Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin, the GOP’s New, Kinda New and Old Voices

Congressional Republican redistributors of wealth continue to protect the pen of porcine wealth-gatherers as they cement their role in the Tea Party (actually, whoever directs the party) jihad against Democrats and moderates.

If Republicans have ever told the truth about anything, it’s the fact that there has been a massive redistribution of wealth. When you have the Walmart Walton heirs owning more wealth (assets minus liabilities) than the bottom 41.5% of the population, or nearly 49 million people; that’s redistribution. And those numbers don’t even including wages.

Taking all money stats into consideration, a massive quantity of America’s wealth is concentrated in the top 1-2% of the population. Of course Republicans would have you believe it’s the rich who are being robbed of their wealth. Provide me one example where the poor and middle-class have outstripped the top 2% in wealth building over the last few decades. In fact, Federal Reserve figures reveal that from 2007-2010 the average family lost 39% of their wealth. Again, the Bush administration’s housing bubble, economic and tax policies and rampant corruption being the primary reasons.

One could say that our current situation is analogous to the old English fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” (some people still prefer “Jack the Giant Killer”). In the fairy tale, Jack’s cow stopped giving milk. Today’s Republicans want to render the administration’s cow incapable of producing the milk of human kindness and decency. They’ve accomplished this as millions of people most in need of fiscal nourishment have lost their jobs as a result of George W. Bush policies and the refusal of Congressional Republicans to approve meaningful jobs bills, alternate energy development and infrastructure projects.

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But the extremists would be well served to read the rest of the tale. Jack’s mom wants to sell the dry cow for a few pounds so she sends Jack off to the village. An old man (maybe an old black man with big ears?) gives Jack some beans in exchange for the cow. Jack’s pissed-off mother tosses the beans out the window. Overnight, a giant beanstalk grows and towers its way skyward. Jack climbs it to the house of a giant (a modern-day M(B)illionaire and his wife). We’ll call the giant ‘PBR’ for “Protected by Republicans.” When Jack arrives at PBR’s crib, the greedy bastard is counting his money and “Fee-fi-fo-fumming.” Jack manages to escape with a bag of gold, just like the right thinks the poor on food stamps are “stealing” taxpayer’s gold.

On his next trip, Jack pilfers that golden egg-laying hen after which he makes a final B & E, snatching a magical harp that plays itself. By this time, PBR is on to Jack and gives chase. Jack chops down the beanstalk in the nick of time and PBR dies (symbolically of course). In the end Jack and his now blissful mum are living comfortably on money PBR wouldn’t have needed anyway, had he lived.

“Dennis. Dennis! Wake up!” “Wha?” Huh?” “Wake up darling; you’ve been yelling something about ‘cut it down, cut it down.” Seems I had nodded off in front of the computer and dreamed about “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Such a happy ending. I should have known I was asleep. There are no bags or eggs of gold or magical harps in the 113th Congress or anywhere in America these days.

The giants of Congress fight every initiative to help the poor and do everything the super-rich tell them to do. We’re talking health care, jobs, public education, protecting the environment, closing tax loopholes, supporting women’s issues and passing responsible gun legislation to mention a few examples. The formula is simple; if the legislation doesn’t add millions to the bottom lines of millionaires and billionaires, it dies.

Progressives and moderates thought that maybe the boffo Obama second-term presidential victory, the continued Democratic majority in the Senate and the fact that Republicans are disdained at the polls by virtually every minority, might inject a sense of reality and bipartisanship into the political veins of the Republican Party leadership. Instead, we are greeted with the emergence of a couple new wackjobs and the resurgence of a heretofore roundly rejected Alaskan wacko.

I speak; of course, of a young man who has accomplished a feat of such enormity that no one thought it possible. Yes, Tea Party Senator Rand Paul is nutty squared compared to his father, Ron. And he’s the new L’enfant terrible of the extremist right. Slobbered over and possibly coveted as a 2016 president candidate by the attendees of Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Paul garnered a narrow win in CPAC’s much-hyped but essentially irrelevant presidential straw poll. The senior Paul, Ron, won it twice. If you were to follow Rand Paul’s budget game plan you’d be going to the nearest stream for water.

The second voice is brand new. Texan, Ted Cruz is a freshman Senator who somehow gets people to listen to his philosophical sludge. Cruz has emerged as another Tea Party spokesman. This Canadian born “man of the people” matriculated through Princeton, Harvard and Harvard Law. The New York Times reported that this is the guy who pulled out a reference to climate change in a routine resolution commemorating “International Women’s Day.”

Cruz is owned (gun) lock, (gun) stock and (gun) barrel by big-time arms and NRA interests and has threatened to filibuster “any additional gun restrictions.” Rand Paul has joined him in the effort. Then there is the re-emergence of “Mama Grizzly” Sarah Palin. From the CPAC podium, she clawed away at the president for his “lack of leadership.” She also growled about certain consultants who keep losing elections while making millions. Just like Sarah who keeps losing media gigs while making millions.

And how about that Christian right? Travel with me to the Inquisition epoch of the 13th century and beyond. If you didn’t adhere to Church authority, you were a heretic. One of the sentences for daring to ask even one challenging question was poena confusibilis, Latin for “humiliating punishment.” The ‘guilty’ party was forced to wear crosses on his/her front and back, making the victim a target to be mocked and well, humiliated. That’s what the modern-day evangelicals are doing to our president. Since he disagrees with E-vans on the role of women’s reproductive rights, separation of church and state (in lockstep with Jefferson, Madison and Washington), and damn near everything else, they hate his guts.

But you can be passionate about and committed to both government and Christianity; just keep them separate. Washington embraced a treaty with Tripoli that stated, “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Jefferson and Madison both spoke eloquently in favor of separation.

A few more reasons to vote pure Democratic in 2014 and 2016.

Dennis S

Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.

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