The beginning of 2011.
Nobody in the Florence Area Democratic Club was willing to take on the job of Chair. I decided to do it for two more years resolving not to serve a year longer.
The Republicans now controlled the House of Representatives. McConnell’s use of the Senate filibuster would no longer be necessary. “The Party of No” could now stop everything beneficial that Obama and the Congressional Democrats wanted to pass. How could this have happened?
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To garner enough votes to service the wants of corporate America and the very rich, Republican leaders must exploit universal weaknesses of character. The avaricious? The authoritarian rule-maker? The get-off-your-lazy-duff critic? Check. How to convince working class men and women that scapegoats, not unregulated capitalism, have deprived them of the “American Dream”? Magnify fear, channel anger, vilify. Convince them that servicing the needs of ordinary people is tyrannical governance. Turn reality on its head.
Eric Alterman (The Nation, Feb. 3): “Conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations.” They want to destroy public employee unions, “just about the only institutions with sufficient financial and organizational muscle to make a difference in close elections.”
The Far Right’s second-prong attack scapegoats public employees, living high (erroneously) on their wages and benefits.
William Rivers Pitt (truthout.com, Feb. 18): “Wall Street doesn’t have to sacrifice, the ‘defense’ department doesn’t have to sacrifice, insurance companies don’t have to sacrifice, banks don’t have to sacrifice, but you absolutely have to eat a pay and benefits cut, right?”
Enter Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, one step ahead of the Republican governors of Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Florida.
Claiming the need to cover a state budget deficit that he himself created providing corporate tax breaks, Gov. Walker wants to pass legislation that would substantially reduce public employee benefits and collective bargaining.
Thousands of public employees have been protesting in Wisconsin’s capital. Rush Limbaugh’s take: “Whiners! … Freeloaders! … You’re on the side of the protesters or on the side of the country.” Baloney.
Printed February 23, 2011, in the Siuslaw News
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The GOP was now threatening to shut the government down. Read this information about government shutdowns.
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(from Wikipedia)
Under the separation of powers created by the United States Constitution, the appropriation and control of government funds for the United States is the sole responsibility of the United States Congress. Congress begins this process through proposing an appropriation bill aimed at determining the levels of spending for each federal department and government program. The finalized version of the bill is then voted upon by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. After it passes both chambers, it proceeds to the President of the United States to sign the bill into law.
Government shutdowns tend to occur when there is a disagreement over budget allocations before the existing [appropriations] cycle ends. Such disagreements can come from the President – through vetoing any finalized appropriation bills they receive – or from one or both chambers of Congress, often from the political party that has control over that chamber. A shutdown can be temporarily avoided through the enactment of a continuing resolution (CR), which can extend funding for the government for a set period, during which time negotiations can be made to supply an appropriation bill that all involved parties of the political deadlock on spending can agree upon. However, a CR can be blocked by the same parties if there are issues with the content of the resolution bill that either party has a disagreement upon, in which case a shutdown will inevitably occur if a CR cannot be passed by the House, Senate or President. Congress may, in rare cases attempt to override a presidential veto of an appropriation bill or CR, but such an act requires there to be majority support of two-thirds of both chambers.
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WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Senior U.S. Senate Democrats slammed Republicans on Sunday for a “reckless” threat to shut down the government amid deepening political posturing on both sides over federal spending and the budget deficit.
The House of Representatives voted on Saturday to cut federal spending by $61 billion through September. But the Republican measure will likely die because Democrats who control the Senate oppose it and President Barack Obama vowed to veto it.
Obama has outlined his own plan for less-severe spending cuts in 2012, and has warned that tightening the belt too much too soon could harm the slow economic recovery.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer criticized House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell over talk among some Republicans that they would rather shut down the government than relent on their spending cut demands.
“Unfortunately Speaker Boehner seems to be on a course that would inevitably lead to a shutdown ... That’s reckless,” [Democratic Senator Chuck] Schumer said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
“We have said shutdown is off the table ... Boehner, Mitch McConnell, other Republican leaders have not taken it off the table when asked, and there are lots of people on the hard right clamoring for a shutdown.”
