Two dumfounding news times from the culture war caught my attention this week. In Alaska, Gov. Sean Parnell nominated Don Haase to a panel that selects state judges. Haase holds, among other fundie beliefs, that sex outside of marriage should be a crime. And in South Dakota, a law was passed that will force women seeking an abortion to undergo a 72 hour cooling off period after submitting to pro-life counseling.
The Alaskan case is clearly a governor working under what he sees as a mandate. Despite what the propaganda machine told us during the elections, the Tea Party is all about a moral agenda. This blatant attempt to influence judicial nominations is just one of many such acts by Republicans in states across our country. The bar is lower in Alaska. We all know why.
South Dakota represents an older force in the long culture war; old guard republicans. The guys are entrenched and will never give up the reins of power. Rep. Roger Hunt has been at his anti-abortion game for over a decade. He’ll fight his holy war until he dies.
Are we losing the culture war? No, but we’ve lost a big battle. Letting the Tea Party get a foot in the door was a big mistake. Given how the Democrats operate, I don’t think we have much hope in the short term. They have no real strategy. They have no long term vision, and more importantly, they squandered their mandate. We need a strategy that does not rely on the Democratic Party if we are to push back god’s misguided army of culture warriors.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m down on Democrats. There are lots of reasons. their leadership is a mess. Obama has lost his way. Unions are under attack. Democrats are in survival mode. But the thing that bugs me the most is that I do not like their politics. I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I’d say I’m a libertarian but that would align me much too closely to a bunch of fringe purists who waste their time arguing the finer points of whatever untenable position is the favor of the month. Libertarians will not fight the culture war. They don’t know it exists. I’m not sure I would want them to lead the fight anyway. They have trouble winning in unopposed races.
The Democrats seem lost. My outrage grows with each new act of Tea Party lunacy. I’m looking for ideas here. Can a secular coalition lead the fight?
Logging you in...
Jack 119p · 733 weeks ago
Like you, I find myself thinking that we need a third party (or maybe a few of them). And yet, I also see what happened in Wisconsin and am afraid of what might happen if we all abandon the Dems now.
The Dems have a window of opportunity now to remember their base and embrace progressive values. If they do not, they will condemn themselves to irrelevancy and condemn the country to further decline.
Tmaximus · 733 weeks ago
The force of conundrums is strong in Tea Bagistan.
Cullen Athey · 733 weeks ago
I read this morning in the Times that for Republicans Iowa is all about social issues. Not jobs, not the economy. Of course, mostly R's use bait and switch techniques--complain about Democratic "Job Killing" bills and laws, imbalance in the budgets that they ultimately caused, and our niggardly social supports, then, once in office it's all about conservative social issues. That brings me to my point--what is the consequence of fiscal conservatism? What does it mean, really?
For the last 35 or so years, it has meant transferring about half the wealth of our nation to the top few percent of the wealthiest corporations and people. It has also meant trying to balance the national and state budgets on the backs of those least able to afford it. Shrinking federal budgets hasn't been a forte of Republicans. Reagan tripled the federal deficit and Bush doubled down on that ploy. Clinton raised the top tier tax rate a bit, got the annual budget into the black, and more jobs were created in his administration than in Reagan's and both Bushes' administrations combined.
Now, Obama didn't have the supermajority in the Senate that FDR and LBJ had. He had ten fewer, in fact. So, a lot of what he has tried to do has been watered down by Republican demands for more tax cuts which just underfund the government and don't create jobs. As the result the stimulus was both underfunded and misdirected to a great extent. Corporate profits are way up and Wall Street is doing just fine, though, eh?
Bottom line, for me, is that a demand for "fiscal conservatism", a la Republicans, has only made the rich richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class to shrink. An underfunded government is the formula for loss of liberty and individual freedoms in the hands of Republicans. Shrinking our government spending in the wrong way will just shrink the whole economy, perhaps irreversibly. Then where will we be?
Mojoey 107p · 733 weeks ago
Cullen Athey · 733 weeks ago
I don't see Bush era tax cuts as being productive in that way, so raising at least the top tier rates and, by the way, getting corporations to pay their fare share (GE?) would all help address the current deficit revenue flow. As the revenue stream increases we can then look at funding we could cut, not at the margins, but in Military expenditures, for instance, where a 20-25% cut could be managed by reducing Cold War weapons systems, doing some reorganization, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and redefining our mission in the world.
Also, reducing or eliminating handouts to the big corporate energy and farming interests while preserving certain support for the smaller family farms would also improve the balance of revenue vs. spending. More employment would reduce the safety net costs that are up now due to the recession and a single payer medical system would reduce the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP costs. Social Security should be off the table other than to increase the cutoff from $108,000 to $125,000 or $150,000 or higher for FICA and perhaps means testing to determine levels of payback. SS really isn't supposed to be a budgetary item other than that the pols have raided the "lock box", leaving IOU's.
So increase income and reduce outlay with informed pragmatic vs. ideological solutions and also invest in the future with education, scientific, and infrastructure funding so we both stimulate the immediate economy's growth and also prepare the US for the future.
Current "fiscal conservative" Republican efforts, cutting around the edges of our social supports, are only licking the icing off the cake, but not substantive honest cuts of any truly significant proportion, just feel good payback, for them, at least. I think they are both immoral and unethical, certainly heartless, eh? Even the $61Bn cut they now propose is under 2% of the federal budget and draconian in nature.
So, finally, I think fiscal conservatism in this time goes hand in hand with loss of wealth for the most of us, the loss of individual freedoms, and ultimately weakening our country. The fiscal conservative Europeans are fairing much less well than the more liberal/progressive ones, eh? I don't want us to fall into the same conservative trap Ireland, England, and Portugal have.
tonjia rolan · 733 weeks ago
Mojoey 107p · 733 weeks ago