Sunday, June 28, 2009

Conservatism Fails the United States

As in EPIC FAIL. For eight years we had a conservative Republican administration. The conservatives controlled the House and the Senate for most of that time. Their ideology says that they want less taxes and less government. I'm sure that there are some rather thick people out there who think that this sounds like a good thing, until they think, if they have the capacity to reason that is, about all of the things that we have that are provided by our government. You know, the schools, the roads, the public services like trash pick up and water.

In fact if you listened to the Republicans enough you would think that what they really want is to go back to some sort of medieval style serfdom, where the poor have no chance of an education and are held in servitude to a lord, or in this case, a corporation. The mark of a free and democratic society is how educated it's people are. Without public education, nay, without good public education, you wind up with a society that is only fit to serve it's masters. I believe that the founders would be appalled at this.

And California is a microcosm of the bigger problem we have here in this country. There is an article in Time, that I read this morning, that really sums the entire problem up for us.

The financial crisis in California grew worse this week as State Controller John Chiang warned that if legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fail to come up with a budget-balancing package, he would begin paying California's bills with IOUs on July 2. The last time the state did this was during the Great Depression...

And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era...

Before Prop 13, in the 1950s and '60s, California was a liberal showcase. Governors Earl Warren and Pat Brown responded to the population growth of the postwar boom with a massive program of public infrastructure — the nation's finest public college system, the freeway system and the state aqueduct that carries water from the well-watered north to the parched south...

The conservative mindset has, yet again, thrust us into what I'm sure historians will decide some decades from now, is another Great Depression. They got us into the first one as well, as I wrote about some months ago. You cannot provide the things that are the mark of a free and democratic society in a modern country, things such as water and public education without taxing people. You have to pay taxes if you want these things that make our lives comfortable and free. It's really quite simple. Sure, the government, at both the federal and local level, could stand to trim fat, you know, like the two wars we're fighting for no reason, politicians who use public money to go and see mistresses in Argentina, allowing no-bid contracts to certain corporations in quid-pro-quo deals, but that's not what the Republicans want cut. That's what they want to spend money on! Meanwhile they seek to destroy public education, government assisted funding for college and anything else that serves the public good. And the Democrats are no better. They need to grow some cojones and put a stop to this shit.

When we stop funneling money and resources into killing people and into corruption, we should have all the money we need for our crumbling schools and decaying roadways.

Or we can just be stupid and let the government continue to cut funding to important things so they'll have all the money they need for the military, so that they can run off and fight unnecessary wars with our tax dollars. We can submit to this and be little more than serfs, we can throw away all of the sacrifices that our ancestors gave so that we could be free and educated, and instead live in servitude to corporations.

7 comments:

  1. very well said. it makes me nauseous to hear conservatives say that they are the patriotic ones, when they care nothing for the future of the country or its citizens. they care only for sticking to their conservative "principles" which serves only to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. it's like a parent sacrificing his child, because his strict religious beliefs don't allow the medical treatment the child needs.

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  2. Ultimately, we have two governments in this country--a democracy and a corporate oligarchy. When conservatives talk about "small government" what they mean is that they want to shrink the democracy so it'll be powerless to stop the oligarchy from doing whatever it wants. And, with the steadily increasing gulf between the rich and the rest, the rise of military "contractors"(private armies), and gated communities...there should be little doubt that what the oligarchy wants is feudalism.

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  3. Conservatism as I see it consists of a small group of well fed people who are hellbent on making sure they get richer while greasing the slopes for anyone else outside of their little oligarchy who attempts to make anything of themselves. The are conservative when it comes to stuff like compassion, mercy, forbearance and empathy. When profit is involved, their own of course, they seem to become quite liberal. It's not enough that they stuff their own faces; equally important to the cause is making damned sure they steal from other people's plates as well.

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  4. I call BS on this one :)

    If the Gov't takes our money via tax it means that we have less to spend on our families. Ultimately we are slaves to the Gov't.

    There is very little that the Gov't can do better than the private sector. And please note that the Republicans and not much different than the Democrats.

    I see CA as a prefect example of a State that has tried to do everything for everyone and it has failed.

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  5. "If the Gov't takes our money via tax it means that we have less to spend on our families. Ultimately we are slaves to the Gov't."

    Really? And who do you propose we pay to build our roads, provide public education for everyone, etc.?

    Oh, I see, you want private corporations, who are for-profit, to take our money and give us shit back. Like the oil companies, functioning on public subsidies, funded by our tax dollars, they make record profits, and do we see any of that back? Hell no. If we start paying private corporations to fund public stuff, well, go ahead and add another nail to the coffin of democracy. The problem is the private corporations. They're not the solution, they're the fucking problem.

    Because you see, the government is *supposed* to be us. You, me, your next door neighbor, Rastamick61, Yoga, nonnie, and all the other posters here who live in the United States. WE ARE THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT. The money we pay in taxes is supposed to go back to helping US.

    Instead we have given up our say. We have none. We vote in mock elections, to choose between two candidates who have been handpicked by industries and corporations, and funded by them. And therefore the candidates owe the corporations and the industries. They owe them for their place in the grand scheme of things, so when they have to choose between doing something in the best interest of their constituents or doing what's in the best interest of the industries/corporations, who do you think they pick? It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

    For example, take a look at just how much cash gets spent by lobbyists, who buy off congressmen and women and senators, people who are supposed to be representing US, but are instead beholden to other interests.

    And you're right. The Republicans and the Democrats are pretty much the same, the only difference I see is that the Republicans want to interfere in my private life and the Democrats don't.

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  6. Conservative policies are dangerous even when Democrats like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi carry them out. They were dangerous when Bill Clinton was President.

    Conservatism is a bipartisan catastrophe.

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  7. Your closing paragraphs nailed it. Every time the government shrugs & says they just can't afford (fill in the blank)..... think about all the billions we can & do afford for wars of choice.
    Wars based on lies.

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