QUOTE
What you have to understand is:
Republican Party is FUNDAMENTALLY a party of BIG BUSINESS, FINANCIAL ELITES, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS, and the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX. All the "Moral Issues" are SECONDARY-- they are a MEANS to obtain a majority ELECTORAL coalition.
The CORPORATE POWER behind the Republican Party-- and the DLC Democrat "centrists" (sic) also!!-- would never allow a true THEOCRATIC movement to threaten THEIR POWER.
The profit-making corporate machine, the profit-driven Wall Street Investor Crowed, the transnational predatory-Capitalist ELITES-- they LIVE on the expansion of MARKETS and the production and sale of ever more consumer goods (whatever the costs in wars, big and small, economic disaster for billions outside the "market", and environmental devastation). There are TRILLIONS of dollars -- CAPITAL-- that MUST be made to INCREASE-- or stocks go down! This is a global FORCE that is the social REALITY behind whole electoral CHARADE.
This is a MASSIVE FORCE that is a THOUSAND TIMES more powerful than the THEOCRATIC Christian movement and is antithetical to that movement at it's ideological core. Who sells pornography? The big corporations? Who NEEDS women in the workplace- big corporations. Who needs the moral decay, tv violence, extreme HEDONISM and MATERIALISM-- the big corporations! Who needs massive immigration and the economic thirdworldization of America.. the Big Corporations and the transnational FINANCIAL ELITES.
The PROOF is in the PUDDING. Reagan spouted on about moral issues-- but his BIG ACHIEVEMENTS WERE: TAX CUTS for the wealthy and MASSIVE MILITARY SPENDING INCREASES.
Same with GW BUSH: lip service to social issues... but the real action is : massive tax cuts for the wealthy, a new endless "War on Terror" to justify the expansion of the military- industrial -media complex for the forseable future, PRIVATIZATION of social programs (money into the stock market!! Cuts in benefits!!); corporate De-regulation, gutting of environmental laws, the seizure of Iraqi Oil fields, and so on.
What's the NEW BUSH AGENDA? An anti-Gay-marriage admendment?? Hmmm....
The "MORAL MAJORITY" of the AMERICAN HEARTLAND has been ROYALLY SCAMMED once again!!!!
======================================
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
JONATHAN CHAIT
Those Who Voted for Bush May Be In for a Big Surprise
Concerns closer to his heart could trump all that talk about values.
Jonathan Chait
November 5, 2004
Dear rural/exurban Christian conservative voters: Congratulations on your election victory. By going to the polls in unprecedented numbers Tuesday, you overwhelmed an enormous Democratic turnout and returned President Bush to office, along with a number of very conservative senators. Now Bush is preparing to repay your efforts by moving immediately on your highest priorities: a flat tax and privatizing Social Security.
Oh, wait. You didn't particularly hanker for those things, did you? The election is so far in the past now that it has receded into a hazy memory. But as I recall, you voted for Bush because of his position on one issue — he opposes gay marriage — and on the general principle that he is a godly man who shares your values. Now Bush has decided, conveniently enough, that those values are identical to those of his wealthy financiers. (Go to any meeting of the Club for Growth, a group of affluent, libertarian-leaning Bush backers who mostly live in Washington and New York City. I'm sure you'll find them, like victorious Okla-homophobe Sen. Tom Coburn, deeply concerned about rampant high school lesbianism in the Sooner State.)
Bush is claiming the election as a mandate. There are, however, a couple of ways to interpret that. The conventional meaning is that a candidate gained office by promising to do a certain thing. Ronald Reagan in 1980 had a mandate to cut taxes and bolster the military. Bill Clinton in 1992 had a mandate to raise taxes on the rich, expand healthcare, reform welfare. Those were the central promises of the two campaigns.
Bush uses the word somewhat differently. As he told reporters Thursday, "I earned capital in the campaign — political capital — and now I intend to spend it."
What that means is that all you small-town folk voted for him not to pursue an agenda but just because he embodies family values. That gives him political power that he can use for purposes utterly unrelated to the source of his popularity. Sure, Bush mentioned some of these purposes in the campaign. But the references tended to be perfunctory and in code.
Start with taxes.
Though Bush talks about tax "simplification," he doesn't seriously believe it. He has littered the tax code with complicated new provisions, including a ludicrous corporate tax bill stuffed with special provisions for sausage producers, foreign dog-race gamblers and the like. Simplification really means making the tax code flatter — i.e. less progressive. He doesn't care about making taxes simpler; he just wants rich people to pay a smaller share of them. There's little evidence to suggest small-town Ohioans flocked to the polls so they could have a portion of George Soros' tax burden shifted onto themselves.
On Social Security, Bush was just as evasive. Here, again, the tiny minority of people who closely follow this understood his code words. He wants to divert Social Security taxes into private accounts. Because those taxes pay for the benefits of current retirees, his plan would require cutting benefits or driving the national debt even higher.
Bush, of course, went to great pains to distance himself from these unpleasant facts. In 2001, he appointed a commission that proposed three plans to partly privatize Social Security, but he declined to embrace the panel's findings. A few weeks before the election, a New York Times Magazine story reported that Bush told GOP donors he planned to push privatization after the election. John Kerry's campaign circulated a nonpartisan study showing what the benefit cuts in one of the commission's plans would entail. Bush's spokesman dismissed the charge that he favored privatization or benefit-cutting as a "false, baseless attack."
Here's what Bush said Thursday: "I had asked [Daniel Patrick Moynihan], prior to his passing, to chair a committee of notable Americans to come up with some ideas on Social Security, and they did so. And it's a good place for members of Congress to start."
Got that? Last week, if you had described Bush as advocating the commission's plans, he would have denounced you for promoting a hysterical lie. Now they are at the top of the list of things he's saying he was elected specifically to enact.
Meanwhile, what about opposing gay marriage, the one mandate Bush might legitimately claim? Earlier this year, Bush barely lifted a finger in support of a constitutional amendment banning it. (Compare this to the furious arm-twisting he performs to get moderates to back his tax cuts.) If he has a mandate to do anything, it's to bring up the amendment again. However, he's said nothing about doing so, and nobody expects him to.
No surprise there — it's hardly in the Republican Party's interest. If gay marriage is banned everywhere, what's going to bring all those heartland conservatives to the polls next time?
Republican Party is FUNDAMENTALLY a party of BIG BUSINESS, FINANCIAL ELITES, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS, and the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX. All the "Moral Issues" are SECONDARY-- they are a MEANS to obtain a majority ELECTORAL coalition.
The CORPORATE POWER behind the Republican Party-- and the DLC Democrat "centrists" (sic) also!!-- would never allow a true THEOCRATIC movement to threaten THEIR POWER.
The profit-making corporate machine, the profit-driven Wall Street Investor Crowed, the transnational predatory-Capitalist ELITES-- they LIVE on the expansion of MARKETS and the production and sale of ever more consumer goods (whatever the costs in wars, big and small, economic disaster for billions outside the "market", and environmental devastation). There are TRILLIONS of dollars -- CAPITAL-- that MUST be made to INCREASE-- or stocks go down! This is a global FORCE that is the social REALITY behind whole electoral CHARADE.
This is a MASSIVE FORCE that is a THOUSAND TIMES more powerful than the THEOCRATIC Christian movement and is antithetical to that movement at it's ideological core. Who sells pornography? The big corporations? Who NEEDS women in the workplace- big corporations. Who needs the moral decay, tv violence, extreme HEDONISM and MATERIALISM-- the big corporations! Who needs massive immigration and the economic thirdworldization of America.. the Big Corporations and the transnational FINANCIAL ELITES.
The PROOF is in the PUDDING. Reagan spouted on about moral issues-- but his BIG ACHIEVEMENTS WERE: TAX CUTS for the wealthy and MASSIVE MILITARY SPENDING INCREASES.
Same with GW BUSH: lip service to social issues... but the real action is : massive tax cuts for the wealthy, a new endless "War on Terror" to justify the expansion of the military- industrial -media complex for the forseable future, PRIVATIZATION of social programs (money into the stock market!! Cuts in benefits!!); corporate De-regulation, gutting of environmental laws, the seizure of Iraqi Oil fields, and so on.
What's the NEW BUSH AGENDA? An anti-Gay-marriage admendment?? Hmmm....
The "MORAL MAJORITY" of the AMERICAN HEARTLAND has been ROYALLY SCAMMED once again!!!!
======================================
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions
JONATHAN CHAIT
Those Who Voted for Bush May Be In for a Big Surprise
Concerns closer to his heart could trump all that talk about values.
Jonathan Chait
November 5, 2004
Dear rural/exurban Christian conservative voters: Congratulations on your election victory. By going to the polls in unprecedented numbers Tuesday, you overwhelmed an enormous Democratic turnout and returned President Bush to office, along with a number of very conservative senators. Now Bush is preparing to repay your efforts by moving immediately on your highest priorities: a flat tax and privatizing Social Security.
Oh, wait. You didn't particularly hanker for those things, did you? The election is so far in the past now that it has receded into a hazy memory. But as I recall, you voted for Bush because of his position on one issue — he opposes gay marriage — and on the general principle that he is a godly man who shares your values. Now Bush has decided, conveniently enough, that those values are identical to those of his wealthy financiers. (Go to any meeting of the Club for Growth, a group of affluent, libertarian-leaning Bush backers who mostly live in Washington and New York City. I'm sure you'll find them, like victorious Okla-homophobe Sen. Tom Coburn, deeply concerned about rampant high school lesbianism in the Sooner State.)
Bush is claiming the election as a mandate. There are, however, a couple of ways to interpret that. The conventional meaning is that a candidate gained office by promising to do a certain thing. Ronald Reagan in 1980 had a mandate to cut taxes and bolster the military. Bill Clinton in 1992 had a mandate to raise taxes on the rich, expand healthcare, reform welfare. Those were the central promises of the two campaigns.
Bush uses the word somewhat differently. As he told reporters Thursday, "I earned capital in the campaign — political capital — and now I intend to spend it."
What that means is that all you small-town folk voted for him not to pursue an agenda but just because he embodies family values. That gives him political power that he can use for purposes utterly unrelated to the source of his popularity. Sure, Bush mentioned some of these purposes in the campaign. But the references tended to be perfunctory and in code.
Start with taxes.
Though Bush talks about tax "simplification," he doesn't seriously believe it. He has littered the tax code with complicated new provisions, including a ludicrous corporate tax bill stuffed with special provisions for sausage producers, foreign dog-race gamblers and the like. Simplification really means making the tax code flatter — i.e. less progressive. He doesn't care about making taxes simpler; he just wants rich people to pay a smaller share of them. There's little evidence to suggest small-town Ohioans flocked to the polls so they could have a portion of George Soros' tax burden shifted onto themselves.
On Social Security, Bush was just as evasive. Here, again, the tiny minority of people who closely follow this understood his code words. He wants to divert Social Security taxes into private accounts. Because those taxes pay for the benefits of current retirees, his plan would require cutting benefits or driving the national debt even higher.
Bush, of course, went to great pains to distance himself from these unpleasant facts. In 2001, he appointed a commission that proposed three plans to partly privatize Social Security, but he declined to embrace the panel's findings. A few weeks before the election, a New York Times Magazine story reported that Bush told GOP donors he planned to push privatization after the election. John Kerry's campaign circulated a nonpartisan study showing what the benefit cuts in one of the commission's plans would entail. Bush's spokesman dismissed the charge that he favored privatization or benefit-cutting as a "false, baseless attack."
Here's what Bush said Thursday: "I had asked [Daniel Patrick Moynihan], prior to his passing, to chair a committee of notable Americans to come up with some ideas on Social Security, and they did so. And it's a good place for members of Congress to start."
Got that? Last week, if you had described Bush as advocating the commission's plans, he would have denounced you for promoting a hysterical lie. Now they are at the top of the list of things he's saying he was elected specifically to enact.
Meanwhile, what about opposing gay marriage, the one mandate Bush might legitimately claim? Earlier this year, Bush barely lifted a finger in support of a constitutional amendment banning it. (Compare this to the furious arm-twisting he performs to get moderates to back his tax cuts.) If he has a mandate to do anything, it's to bring up the amendment again. However, he's said nothing about doing so, and nobody expects him to.
No surprise there — it's hardly in the Republican Party's interest. If gay marriage is banned everywhere, what's going to bring all those heartland conservatives to the polls next time?
Brilliant, DB. It looks like you and Mr. Chait are on the same page. All of this cultural talk is a diversion. What's disgusting is that, even if abortion were banned in this country, some fat cat executive at some multinational corporation could knock up some teenager and get her an abortion anywhere else in the world. Same with someone like Julia Roberts.
What about those poor women who are stuck in dead-end lives who would become even more stuck if they were forced to have a child they were not prepared to care for or even afford to carry to term? I just hope they're reading their Bibles!
