Republicans, Chewing Gum, Spill Tea

By TRB

They did it in 2008. The Republicans fell on their prejudices back then. Thought they were going to wall off the entire Southwest, acted as though our Mexican brothers and sisters should be banned forever from the United States. Said they just wanted to follow the rules. Denied that any anti-Mexican sentiment was created by their highly publicized round-ups of hard working Mexican men and women who came here so they could feed their children. Just wanted to work.

No, but they we caught in the Klieg lights of a major "Let's Take America Back" production in which they were the bad guys, receiving the part, no rehearsal required. You think George Orwell was scary. Well we'll show you some "scary" and it won't be George Orwell or some other wrong-headed socialist playing the part. We have the actual monsters themselves. Look, here they come dressed in traditional black, armed with automatic weapons. You will leave this country or we will carry you out in a casket.

But something happened with the production of "Lets Take America Back." It didn't make people feel all warm and fuzzy, although it claimed to be a good American family film. Maybe it was the audiences. Seems its producers forgot or overlooked the millions of Latino U.S. citizens who would be among the viewers of this tragedy. Seems no one told them that these were people who were highly regarded in their neighborhoods by people of all races. Hard-working people. Loyal family people. Neighborhood participants and active in public schools. People of undeniably good character. They didn't like the movie and the Republicans laid a big one in 2008.

Come 2010, the Republicans won big in the House and now they had as allies a kind of white trash version of themselves called the Tea Party. But wait, once again the Republicans seemed not all that satisfied with their victories and spent months days and hours hatching schemes to lose the next election. It became very heated under that Capitol dome and they are still blowing the popcorn off the the lawn today. You think dirty snow is bad. Try some dirty popcorn.

It began as an idea hatched by two brothers worth approximately $17.5 billion a piece. No, of course they didn't earn it; no one has ever accused these brothers of having one brain between them. Yes, it was left to them. Did you know they were Republicans? Their names are David and Charles Koch and they will fund the campaigns of Democrats too, like Governor Andrew Cuomo or so-called liberal Republicans like our own Senator Scott Brown, who was filmed recently begging one of the Koch brothers for money. "Your support during the election, it meant a ton," he said "It made a difference and I can certainly use it again."

This occurrence of politicians begging would be nothing new except that the Koch brothers are owners of companies that are among the worst polluters in the nation. It is their money behind the effort to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency that has a habit of fining them for their environmental catastrophes. They don't like that and think they can pay to make the EPA disappear. They also, like most owners of corporations, don't like unions and collective bargaining.

So could the billions left to them by their parents help in getting rid of the unions? It helped them virtually create and finance the Tea Party. And there was this other Scott, this one named Walker, who is governor of Wisconsin, a man known for standing by his word even when it makes no sense at all. The Koch brothers gave him a lot of money, wound him up and told him to destroy the unions.

Now 23 days later it looks like the hapless Walker will have to cave in on his promise to kill collective bargaining. Why? Because the people of Wisconsin told him over and over in demonstration after demonstration that they would put him out on his butt the first chance they got. And just to underline their anger they are now involved in what might prove to be successful recalls of Republican Reps in the Wisconsin House. Scott Walker, the Republican, Republican killer.

Let's take some time out here to explain why so many cities and towns in the U.S. are hurting so badly. It is simple. The banks and Wall Street have stolen all their money, their pension funds, their insurance. Stripped them bare. Then they lost it gambling on the financial markets. Are you following this? So then Pres. Obama and Congress came up with a way to give that money back to the banks. They printed it and called it taxes for U.S. citizens to pay at a later date. So we will eventually pay the banks for ripping us off. Now comes our local government attempting to force us to pay them off as well for our money (in the form of pensions, etc.) the banks stole from them. And meanwhile the U.S. government, led by Barack Obama, whose campaign for president was financed significantly by banks, has failed to charge one of these thieves. Not a single one.

But back to more good news.

Believe it or not, 16 other Republican governors are set to get rid of the unions. I hope for their own sake they take a good look at what happened in Wisconsin, because as we sit here today Governor Scott Walker has given up and is giving in to union demands. But I don't expect these other 16 Republican governors to give up. They are like lemmings, and the run is on. We can't stop them, nor, in this case, would we want to.

Talk about political suicide, just take a look at Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan. He wants to raise taxes, but only on poor and old people. He wants to take $1.7 billion from them. Then he wants to give $1.8 billion in tax cuts to businesses. But that's nothing. What he also plans to do is hire people who will fire elected officials and dis-incorporate or dissolve towns and cities that he deems are not financially viable. He is the sole authority in making this decision. He can also throw out the elected officials and hire a private corporation to run the town. This is one of the reasons we need unions. They are the last line of defense between us and them. And don't kid yourself that there isn't an us and them.

The Republican agenda is not known to most people, unfortunately. They tell you that they want to cut taxes but fail to tell you it is only for the very wealthy. Then they believe all these other things that normal Americans just do not believe. For example, as Naomi Klein has stated in her recent book Shock Doctrine, which describes what she calls "disaster capitalism," the Republicans also want to privatize almost everything, including your town government and your water supply. If they had their way you would not have a vote in local elections. Your town would simply be owned by Walgreens maybe. Who knows?

This will go down as the year, I believe, when people in the U.S. really began to get wise to the Republican's radical ideology, and how little it has to do with U.S. representative democracy. We have Scott Wagner to thank for that. And the Koch brothers, and Governor Snyder, not to mention witch trial chief Rep. Peter King.

So the Republicans are blowing it in the Mid-West. What are they doing on the East Coast? Well, there's Rep. Peter King of New York, former enthusiastic supporter of the IRA during its most violent period of terrorism, who plans to question the loyalty of U.S. citizen Muslims tomorrow at a hearing in Congress. King wants this witch trial because he is convinced there are many sleeper Islamic terrorists among us, although he has no proof of this and would not be able to obtain proof in these hearings he will chair.

The Republicans are probably the most self destructive political party in American history. I believe that is because they have to keep lying, and that always makes them seem suspicious. If Americans knew how unAmerican their beliefs really were, they wouldn't vote for one of them