I’ve
noticed over the years, there are some fundamental differences in the
way Republican and Democratic politicians think. Here are just 15
examples.
Still think there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans?
I’ve noticed over the years, there are
some fundamental differences in the way Republican and Democratic
politicians think. Here are just 15 examples.
(1) Republicans fear that the government has too much control over corporations. Democrats fear that corporations have too much control over our government. (2) Democrats believe it benefits all of us to help the weakest and the poorest among us. Republicans believe it benefits all of us to help the wealthiest and most powerful among us. (3) Republicans believe large corporations will always do what is best for the American people if the government stays out of the way. Democrats believe large corporations would disembowel you and sell your organs to the highest bidder if the government didn’t stop them. (4) Democrats believe everyone is entitled to health care regardless of their ability to pay. Republicans believe everyone is entitled to jack squat if they can’t pay for health care. (5) Democrats believe too much of our money goes to
crooked corporate executives who take government subsidies and pay
themselves $80 million salaries. Republicans believe too much of our money goes to teachers who make $30,000 a year. (6) Democrats believe anything that helps the American people during a recession or a time of crisis is the true essence of patriotism. Republicans believe anything that helps the American people during a recession or a time of crisis is the true essence of communism. (7) Democrats believe that we need to set high standards for clean air and drinking water. Republicans believe that standards for clean air and water are burdensome over-regulation. (8) Democrats believe the President and Congress need to work together to create jobs during a weak economy. Republicans believe that Congress should do nothing to create jobs and then blame the President. (9) Democrats believe that corporate polluters should be made to pay for the cleanup of their pollution. Republicans believe that making corporations clean up their pollution is burdensome over-regulation. (10) Democrats believe our health care system exists solely for the purpose of making people healthy. Republicans believe our health care system exists solely for the purpose of making a healthy profit. (11) Democrats believe Congress should be of the people, by the people and for the people. Republicans believe corporations are the people. (12) Democrats believe that corporations have too much influence over Congress due to their lobbyists and huge campaign contributions. Republicans believe the middle class has too much influence over Congress due to their voting and paying taxes. (13) Democrats believe we need to protect victims of corporate negligence by allowing Americans to file lawsuits against corporations. Republicans believe we need to protect large corporations from lawsuits by Americans who’ve been victimized by them. (14) Democrats believe that the rich should be taxed more than the poor and middle class. Republicans believe
that the rich should be allowed to keep all their wealth, except for
the millions in campaign contributions they give to politicians. (15) Democrats believe that too much money in politics produces corruption and destroys the American way of life. Republicans believe that money and corruption in politics are the American way of life.
These are just my observations from a lifetime of watching Democratic and Republican politicians.
In contrast to the Republican plan to cut financial
aid and make college more expensive for students, Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) is set to propose legislation that would give students free
tuition at four-year public colleges and universities.
The Republican budget would end mandatory funding
for Pell grants, the end of the in-school subsidy on Stafford loans, and
the budget would also end income-based student loan repayment programs.
Sen. Sanders is going in the opposite direction.
In a statement, Sen. Sanders said:
We live in a highly competitive global economy and, if our economy is to
be strong, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. That will
not happen if, every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young people
cannot afford to go to college, and if millions more leave school
deeply in debt.
Countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden and many
more are providing free or inexpensive higher education for their young
people. They understand how important it is to be investing in their
youth. We should be doing the same.
We used to lead the world in the percentage of our
people who graduated college. Today we are in 12th place. We used to
have great universities tuition free. Today they are unaffordable. I
want a more educated workforce. I want everybody to be able to get a
higher education regardless of their income.
Republicans are trying to make higher education less
affordable. Their goal is to give people one less avenue for economic
advancement. Sanders was correct. If the United States hopes to regain
its status as the land of opportunity, a key piece to the puzzle is
affordable higher education.
It is a tense time for students who are just
graduating or still in school. The Republican-controlled Congress has
targeted programs that aid students by making college more affordable
for budget cuts. Sen. Sanders is making the line between the left and
right clear. Democrats and the left are fighting to expand educational
opportunities.
The contest on the left is a competition to see who
can deliver a plan that will make college affordable for the most
people. Republicans try to avoid any discussion of their plans by
burying their cuts deep in their budget.
