Why Can't Republicans Govern?

Mott the Hoople said:
So you're essentially agreeing with my factual observation that leaders of the modern conservative movement, when elected to office, split the difference by bowing to public pressure from their constituents to provide government services that can improve their lives only to manage them ineptly so as to prove their self-fulfilling prophecy that government can't be trusted to run government programs effectively with the end result that with modern conservatives we get not only more government but more bad government.

The strongest evidence of that fact is that the biggest increases in the size and scope of our government in the last 50 years has occurred under the conservative Presidents, Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr. It also should be noted that the worst abuses of government power, during that same time, occurred under the same administrations.
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No, I'm totally agreeing with you, that their inability to govern is inherent in their political ideology. Not to mention that the basis on which much of their legislative agenda is predicated is that the poor have too much money, and the wealthy don't have enough. The nerve of the poor, not paying any income tax, which is the only one of the many contributing to the total tax burden the regressives bring up, as if the wealthy were paying more than their fair share of the total tax burden.

Case in point: the inheritance tax, which the right falsely refers to as the "death tax," and makes the ridiculous claim that it taxes the same money twice, as if that meant anything. Every dollar is taxed every time it changes hands: payroll tax, sales tax, income tax, excise tax, etc. The inheritance tax is not a tax assessed on the decedent, but on the inheritors, as unearned income, and its purpose is partially to prevent the concentration of wealth, and therefore power, in a small number of families, because concentration of wealth is inherently anti-democratic. How so? The democratic process is the ultimate dilution of power, where each adult gets a vote. Wealth is power, so any concentration of wealth is also a concentration of power, and any concentration of power is anti-democratic.

Not to mention dangerous. We see today the results of a concentration of power in a few hands; notably the big banks, big insurance, big oil, big coal, big pharma, and big defense, all of whom are like hogs at the trough, using their wealth to buy members of Congress and the Senate, defeating attempts to pass legislation for the common good, instead influencing the legislative agenda so that special interests benefit to the detriment of the people as a whole. The result: a financial crisis brought on by risky gambles made with other people's money and made by greedy, unethical, inbred, upper-class twits. That's right, Bertie Wooster is handling your retirement nest egg. Doesn't exactly give you a warm, fuzzy feeling does it?

Not only are the special interests greedy, they don't care how many workers/consumers/insured die to make them rich, or how much irreparable environmental damage they cause in their quest for more profits. Deregulation was and remains a total scam, the equivalent of pulling the referees off the field, and trusting in self-enforcement of the rules. Some players try to cheat when there are refs. What are the chances they will self-enforce? Zero. What are the chances dishonest businessmen will self-regulate? The same.

Thomas Jefferson's vision of the just powers of government versus individual civil rights is best summed up by the following observation:

"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:221 [italics mine].

Jefferson would absolutely approve of government regulation of business (he was also strongly anti-corporation) to prevent the picking of the people's collective wallets, as well as regulation to prevent environmental abuses, since cancer caused by man-made carcinogens in the environment, or deaths caused by unsafe workplaces, or anything else physically or financially injurious. How odd that the GOP eschews the legitimate functions of government, and chooses to use the power of government in areas excluded by the founders: harass gays, promote religiosity, and destroy an activist organization whose only crime was registering minority voters, who all vote against the GOP and its cronies. BTW, the obnoxious little asshole who made those bogus, heavily edited videos purporting to show ACORN corruption, is now an admitted felon, having plead guilty to a federal crime. ACORN was never even indicted for any criminal acts, not even a misdemeanor.

The GOP is unclear on the concept of the just powers of government, which goes a long way to explain their inability to govern.
 
zoombwaz said:
No, I'm totally agreeing with you, that their inability to govern is inherent in their political ideology. Not to mention that the basis on which much of their legislative agenda is predicated is that the poor have too much money, and the wealthy don't have enough. The nerve of the poor, not paying any income tax, which is the only one of the many contributing to the total tax burden the regressives bring up, as if the wealthy were paying more than their fair share of the total tax burden.

