The more we see of Paul Ryan’s “innovative” budget proposal, the more mean-spirited it gets.
Take Food Stamps–another target for “savings.” According to Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos, Ryan would change food stamp dollars to block grants, which would be funded at only 80 percent of the current level of spending. “That means cuts of $127 billion between now and 2021. To achieve that would require dropping millions of low-income Americans from SNAP rolls or cutting their benefits or some combination of both. Ryan doesn’t specify. This “reform”—astonishing what gets that label these days—would also impose new restrictions on recipients, including time limits on how long they would be eligible to receive food stamps.”
We are just beginning to emerge from the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Thousands and thousands of hardworking, taxpaying Americans lost jobs and home, and a significant number of people who had always been self-sustaining found themselves on food stamps. Their needs, however, cannot compete with the need to protect the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of earners.
Ryan’s defenders will claim that these historically low tax rates will generate investment and translate into jobs. The evidence against that is overwhelming and compelling.
This is really an effort to dismantle the remnants of our already dangerously frayed social safety net–by self-proclaimed “Christians” who have no understanding of their own religion’s teachings, and no empathy for anyone who doesn’t look just like them. And it is unforgivable.
Or we could just call this post “the arrogance of power.”
I used to argue with friends who deliberately voted for divided government. It didn’t seem logical to install a system where little would get done–where agendas could easily be blocked. A vote for divided government was a vote for gridlock rather than action.
Gridlock has never looked so alluring.
For the first time in several years, the Republicans hold all the power in Indiana–they have a majority of the House and the Senate, and they have the Governor’s office. And they are using their unconstrained power with a vengeance. There’s been the stuff we all expected: we’ve seen the redistricting maps, for example, and as we all know, had the Democrats held all the power, the maps would have been no less politically motivated. But they haven’t stopped there, and some of the shenanigans have been truly outrageous (a word I try to use sparingly).
Two examples just from yesterday: Rep. Scott Schneider–one of the many “culture warriors” who dominate today’s GOP–inserted a budget amendment to completely de-fund Planned Parenthood. In pertinent part, the measure reads “For any contract with or grant made to an entity that performs abortions or maintains or operates a facility where abortions are performed covered under subsection (b), the budget agency shall make a determination that funds are not available, and the contract or grant shall be terminated under section 5 of this chapter.” It passed, with only two Republicans having the guts to vote against it (and several gutless Democrats voting for it.)
Clearly, for the zealots, the health of women who depend upon Planned Parenthood for pap smears, cancer screenings and birth control is far less important than imposing their religious beliefs on the rest of us, and inserting themselves into the most intimate decisions families have to make. What is even more despicable is that, for many of the Representatives who voted with the zealots, women’s health is less important than political pandering.
The assault on women’s health and rights has been part of the GOP agenda for quite a while. It is one of the reasons for the gender gap. But the second example of arrogance was not ideological. It was pure self-serving politics.
As anyone who has been following the news knows, Secretary of State Charley White has been indicted on several counts, including voter fraud. Since the Secretary of State is in charge of elections and voting integrity for the state, this is a bit awkward, to put it mildly. A Marion County Judge has instructed the Election Board to determine whether White was eligible to run for that office. Under current law, if the Board finds that he wasn’t eligible, the candidate with the next highest vote total would be declared the winner. That would be Democrat Vop Osili. Not only would the GOP lose that office, but not having run a qualified candidate for Secretary of State, they would not be deemed to have received ten percent of the vote for that office–a requirement for major party status. They would have to conduct a petition drive to regain ballot access.
But not to worry! If the law disadvantages the majority, the majority will just change the law! And so they did. (Didn’t you always tell your children to play by the rules–but to change the rules so that they’d always win?? Of course you did.)
The GOP majority changed the law to provide that the Governor would appoint someone to fill the vacancy, and to avoid the pesky consequences of having run a felon for high office. Problem solved.
It’s interesting how the self-appointed guardians of our morality see nothing wrong with immoral behaviors that benefit them. In his speech urging passage of the bill to defund Planned Parenthood, Rep. Schneider insisted that the organization was focused mainly on abortion–a statement he had to know was false. He insisted poor women could easily get health services elsewhere (as Stephen Colbert deadpanned a few nights ago, surely Walgreen’s does pap smears!) In other words, he lied in order to advance his own peculiar version of morality. In the case of Charley White, the party of righteousness, the party that insists on law and order, evidently believes that the rules are just for the “little folks” and Democrats.
It’s often said we get the government we deserve. If that’s true, we the people have been very, very bad.
