True Republicans love the free market; it is the be all and end all. Why, it can fix anything, given, say, a generation or two. Republicans supported Clinton's welfare reform because it did something they really love: it put downward pressure on wages. "Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off." Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Recently California Senator Diane Feinstein proposed legislation to assist illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. The immigrants would sign a contract to work for two years for a California agribusiness. I read these words and I shook my head in disbelief and then read them over again. I thought, "Why not call it the California indentured slavery act?" The immigrant is beholden to his corporate employer for his or her immigration status. After two years they would be eligible for citizenship, but ask yourself, would that be in the company's interest. Wouldn't those new citizens leave the fields in search of better jobs? It's the old Reagan ploy of putting the corporations in charge and trusting that they will do right thing when it smacks of Scarlet O'Hara from Gone with the Wind.
I respect those Democrats that disagree with me and I will never move to have you thrown out of the party. The Republicans have it pretty easy, one big monolith of rich and, for the most part, white people. It makes it easy for them to agree on things. We Democrats have a harder mission; we are black and white and brown and yellow. We are gay and straight, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Humanists. We are rich and poor. While the Republicans are the party of wealth, the Democrats are the party of everyone else.
"On April 20th, an explosion ripped through BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, about forty miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven workers lost their lives. Seventeen others were injured. And soon, nearly a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, oil began spewing into the water. Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology." Barack Obama
For decades oil companies have sought to lift the drilling moratorium in the Gulf. It was the centerpiece of John McCain's energy policy. George W. Bush tried to lift the moratorium but it was Barack Obama that did it. Just trust to private industry; everything will be okay. The reason the moratorium was put in place was a near identical explosion and fire off the California Coast. The original moratorium was passed by Congress in 1969 and signed into law by one Richard Milhous Nixon.
So when I say that Obama is to the right of Nixon it is not hyperbole. When Obama offers tax credits for business and industry, sorry, Hoover tried that; it didn't work. When Obama helps corporations break union contracts I am reminded of what Franklin Roosevelt said. "If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union." When Obama leaves the bankers in charge of the mortgage bailout, guess what: that was Bush's plan.
"We intend on sending men to the moon and returning them safely to Earth."
John Kennedy
"Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology." Barack Obama
Kennedy made the point that we were going to return those men to the Earth and we weren't sending them until we were sure that we could return them.
The 1969 Santa Barbara spill was identical except it was at 3,500 feet rather than 5,000.
A Democrat tests the limits of human technology before the oil spill; this is why the moratorium was in place and defended by Democrats for a generation. Republicans just trust the corporations that everything will be all right.
It ain't me, babe. I'm right here where I've always been. I'm not the bad Democrat. They are!
" My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now." John Kennedy
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