With the government funded only through March 4, the government could run out of money if lawmakers fail to act, but both sides have been urging compromise. That was seen as the likeliest outcome, even by one of the House’s new breed of small-government, deficit-slashing freshman Republicans.
..
The House bill is more than an effort to cut the deficit. Republicans are also trying to use the budget process to starve government programs such as healthcare and regulation of Wall Street and the environment that they have long opposed.
Republican Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, downplayed the shutdown scenario on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program.
“We’re not looking for a government shutdown, but at the same time we’re also not looking at rubber stamping these really high, elevated spending levels that Congress blew through the joint two years ago,” Ryan said (Drawbaugh 1-3)
Work cited:
Drawbaugh, Kevin. UPDATE 1-Gov't Shutdown Threat Looms over U.S. Budget Fight.” Reuters, February 29, 2011. Net. https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-budget/update-1-govt-shutdown-threat-looms-over-u-s-budget-fight-idUSN2018563820110220
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The GOP has always been the enemy of labor unions. In the following letter I highlight their intention to damage severely public employee unions.
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You have to wonder about Republican Party office holders like the spate of recently elected governors that are presently hell-bent on destroying public employee unions. Coming out of their mothers’ wombs, they absolutely missed out inheriting the empathy, honesty, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I gene! Team players for our morally corrupt multi-national corporations, which don’t give a damn about 98 percent of our citizen’s physical, mental and economic well-being, our country’s economic stability, world peace, and our planet’s very existence, these politicians are motivated solely by monetary gain and the rush of political combat and the attainment of dictatorial power.
You have to wonder just as hard about the working class people and seniors who vote these sociopaths into office. How the GOP and their media mouthpieces play them! Paul Krugman observes: “A large segment of the population … is completely impervious to rational argument and the presentation of evidence. In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.”
Has the enemy among us finally triumphed? Is the outrage manifested in Wisconsin a turning of the tide? We’ll know very soon. Will the President and Senate and House Democrats cave to draconian GOP budget cut demands? Or will they say to Boehner and McConnell, “Shutting the government down and its cruel consequences are entirely on you”?
Printed March 14, 2011, in the Register-Guard
March 15, 2011, in The World
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Virginia Conley called me to compliment me on the above letter. We had communicated several months before. She lives in Eugene and is 90. A former school teacher, she is a very strong liberal activist. She taught an “open classroom” that encouraged students to think critically. She does not approve of how schools teach students now. George Myers and Ron Preisler complimented me via email.
In the next letter I expressed some hope that voters might be waking up to Republican Party chicanery.
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How encouraging it is to see registered Republicans criticizing Republican congressmen at their town hall meetings for having voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan.
I say “encouraging” because it demonstrates that not everything economically and socially detrimental to middle and underclass Americans is being transformed in the minds of the susceptible into examples of “fiscal responsibility,” “free enterprise job creation,” “the protection of taxpayer wallets,” and “the destruction of welfare dependency.”
Most Americans recognize the value of Social Security, Medicare, and the need for some sort of safety net. More and more citizens are conscious now of the huge wealth discrepancy in this country, even though many don’t know yet how that came to be. They know that multi-national corporations are making huge profits, are not creating jobs in this country, and are paying little or no corporate taxes.
It takes a terrible recession, perhaps, and an outlandish deficit reduction plan to wake people up to the fact that the right-wing media machine’s fact-reporting and Republican officer holders’ repeated use of loaded word frames like “job killing” and “job creating” are so much smoke-and-mirrors barn sniffle.
What we have in common, regardless of party affiliation, is the desire for fairness and honesty.
Printed May 7, 2011, in the Siuslaw News
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I submitted the following letter to the Register-Guard. It was not printed, maybe because of its sarcasm. The World newspaper in Coos Bay printed it.
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Let us thank our lucky stars that we have the Republican Party on the job making certain that America is the greatest country ever.
Not only are newly elected GOP governors and Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida putting high-living public employees in their places while helping out profit-deprived corporations like Koch Industries. They are passing legislation that will bring the hammer down once and for all on systemic voter fraud!
No longer will we be having 80-year-olds who get around using walkers in assisted living facilities voting two or three times under different names. And thank heaven that clever inner-city minimum wage workers -- using public transportation to get to work to wait tables or clean hotel rooms -- won’t be traveling to two or three voting places. And those college students! How dare they vote twice – once at the voting place near where they and their parents live and again hundreds of miles away near where they go to college!
Not having a driver’s license or passport or not having a birth certificate handy is pretty suspicious!
George W. Bush’s Justice Department discovered that 38 cases of voter fraud resulting in 13 convictions took place nationwide between October 2002 and September 2005. Heck of a job laying out the problem, W.!
Count on high-minded Republicans like Karl Rove to know whom to target.
Printed May 24, 2011, in The World
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The Congressional Republicans were going “into overdrive” to destroy the idealistic but cautious, accommodating-minded President. I kept writing letters, therapeutic to a degree, consciously defensive, as if I could change obdurate minds, at least validate what like-minded liberal readers believed.
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World Public Opinion quizzed news consumers in 2010 and found that Fox News viewers were significantly more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news from other sources.
“In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.” – Paul Krugman.
“A lie gets half-way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill
Too many Republican Party supporters believe that socialism is terrible, big government is tyrannical, corporations are over-regulated and overtaxed, global warming is a hoax, tax cuts grow the economy, Social Security and Medicare are driving us to financial ruin, labor unions are blood-suckers, Muslims are especially dangerous, capitalism is the way of all things, etc. They make these assertions convinced that what they have chosen to believe is fact.
People are entitled to their opinions. Opinions expressed in public, however, should be supported by actual facts.
Republican Party operatives are counting on being able to persuade enough low-knowledge, independent voters to believe that Obama and the Democrats are to blame for the terrible economy. Never mind that GOP senators did everything they could the first two years of Obama’s presidency to derail everything the Dems tried to pass in Congress to take corrective measures. They are saying, “See? Awful economy. Obama’s been in charge. Case closed.” This is like a corporation, wanting to privatize a fire district, setting on fire a bunch of houses, then slitting the tires of the department’s fire trucks and putting sand in their gas tanks, and afterward saying, “See? The fire department never came out to put out this terrible fire! We’ll do much better. Trust us.”
Printed July 16, 2011, in the Siuslaw News
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Garry Kelly, Lu Herr, and Wende Jarman complimented me. Wende had Rep. Arnie Roblan read it while he was getting a haircut in her barbershop.
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What angers me more than hearing Speaker of the House John Boehner say repeatedly, “The American people want ______” (fill in the blank with any GOP agenda objective), is a talking head TV “journalist” championing “shared sacrifice” and “reasoned compromise.”
The middle class and the poor have been taking it on the chin economically from thirty years. Wages have remained stagnant. Decent-paying jobs are gone, performed now by cheap overseas labor. Multinational corporations and the very rich are awash with money. Yet we wage earners and retirees, not the top 2 percent wealth recipients, are expected to sacrifice!
We are told that both parties need to compromise to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Just raise the damn thing! Congress has done it many times. Holding a gun to our (and the world’s) economy system’s head, Congressional Republicans have manufactured a huge crisis. “Give me everything I want or I’ll shoot your daughter,” is what they’re saying. President Obama, use the 14th Amendment. Wield a pointed stick!
Why aren’t Republicans content to have the voting public sort out a year from now what crises are real and what are concocted? Tactics. Smoke and mirrors. Outright falsehoods. Exploit ignorance, voter anger, individual prejudices. Thwart recovery. Confuse. Vilify.
Republicans want our government to be a corporatocracy. I want our government to solve problems so that we all benefit. Why would you want to compromise that?
Printed July 29, 2011, in The World
July 30, 2011, in the Register-Guard
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The Register-Guard edited the third sentence of the third paragraph to read “Holding a gun to our and the world’s head ….” It also deleted the last sentence of the letter.
Below is one of the internet comments submitted to The World’s website.
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The World has changed, Mr. Titus. It’s no longer an economy that’s kind to anyone without skills or an education and we’re never going back, so best to move on. And if you’re looking to the government to “solve problems” you are sorely misguided, because we have one of the most inept and misguided governments on earth. Unfortunately, there’s not enough Chris Christies around it get it fixed.
Sherman
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