Introduction

The entire Teaparty movement is based on ideas that have been continuously discredited for years. Yet the GOP, eager to leverage all the passion and zeal of these misguided populists, is promising policy based on still more of the fiscal absurdity that has already wreaked havoc on our cities.  Over the next few weeks, I am going to collect examples of this ongoing ruination and post them here.

If you have good articles for this reader (I call it a wrapper), please submit as a comment or email it to me and I'll consider including it.

Recent

City cuts into services considered basic by many.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.  More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

Backgrounders

California's Proposition 13 : The Mother of all Stupidity

The proposition's passage resulted in a cap on property tax rates in the state, reducing them by an average of 57%. In addition to lowering property taxes, the initiative also contained language requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases in all state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected, including income tax rates. It also requires two-thirds vote majority in local elections for local governments wishing to raise special taxes. Proposition 13 received an enormous amount of publicity, not only in California, but throughout the United States.

Spread the meme. Republicans are the party that wrecked America

So, to begin this process, and to clarify the situation, I urge readers of this blog to identify the Republican Party by its new brand-name: the party that wrecked America.

Related

Myth: Carter ruined the economy; Reagan saved it.

Carter cannot be blamed for the double-digit inflation that peaked on his watch, because inflation started growing in 1965 and snowballed for the next 15 years. To battle inflation, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who defeated it by putting the nation through an intentional recession.

The Great Lie of Supply-Side Economics, By Paul Krugman

The tax cuts that went through were sold on false premises – what it costs us is far greater than advocates said, advocates who claimed it would actually increase revenue and cost us nothing. It does cost us, hundreds of billions of dollars so far, and that cost has not been presented honestly to the public by either the advocates of the tax cuts or the press reporting on the issue. Without an adequate understanding of the true costs, the public discussion on the issue is distorted and the result is bad public policy.

Why The Party that Wrecked America Can't Fix It

The Republican party has a problem. They have based much of their power, over the last several decades, on the idea of ever-expanding (almost exclusively white) suburbs. The thinking was, as those suburbs become less and less dense — as one wag put it, the further away the houses are from each other — the more those suburbanites will vote Republican. As William Levitt, the builder of the first modern suburb after World War II said, "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist."

I always forget about this gem. Twitter just reminded me of it. 

Everyone needs to watch this 3 times, and then remember these words:

"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

 

R.I.P. George Carlin. We never really appreciated you in your time.  We miss you and we need you.  Come back when you're ready. Maybe we'll still be here. Maybe.

After months of whining, backstabbing, and sniveling by people who think bashing Obama is the best way to redirect America on a progressive path, the result has been a demoralized and disaffected electorate that is easy polemical pickins for the malicious fascists who got us into this mess.

We have 48 hours to not just save the Health Care bill, but probably the future of this country.  By November, the momentum from a Coakley loss will so fire up the blind, deaf, and far too dumb fascist scumbags in the TeaGOP, that many progressives  will be cursing the day they ever let a little impatience and disappointment with Obama be fashioned into an outright apathy orgy.

Just smarten the fuck up, liberals. After 30 years of neglecting politics, and cashing the checks from our corporate paymasters, we have built ourselves one rickety, piece-of- shit  bus heading for a train-wreck of a future.  Blaming the elected bus driver for that collective #FAIL is just immature and self destructive.  We should be working with the driver we elected, and forcing him to do (much) better. We should not be walking off the bus and stepping into heavy traffic.  The GOP is an 18 wheeler with most of the media, money, and power behind its rolling thunder.  If you think we stop that juggernaut with Kumbaya elections every few years, you're in need of reeducation summer camp.  But it's winter, and we haven't got the time for that.

2008 was ONE election.  If someone believed that one election could redirect all these years of abuse, then THEY are the real problem.  Obama was given one of the worst set of conditions that any president has ever inherited. And selling him short before he can fix any of it, is just inviting the GOP to come back to power and fuck us so far up the ass you'll need to gargle with battery acid to rid yourself of the taste.

Regardless of what got us here, we have to tread water until progressives can hope for enough good developments that we can undo some of the Fox-fed hysteria about government, health care, and most of the disasters the GOP has left for Democrats to pay for.  But that's going to take a long time. In the meantime, you can help by spending the next two days…

VOLUNTEERING FOR COAKLEY.  If you haven't done anything until now, this is your chance to make a difference.

Organizing For America If not a member, sign-up. You will find phone scripts and all sorts of tips for how you can help. 

MarthaCoakley.com/Volunteer  — More specific ways you can volunteer, including of course, donations.