home
about
archives
|
IDEOLOGY IS ALL THEY HAVE LEFT
02/25/2009
President Barack Obama gave a magnificent speech last night and as I listened to him I realized how wonderful it feels to finally be out of the intellectual wilderness that we have been in for the past eight years.
Not only did President Obama speak realistically about the dire economic situation we are in as a nation, but he spoke hopefully and confidently about what we need to do – together – to recover and rebuild. He skillfully included in his speech his plans for three important and necessary reforms: energy reform, health care reform, and education reform. As he said, these are three problem areas that have contributed to the current crisis and they have been neglected for the past twenty-five years.
While the immediate cause of our economic problems, he told us, are the credit, banking, and mortgage crises, he acknowledged that we will never fully recover if we don't address the longer term causes of our economic problems: our energy dependence that sends billions of our dollars to Arab countries, our broken health care system that is destroying small businesses while damaging the health of tens of millions of Americans, and our poor track record on education which hurts our ability to compete with other nations.
While the Republicans may argue against Obama's specific plans for reform, no one can argue these are areas that need immediate attention if we as a nation are to regain our economic strength.
Obama's speech was elevating, clear, precise, and easy to understand. His plans were practical and included an outreach to Republicans. He exuded the right blend of sober realism, and hopeful optimism.
Had I turned off the television at that point, I would have gone to bad happy and relieved that we finally have an educated and competent adult in the White House, a man of the people who puts their needs before some think-tank ideology, someone who is flexible yet commanding, someone who is a true leader in touch with the times.
Instead, I watched the Republican response by Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousiana.
What a letdown! What a disappointment! What a joke!
Governor Jindal proved that all the Republican Party has left to present to the American people is its failed ideology.
First, he engaged in "me-too-ism," by comparing his status as the son of immigrants to Obama's situation as the son of a Kenyan father, and because Jindal's mother was apparently pregnant with him when his parents came to America, he said he was a "pre-existing condition." Little did he know how accurate that statement was, because by recycling the old worn out and failed Republican and conservative ideology, he showed himself and his party to have a pre-existing condition, an ideology that is leading the GOP to RIP.
He spoke fondly of his dad telling him, as they walked down a grocery aisle, that "Americans can do anything" and he then used that story to segue into the tired, worn conservative idea that government can do nothing, but the American people can do everything. That was the theme, that Americans can do anything, and he repeated it as a way of countering what he mistakenly thought Obama was saying, that government is the solution to our problems.
Actually, Obama said over and over again that Americans have always risen to the occasion and will rise to this one. (One wonders if Jindal even listened to Obama's address.) Furthermore, Obama indicated his regret that we have to rely on government bail-outs at this time, but that to ignore the reality of the moment – that government is the last resort - is to court disaster.
What Jindal's immigrant father noticed was the enterprise and ingenuity of the American people, something we can all agree on. But as an immigrant, uneducated in American history and politics, he apparently failed to realize that the government of the United States IS the people and that it is their very ingenuity that created this government and changes its policies and direction whenever it is necessary.
Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan succeeded in rhetorically separating government from the people, even though he came from the party of Lincoln, who once reminded us that the American government was "of, by and for the people."
This has always seemed a curious trick of Republicans – to separate the American government from the people and to pit one against the other, rather than to celebrate the strength of the American government as representing the will of the people. And yet, there was Jindal, resurrecting the tired ideology of the Party that always sees government as the problem and instead of trying to make it succeed and work for the people who own it, tries to destroy it in favor of "every man for himself."
Jindal went on to say that "today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts…. The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens."
This was an amazing section of the speech. Jindal as much as admitted that the government led by his Party failed Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina (which it did) and then said it was individual people who saved it. This is actually rewriting history. Bush's conservative crony government failed Louisiana during the rescue part of the aftermath, but in recent years the government has spent billions on recovery. Jindal, to the best of my knowledge, has not turned this money down. Yes, there were many individuals and private charities that have helped Louisiana, but the government eventually poured billions into the state, much of it going to private contractors who got rich in the process.
So let's be clear. The government that failed Lousiana was the government of Jindal's cronies, his fellow conservatives. Had Democrats been in charge, government might have done a much better job. In fact, the federal government did a much better job of rescue, relief and recovery under previous presidents than during the Bush administration. Just because the incompetent Bush failed doesn't mean government always fails. People who believe the federal government can do a good job, and who staff it with competent people, tend to prove how effective the government can be. On the other hand, people who despise government (even as they use it as a tool to get rich), tend to prove how bad government can be by staffing it with people like "heckuvajob Brownie."
Jindal went on: "To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you -- the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.
That is why Republicans put forward plans to create jobs by lowering income tax rates for working families, cutting taxes for small businesses, strengthening incentives for businesses to invest in new equipment and hire new workers, and stabilizing home values by creating a new tax credit for home-buyers."
There are so many things to refute here that the mind reels. First of all, Obama is not "raising taxes." He is lowering taxes on 95% of the American people and in 2010 he is allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which have been disastrous for the budget, to end. As Obama said, we have to face reality. The government (i.e. the people), in order to reduce the deficit and still create jobs, rebuild the infrastructure, fund the military, and provide necessary services, has to find the money somewhere. It can't just keep printing new money as that will create more problems down the road by devaluing the currency. So Obama is going to go back to the tax rates of the Clinton era, a pretty prosperous decade by any estimation.
