Texas Republicans want to get rid of of NASA, the air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and every other government agency established after 1776. It’s as if their goal is to reduce the national GOP to a southern regional party.
On Tuesday, Sarah Jones reported on the Texas GOP’s hate platform. It calls for brainwashing the gay away, ending instate tuition for children of undocumented immigrants and establishing a neighborhood snitch program to report women who didn’t register their miscarriages with the uterus gestapo.
If you haven’t read Sarah’s post yet you really should because it is an eye opener into the level of crazy that comes with a Tea Party takeover of the GOP’s ideology.
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The crazy doesn’t end there as you will see from a platform that, if implemented, would destroy the economy and leave the federal government in shambles. The Lonestar Project outlines the economic proposals which make the Bush created recession look like good times. These are the policies that Greg Abbott dreams of doing to Texas, with the added ambition of dragging the entire country down with his state. At least it seems that way since Abbott hasn’t said anything to denounce or at least distance himself from ideas that amount to a combination of hate and economic destruction.
The full document can be read here.
The GOP of Texas wants to eliminate every government agency created after 1776. Of course, they want to re-institutionalize poverty for seniors by handing Social Security to for profit corporations and in the name of institutionalizing the dumbing down of America they want to eliminate public education. After all, an ignorant serf is a compliant serf.
Ok, if the highlights didn’t scare you, hang on to your seats as we go on a very bumpy ride through some of the specifics.
They want to kill jobs faster than Bush’s policies did by eliminating every government agency that was established after 1776. That includes the FBI, the CIA, the FDA, the National Weather Service, The Department of Education, the Federation Aviation Administration and the EPA. NASA would cease to exist. It means we wouldn’t have a Justice Department, the U.S. Treasury or a State Department. We also wouldn’t have an air force. No food or water safety, nothing to assist states during natural disasters or the direct consequences of state Republican policy disasters. And this barely scratches the surface.
This also means that our government would cease to have any clout at all in the international community because we wouldn’t have a state department, which means no diplomats. This would eliminate our ability to influence world affairs and shape international political and economic issues. Of course, having the military might to fight the wars that Republicans want us to wage or defend our allies might prove problematic without an air force.
Ironically, these Bozos overlooked the fact that under Article 2, the constitution anticipated that the Federal government would in fact expand its agencies and departments. Within the context of consequences to the economy, this measure amounts to a job massacre.
True to the Tea Party doctrine, the Texas GOP is bound and determined to drive the economy into the ground. As if killing millions of jobs wasn’t enough, They want to get rid of the minimum wage not only in the private sector, but at all levels of government. The platform specifically calls for repeal of Davis-Bacon Act and and all other laws that establish a minimum wage.
No Republican effort to destroy the economy is complete without proposing a regressive national sales tax. In combination, this platform is a declaration of war on the U.S economy, what’s left of the middle class and with even more devastating effects on people working for poverty wages.
Aside from creating massive levels of unemployment in an economy where there is already a substantial job shortage, eliminating the minimum wage would mean many more millions of Americans would have less disposable income and the national sales tax would make an already harsh reality in which people are choosing between shelter and food more devastating. It means a substantial price increase for everything from food to cars, clothing and housing. Since fewer people will be able to afford these things, it means even more jobs will be lost.
Meanwhile, this would amount to a substantial tax cut for wealthier Americans since they spend a smaller proportion of their income on items that would be subject to a national sales tax.
The economic destruction elements of the hate platform offers the same many times rejected Republican policy of turning social security over to for profit corporations. It went over so well when Mitt Romney proposed it that President Obama won a second term.
As if screwing over the middle class, people working for poverty wages and seniors wasn’t enough, Texas Republicans want to spread the misery to children by eliminating public education and eliminating instate tuition for children of undocumented immigrants. Wow, how low can you get when you take your hatred of immigrants out on their children, who if born in the U.S. would be American citizens under the U.S. constitution. Moreover, this radical policy assures that our economy will face additional obstacles because we will lag behind other developed nations in the global economy.
If we didn’t know better, one might be tempted to believe that the draft platform was written by a some home-schooled first graders as a really bad April Fool’s joke. But then, we are talking about conservative ideologues who cheered Eric Cantor’s downfall by the unknown economics professor David Brat who sounded like a male Sarah Palin during his interview with Chuck Tood. I mean this guy flubbed a question on the minimum wage is about economics equivalent of asking Sarah Palin what she reads.
Although this hasn’t really been a stellar primary season ,so far, for Tea Party candidates, the Koch Brothers have what they really want, namely, influence over the GOP’s policies and ideology. The Texas hate platform is the latest confirmation of that reality.
This is good news for Democrats because the Republican Party’s radical shift is sending it down a path to regional party status. In some ways, Democrats really ought to thank Texas Republicans for wearing its xenophobia and determination to destroy the U.S. economy on its sleeve.
Former contributor.