One of my favorite stories is the one about the Rabbi of a small shtetl, or village, who was asked to mediate a quarrel between two residents. He listened to one side intently, then said, “yes, you are right.” Then he listened to the other man’s position, and said “yes, you are right.” A bystander protested. “Rabbi, they can’t both be right!” To which the Rabbi replied, “You also are correct.”
What I love about that story is that it underscores a point often missed in our toxic political culture: no one has a monopoly on being right. Or wrong. As I frequently remind my students, reality can be complicated. The right answer will often depend on context, on factual distinctions and how the question is framed.
Over the weekend, I read David Brooks’ new book, The Social Animal and it reminded me of the Rabbi’s lesson. The book is excellent; it deserves the plaudits it has received. I don’t necessarily agree with every conclusion he draws from the considerable research he has consulted about the nature of the human animal, but his is a plausible, reasonable reading of available evidence.
At the end of the day–for me at least–the book made a case for a more social, more communitarian approach to government. I have long been leery of communitarianism, the argument that we are all socially embedded creatures who require an agreement about the ultimate ends of life. (The practical problem with communitarians is that many of them tend to be statists who would hand over to government the power to choose our life goals. Marxists tried that and it wasn’t pretty.)
On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that we have traveled a very long way toward radical individualism, and those results aren’t pretty either.
If the Rabbi were mediating this debate, he might say to the libertarians among us “You are right that the state should not prescribe your beliefs and social behaviors.” He might also say to the communitarians “You are right that humans need a community to be a part of, a community that you help support and that helps support you”
Onlookers might protest that both things can’t be right, but in this case, I think they would be wrong.
That anyone–anywhere–is taking “The Donald” seriously is a black mark on America.
This megalomaniac with really, really bad hair, whose most salient characteristic is a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, is busy pandering to the very worst elements in our political system–much as he has pandered to our obsession with money and celebrity. As a side show, I suppose some may find him moderately amusing, if bad taste and cluelessness are your thing. As a presidential contender, not so much.
On the other hand, the shamelessness with which he is playing to the Tea Party folks makes it abundantly clear what truly motivates them: hatred of Obama. Not the real, flesh and blood person who occupies the White House, but the idea of Obama. “Birtherism” is simply a slightly less obvious attack on Obama’s race. The other attacks flow from that central conviction: a black President is unthinkable, illegitimate.
Was there intense hatred of George W. Bush? Absolutely. But it developed over time, as Bush took actions that enraged many citizens. Even after the disaster of the hanging chads and the Supreme Court’s intervention, there was partisan disapproval but not the white-hot anger that developed as Bush revealed himself through word and deed. That is not the case with Obama; he was the object of searing personal attacks before he even assumed the office. You don’t have to agree with everything he’s done (and I don’t–especially his continuation of Bush’s national security policies) to recognize the difference.
But even the most reactionary among us surely don’t hate Obama–or America–enough to consider Donald Trump anything but the shallow side-show he is.
I had lunch today with a delightful young woman who, among other things, is active with the League of Women Voters. During our discussion, she remarked (rather plaintively) that she found it difficult to understand why the League was so often viewed as a “liberal” organization. “We don’t take positions until we have studied them carefully,” she said. “We gather evidence for two years, and assess it carefully, and base our position on that evidence.”
There you go! Basing positions on evidence is what is now considered liberal.
The conversation reminded me of an explanation from my book God and Country: America in Red and Blue. I was looking at the paradigm shift caused by the Enlightenment, and the profound effect that shift had on our Constitution.
When Francis Bacon insisted that laws governing the material world could be inferred through careful observation (a notion that, for contemporary Americans, is an unremarkable commonplace), it had enormous implications for the existing, traditional, deductive methods of understanding reality. The “old learning,” had begun with an a priori “given,” the bible, the absolute truth of which was unquestioned. The primary goal of Puritan education was thus directed at biblical understanding; one began with the text and learned—deduced—how to interpret it. Proper interpretation required the application of time-tested methods of exegesis and analysis, and instruction in historical context and meaning (mostly, what important theologians of the past had decreed to be correct understandings and approaches). One started with Truth, and education was the process of learning to apprehend and defend that Truth. Bacon changed the fundamental order of things by teaching that education must begin with observation of natural phenomena.
We are a country that was founded on a radical notion: evidence matters. Today, however, those of us for whom evidence still matters are dismissed as “liberals” by the political equivalents of the Puritans. Like those Puritans, our ideologues (of every stripe) begin with their “truth,” and look for evidence to support it and ways to impose it.