As for Jindal's contention that Republicans can create jobs by increasing supply, which is the rationale behind lowering business tax rates, has been disproven. Right now, there is no demand. It doesn't matter how much supply there is if no one is buying. So lowering income tax rates for working families is what Obama is doing, in order to create demand. Jindal acts like this is a Republican idea, which it isn't. Republicans insist on tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. This is the same old supply side economics that has failed. But it is apparently all the party has.
As for "stabilizing home values but creating a new tax credit for home buyers," this is nonsense. People don't have jobs. They can't afford homes. People are still losing homes. How will a tax credit help people who are unemployed, can't qualify, or are already losing their homes? And how will it help when banks aren't lending? Jindal's words are nothing more than gobbledy-gook. A high school student in an economics class could come up with better ideas.
Jindal attacks the Democrats for their stimulus bill because he says it is "larded with wasteful spending." What Democrats crafted as spending projects to create jobs, Jindal calls "wasteful." I wonder how many unemployed Americans consider those projects "wasteful." Jindal gives some examples: his mythical " 'magnetic levitation' line from Las Vegas to Disneyland as well as $140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring'."
Again, Jindal couldn't be more misinformed or dishonest, I'm not sure which. Yes, there will be a high speed rail line in the West, which is something that is needed and will create jobs, but no routes have yet been established, and it for sure has nothing to do with "Disneyland," a noun Jindal is throwing in just to denigrate the plan as silly and wasteful.
As for volcano monitoring, another scientific project that will employ people, it sounds like a pretty important task to me, similar to the earthquake monitoring we do in California, and hurricane monitoring off the coast of Jindal's Louisiana, to provide early warning if at all possible and prevent deaths. (One wonders if Jindal's entire understanding of America has taken place within the confines of those supermarkets that so enthralled his father.)
His speech continues with the same tired old conservative ideology that government sponsored universal health care is bad because it means that "government bureaucrats will make medical decisions, not doctors." This is such an absurdity. Right now, managers at insurance companies make decisions about what will and will not be covered, and if government takes over, it will make some of those decisions. But government does that now with Medicare and most people I know on Medicare much prefer it to the private insurance they once had. But no one – not insurance middlemen nor government bureaucrats, ever make the actual medical decisions. That is always up to the doctor, and doctors always fight for their patients with whatever insurance company or government program covers them. This threat of government making medical decisions is a fear-mongering tactic that is pure politics. Republicans know the government will not make medical decisions – they just don't want government involved in health care because it will reduce the big money their supporters have gotten for years – supporters such as insurance conglomerates and pharmaceutical companies.
Jindal also said that American ingenuity can achieve energy independence in the private sector, and that is probably true, in the abstract. In reality, the private oil companies have kept that from happening, and never more so than during the past eight years when two Republican oil men were in power. Today, the oil companies have so much money and are so profitable that they can drown out any small companies trying to create alternative sources of energy. Government (i.e. the people) must step in and balance the scales or it will never happen. Why the Republicans refuse to acknowledge this can only be explained in one of two ways: either they are incredibly blinded by their ideology, or they are getting their pockets lined by the oil companies.
Ethics was another topic Jindal talked about, as if Republicans are the ethical party. Hello! Has anyone been paying attention over the past eight years? Yes, ethical problems exist in both parties – with the Democrat Blagojevich being the latest example – but have we so quickly forgotten the Republicans Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Scooter Libby, and the dozens of their cronies who are either in jail or have cut a deal to testify? As for the Dems passing a bill the American people haven't seen, as if it is as secret as the notes from Dick Cheney's energy task force, the details of the bill are on the web, as Obama promised.
Finally, Jindal concludes his painful exercise with this:
"In the end, it comes down to an honest and fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government. We oppose the national Democrats' view that says -- the way to strengthen our country is to increase dependence on government. We believe the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington, and empower individuals and small businesses to grow our economy and create jobs."
Yes, there is a fundamental disagreement between the two parties. The Republicans are reflexively and ideologically opposed to what they call "big government" or what Jindal calls "dependence on government." No one, it should be said, wants to be "dependent" on government, yet in this time when no one has any money, the banks are nearly insolvent, and jobs are disappearing at the rate of more than half a million a month, government (the elected representatives of we the people) is the only institution that can help. The American people know that the only entity strong enough to jump start the economy is the federal government, and the ideological message of Gov. Jindal and his cronies simply doesn't resonate with Americans because of that.
Americans want temporary government help now, but all Jindal can do is resort to conservative ideology because he thinks abandoning that ideology is what caused his party to be demolished a few months ago. It isn't. What caused his party to be rejected is that over the past eight years it put into practice its disdain for effective government (including practical regulations of banking and actual assistance to the people who needed assistance) and its adherence to a failed and destructive ideology.
The people have seen the failure of Republican ideology in every arena: the neoconservative ideology that sought to spread freedom through war; the deregulation, free market, supply side ideology that destroyed our economy and transferred enormous amounts of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy; and the religious ideology that peddled hate in the name of God while it sought to unite church and state in ways our Founding Fathers rejected.
And as the people have seen that ideology in action they have rejected it and have decided to stand with this new president by numbers ranging from 68% to over 80%. The people have spoken and so the words of Bobby Jindal are a joke. Conservative ideas have failed.
We are at war in two countries and those wars have not gone well, while they have cost us billions of our dollars. Supply side economics have, as Alan Greenspan recently said, a "huge flaw in the ideology." People are suffering and they know the Republicans have not and will not help them, even as they recognize that Republicans are the ones who created the problems.
Yet Bobby Jindal keeps going with his silly speech, peddling the Republicans' failed ideology, refusing to see reality, because ideology is apparently all they have left.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
|
