why not let the people who took out these loans just hang? If we allow our spite to get ahead of our pity (or self interest), making sure these people pay back their loans, our economy suffers from having too little money left over to buy the things that we sell. All of us suffer if we make any one segment of the population suffer too much.

In addition, we really need to start working on our infrastructure, and I don’t mean just roads, bridges, ports, electricity grid, and communications grid. I mean the workforce as well. For most of my life we have seen a growing battle against the workforce. McCain’t has been talking a big game over how strong our workforce is, but the reality is he has actively been working on weakening it.

The big secret that allows the American economy to be so strong has been our educational system. Public education was invented here. We have expanded it ever sense the Brotherhood of Friends (often referred to as “The Quakers”) introduced the concept. All of my life the Republican Party has been trying to weaken it. Vouchers. Increasing tuition in Universities. Destruction of vocational schools. Even “No Child Left Behind” which is decreasing Federal funding to elementary schools. Recently when Democrats tried to bring back full tuition for all Iraq War Veterans, McCain’t voted against it. He said it would reduce the incentive for our Servicepeople to reenlist. This attitude is going to prevent our economy from recovering.

We need a top of the line communications grid to allow educated people to build products using electricity that will be shipped to the consumer through working ports and over working roads and bridges. If any one of those things isn’t working, our economy dies and stays that way.

Why wouldn’t our economy recover? Really, why would it? People with money are under no obligation to invest it in our country. If our economy is wrecked, they would be dumb to put good money after bad. They’ll invest it elsewhere, in economies that are booming. China is a good example. With no money being invested in our country, no educated people to design new products or services, a 20th century communications grid expected to help them design them, no energy to build them, and deteriorating ports, roads, and bridges to ship them our economy will stay sunk.

What we really need to get us through this crisis is a leader that believes in our future, not one that is trying to bring us back to a failed past, namely the “Roaring ‘20s.” Let’s all make sure we work toward our country’s future.

Links:

Fortune Magazine interview with Paul Krugman: March 17th, 2008 by Jia Lynn Yang http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/14/news/economy/krugman_subprime.fortune/index.htm

“Business as Usual” ends at home

By Ed Smallwood

For the past couple of years I have been publishing my thoughts online in the form of essays. One essay at a time, one thought at a time. They started out as a trickle that I would put on a MySpace page, and have in recent months turned into a virtual deluge (for me) that I have been posting anywhere I can from my personal blog to any news or commentary site I can find.

As I publish more, I’m noticing more people are responding to my thoughts. I have seen many messages, both public and private, from people that are very thoughtful. Those are the comments I cherish.

Some of my essays have been about what I think should be done to improve the world in some small way, whether it be improving the environment by modifying our behavior, to improving communications in this country by acknowledging a problem and fixing it. There is one response to these essays that I have gotten that has gotten me mad: “Not gonna happen.” It is a simple statement of belief, a resignation of what is. A surrender to the inevitable.

Although the people who make this statement may not realize it, it’s also lazy and a way of dodging personal responsibility. “Nothing is going to change, so I don’t have to do anything or feel guilty about it. I can safely sit here in front of my TV and criticize others about how bad things are.”

Every time this happens a lobbyist or legislator smiles. You can almost hear them: “You smell that? That’s apathy. I love the smell of apathy in the morning!”

I decided to ask myself why this thought process made me mad. Why should I be surprised that someone would think this way when, in fact, all of the evidence of the past 40 years or so completely backs them up?

For years we have been told by surveys that Americans are tired of “Business as Usual.” My loose working definition of “Business as Usual” is a government that doesn’t listen to its constituents, but listens very carefully to lobbyists for corporations and special interests. Distilled down to two words: “Money talks.”

So, if Americans are tired of “Business as Usual,” why is it usual? Why has it been usual? How could people put up with it for this long? It’s because true Democracy has not been considered important.

Democracy requires several things to work: Information, participation, consent. These aren’t just optional parts of a democracy, they are vital. For years television news has been our main source of information about our government. Newspapers have been shriveling on the vine from neglect. Newsmagazines used to be staples of the check-out line at supermarkets. Now they have been placed so far down on the racks I thought that they had been removed entirely until a few days ago when I nearly kicked one. The slots that used to be filled with Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Reports have all been replaced by scandal sheets and entertainment magazines, with the newsmagazines being placed so low on the racks that they are below the eye-level of even the smallest child (certainly not their target readership.) “Who cares what’s happening in the real world?” these reformatted racks proclaim. “Read about what’s happening in the soap operas on your favorite television network instead!”

