Left, Right, or Wrong?

Archive for the ‘unemployment’ Category

Newly minted House Leader John Boehner recently commented that, although the GOP now has control of the house, that President Obama is still in charge. It seems that even with control of the House that the GOP has no intention of taking any responsibility for setting the agenda for the people’s business. Instead, and this should be no surprise, the GOP will simply block the Democrats attempts at passing legislation and helping stimulate the economy. After all, why not do this if they can successfully use this political tactic against the Democrats time after time?

Sadly, even though the Democratic Party did pass health care reform, Wall Street reform, stop the free fall loss of jobs, and create a new consumer protection bureau, the GOP was more successful at whining about jobs and how the cost of these programs were sinking the economy.  The result was nothing short of a disaster for the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections.

If, however, the Democrats are following the correct legislative strategy, then why weren’t they more successful in the midterm elections?  It is very clear that the Democratic Party has a messaging problem. They cannot seem to be able to energize their own base nor do they seem able to adequately respond to the GOP and Tea Party attacks without looking like they are ready to fold. The result of all this was a sound trouncing by the GOP. The President, incidentally, has the right strategy, but at the wrong time. His attempts to take the high road and avoid division with the GOP is the better way. Unfortunately, however, all this did was to make the Democrats appear weak in the face of constant 24/7 GOP campaigning.

In the end, despite all their gains in the midterms, the GOP plans to continue the strategy of blocking everything the Democrats do while simultaneously blaming them for getting nothing done. The only sound response to this GOP strategy, is for the Democratic Party to come out fighting hard and to compromise less since the GOP will simply sink anything the Democrats attempt to compromise on. Put simply, the President and his party need to force the GOP to come up with alternatives to their legislation, every hour of every day and hammer at this until the American people wake up and realize that the GOP is truly the party of no.

I was genuinely shocked to be alerted to a story about how a conservative National Review columnist thinks that our populace – as a whole – should guilt trip people on food stamps into feeling guilty for feeding their children. Yes, you read it right, guilt trip them – stigmitize them – for scraping by during a time when the country is recovering from it’s worst recession since the Great Depression. Not to mention that it is generally considered a jobless recovery.

It’s heartening to me to know that these ‘compassionate conservatives’ are looking out for us so diligently. What I want everyone to consider is – where would we be if such conservative pundits along side their GOP congressmen, got their way? What if all social programs were eliminated? What if there were no food stamps or social security or medicare or welfare of any kind?

Actually, we did live like this for a while – between 1929 and 1939. When the Great Depression hit our country, there were little or no programs under Hoover (a Republican) to help the jobless who became destitute. Under Roosevelt, work programs, government assistance to the jobless poor (1 in 4 people in our country) saved many families from complete destruction.

But conservatives think that we should stigmatize poverty and joblessness. They think that everyone is a welfare cheat – skimming the system. This is dangerous propaganda. But what is even more dangerous is when Democrats or independents go along with their conservative brethren.

There will always be a small percentage of people that take advantage of any system. But to postulate that all welfare or food stamp recipients are scamming the system is foolish and idiotic. And that is exactly what John. J. Miller did in his article in the National Review.