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conservative selfishness

Challenged by fellow Catholics, Ryan lies

Apr 30th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.
6 comments

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., darling of the pro-rich, pro-corporate radical right, has won the admiration of Republicans nationwide as a principled champion of the laissez-faire capitalism and Robinhood-in-reverse public policies they favor — not coincidentally, the policies that favor so many of them.

As chairman of the House Budget Committee Ryan has burnished his reputation as an unapologetic economic Darwinist with a budget plan that would destroy Medicare as we know it, drastically cut Medicaid and food programs for the poorest Americans, and do incalculable long-term damage to public education, K-college.

Ryan’s budget doubles down on the worst of Bush-era policies that can be succinctly described as rewarding the rich for being rich while punishing the rest for not being rich.

In an overdue but welcome development, some Catholics have called out Ryan for advancing policies that promote not the compassionate values exemplified in Christ’s life and teachings, but the greed-is-good, “we’re all in this apart” rot dispensed by author Ayn Rand. And, Ryan himself has lionized Rand in word and deed.

That is, until fellow Catholics called him out for preaching the false gospel of his beloved goddess of greed. When that happened, this Republican champion of “I got mine, you get yours, devil take the hindmost” took the coward’s way out: he lied.

Not that his lying will do him any good, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell points out with damning effect.

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Trying to base budgetary policy on idealized notions about selfishness being both a personal and public virtue is as unchristian as it is perverse. Idolizing a neurotic, morally bankrupt hag because she espoused and romanticized that kind of thing is sick.

But what should keep anyone of any political persuasion from affording Ryan even a shred of credibility or respect is how, when challenged by members of his faith, Ryan went weak in the knees and sought to lie his way out of a glaring conflict of moral interest.

Ryan either lacks the courage of his perverse convictions or he’s just one more dishonest political hero of the far right with feet of clay.

Wisconsin voters are busy taking out the trash this year. We hope for their sake and the nation’s that they will see to it Ryan’s regrettable career in Congress comes to an abrupt end.

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Gingrich’s child-labor riff is a flip-flop

Dec 11th, 2011
by S.W. Anderson.
9 comments

Gingrich

—International Business Times

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s recent assertion child labor laws are stupid and that poor children should be able to work as school janitors runs counter to his position in 1996, when he was running for re-eleciton against a Georgia businessman.

Gingrich’s remarks in favor giving poor children who lack employed role models a chance to earn money have drawn criticism since he uttered them Nov. 21 in a talk at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, but he stood by them during last night’s candidates debate.

Competitor Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said he didn’t agree.

The USA Today story notes Gingrich’s convenient change of mind.

But in a 1996 ad titled “Cookie,” Gingrich slammed his then-congressional opponent, Michael Coles, former CEO of Great American Cookie Co., as an “unscrupulous businessman” partly because of a 1993 violation of child labor laws and accused him of using children “for hazardous labor,” according to a transcript of the ad in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Coles fired back with his own ad that said the 1993 incident involved two teenagers and that the company was cited for “violating safety codes that prohibit workers under 18 from operating freight elevators” when the teenagers were taking out the trash at a suburban Atlanta mall.

This makes for a heady mix of Gingrich’s trademark political viciousness and mendacity, with a big dose of obligatory Republican hypocrisy and nod to union-busting thrown in.

Interestingly, Coles passes off the ’96 ad as “just politics,” but sensibly notes something important we’ve yet to see mentioned by the mainstream media: What happens to all the school janitors who would be displaced by child laborers?

Anyone who thinks Gingrich gives a happy damn about people who clean floors and restrooms for a living doesn’t know a thing about Gingrich. There’s not a selfless or compassionate bone in the man’s body.

But displacing low-income union workers with non-union kids is sure to draw cheers from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable wing of the GOP. Not to mention the idea’s appeal to the party’s hard-right political base of resenters, who look on the out of work as lazy slackers.

Gingrich might just be the candidate they’re looking for. He’s that awful, and proud of it.

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A DeMinted take on veterans and fairness

Nov 11th, 2011
by S.W. Anderson.
6 comments

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., won his seat in 2004, then went to work earning a reputation as a weeping boil on the backside of that august body and the nation. But just in time for this Veterans Day, he’s truly outdone himself.

Before getting into the disgusting details, we will point two pertinent facts about this oh so conservative senator: 1, he never served a day in uniform in his complete waste of a life; and 2, as a U.S. representative in 2002, he voted for the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq, clearing the way for Bush’s war of aggression and all the military casualties it cost.