Through miseducation our democratic process has been limited much more than simply through our sources of information. “Get out there and vote!” we hear at this time of the election cycle. “Vote!” From some other people you will hear, “If you don’t know the issues, don’t vote!” The implication here is that democracy is simply about voting. You vote or you don’t vote. You vote for one pre-selected candidate or the other; for a proposition or against it. You can work on one candidate’s campaign, or the other, or stay away and choose from the comfort of your living room. That is all that is expected of you, and all of the communication that is wanted from you. All of civics reduced to a single paragraph. Complexities removed. “If you don’t like it, then stay home. We don’t want your opinion.”

There is a saying that I’m sure you’ve heard. It has been around since the founding of our country: “United we stand. Divided we fall.” Well, the citizenry of the United States has been divided up into a nation of individuals, and that’s why democracy is failing. Voter turnout falls when there is no perceived difference in the candidates. Choosing candidates is usually like going to an ice-cream store and being offered vanilla, vanilla bean, or French vanilla. Why is this? Because television networks allow the candidates to portray themselves this way. We are told that we have the choice between the candidate that has experience and will change the way things work, and the candidate that has less experience and will change the way things work. Has television really given us a history of what the candidates have done, or have the networks given the candidates carte blanc to redefine themselves in any way they want? After all, if the television networks want access to the candidates they can’t ask the hard questions.

This has been the way business in Washington has been conducted for decades, and will continue to be until we stop them. If you are waiting to elect someone who will end “Business as Usual,” you will wait forever and never see it end. This will not change from the top. It works much too well for the people that have been elected, as well as the corporations, lobbyists, and News Networks that got them elected. They currently have no motivation to change. As long as you are isolated, sitting comfortably in front of your TV, getting the news they want you to hear and limiting your involvement to voting periodically, they won’t change a thing. Oh, often you’ll hear them loudly talk about campaign finance reform, while messily gutting it out of public view.

The fact is that we cannot come to these people and ask them for meaningful reform. Especially if we are not willing to change ourselves.

You must be wondering by this point what it is that I am asking? Do I really expect people to get out of their couches and march? Do I expect people to start running for office? Should we all write our congresspeople? Should we blog?

I have an idea at this point. It is just the beginning of an idea, fragile and easily destroyed by apathy. If carefully nurtured it could bear the sweetest fruit. It is still very small and will require care to survive long enough, and we cannot do it separately and in isolation.

You see, it is easy to control individuals, to make them feel alone. It is difficult to control people in groups. I am not asking you to join a national organization. I am asking you to start a neighborhood group—a root level group. Some already exist, but many, many more are needed. Your group should get together as often as you reasonably can just to talk. You may want to set-up organized meetings, or unorganized bar-be-ques. You may have a stated agenda, or you may let anything come up as it will. However, you should be willing to get out of your house and go to these meetings, and host them yourself as you can. Do not be afraid to speak out! Let your voice be heard! And most importantly, let your group’s voice be heard. Don’t be afraid to get together as a group and let your representatives in local, state, or national government know how your group feels.

It is easy for a politician to ignore individuals, or categorize them broadly. It is much more difficult to ignore the opinions of a group of people, especially when they vote for your office. All of the lobbyist campeign money in the world is useless if your constituents refuse to vote for you.

My thought is that as these neighborhood groups should invite their representatives in the local, state, and national governments to come to meetings sponsored by these groups and talk to the people who live in the neighborhood. That way, people won’t be relying on news organizations to ask their representatives tough questions—they can ask them themselves. In addition, these neighborhood groups could make their concerns known to their elected representatives directly, instead of hoping that they are covered in some kind of opinion poll, or that their letters make it through the politician’s staffers. These groups may want to publish local newsletters that could be distributed online and to the door of their neighbors. They could endorse candidates who are responsive to the need of the neighborhood, and withhold endorsement of candidates that are not. Or, if neither option is palatable, you could always help one of your own members run for the office!

Also, groups of this kind could get together with other like-minded groups, and pool their resources to get better responses. Multiple groups around a city could work together to set up debates between candidates, or have round-table discussions.

More importantly, your children and grandchildren should see you doing this. It is important not just to participate in democracy, but to teach the next generation how to interact and to know what democracy looks like. Currently, most of them think it looks like talking heads on CNN or C-SPAN. Let them know real democracy looks like people talking to each other, not people talking at each other. Don’t let them be intimidated by elected officials—they’re just people who were elected to office.

While it is probably too late for this kind of organization to have much impact on the current election, it is certain to me that now is the right time to start organizing these groups for all of the elections in the future. Potential recruits for neighborhood groups are self-identifying at this time. How better to know if someone might be interested in joining than to look for signs emblazoned with the name of some politician sticking into someone’s lawn? Is that not an invitation to talk?

If we are to take back our government from the lobbyists and special interests, it is going to be through this kind of local change. By paying attention to our government and closely watching what is going on, we will counter all of that special interest money going into the campaign treasuries. That isn’t just the beginning of campaign finance reform--it’s the beginning of government reform. Most importantly it doesn’t require an act of Congress, it can’t be vetoed by the President, and it can’t be overturned by the Supreme Court. That is true Democracy.

If you are a patriot, a person who believes in the United States and spreading democracy, then you have no excuse for not starting a neighborhood political group or joining one that already exists. Now is the time. Join in real Democracy and do more than just vote.

The Political Anchors Dragging Down John McCain

By Ed Smallwood

Senator John McCain has problems. He has been trying to distance himself from an unpopular President in G.W. Bush. He has been trying to convince you that because he is a former POW from the Vietnam War that he is a military supporter. He also wants you to believe that the economy is going well. Each of these issues is weighing him down like anchors around his neck.

It came out recently that former Senator Phil Gramm, who was a lobbyist for UBS, and who lobbied hard for deregulation of the mortgage industry, is a leading economic advisor to Senator John McCain. That’s right; the architect of the current “Mortgage Meltdown” is a senior advisor for Mr. McCain’s economic policy. We’ve already seen what happens when the President’s closest advisors are former industry big-wigs—you get $4 per gallon oil, manipulation of the electricity market in California, implosion of Enron, and the destruction of the home owning dream in America. Do we want to continue down this road with John McCain.

Right now the Senate and the House of Representatives are in conference to put the finishing touches on a new G.I. Bill that the President has vowed to veto. It would allow veterans to go to college after their service is completed. Many of our Military Servicemen and Servicewomen went into their branches of the service with the understanding that they would get monetary assistance in college as a result of their service to our country. All of the major veteran’s groups have come out in favor of this bill.

John McCain has publicly come out against the new G.I. Bill, in opposition to many of his peers in the Republican Party. He says it will cost too much. I’m not joking. Mr. McCain has said in no uncertain terms that he is not willing to give an education to people who are willing to give their lives for him and us. The cost of the lives of those over 4,000 dead in all of the branches of the military including the National Guard is not enough to make sure the rest get an education. Over 30,000 have been wounded, and that is not payment enough, according to John McCain and G.W. Bush, to make sure they and their compatriots get an education. Mr. McCain says he is afraid that one of the main recruiting tools that the military has, the offer of a free education in exchange for military service, will encourage current military personnel to leave the military instead of spurring more enlistment, and that could make a difference in his 100-year-war. Is that supporting our military?

Relying on industry to give input on how it should be regulated. Giving military support lip service. Allowing the economy to fall into disrepair from neglect. Don’t these all sound like the methodology of G.W. Bush? Can McCain really distance himself from Bush while using these tactics?

More importantly, can we vote for McCain while knowing all of this? For myself, I know that the answer is an emphatic “No!”

Sources:

Military Casualties:

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

McCain’s Veteran’s Problems:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1808161,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/mccains-gi-bill

Sen. Phil Gramm’s lobbying:

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/05/26/daily15.html

Republican Babies need their mothers

By Ed Smallwood

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers who may be reading this! Are you aware of how Republicans in Congress honored Mother’s Day this week? By acting like spoiled children and voting against Mother’s Day openly in Congress. Yep, 178 Republicans voted against something as American as…mom…and apple pie. You see, they’re unhappy that the vote for the Iraq War Funding Bill didn’t go exactly the way they wanted it to, so they’ve vowed to slow down everything in Congress by holding their breath until a revote is called on everything that comes before them. Yep, everything. That’s what they did with the vote on a resolution honoring mothers, and when the revote was called, 178 of them, including Minority Leader John Boehner voted against motherhood. Next thing you know, one of them will rip the blue field off of a flag because that color represents the Democratic Party.

