Ed
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/24-10
Why Say Yes to the Party of No?
by Ralph Nader
CommonDreams.org: September 24, 2010
How does the Big Business-indentured Republican Party get away with
expectations of a runaway election victory this November? If such a victory
should occur in Congress and for many governorships and state legislatures,
it will be due to a ten percent or so shift in voters who voted Democratic
in 2008 and are expected to vote Republican this year or stay home in
despair or disgust. The rest of the voters who do vote will still stay with
their hereditary Republican or Democratic candidates.
So what is accounting for a possible ten percent shift? Let's briefly review
some of the Congressional Republicans' voiced positions:
1. They want to do nothing about unfair Chinese trade practices that lure
jobs away from our country though huge factory subsidies, and where workers
are repressed and counterfeit products abound. Imagine, Republicans coddling
a communist regime, luring the auto parts, electronic, solar and drug
ingredients industries away from America, often in violation of the World
Trade Organization rules. And, in turn, China is exporting to the U.S.
impure food, faulty tires, toxic drywall, lead-tainted toys and medicines
which are contaminated, defective or harmful. Don't forget the dumping
violations.
2. Republicans, led by Senator Richard Shelby and his banking friends,
declared their adamant opposition to Professor Elizabeth Warren becoming
head of the new consumer financial regulation agency. (To avoid a
confrontation with them, President Obama made her a special assistant to
organize this consumer watchdog.) Ms. Warren has a solid record of exposing
and communicating clearly to families the tricks and traps of credit card
companies, mortgage firms, and intermediaries that have taken so many
billions of consumer dollars with impunity.
3. The Republicans led by their House leader, John Boehner (Rep. Ohio), a
total toady of the gouging student loan companies, opposed the Democrats
successful reform of this taxpayer boondoggle that guaranteed obscene
profits and had the taxpayers absorb any student defaults. Boehner's
lobbying should upset millions of parents who had to foot the bill for so
many years.
4. The Republicans are opposed to raising the federal minimum wage to what
it was, adjusted for inflation, in 1968!! They opposed an adequate budget
for health and safety enforcement by OSHA to diminish the 58,000 American
workers who die every year from workplace toxics and trauma. They are now
blocking protections for coal miners pending in the Senate after the Massey
mine disaster.
5. Republicans oppose doing anything about "too big to fail" even after Wall
Street's reckless, avaricious collapse of the economy, costing 8 million
jobs and trillions of lost pension and mutual fund dollars.
Moreover, they do not support genuine enforcement of the anti-trust laws
which are supposed to break up monopolization efforts, monopolies or
oligopolies like Monsanto (seeds) or the big five banks-bailed out by
taxpayers and secure in their domination of well over 50 percent of all bank
assets, deposits and the credit card business. This is by far the highest
concentration of financial power in modern U.S. history. With few
exceptions, the GOP want very few federal cops on the corporate crime beat.
6. Fighting for the last billionaire and multimillionaire, Republicans are
blocking ending Bush's tax cuts on incomes beyond $250,000 per year. Yes,
Republicans want to reduce the deficit yet they want to end revenues of over
700 billion dollar over ten years of restored super-rich taxes. They are
blocking renewal of the estate taxes after their expiration on Dec. 31, 2009
left no taxes this year on the estates of the super-rich. (Over 99 percent
of estates were already exempt from the federal estate tax.)
7. No matter that Republicans caved to the health insurance companies
getting over 30 million new covered customers, starting in 2014, they
supported the industry's blaming the federal government, no less, for this
month's latest sharp hike in insurance premiums by Aetna and others largely
on the policies of individuals and small business. The Republicans did this
after blocking the "public option" that would have given consumers both a
choice and the benefit of some competition to the big insurance firms.
8. Have the Congressional Republicans ever challenged the bloated, wasteful,
contractor-corrupt military budget that makes up half of the entire
government's discretionary budget?
Even the Congress's own auditing agency-the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) declares the Pentagon budget unauditable. Many Pentagon audits
document the abuses of Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and other firms in the
deficit-driving, bloody Iraq and Afghanistan wars (both Republican
espoused.) The Pentagon's burgeoning budget, now nearing $800 billion a
year, is deemed untouchable. (A few Republicans, like Charles Grassley and
John McCain sometimes object to contracting abuses.)
9. President Obama wants a counter-recessionary public works program
renovating airports, bridges, highways, rail and mass transit, drinking
water and sewage treatment facilities and other infrastructures. Republicans
sneer at this local job creation for much needed facilities.
10. Unlike any Republican Party since its creation in 1854, it has misused
the filibuster threat, and any one of its Senators misuse the rules and
block even going to a floor discussion or a nomination vote. The Party is
earning its moniker as the Party of NO. Republicans have turned the U.S.
Senate into America's graveyard.
There is much more, but enough has been cited to ask again-how are
Republicans seen by the polls as front runners in the upcoming election?
The answer my friends, is not in the stars. The answer is in the clueless
and spineless Democrats, busily dialing for the same corporate campaign
dollars.
The other answer is in the ten percent of the actual voters who need to
seriously avail themselves of the facts and a modicum of thought. For if
they don't, they will continue to pay bills handed to them and their
children by their ruling corporatists in Republican clothing.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent
book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most
recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.
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