So here is what it has come down to: The people who don’t like President Obama (like Terry Garlock) have memorized a playbook and it goes something like this.
The President has introduced mountains of new regulations stifling business. The President is responsible for class warfare. The President has run up the national debt to $14 trillion, with help of course from successive liberal governments who forced banks to lend to people who couldn’t afford it.
Those of course are just the highlights, but Mr. Garlock managed to hit them and others in his article of the week past. Meanwhile the established audience, the one that listens to Sean Hannity say the same thing every night, lacking an original thought in what passes for a brain; the audience which gets all its news from Roger Ailes’ invention, funded by the Australian phone tapper who became an American to avoid taxes; meanwhile that audience laps everything up and starts their day fresh loving the taste of the tripe they’ve been fed.
Garlock doesn’t tell us how anybody is supposed to wage class warfare when there aren’t supposed to be classes in the United States.
He fails to mention any regulation whatsoever, imposed by President Obama and which now impedes commerce.
He fails to mention the ten years Republicans had sole control of Congress and the several years they had the Presidency as well.
Garlock fails to mention the story of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which kept commercial and investment banking separate for over 60 years.
He doesn’t mention that all those fancy derivatives were invented by risk takers as a result. They were taking risks with our money, by the way.
He doesn’t mention the trillion dollar war President draft-dodging Bush waged with the help of draft-dodging Dick Cheney, draft-dodging Karl Rove and draft-dodging Saxby Chambliss and a whole list of draft-dodgers.
He does mention simplicity and gives us the simple story. Hey if we would just let these guys run wild all of our problems would be solved.
He doesn’t mention that the real aim of American capitalism over the last twenty years is to run out of the country to produce somewhere else, but feel free to drain our wealth by selling us goods which have been produced by starvation wages with no labor protection whatsoever.
He mentions all that risk associated with capital venture, but doesn’t mention that the enormous salaries given to business bureaucrats who take no risk at all, seem to be the holy grail of the Republican Party.
He doesn’t mention that hedge fund managers sometimes make up to a billion dollars a year but are taxed only at the rate of capital gains (15 percent) while the plumber who busts his ass working overtime might have to pay up to 35 percent marginal tax.
America has lost its mind and it is because of people like Terry Garlock that the political dialogue is no dialogue at all. A society can send forth its best citizens to search for compromise to arrive at the best solution to government and governance. The ranting minority of Republicans has come to the conclusion that government is the problem. Meanwhile the conservative horn keeps blowing and it has only one note.
Perhaps they will get their way. In their frenzy they have already brought the federal government to a standstill. On the local level the city of Topeka, Kan., will no longer prosecute crimes of domestic violence and the attorney general for Shawnee County admits he might have to “triage” certain offenses (by way of example). Harrisburg, Penn., is trying to declare bankruptcy.
Is there any hope? Not really. The shrill cries from the right only increase with the years. They have already forgotten the way in which Republican-inspired deregulation got us here, and how their useless and poorly strategically fought wars have gotten us here.
And tell Lynn Westmoreland he can save his staff some trouble by just posting the links to the industry websites he loves to defend. And he doesn’t need to worry about us. His performance as the perfect Republican cur is sufficient to be reelected in this district.
Timothy J. Parker
Peachtree City, Ga.
