Excerpt: "Trump's the symptom, not the disease. The Republican establishment
has been infecting the body politic for years."
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talks with fellow state governors before
President Barack Obama addressed members of the National Governors
Association at the White House in 2015. Also pictured is Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Image)
The GOP Elites Have Themselves to Blame
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
16 March 16
From their "Dark Money" bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David
Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from
Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists and crackpots who have
fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will
save the party from the elites?
Look around at just some of the other sheer lunacy their party perpetrates
when it's not trying to shut government down, redistribute wealth upward,
and prevent the president of the United States (who, the last time we
looked, has the constitutional right and mandate) from filling a vacancy on
the Supreme Court.
The Republicans in southern California just got a 7-6 majority on the
region's air quality board and have set out to reverse all of its
safeguards, "reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other
major polluters," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Mary Lou Bruner, a Republican crank in Texas who claimed that a young Barack
Obama had worked as a black male prostitute, is on track to become a key
vote on the state's board of education, the group that, as Matt Levin at the
Houston Chronicle writes, is, "already drawing intense criticism for
textbooks that, among other issues, downplayed slavery and racial
segregation."
That's important because the school board is such a major buyer of books its
decisions affect editorial content in texts all over the country. So
remember that Bruner is an eccentric whose Facebook declarations include
"School shootings started after the schools started teaching evolution" and
"The dinosaurs on the ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce. It
might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the
ones bigger than a bus." Huh? Yet Republican elites seem quite satisfied to
have a Mary Lou Bruner as the arbiter of what their children read in
schools.
And while we're talking about education, travel over to Texas neighbor
Louisiana and look at the legacy that former Republican governor and
presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has left behind for his Democratic
successor, John Bel Edwards.
At The Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported,
"Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and
painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to
offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities. A few
universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be
canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Since the 2007-08 school year,
Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest
pullback in the nation."
Part of this can be attributed to the precipitous drop in oil and gas prices
and loss of fossil fuel industry revenue crucial to the state's economy. But
the real problem, according to the Associated Press, is that
"Jindal, burnishing his fiscal conservative credentials for his failed
presidential campaign, refused to hike taxes or approve any action that even
resembled a tax hike, including trimming expensive business tax credits,
even amid an economic downturn. Legislators are hearing that cuts described
by the Jindal administration as 'efficiencies' actually went much deeper,
striking at services. They've learned about borrowing practices that
increased state debts and about threats to Louisiana's cash flow because it
spent down reserves."
The result? A calamitous budget crisis in the second most impoverished state
in the country, a $900 million shortfall that has to be fixed by June 30 and
another amounting to around two billion that will need to be closed next
year.
So that's how you govern when you have the power. Thanks, Republicans!
And while we're at it, ponder, too, the once-great state of Kansas, where,
under the right-wing ideology and bumbling leadership of Republican governor
Sam Brownback, the clowns are running the circus. The state legislature
there is moving toward passage of a bill that would allow the impeachment of
Kansas Supreme Court justices for, among other newly-thought of high crimes
and misdemeanors, "attempting to usurp the power" of said same legislature
or the executive branch.
The reason? As per Edward Eveld of The Kansas City Star, "A recent state
Supreme Court decision, citing the Legislature's constitutional duty to
properly finance public schools, has demanded that lawmakers fix a school
funding formula by June 30 or risk the shutdown of public schools for the
2016-2017 school year."
The court also has overturned death sentences and is considering a case that
would void anti-abortion rules. The Republican legislature doesn't like any
of this one bit - not to mention that four of the seven judges were
appointed by former Democratic Governor Kathleen Sibelius. So in a classic,
don't-raise-the-bridge-lower-the-river solution, the GOP legislators - who
outnumber Democrats by three to one - have decided that the answer is to do
away with the judges they don't like and to hell with checks and balances.
In the words of Esquire's inimitable Charlie Pierce, "They recognize no
limits to their power, no curbs to their desire. There are few frontiers in
democratic government that they will not work to violate, or to twist to
their own purposes. And they absolutely will not stop. Ni shagu nazad, as
Stalin said to his army. Not one step backwards."
What happened to Kansas? A coup against common sense, sound principles and
the "general welfare" hailed in the preamble to the US Constitution. And as
it all has gone down, Republican elites seem to have developed a case of
laryngitis.
We could go on. Let's not forget what Governor Scott Walker has done to
Wisconsin and Michigan Governor Richard Snyder to Flint. Check out how
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is endeavoring to "fix" higher education
there. Will Republican elites please tell us where they stand on their
man's ax-wielding mania?
And what Republican poobah has dared call out Grover Norquist, whose
monomaniacal crusade against government has thrown public education into
crisis, turned streets and highways into bottomless potholes, and produced
stratospheric deficits? (Bobby Jindal, by the way, was just one of the many
who signed Norquist's no-tax pledge, a major reason why his state is barely
holding on by its fingernails.)
Finally, this is the party whose elites deceived America into war after
cutting taxes on the wealthy so they wouldn't have to pay for it. And so it
goes. All of which leads us to the conclusion that what's wrong with the GOP
ain't just about Donald Trump, apoplectic, mendacious malcreant though he
is. Over decades, the Republicans have built castles of corruption and
citadels of crony capitalism across the country and now the angry villagers
are climbing over the ramparts. Not one step backwards? Too late.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talks with fellow state governors before
President Barack Obama addressed members of the National Governors
Association at the White House in 2015. Also pictured is Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Image)
http://billmoyers.com/story/the-gop-elites-have-themselves-to-blame/http://b
illmoyers.com/story/the-gop-elites-have-themselves-to-blame/
The GOP Elites Have Themselves to Blame
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
16 March 16
rom their "Dark Money" bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David
Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from
Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists and crackpots who have
fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will
save the party from the elites?
Look around at just some of the other sheer lunacy their party perpetrates
when it's not trying to shut government down, redistribute wealth upward,
and prevent the president of the United States (who, the last time we
looked, has the constitutional right and mandate) from filling a vacancy on
the Supreme Court.
The Republicans in southern California just got a 7-6 majority on the
region's air quality board and have set out to reverse all of its
safeguards, "reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other
major polluters," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Mary Lou Bruner, a Republican crank in Texas who claimed that a young Barack
Obama had worked as a black male prostitute, is on track to become a key
vote on the state's board of education, the group that, as Matt Levin at the
Houston Chronicle writes, is, "already drawing intense criticism for
textbooks that, among other issues, downplayed slavery and racial
segregation."
That's important because the school board is such a major buyer of books its
decisions affect editorial content in texts all over the country. So
remember that Bruner is an eccentric whose Facebook declarations include
"School shootings started after the schools started teaching evolution" and
"The dinosaurs on the ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce. It
might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the
ones bigger than a bus." Huh? Yet Republican elites seem quite satisfied to
have a Mary Lou Bruner as the arbiter of what their children read in
schools.
And while we're talking about education, travel over to Texas neighbor
Louisiana and look at the legacy that former Republican governor and
presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has left behind for his Democratic
successor, John Bel Edwards.
At The Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported,
"Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and
painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to
offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities. A few
universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be
canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Since the 2007-08 school year,
Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest
pullback in the nation."
Part of this can be attributed to the precipitous drop in oil and gas prices
and loss of fossil fuel industry revenue crucial to the state's economy. But
the real problem, according to the Associated Press, is that
"Jindal, burnishing his fiscal conservative credentials for his failed
presidential campaign, refused to hike taxes or approve any action that even
resembled a tax hike, including trimming expensive business tax credits,
even amid an economic downturn. Legislators are hearing that cuts described
by the Jindal administration as 'efficiencies' actually went much deeper,
striking at services. They've learned about borrowing practices that
increased state debts and about threats to Louisiana's cash flow because it
spent down reserves."
The result? A calamitous budget crisis in the second most impoverished state
in the country, a $900 million shortfall that has to be fixed by June 30 and
another amounting to around two billion that will need to be closed next
year.
So that's how you govern when you have the power. Thanks, Republicans!
And while we're at it, ponder, too, the once-great state of Kansas, where,
under the right-wing ideology and bumbling leadership of Republican governor
Sam Brownback, the clowns are running the circus. The state legislature
there is moving toward passage of a bill that would allow the impeachment of
Kansas Supreme Court justices for, among other newly-thought of high crimes
and misdemeanors, "attempting to usurp the power" of said same legislature
or the executive branch.
The reason? As per Edward Eveld of The Kansas City Star, "A recent state
Supreme Court decision, citing the Legislature's constitutional duty to
properly finance public schools, has demanded that lawmakers fix a school
funding formula by June 30 or risk the shutdown of public schools for the
2016-2017 school year."
The court also has overturned death sentences and is considering a case that
would void anti-abortion rules. The Republican legislature doesn't like any
of this one bit - not to mention that four of the seven judges were
appointed by former Democratic Governor Kathleen Sibelius. So in a classic,
don't-raise-the-bridge-lower-the-river solution, the GOP legislators - who
outnumber Democrats by three to one - have decided that the answer is to do
away with the judges they don't like and to hell with checks and balances.
In the words of Esquire's inimitable Charlie Pierce, "They recognize no
limits to their power, no curbs to their desire. There are few frontiers in
democratic government that they will not work to violate, or to twist to
their own purposes. And they absolutely will not stop. Ni shagu nazad, as
Stalin said to his army. Not one step backwards."
What happened to Kansas? A coup against common sense, sound principles and
the "general welfare" hailed in the preamble to the US Constitution. And as
it all has gone down, Republican elites seem to have developed a case of
laryngitis.
We could go on. Let's not forget what Governor Scott Walker has done to
Wisconsin and Michigan Governor Richard Snyder to Flint. Check out how
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is endeavoring to "fix" higher education
there. Will Republican elites please tell us where they stand on their man's
ax-wielding mania?
And what Republican poobah has dared call out Grover Norquist, whose
monomaniacal crusade against government has thrown public education into
crisis, turned streets and highways into bottomless potholes, and produced
stratospheric deficits? (Bobby Jindal, by the way, was just one of the many
who signed Norquist's no-tax pledge, a major reason why his state is barely
holding on by its fingernails.)
Finally, this is the party whose elites deceived America into war after
cutting taxes on the wealthy so they wouldn't have to pay for it. And so it
goes. All of which leads us to the conclusion that what's wrong with the GOP
ain't just about Donald Trump, apoplectic, mendacious malcreant though he
is. Over decades, the Republicans have built castles of corruption and
citadels of crony capitalism across the country and now the angry villagers
are climbing over the ramparts. Not one step backwards? Too late.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize