Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Second Verse – Same As The First


“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
 ~ Albert Einstein
(Attributed)

Is it just me, or have the Republicans just doubled-down on the failed policies that they have tried, and tried, and tried, and tried…

Last night I watched the State of the Union address and while I like some of the ideas that the president forwarded, I had hoped for a bit more detail on how he proposed that we would be paying for some of it. I am a HUGE proponent of education – I am funding a scholarship at my alma mater in my estate plan. But there is no detail on how his initiative to provide some minimum of continuing education will be paid for.

I like the fact that he is trying to minimize the wealth inequity, but do not expect for the moment that it will go anywhere. Why? Because I also watched the Republican “response to” the State of the Union address. Let me explain the quotation marks; in his show A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor once discussed what he called a “Minnesota Debate.” The “Minnesota Debate” starts with the ‘a guy could…” statement where in the first speaker introduces a topic. The second speaker then makes a ‘yeahbuttal;’ which is defined as any statement which is completely unrelated to the ‘a guy could’ statement and starts with ‘yeah, but…’

Senator Ernst’s (R-IA) “Response” to the president started with the disclaimer that she had no intention of actually addressing what he actually said, went on to say that the president did nothing but repeat talking points, and ended by repeating the same old laundry list of failed and debunked Republican policies and calling the president a failed president sponsoring failed policies.

The “Response” presented a load of misrepresentations (“Obamacare is a failed policy,” “The economy is in shambles,” “The Keystone pipeline is a good thing that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.”) and continued to talk about the discredited policies (“Trickle-down economics,” “’Free Market’ Healthcare”) and how these (and these alone) can lift the poor out of poverty.

The fact of the matter is that the Republican party, specifically, and the two parties in general do not WANT to lift the poor out of poverty. At least the left throws some of the crumbs to the poor… but BOTH parties are really in it only to protect their richest supporters. There is TOO MUCH MONEY in the US Political system!

Which is not to say that there aren’t some stand-out exceptions. Too bad that they are so few and far between!

Wherever you are today, please do not be fooled by someone who wants to help you by giving your boss a tax break!

Don Bergquist – November 21, 2015 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA

No comments: