In 2014 the gerrymandering and millions of dollars finally worked, returning the bonus of a highly partisan, ideological Congress, packed with right wing zealots, driven superfically by ideological goals to downsize and reduce government and taxes. The real motivation is good old fashioned pay back, since corporate money, Koch Brothers, et al, contributed millions creating a new Congress that will do their bidding. This money was contributed with the goal of profit and in a cynical sense, economic growth. The potential for quite the opposite result, economic disaster, is huge.
And they got right to work, attacking the President's actions on immigration, voting to repeal the ACA, cutting taxes for the rich (payback).
A major talking point during the election was elect us, we will end the dysfunction in Congress, we will not "be scary", we will govern, we will cooperate, we will end politics as usual.
They took office the first of January, and it is the end of February: and we have already seen a government department responsible for keeping all of us safe defunded and the plunging morale of not being paid that thousands must be experiencing who patrol our borders, inspect our luggage, and stand between us and bombs.
And what did some of the new Congress do? Why, they mocked government workers, saying they didn't work hard anyway, and by gosh, maybe we will eliminate them anyway.
I was sickened by the snide comments about TSA Agents. Just one inspector who would have caught a box cutter being smuggled on an airplane, and 9/11 doesn't happen. It also will take just one disgruntled TSA Agent, who shrugs their shoulders and waves a suspect through, angered that they aren't getting paid, to lead to another 9/11. Just one!
Will it happen?
Of course it will, if this lunacy continues.
There is a majority of Republican congressmen and women whose primary goal is to disrupt and destroy the very government they were elected to run. They see themselves as revolutionaries; as the new Iowa Senator trumpeted, "We want to see them squeal". Well, we are squealing, we are frightened and sickened by our representatives acting like revolutionaries. That is terrorism by anyone's measure.
That is right, we foolishly elected terrorist revolutionaries to our Congress. Our votes were bought and we were fooled.
And now, we have terrorists running the legislative branch of the Congress. Anyone who has read any political science knows that revolutionaries are not always right, and make lousy governors.
Often they destroy more than the injustices they seek to cure. Isis, Nazis, the Confederacy, French Revolution, the Crusades all spring to mind.
That is why the founding fathers built a Constitution that is so full of checks and balances. Remember they had their own revolution as a guide, that gained freedom from Britian but led to a bankrupt and vulnerable Articles of Confederation, and the horror of the French Revolution was just playing out, demonstrating what I am warning about, revolutionalry zeal makes for bad government and the "blood of tyrants" often is innocents' blood.
I was sickened by the clips of the recent Conservative Pac convention of the tea pary member walking around in colonial dress with his "Don't Tread on Me" flag, This glorifies revolution and terrorism, NOT fair competent government.
It is NOT politics as usual. It is terrorism!
And it will not be good for business either. The very corporations that elected these terrorists will be victimized by them.
Why? Well if you remember the weeks and months after 9/11 what happened to the economy? It tanked. Fear does that to economic growth. And who took most of the hit for this? The poor and the middle class.
Many other sectors were harmed, airlines for one, several actually went bankrupt because people were afraid to fly.
Remember President Bush begging people shop, to go on vacations, to spend money, as the 9/11 recession deepened. Terrorism did that.
And, he then foolishly pushed through a tax cut to stimulate the economy, while simultaneously attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, in an economic nightmare of cuts in taxes coupled with a massive increases in spending.
The imbalance that caused led inevitably to the economic meltdown of 2007 and the worst recession since 1936.
So don't think that for one minute that political terrorism, both self inflicted (like this awful Congress) or from attack, doesn't negatively affect the economy. Revolutions, like the ones the Tea Party fools are pushing, will tank our economy.
Redding is a good example. We endured years of Tea Parry leadership with a majority of conservatives in control. In the past we had a non-partisan Council. The terrorists cut police and fire, ripped city policies to shreds, and gleefully "blew up the boxes" of government. And what do we have? A mess of crime and an outright hostile business climate.
Every Chamber of Congress in this country should be calling their Tea Party Representatives and demanding they knock it off, because their behavior is going to tank what was a pretty robust recovery.
That does not mean conservative goals of less government, frugal government cannot be pursued. Not at all. What it does mean is that "politics as usual" is not a bad thing, that compromise and deal making is the way the system was intended to work, and political terrorism and government shutdowns are dangerous and can lead to the end of our country.
We need a return to politics as usual...
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