Now, for DeMint’s unique take on honoring our soldiers, sailors and airmen.

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When it comes to favoring some Americans over others, we’re reminded that civilians aren’t obliged to go to distant and dangerous places for long periods, leaving their loved ones behind. Civilians aren’t on call 24/7-365, can’t be worked up to 23 hours straight, can’t be worked seven days a week indefinitely, can’t be jailed for telling an employer “I quit” and failing to show up for work, and they aren’t forbidden to be active in politics. Just to name a few significant differences.

Oh, and did we mention DeMint never served a day in uniform in his complete waste of a life?

South Carolina voters have a gift for putting lowlifes in high places. DeMint is exhibit-A. (“A,” for that famous hole.)

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Republican economics explained in three slices

Oct 10th, 2011
by S.W. Anderson.
17 comments

Speaking to a group of self-appointed guardians of the nation’s moral and spiritual well-being Friday — the so-called Value Voters Summit — Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told his listeners what he’s “increasingly concerned” about.

 

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This brings to mind what Cantor, his fellow Republicans and gay-bashing Values Voters should be concerned about, and could help do something about. But they aren’t and they won’t.

Share of wealth graph

Occupy Wall Street protesters and their counterparts in cities across the U.S. are rightfully upset about their situation and about all the lies and greed that brought them low. Let’s take a moment to consider the lies, because they’re important to understand and to finally throw back at those who continue to tell them.

Look carefully at the pie chart. Notice how small that yellow slice 80 percent of us share is compared to the two slices shared by some of the wealthiest, most powerful people on Earth. For 30 years, conservative Republican shills for Wall Street banks, big investors and corporate America have been telling the rest of us their reward-the-rich policies would make the pie bigger and bigger. By growing the pie their way, they said, everyone’s slice would get bigger.

Republicans lied. The pie has grown somewhat. But what Republican policies have done is make those red and blue slices bigger out of all proportion to the the yellow slice. The main achievement of Republicans’ trickle-down scam has been to make those red and blue slices bigger by making the yellow slice smaller.

That, in a simple pie chart, is the truth about Reaganomics, about supply-side economics, about trickle-down economics — about the only thing Republicans have for an economic policy. It’s the only thing they have had for an economic policy for 30 years of taking from the poor and from the working and middle classes to make those blue and red slices of the pie so wonderfully big for Republicans’ favored few.

Why must so many give up so much to benefit so few? Simply because Cantor’s perverse attitude, like that of his party and every Republican presidential candidate, is rooted in self-interest and party interest. It’s a matter of not biting, but rewarding, the hands that feed his campaign coffers and those of his fellow Republicans.

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Bachmann selfishly demagogues issue
that could cost women their lives

Sep 14th, 2011
by S.W. Anderson.
9 comments

Michelle Bachmann

Rep. Michelle Bachmann

An ugly dustup among Republican presidential primary candidates this week offers proof aplenty why none of them belongs in the White House, except on a visitor’s pass.

The row began at Monday’s candidate debate in Tampa, with Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota ripping into Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his 2007 decision to approve mandatory immunization of girls 8 to 12 years old against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted pathogen that causes cervical cancer.

The HPV immunization, Gardasil, is produced by drug maker Merck, whose political action committee has injected $28,500 into Perry’s campaign coffers since 2001. Noting Merck donated $5,000 to Perry in 2006, Bachmann charged him with crony capitalism for approving a lucrative program for the drug maker one year later.

Perry disingenuously countered that he couldn’t be bought for (only) $5,000, eliciting audience laughter.

Of course, being a conflict among radical-conservative Republicans, this wasn’t just about how Perry’s a sold-out politician repaying his corporate sugar daddies.

The fight over requiring vaccinations for young girls . . . involved government prerogatives and cancer. But it also had a strong moral subtext: Bachmann and other social conservatives objected to forcible inoculations against a disease spread by sexual activity, while Perry defended himself with the language of the antiabortion movement.

“I am always going to err on the side of life. And that’s what this was really all about for me,” he said Monday night.

Indeed, Perry’s decision, however rooted in corrupt motivation, is defensible on lifesaving grounds. But among fundamentalist Christians, it’s not uncommon for ostentatious righteousness to trump mundane considerations like life and death. It also bears mentioning that Perry’s commitment to erring on the side of life slipped off the radar after righteous ( and woefully ignorant) Texans prompted state lawmakers to kill enabling legislation for the Gardasil program.

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