Some people may be saying that this childish behavior is a result of the Republicans being in the minority. I would counter and say that they always act like spoiled brats, even when they have the majority. Remember when they threatened to change the rules of the Senate if the Democrats Filibustered a vote on a judge that didn’t appeal to them? Is that really adult behavior? Honestly?

I propose that these mean, hateful people need their mothers more than ever. Perhaps things would be going better if their mothers would walk out onto the House floor, grab them by the ears, and haul them home for a good “talking to” behind the woodshed.

In Praise of Comic Books

By Ed Smallwood

Free Comic Book Day came and went yesterday without much comment from me, excepting a brief mention in a recent blog entry. I actually do consider this an important day of the year. This day may not be as important as paying attention to our parents, or remembering our veterans, or remembering the achievements and suffering of Union members, but it is in fact the only day backed by industry that helps with literacy. Think about that for a minute. One day a year you can get a free book. It may not be the latest Stephen King book, but that may not be a bad thing.

Comic books have been maligned in our culture for a long time, often as the lowest form of entertainment--probably because they have historically been produced on the cheap. While this can still be true today, it is more often the case for the major publishers that comic books are very well produced and literate popular culture magazines.

Every week I have been trying to write at least one, and often two, complete essays. This takes me as little as 4 hours and as much as 40 hours per essay in research and editing, which is one of the reasons I like to republish my “Brown-bagging as gas saving measure” essay. I can put in an hour or less of research and bring it right back up-to-date. Now, considering the work I put into one essay, I’m trying to imagine putting in a similar amount of work to produce a work of fiction writing. Now throw in 32 pages of drawings, all of them inked and shaded. I know I would find that amount of work to be staggering.

It really is no surprise that so many of the better comic books are being produced as movies. One of the first things that most movie producers and directors do is commission a set of story boards to visualize the movie, and really story boards are so similar to a comic book it really doesn’t make sense to put them in different categories.

While it is difficult to disapprove of the artistic merits of a comic, many people are unimpressed with the basic literary narrative value of them. When I was very young, I loved comics, almost any kind I could get my hands on. As I got older I moved on to novels, magazines, and newspapers. I began to believe that comics were strictly for children and the immature. I was humbled several months back when a co-worker loaned me the trade-paperback copy of several volumes of Marvel’s Civil War series of comics. In this series, the U.S. Congress passes a law making it illegal for superheroes to keep their identity secret. One group, led by Tony Stark (Iron Man) follows the law and starts hunting down superheroes who refuse to follow the law. A second group, led by Captain America refuses to follow the law.

At one point early in the series, Spider Man asks Captain America why he is fighting the law when everyone is aware of his real identity, and Captain America quotes from an essay by Mark Twain that I was not even aware of. I was so impressed by the relevancy of the excerpt, placed in a comic book in an alternate universe where nobody would notice it, that I had to look into it further. It took hours of work, but I managed to find a longer excerpt at a website called "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Nachos" (you can find it online at http://studiodave.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html.) I am reprinting here the passage from that website until I can find a longer version.

Here it is:

Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object — robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way.

What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick — a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag.

And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

For in a republic, who is "the Country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is "the country?" Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn't.

In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country — hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

This Republic's life is not in peril. The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pirate hands.

It becomes difficult at best to impugn the literacy of comics when you have that kind of content.

It is for these and other reasons that I heartily recommend that next year you take time to celebrate Free Comic Book Day. I am nearly certain that you will not be able to visit a Hallmark Store and get a free card any day this year, and even if you can, it is unlikely to have the same literary impact, or be as relevant to our current political situation, as that one passage above. And who knows, you may even enjoy the free book.

But then, why wait a year?

The Three Republican Parties

By Ed Smallwood

A quick note before I get into my regular political ranting. I'm fairly new to blogging. In fact, I've really only been at it a few months, so I'm at the beginning of the learning curve. One of the parts I've been having trouble with is being topical. Another thing I've been having trouble with is posting regularly. I hope to fix the regular posting problem with this article. I intend to update my blog at least twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am also going to pay closer attention to Holidays such as MLK Day, which just passed without a mention by me. I really don't tend to pay attention to important days like this (including my own birthday, embarrassingly), but I am going to make an effort to pay more attention to these events from this day forward. MLK day will be mentioned in passing only in my next post, which should be done on this coming Thursday. I do intend to have a more in-depth article about Mr. King at some time in the future, and what his relevance is in this day, but it will take work that I haven't done yet. Stay tuned!