Case in point: the inheritance tax, which the right falsely refers to as the "death tax," and makes the ridiculous claim that it taxes the same money twice, as if that meant anything. Every dollar is taxed every time it changes hands: payroll tax, sales tax, income tax, excise tax, etc. The inheritance tax is not a tax assessed on the decedent, but on the inheritors, as unearned income, and its purpose is partially to prevent the concentration of wealth, and therefore power, in a small number of families, because concentration of wealth is inherently anti-democratic. How so? The democratic process is the ultimate dilution of power, where each adult gets a vote. Wealth is power, so any concentration of wealth is also a concentration of power, and any concentration of power is anti-democratic.

Not to mention dangerous. We see today the results of a concentration of power in a few hands; notably the big banks, big insurance, big oil, big coal, big pharma, and big defense, all of whom are like hogs at the trough, using their wealth to buy members of Congress and the Senate, defeating attempts to pass legislation for the common good, instead influencing the legislative agenda so that special interests benefit to the detriment of the people as a whole. The result: a financial crisis brought on by risky gambles made with other people's money and made by greedy, unethical, inbred, upper-class twits. That's right, Bertie Wooster is handling your retirement nest egg. Doesn't exactly give you a warm, fuzzy feeling does it?

Not only are the special interests greedy, they don't care how many workers/consumers/insured die to make them rich, or how much irreparable environmental damage they cause in their quest for more profits. Deregulation was and remains a total scam, the equivalent of pulling the referees off the field, and trusting in self-enforcement of the rules. Some players try to cheat when there are refs. What are the chances they will self-enforce? Zero. What are the chances dishonest businessmen will self-regulate? The same.

Thomas Jefferson's vision of the just powers of government versus individual civil rights is best summed up by the following observation:

"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:221 [italics mine].

Jefferson would absolutely approve of government regulation of business (he was also strongly anti-corporation) to prevent the picking of the people's collective wallets, as well as regulation to prevent environmental abuses, since cancer caused by man-made carcinogens in the environment, or deaths caused by unsafe workplaces, or anything else physically or financially injurious. How odd that the GOP eschews the legitimate functions of government, and chooses to use the power of government in areas excluded by the founders: harass gays, promote religiosity, and destroy an activist organization whose only crime was registering minority voters, who all vote against the GOP and its cronies. BTW, the obnoxious little asshole who made those bogus, heavily edited videos purporting to show ACORN corruption, is now an admitted felon, having plead guilty to a federal crime. ACORN was never even indicted for any criminal acts, not even a misdemeanor.

The GOP is unclear on the concept of the just powers of government, which goes a long way to explain their inability to govern.
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It does indeed. It does indeed. I think the right wing posters in this thread have made it abundantly clear the contempt in which they hold democracy.
 
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T&A said:
Actually, English philosophers such as Locke and Hooker invented it, but it is not an open invitation to government largesse, else our country would have failed long ago, such as during the early republic under the Founders.
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No, Locke and Hooker, as philosophers are famous for doing what philosophers are justly famour for, they only thought about it. Our founding fathers made it a reality. They created it. Not Locke, Not Hooker. The credit for creating Liberal Democracy goes to our founding fathers. Only a fool would argue other wise.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
No, Locke and Hooker, as philosophers are famous for doing what philosophers are justly famour for, they only thought about it. Our founding fathers made it a reality. They created it. Not Locke, Not Hooker. The credit for creating Liberal Democracy goes to our founding fathers. Only a fool would argue other wise.
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And the Brits had been developing liberal democracy for centuries, via common law, parliaments, the English Constitution and the limiting of the monarchy. We put one into place in one fell swoop, which is why it can be viewed as so revolutionary.

Guys like Locke and Hooker, and the Whig writers, etc., had been influencing parliament for decades.
 
T&A said:
And the Brits had been developing liberal democracy for centuries, via common law, parliaments, the English Constitution and the limiting of the monarchy. We put one into place in one fell swoop, which is why it can be viewed as so revolutionary.

Guys like Locke and Hooker, and the Whig writers, etc., had been influencing parliament for decades.
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Don't forget such European Philoshophes as Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, etc. There were many thinkers from the period of the "Enlightenment" that contributed to modern liberal democracy. That doesn't change the fact that it was the American founding fathers who actually created one.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Don't forget such European Philoshophes as Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, etc. There were many thinkers from the period of the "Enlightenment" that contributed to modern liberal democracy. That doesn't change the fact that it was the American founding fathers who actually created one.
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And like its British forerunner, a limited one, in the form of a constitutional republic. They were neither populists nor leftists. They feared democracy as well as autocracy. Leftists always use the excuse that because a stone was first caste, that its natural and proper to continue ceaselessly following in that spirit to evolve beyond our strict origins.

The Leftist montra today seems to be this: The fact that we have a perceived living constitution and an attitude that all things must change means that our social mores must devolve. They play off of the fact that man is perverse and so this must become manifested at every turn.

But getting off of my high horse, remember that the Founders were arguing about their perceived view of the English Constitution, which was that it was being abused and misinterpreted at their expense. It was only when they couldn't get their way under it, as proper Englishmen, that they threw it out and adopted their own constitutions. The Revolution began as the first constitutional crisis in American history, and ended with the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. Lastly, Adams, who orchestrated the movement to have all of the colonies draft their own constitutions in 1775, believed that the failure of the English Constitution in America, was that it was an unwritten document and could therefore be interpreted out of existence. He believed the remedy to this was to have written constitutions take its place, and wrote the Massachusetts one himself. Madison was of the same mind when he wrote the national one, which is basically an improved version of Adams' draft for Massachusetts along with his later ideas talked about in his Thoughts on Government, which was written in response to other statesmen who wanted advise for drafting constitutions for their states, as well to refute Paine's Common Sense, which had come out earlier in the year.
 
zoombwaz said:
...the basis on which much of [Republicans] legislative agenda is predicated is that the poor have too much money, and the wealthy don't have enough. The nerve of the poor, not paying any income tax, which is the only one of the many contributing to the total tax burden the regressives bring up, as if the wealthy were paying more than their fair share of the total tax burden.
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1. How does taxing rich folks at a higher percentage than poor contribute to the economy? How is that "fair"?
2. Why should those who don't contribute to society be given the same voting rights as those who support them?
 
I would be very interested in why cities like Oakland which have no Republican representation and are run by people who supposedly strongly support and believe in government are so corrupt and so poorly run?
 
Any Questions?!!

gop-gene-pool-810.jpg
 
cawacko said:
I would be very interested in why cities like Oakland which have no Republican representation and are run by people who supposedly strongly support and believe in government are so corrupt and so poorly run?
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I’m pretty positive that the overwhelming majority of all large American cites are governed by Democratic mayors and city councils. So, sorry man, I don’t find the cherry-picking of Oakland to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship, to be compelling or convincing. Presumably, some large American cities that are relatively well run, and and others aren’t. And let’s just be freaking real, running a large city is tougher and more complicated than running your garden variety Dukes of Hazzard small town.

The other thing is, Democrats are more likely to be into dealing with problems that are associated with urban populations: the income inequities, social services and public services, poverty, and cultural diversity. I don’t think republicans are really genetically predisposed, or have much real interest in that kind of crap. And I really don’t think republicans, broadly speaking, are down with living in environments of extreme cultural diversity. Urban hipster isn’t normally a term one associates with tea bagging republicans.

I presume that republicans mostly are interested in building golf courses, keeping their own property taxes low, and living in nearly-all-white enclaves of suburbia and rural towns. But I could be wrong. Maybe the ivory-white GOP conventions, Tea Bag parties, and Koran-burning shin digs I see on TV aren’t showing us the hip, egalitarian, and culturally-tolerant side of the movement conservatism.
 
Usually those white suburbias with nice golf course which you speak of, have deliberately high property taxes so as to keep out the riff-raff (meaning non-whites).
 
Cypress said:
I’m pretty positive that the overwhelming majority of all large American cites are governed by Democratic mayors and city councils. So, sorry man, I don’t find the cherry-picking of Oakland to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship, to be compelling or convincing. Presumably, some large American cities that are relatively well run, and and others aren’t. And let’s just be freaking real, running a large city is tougher and more complicated than running your garden variety Dukes of Hazzard small town.

The other thing is, Democrats are more likely to be into dealing with problems that are associated with urban populations: the income inequities, social services and public services, poverty, and cultural diversity. I don’t think republicans are really genetically predisposed, or have much real interest in that kind of crap. And I really don’t think republicans, broadly speaking, are down with living in environments of extreme cultural diversity. Urban hipster isn’t normally a term one associates with tea bagging republicans.

I presume that republicans mostly are interested in building golf courses, keeping their own property taxes low, and living in nearly-all-white enclaves of suburbia and rural towns. But I could be wrong. Maybe the ivory-white GOP conventions, Tea Bag parties, and Koran-burning shin digs I see on TV aren’t showing us the hip, egalitarian, and culturally-tolerant side of the movement conservatism.
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I picked Oakland specifically because I grew up there and care about the area and essentially live next door to it now. I could have chosen any other number of cities.
 
Threedee said:
Usually those white suburbias with nice golf course which you speak of, have deliberately high property taxes so as to keep out the riff-raff (meaning non-whites).
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Why don't the non-whites get decent jobs so they can afford to live there?
 
Damn Yankee said:
1. How does taxing rich folks at a higher percentage than poor contribute to the economy? How is that "fair"?
2. Why should those who don't contribute to society be given the same voting rights as those who support them?
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1. Stupid question. The rich derive far more benefit from living in this country than do the poor, so they should be expected to pay more taxes. BTW, the indfo on income taxes you righties love to post is nonsense, because the income tax isn't the only tax paid. There are sales taxes, excise taxes, payroll taxes, etc, most of which are taxed on the first dollar of income and every dollar thereafter, which hit the middle and lower classes harder as a percentage of their income. The $100,000 ceiling on SS and medicare taxes means that the guy making $50,000 a year is paying 5.7% of his income on that tax, while the top 1%, who make $250,000 are paying 1.14% of their income, and the guy making $5,000,000 a year is paying (if he has any earned income at all) .057%. When you combine all the taxes into a total tax burden. the middle class pays more as a percentage of their earnings OR their wealth, than the wealthy do. And perhaps you myopic right wing nimrods have failed to notice, but there is a huge transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the rich. The poor have been losing ground and the middle has been stagnant at best, while the wealthy have been getting richer by leaps and bounds. Do you know why that is? Of course you don't. That would require independent critical thought. The money the super wealthy received in their gift tax cut from Bush? Are they investing it in job creation? Hell, no. They are speculating with it, and destroying jobs, just like they have every time a tax cut has been given to the wealthy.
 They also buy tax-free T-bills with their tax windfall. What's wrong with that? You mean beside being stupid for the government to be borrowing and paying interest on the same money they used to take in taxes.

2. Oh, you asshole. Because they are citizens, you elitist prick. And the reason they need support from the government is because they have been getting ripped off by the wealthy. Anybody working 40 hours a week for less than a living wage is being ripped off by their employer. Have you ever heard of enlightened self-interest? Obviously not. It has a lot of names, and it is known to every ethnic group and every religion, and it is the basis for Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, which should be required reading for graduation from high school, as it was the inspiration for the two chief architects of our republic, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. You should read it. It's a very slim book, which is surprising, given its importance to civilization.

