American Politics

I love all the wrangling and discussion now that the Democrats have control over Congress. Especially speculation about all the new directions we can go in. It’s very amusing.

Nobody’s calling for the government control of main utilities. Nobody’s calling for the dissolution of the corpoate structure. Nobody’s calling for the redistribution of the country along ethnic or religious lines. The Democrats and Republicans are only arguing about the redistributions of relatively small percentages around the national budget. The truth is an open secret: We have the best damn one-party political system in the world…

7 thoughts on “American Politics

  1. *Christopher

    Yep. You forgot to mention Nobody’s even talking about balancing the budget. One party is the Cut and Spend, the other the Tax and Spend. Either way, we, our children, and children’s children will get left holding the bag.

    I second LP’s kudos on the new “About Me”.

  2. Gracious Light

    Well, actually, Harry Reid (Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader) said today that one of the things they were going to do was to end the red ink.

    Admittedly, I am a proud liberal who has had to go buy new pants since I have peed in every pair I own since last Tuesday. But the biggest thing that the elections brought around are a return to checks and balances. Its not that the check and balances our constitution were ever removed but people of the same party as the executive branch rarely exercised any oversight/ advise and consent roles. Its only been in this president’s term that we have ever heard the notion that the president has the “right to pick his own team”.

    Why do you think that Rummy “resigned”? He knew that he was going to have to go to the Hill and actually be held accountable for things said, decisions made, and resources utilized. We’ve been “at war” for 3+ years and I’ve yet to see W follow through on regular reporting and reauthorization required in the War Powers Amendment to the Constitution.

    But you are right, Derek. These Dem’s know they might as well go ahead and start getting boxes out of the closest if they ever tried to do anything like tax corporations like they should be, force them to not move money off-shore just because it is profitable, raise minimum wage to anything near to what is considered a living wage, or do anything about health care. I read a few years ago an article the compared the ration of ceo to employee income of both sides of the Atlantic. I don’t remember the numbers exactly but in Europe the ration is something like 8:1 where in America its something like 30:1. No, in the long run, Tuesday’s decsion did not do a whole heck of a lot.

    If somehow the new majority party can dismantle the K Street Project’s power, move to public financing of elections, or at least become more transparent, I’ll consider it a win.

  3. James Day

    Goth/Industrial soundtrack…

    Great stuff. The “About Me” is all the way on the bottom of the page. How did you guys even notice it? Love it anyway.

  4. Derek the Ænglican

    Thanks y’all…

    No, GL, I think we’re just going to see a parade of investigations into the admin’s handling of the war that will find that some people did some dumb things and that other people made decisions that looked good at the time based on the data they had but now alos look really dumb. I think all the really important issues will get shelved in service of political ends.

  5. Gracious Light

    Now that is a fear of mine, that any “oversight” would become vindictive. Where’s the line between being human and being accountable for mistakes, omissions, myopia, or lies? Of course, we know the accountability for screwing all this up… packing up your boxes and moving to the sucky offices on Capitol Hill.

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