Bernie Sanders is shining a light on those plans while setting a new bar for the left for making college more affordable.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a
bill on Tuesday that would eliminate tuition for college undergraduate
students through the use of a “Robin Hood tax.”
On
May 6, a white man and a black man conducted a high-risk experiment.
The two pro-gun, open carry supporters walked the streets of their
neighborhoods with the exact same type of gun — an AR 15 — slung over
their backs. They both live in places where it’s legal to open carry,
and they both got stopped by police.
That’s where their similarities end. It’s awfully strange how the
NRA-sponsored GOP loves open carry — and law enforcement tolerates it —
but not when black people do it.
The two men each went on their open carry strolls as someone followed
with a video camera. The videos — which they spliced together and
shared on Live Leak — show encounters with police that are disturbingly different.
The video first shows the white man — who hails from the state of
Oregon and posts lots of YouTube videos of his open carry adventures
under his Marked Guardian
handle — getting approached by a cop. The police officer clearly
dislikes the AR 15, demands Marked Guardian’s I.D., and asks a few
questions. Marked Guardian refuses to give the officer his ID,
explaining that open carry is perfectly legal in their state. And that’s
it.
If you search “Open Carry” on YouTube, you’ll see oodles of tense but
ultimately peaceful interactions like this, because these mostly white
people often record their walks and their interactions with police. What
we don’t see as often is what happens to black people who open carry.
The video switches over to the black man sauntering down the street
with his perfectly legal AR 15. When the police come, they don’t bother
asking him any questions, they just pull out their guns and order him to
drop his weapon and lie prone on the ground or they’ll shoot. Who
cares if open carry’s legal, they’ll arrest him anyway. Seconds later,
there are two police cars and three cops with guns drawn as the fourth
takes the black man into custody.
Now, this writer harbors a strong revulsion towards the open carry
movement and guns in general. Nonetheless, this black man was open
carrying an AR 15, which is LEGAL in his state and which he was not
pointing at anyone or waving around threateningly or doing anything
different than what the white man was doing. Yet the cops threatened him
with their guns, forced him to the ground, called another squad car for
help, and then illegally arrested him.
There’s something seriously wrong with open carry being legal, but there’s something even more seriously
wrong with black open carry activists getting abused and detained
illegally while their white counterparts walk away Scot-free.
Watching this video is almost enough to make you wonder whether open carry is
justified in some communities, and that’s a scary thing. You’d think
that communities of color would have more reason to fear police and
embrace open carry than white folks, but try explaining that to a bunch
of paranoid white tea baggers.
This is not the first time cops discriminated against black open carry activists.
White liberal folks (including this writer) love to tar the open
carry movement with the viscous brush of racism, but in some cases, it’s
more complicated than that. Last September Hell’s Saints, a mixed-race open carry group from Michigan, raised a hullabaloo after a black member got arrested for open carrying in Detroit. Naturally, he was the only
one who got arrested. At the time, this writer was unable to get the
standard police report information because Detroit’s GOP-run “Emergency
Manager” has privatized all the record-keeping and not only requires a
fee (which this writer would have paid), but requires you to come to the
Detroit Police Dept.’s main office in person.
Here’s the video with the sharp and disturbing contrast between the
white and the black open carry activists’ encounters with police in
Oregon — a state in which open carry is perfectly legal.
Note: This experiment is not exactly scientific, as
some commenters have pointed out. The incidents shown happened in
different locations, and others pointed out that the position of the
black man’s AR 15, slung alongside his hip instead of over his back, may
have provoked the police officer. Still, given what we see in the news
headlines every day, it is hard to see how an encounter between police
and a black man open carrying could have ended any differently than
this. Correction notice: An earlier version of this post
lumped law enforcement in with the “NRA-sponsored GOP” that “loves “open
carry. Obviously, that is not true. Anyone who has watched the numerous
open carry videos showing confrontations with police (as this writer
has) knows that people in law enforcement do not seem fond of
open carry at all, though they are forced by law to tolerate it. In
February, the Dallas News reported that a survey of 200 police officers
in Texas — ground zero for the open carry movement — revealed that 75
percent oppose open carry. This writer regrets the error.
STELTER: Here’s what almost everybody missed
about the panel discussion. The president was talking about what he
called a 40-year effort to stir up class divisions. FOX, of course, has
only been around 15 years. Let’s go back to the original video, but
let’s let it keep playing, so Obama finishes his thought.
FOX only played this part of the clip once. It was
in a news report by Howie Kurtz. Notice that Obama is talking about the
whole news media’s responsibility to make sure the middle class and poor
Americans know — I’m sorry — what middle class and rich Americans know
what it’s like to be poor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: And that becomes an entire narrative, right,
that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a
waitress, which is much more typical, who’s raising a couple of kids and
is doing everything right, but still can’t pay the bills.
And so if we’re going to change how John Boehner and
Mitch McConnell think, we’re going to have to change how our body
politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media
reports on these issues and how people’s impressions of what it’s like
to struggle in this economy looks like and how budgets connect to that.
And that’s a — it’s a hard process, because that
requires a much broader conversation than typically we have on the
nightly news.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: He called for a broader conversation, but FOX ended up having a very small conversation.
Anyway, that’s “Red News/Blue News” for this week.
It would be nice to think that the media is finally
catching on to Fox News’ selective editing tricks, but outside of the
cable news competition at CNN and MSNBC, most of the mainstream press
doesn’t bother to call out their lies.
If more members of the media would stand up to the
Fox News propaganda machine, not only would the news be more
trustworthy, viewers would be better informed. The bulk of the press is
terrified of Fox News, so they will never directly criticize, debunk, or
call out the Republican talking point network.
Brian
Stelter of CNN took a few minutes of his show to debunk a major Fox
News lie of omission, and if more members of his profession did the
same, the Fox News blight could be removed from journalism.
These days, it seems that the majority of wingnuts
tend to view the world through a very simplistic scope that allows
little room for discussion, interpretation, or compromise. We have
reached a point where any questioning of unregulated capitalism
automatically gets you labeled as a socialist, communist, Marxist, or
Fascist because those are all interchangeable right?
When President Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008,
conservatives unleashed a vicious tornado of attacks labeling him a
Kenyan born dictator who supported redistribution of wealth, taking from
those who have, and giving it to those who do not. They were right
about part of that. He does believe in redistribution of wealth but
guess what? So do most Americans.
If your children go to a public school, if your streets are patrolled by
the city or county law enforcement, if your garbage is picked up by
city workers, if you have ever dialed 911, if you or anyone in your
family has worked in the public sector, if you’ve ever claimed
deductions on your taxes, and if you’ve ever driven on a public road,
not only have you condoned redistribution, you have supported it.
The modern day wingnuts are led to believe that all government is
bad, and that they don’t need government in their everyday lives. We
have reached a point of insanity where an average Joe making 30,000 a
year drives on a public road, to drop his kids off at a public school,
all while listening to wingnut hate speech radio tell him how evil every
aspect of government is. This disconnect from reality is unreal.
The truth is, many of the services that Americans rely on are rooted in
redistribution. Social Security, Medicaid, public safety services, and
emergency services are just a few of the redistributive services that
all Americans enjoy, while never even realizing that they are a form of
democratic socialism.
Why then do wingnut Americans freak out when a family needs food
stamps to eat, or when a young mother needs WIC, or TANF to survive? The
answer is racism.
I’ve had friends over the years that took advantage of public assistance
services for their families such as WIC or Food stamps. The truth of
the matter was, they really didn’t need them, but in their minds, they
earned the right to use these public services since they worked and paid
taxes. The problem was, they were all white, and they all shared a
disdain for minorities that receive public assistance. You see, when
white people use public assistance, they are getting back what they’ve
paid in – but when black people or other minorities use public
assistance, they are lazy and entitled. Sadly, that’s how wingnuts think.
The Republican Party has done a wonderful job of getting everyday, white
Americans to look down upon, and demonize minorities for doing the
same thing that they do, all while being oblivious to the fact that they
are being robbed blind by the billionaires behind the Republican party
money machine. In the South, there is an understood but subtle racism
among many white people that is rarely talked about, but always present.
Just delve into any comment section of a local news story on virtually
any city in a southern state that involves the subject of an African
American, and those dog whistles turn into sirens very quickly.
You see, it all goes back to looking at a very complex world through a
very simplistic lens. It doesn’t work. Modern day wingnuts truly
believe that everyone is given the same exact opportunity to succeed
regardless of their race or where they come from, and that is just not
true. Study upon study proves that African Americans and minorities have
a much harder path to success than their white counterparts, yet when
they look to take advantage of the same public assistance services that
many white people enjoy, they are demonized, they are called lazy
freeloaders, they are made into the punch lines of jokes, and they are
ridiculed beyond belief – all because of an obvious double standard that
is rooted in white privilege.
Brownback’s fanatical war on the poor backfires yet again, this
time to the tune of $100 million. How much longer will Kansas voters
keep supporting him?
Mack Butler (R-AL)
introduced legislation this week requiring medical professionals to
notify police within two hours if they suspect a pregnant woman of
having consumed illegal substances — regardless of whether she tests
positive for drugs or not.
According to the State of Wyoming, ignorance is a civic virtue and
investigation and free thought a crime. The state’s conservative
government has pulled ahead of the pack in the Republican-led campaign
against science when Governor Matt Mead (R) signed into law a bill that
criminalizes collecting information about the state of the environment
“with the intent” to share it with the state or federal government.The
law is incredibly broad in scope, making it a crime to “collect
resource data” or “preserve information in any form” from any “open
land,” whether publicly or privately owned. Thus it is now a crime in
Wyoming to engage in any form of citizen science – even taking a
photograph of the environment – if it is shared with government in any
way. Coming hot on the heels of efforts in Wisconsin and Florida to ban
any research into or even discussion of climate change, the new Wyoming
law is only the latest and most extreme example of a wide-reaching
Republican crusade against science and knowledge.
From where,
however, did Wyoming’s Republican overlords get the idea that citizens
taking pictures of the state’s natural beauty were a threat? The answer,
as is so often the case with abusive and totalitarian laws, is big
business and lobbying groups. And in Wyoming, where cattle ranching is a
multi-billion dollar industry, big business means Big Cattle.
The
problem for Big Cattle is that not only has overgrazing led to land
degradation throughout the state, but inadequate regulation has led to
pollution of numerous Wyoming streams and rivers with a dangerous and
potentially-fatal strand of the E. coli bacteria, which is found largely
in cow excrement.
The Western Watersheds Project and several
recent studies have confirmed the presence of E. coli concentrations in
Wyoming waterways far in excess of what is considered safe, and have of
course traced the source to cattle ranchers. The sensible solution would
be to implement regulations and controls to assure that ranchers manage
their herds properly, but Wyoming and its Big Cattle business would
rather pretend the problem doesn’t exist to maintain their bottom lines.
The
Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association, a cattle ranching lobby that is one
of the most influential groups in the state and once launched a war on
the state government, took its case to Cheyene. And, sure enough, the
Republican-dominated government quickly bowed before the interests of
big agribusiness, even if that meant contaminating the environment and
endangering public safety.
Wyoming is not the first state to
prioritize its big agriculture over decency and democracy – Idaho made
it a crime to film animal abuse last year – but the scope of the new
law, and all the ways it violates the Constitution Republican’s claim to
swear by, is unprecedented. First of all, the new law is a blatant
violation of the supremacy clause, which states that federal laws are
the highest laws in the land.
A certain federal law called the
Clean Water Act mandates that efforts be made to reduce contamination in
surface water and encourages citizens to share information about unsafe
conditions with their government, the latter of which is now punishable
in Wyoming by a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. More fundamentally,
the law makes a mockery of the First Amendment, not only criminalizing
certain forms of speech and expression that are inconvenient to cattle
ranchers, but also removing citizens’ right to petition and present
information to their government.
It is an increasing trend among
Republicans to ignore science when it doesn’t support their world view
(which is almost all of the time) and to pretend that problems don’t
exist if fixing them would be inconvenient. The new Wyoming law breaks
new ground in this field by literally making it impossible to bring any
case against the dangerous polluting cattle herders. According to the
law, “no resource or data collected in violation of this section is
admissible in any civil, criminal, or administrative proceeding” and
such data “shall not be used in determining any agency action.”
There
is clearly something drastically wrong in America when willed ignorance
at the expense of public safety is the norm in Republican states
nationwide and the Big Cow Manure lobby can determine state
environmental policy.
Thanks to Louisiana’s ‘it’s not rape if she doesn’t resist’ law, a
pastor can’t be charged for having sex with a 20-year-old woman, even
though she has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old child.