Oh, and one of the other names for enlightened self-interest, in case you hadn't guessed: we call it the Golden Rule. Let me put it to you this way: suppose you suffer a debilitating and long-term illness, and your free-market health insurance company cuts you loose, because the Republican Tea Party took over in congress and made good on their threat to repeal Health Care Reform. You illness eats up your savings, your investments, and your house, until you finally find yourself unable to live with out government assistance. You've been a hard-working, contributing member of society for your entire life, but you got deathly ill and are on SS disability, Medicare, and Medicaid. Your family is drawing food stamps, but none of this is your fault. You just had a bad break (the #1 cause of bankruptcies in this country is catastrophic medical problems). What are you going to say to to the person who tells you that you are no longer eligible to vote because you are a ward of the state?


5 for 5 When can I expect you to answer my post, since I answered your five unanswered questions, one of which I had already covered? You do realize that because your questions were mostly ignorant bullshit, the autoloader is full of double ought rounds, the barrel is sawed off, and i'm in full street sweeper mode.

And you still have your rubber knife.

Your ass is mine.
 
cawacko said:
Seems like the more interesting question/discussion might be why the Democratic Party which is more a supporter of the government and its abilities can't govern?
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You fall for the party lines, I am disappointed, it is both and they all do it for their particular agendas with Bush it was war, with Obama the economy! which one is more damaging to us? Especially since they have declared Iraq and Afghanistan total failures! We grew the budget and deficit for NOTHING!
 
zoombwaz said:
It's really quite simple. You can't expect competent, honest governance from people whose base political philosophy is "Government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." They can't allow themselves to govern competently, even in the unlikely event they actually gave a shit about the needs of the voter, because to do so would show what a bald-faced lie their anti-government philosophy truly is. God forbid a regulatory agency actually fulfill its mission. No, the best-case scenario one can expect in governance by an anti-government politician or appointee is benign neglect and apathy, with performance descending from there through malice and deliberate sabotage of the oversight function of government and finally to the massive corruption, malfeasance and outright fraud of the Reagan administration and the complete incompetence and lawlessness of the last Bush administration. Look at what the pro-government Democrats gave us: Social Security, the SEC, the 40 hour work week and overtime pay, the minimum wage, child labor laws, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and a stable banking system through Glass-Steagall (aka the Banking Act of 1933), which created the FDIC and prohibited any single entity from doing business in more than one of commercial banking, investment banking and insurance. A Democratic President pulled the country out of the Great Depression (contrary to the revisionist claims that WWII actually did the job). The jury is still out on Health Care Reform.

The Republicans (and the Dixiecrats, who later became the Republicans they always were at heart) opposed all of these, and fought bitterly against Social Security and the Minimum Wage, both of which they tried to destroy in the last 20 years, the Minimum Wage under the elder Bush, and Social Security under the Shrub. No, they weren't trying to save SS from impending financial doom. That's easy, if congress ever grew the balls to do it: remove the $106,000 cap on taxable earnings, and make the wealthy pay their fair share with the kind of flat tax they always claim to support. Privatizing SS was meant to destroy it, while pumping much-needed cash into the Ponzi schemes being perpetrated by the banking industry after the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Yes, the GOP fought against child labor laws as an over-reach of the government (sound familiar?)

Look at what the anti-government GOP has given us: repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, an orgy of deregulation during the Clinton administration (for which we are still paying...thanks loads, Bill) and tax cuts for the rich in the 1920's and 2000's, which led not to the promised increased investment in the economy, but to sleazy speculation which led in the first case, to the Great Depression and in the second to the worst recession since the Depression, and a financial crisis which almost brought down the world economy this time, and did bring it down in the 1930's. What else did the GOP give us? I mean besides Watergate, Iran Contra, 9/11, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, illegal wiretapping of American citizens, and the illegal invasion of Iraq? Medicare Part D, which was a gift to Big Pharma.
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Excellent points, Zoom, thanks
 
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