{"id":4611,"date":"2011-04-18T04:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4611"},"modified":"2011-04-18T04:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:49:00","slug":"america-or-fascist-corporatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/18\/america-or-fascist-corporatism\/","title":{"rendered":"America or Fascist Corporatism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the people\u2019s blinders are off and the Machiavellian extremism of Republican fascist corporatism are plain to see, common beltway wisdom prefers to ignore it.  Instead they say it\u2019s time co compromise, to make a deal with the Republicans.  The Republicans will make no deal that does not leave Main Street screaming for Vaseline, so I say, No!  Before Obama was elected I said that true bipartisanship with today\u2019s Republicans is impossible.  History has proven me right.<\/font><\/p>\n

This editorial from the Times sets the landscape:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"RepublicanTooMany\"Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause<\/strong> \u2014 much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes<\/font><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

At first it seemed that only a few freshmen and noisy followers of the Tea Party would support the new extremism. But on Friday, nearly unanimous House Republicans showed just how far their mainstream has been dragged to the right. They approved on strict party lines the most regressive social legislation in many decades, embodied in a blueprint by the budget chairman, Paul Ryan. The vote, from which only four Republicans (and all Democrats) dissented, would have been unimaginable just eight years ago to a Republican Party that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. <\/p>\n

Mr. Ryan called the vote \u201cour generation\u2019s defining moment,\u201d and indeed, nothing could more clearly define the choice that will face voters next year. <\/p>\n

His bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor<\/strong>, which has been provided by the federal government with society\u2019s clear assent since 1965. The elderly, in particular, would be cut adrift by Mr. Ryan. People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Fully two-thirds<\/strong><\/a> of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

In addition to making \u201centitlement\u201d a dirty word, the Ryan bulldozer would go much further in knocking down government programs to achieve its goals. It would <\/strong>cut food stamps by $127 billion<\/strong><\/a>, or 20 percent<\/strong>, over the next 10 years, almost certainly increasing hunger among the poor. It would cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether<\/strong>. It would remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start, and slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

And it would do all that while preserving the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and even expanding them<\/strong>. Regulation of business and the environment would be sharply reduced<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The mania for blindly cutting has also spread to statehouses, many with new Republican governors and legislatures. Several states have cut their unemployment benefits below the standard 26 weeks. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has proposed removing 138,000 people from Medicaid. Many recession-battered states, including some led by Democrats, have been forced to cut other services because Republicans have made it so politically difficult to raise taxes. Education, mental health and juvenile justice funds have been particular targets. <\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Florida, Republican governors have used the smokescreen of a poor economy to pursue a long-held conservative goal of destroying public and private unions\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

How can we compromise with that?  Who do we throw under the bus to reach a deal to give billionaires a matching set of mansions?  The old? The poor? The sick? The hungry?  None of the above!<\/font><\/p>\n

Paul Krugman says it\u2019s time to take a stand.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"bipartisan_b2284\"Now, Republicans claim that last year\u2019s midterms gave them a mandate for the vision embodied in their budget. But last year the G.O.P. ran against what it called the \u201cmassive Medicare cuts\u201d<\/strong> contained in the health reform law. How, then, can the election have provided a mandate for a plan that not only would preserve all of those cuts, but would go on, over time, to dismantle Medicare completely<\/strong>? <\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, polls suggest that the public\u2019s priorities are nothing like those embodied in the Republican budget. Large majorities support higher, not lower, taxes on the wealthy. Large majorities \u2014 including a majority of Republicans \u2014 also oppose major changes to Medicare<\/strong>. Of course, the poll that matters is the one on Election Day. But that\u2019s all the more reason to make the 2012 election a clear choice between visions. <\/p>\n

Which brings me to those calls for a bipartisan solution. Sorry to be cynical, but right now \u201cbipartisan\u201d is usually code for assembling some conservative Democrats and ultraconservative Republicans \u2014 all of them with close ties to the wealthy, and many who are wealthy themselves \u2014 and having them proclaim that low taxes on high incomes and drastic cuts in social insurance are the only possible solution<\/font><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

This would be a corrupt, undemocratic way to make decisions about the shape of our society even if those involved really were wise men with a deep grasp of the issues. It\u2019s much worse when many of those at the table are the sort of people who solicit and believe the kind of policy analyses that the Heritage Foundation supplies. <\/p>\n

So let\u2019s not be civil. Instead, let\u2019s have a frank discussion of our differences. In particular, if Democrats believe that Republicans are talking cruel nonsense, they should say so \u2014 and take their case to the voters<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

If Democrats, who currently begin negotiations slightly right of center, keep giving in to meet Republicans, who currently begin negotiations slightly right of Hitler, the voting public will have no reason to choose Democrats in the polls.  Instead they will chose the more accomplished liars, the Republicans.  The Republican president will appoint another goose-stepper to the Supreme Court and America will have given way to a permanent one-party state of corporate fascism, of, by, and for the super rich and criminal corporations.  The Democratic Party has a choice to make.<\/font><\/p>\n

If little or nothing gets done for the next year and a half, that will be hard, but if they give in, they will have no case to take to the voters.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the people\u2019s blinders are off and the Machiavellian extremism of Republican fascist corporatism are plain to see, common beltway wisdom prefers to ignore it.  Instead they say it\u2019s time co compromise, to make a deal with the Republicans.  The Republicans will make no deal that does not leave Main Street screaming for Vaseline, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}