And now for something completely different. The actual post you were expecting.

While I may disagree with the Republican party on just about everything from how the economy is running, to where the country is going, to how we should get there, I must admire the way they have taken wildly diverse groups of people and made them think they have something in common. Three of these groups are officially important to the party, the Religious Conservatives, the Big-Business Conservatives, and the Fiscal Conservatives.

Think about it: What do Religious Conservatives, Big-Business Conservatives, and Fiscal Conservatives really have in common? No, honest. Think about it. I did, and came up with nothing. Let me expound on this for a while here.

Big business conservatives are really only concerned with giving big business an edge in the world. In the past this meant reducing government oversight so they could get away with more, and reducing corporate and personal taxes on the rich. It also meant keeping workers down by making Unions irrelevant, increasing the pool of possible employees by forcing people to work instead of getting an education (eliminating educational funds) and through increased immigration (legal or illegal), and anything else to keep wages down. If they could prevent consumers from having a choice, or getting time in a court of law when things don’t work as they’re supposed to, so much the better. In the past seven years of the Bush administration it has also meant funneling huge amounts of tax dollars to large corporations that contributed to Mr. Bush’s campaign or Republican Party coffers through no-bid contracts. Because of this, Big Business Conservatives enjoy having a big but weak government. Other than that, Big-Business Conservatives really don’t have a lot of concerns.

Fiscal Conservatives really want our government to be responsible with the way it runs our economy and how it spends our tax dollars (as few as possible, please.) They love it when we have a balanced budget and a low deficit. Low taxes and low inflation are good things for them. A smaller government also appeals to them, which is where it is possible to make them think they have something in common with the Big Business Conservatives. Often Fiscal Conservatives mistake the Big Business Conservative’s wish for less government oversight as being the same as a small government, but this is not the case.

Religious Conservatives have a shopping list of concerns, most of which come under the heading of “Family Values.” While many of these are unspoken, because they vary from person to person, or particular flavor of Christianity, some are brought up consistently. These include Abortion (or the hopeful banning of), Gay Marriage (or the again, hopeful banning of), making some form of Christianity the Official Religion of the United States, forcing people to pray in some official capacity, elimination of indecency (public or private), and a few other things. They really have no concerns over the government budget at all. The only other concern they have about the government is that it is able to control the private lives of individuals, and make it at least appear that everyone is living a moral lifestyle.

Now, here’s the thing I don’t understand: Out of the three groups outlined above, one has gotten little more than lip-service in my lifetime from the Republican Party, and yet they get the complete and unswerving loyalty of all three groups.

The Fiscal Conservatives were, note the past-tense there, were in control of the Republican Party until the Presidency of George H. W. Bush. When he lost his re-election bid, they were swept under the rug. Really. This Republican Party and their representatives in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives haven’t done anything fiscally responsible since W. took the White House. Cutting taxes while spending tons of cash in a war? Running the deficit to levels higher than all other administrations combined? That’s certainly not fiscally responsible.

And how about the way the party has treated the Religious Conservatives since they started courting them back in the early 70’s? The Republican Candidates sure seem good at mentioning the things Religious Conservatives are concerned about during an election, like Gays and abortion, but I can’t remember a single bill in either house of Congress even being presented for a vote on either subject in my entire life. Nope. Not one. No ban on Abortion. No ban on Gay marriage. No Family Values. No prayer in schools. Heck, the only thing those lawmakers have done is go after underage page-boys. These guys in Washington wouldn’t know Jesus from Caligula. Yet the Religious Conservatives still refer to the Republican Party as “God’s Own Party.” I really have to wonder about a group of people who seem to like being treated so poorly for so long.

The biggest danger to the Republican Party is that these groups may just wake up and realize that they really don’t have anything in common with the GOP. All it would take is one charismatic preacher to decide to run for office as an independent on these issues, and the party would cleave in two. If a charismatic person with fiscally responsible street credentials ran as an independent as well the damage to the party would take years to fix, assuming it didn’t simply doom the party to the history books.

But that might not be a bad thing.