A Nation Held Hostage By Gridlock...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
While the following is somewhat partisan and slightly tilted leftward it does, at the same time, speak to the truth. Only a complete non partisan with an inability to see and acknowledge the truths that are evident in the article would say otherwise. Truth always has a way of surfacing and ultimately winning the war.
For certain a segment of the republican party (the Tea Party wing) has little interest in governing and is banking on its sheeple to not notice their grifting until it's too late and they have profited and vanished. Ted Cruz appears to be on the way to becoming it's most influential grifter.
Read more BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
While the following is somewhat partisan and slightly tilted leftward it does, at the same time, speak to the truth. Only a complete non partisan with an inability to see and acknowledge the truths that are evident in the article would say otherwise. Truth always has a way of surfacing and ultimately winning the war.
Politico - Vocabulary.com defines a grifter as: A grifter is a con artist—someone who swindles people out of money through fraud. If there’s one type of person you don’t want to trust, it’s a grifter: Someone who cheats someone out of money.
Historically, grifters have taken many shapes. They were the snake-oil salesmen who rolled into town promising a magical, cure-all elixir at a price. The grifter was long gone by the time people discovered the magical elixir was no more magical than water. They were the sideshow con men offering fantastic prizes in games that were rigged so that no one could actually win them. They were the Ponzi scheme operators who got rich promising fantastically high investment returns but returning nothing for those sorry investors at the bottom of the pyramid.
Over the last few years we have seen the rise of a new grifter—the political grifter. And the most important battle being waged today isn’t the one about which party controls the House or the Senate, it’s about who controls the Republican Party: the grifting wing or the governing wing.
Today’s political grifters are a lot like the grifters of old—lining their pockets with the hard-earned money of working men and women be promising things in return that they know they can’t deliver.
Political grifting is a lucrative business. Groups like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots are run by men and women who have made millions by playing on the fears and anger about the dysfunction in Washington. My former House colleague Chris Chocola is pocketing a half-million dollars a year heading the Club for Growth; same for Matt Kibbe heading up FreedomWorks (and I don’t think Kibbe’s salary includes the infamous craft beer bar that FreedomWorks donors ended up paying for). The Tea Party Patriots pay their head, Jenny Beth Martin, almost as much. These people have lined their pockets by promising that if you send them money, they will send men and women to Washington who can “fix it.” Of course, in the ultimate con, the always extreme and often amateurish candidates these groups back either end up losing to Democrats or they come to Washington and actually make the process even more dysfunctional.
Just look at what happened this past week, when hard-right House members with extensive ties to these outside groups, egged on by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, snarled up a sensible effort to pass a bill that would at least begin to address the crisis of undocumented children at the U.S.-Mexico border. It was an embarrassing display of congressional dysfunction, and it showed that the grifting wing has learned nothing from last fall’s shutdown fiasco.
The grifting wing of the party promises that you can have ideological purity—that you don’t have to compromise—and, of course, all you have to do is send them money to make it happen. The governing wing of the Republican Party knows that’s a damn lie. Our Founding Fathers set up a system of government that by its very nature excludes the possibility of one party or one ideological wing of one party getting everything it wants. Ted Cruz, who quotes the founders almost every chance he gets, ought to know this.
Even Ronald Reagan—who won in two of the biggest landslides in American history—was forced to compromise. It was President Reagan who cut deals with Democrats to extend the solvency of Social Security and put the federal budget on a sounder footing. It was Reagan who famously said that someone who votes with him 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally. Reagan’s record and rhetoric stands in marked contrast to the grifting win of the party today, even as the grifters invoke his memory in their disingenuous appeals. Emphasis mine.
For certain a segment of the republican party (the Tea Party wing) has little interest in governing and is banking on its sheeple to not notice their grifting until it's too late and they have profited and vanished. Ted Cruz appears to be on the way to becoming it's most influential grifter.
Read more BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
I agree with the author of this piece in that the Ted Cruzes of the world are a far cry from the Howard Bakers, Everett Dirksens, Lowell Weikers, Ed Brookes, Bill Cohens, Margaret Chase Smiths, and Jacob Javitses of yesteryear. I would only add that the Nancy Pelosis of the world are also a far cry from the Sam Nunns, Dennis DeConcinis, William Proxmires, John Glenns, Howell Heflins, Fritz Hollingses, Ed Koches, Bill Daleys, etc. and that it probably takes 2 sides to do this Gridlockian tango.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is not all bad. Without gridlock, we'd have bigger deficit-busting, job-killing stimulus packages; the secret ballot in union elections would have been abolished; and the ACA would have been a much bigger monster.
ReplyDeleteGridlock, when it persists for years as it has, results in inability to get much of anything done in the interests of the country, and shows only signs of worsening, then it is BAD dmarks.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the founders, who knew more than a smidgen of partisan differences would agree.
I think some of whether or not it is "bad" has to do with what specifically is being halted by gridlock, and in which instance..
ReplyDeleteHow much of it is something done in the interests of the country (I.e. Clinton and Newt making defecits a lot smaller) and how much is one side blocking the other's corrupt debtbusting giveway to lobbyists / erosion of liberty?
I see more of the latter for a very long time now.
As usual, you're both right. On the one hand, gridlock is a good thing in that it serves as a check on government tyranny but, on the other hand, if it isn't accompanied by a strong, positive alternative, it itself becomes toxic.............Take Obamacare, for example. Yes, it was a crappy piece of legislation BUT if the Republicans had countered it with what Mitch Daniels had done in Indiana and what John Mackey had done with Whole Foods, maybe, MAYBE, Obama would have taken the bait and a much more market oriented end-result would have happened (especially if the individual mandate was sustained). Me, I kinda say a pox on both their houses.
ReplyDeleteWill, remember this is Obama, the progressive king of gridlock we are dealing with. He already chose to shut down the government once rather than budge on healthcare.
ReplyDeleteI doubt the innovative approaches you name would have impressed Obama. Too much letting people make their own decisions, not authoritarian enough to appeal to the single-payer fascists in his base, not enough kickbacks to his cronies.
Interesting. Everyone seems to acknowledge there is gridlock. Most agree gridlock for short periods, an example being during straight forward, open, and honest negotiations between between parties to resolve differences, can be "good" if it results in eventual compromise and reaching agreement.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have today is intransigence (TP'ers), finger pointing, and a nation whose government has lost the ability to effectively govern.
Everyone agrees on the one hand, on the other hand blaming takes the day.
Most of the time it is far better to do NOTHING than to do the WRONG thing.
ReplyDeleteThe Teapartiers were elected by a huge spontaneous grassroots groundswell as a direct response to the bullying overreach of Nancy Pelousy's solidly Democratic House of Representatives. They have done precisely what their constituents sent them to Washington to do, and that is everything in their power to stymie, block, balk, thwart and derail any further depredations from the Obama White House and Democratic congressional initiatives.
The Republican minority was not permitted to participate in crafting the deadly legislation in any meaningful way, Will, so your point is purely academic. Republicans were hermetically sealed out of the legislative process that gave us Obamacare.
I could see that the Teaparty movement was quickly co-opted by clever veteran political operatives to work to their advantage, but I am still most grateful to the Teaparty, because -- even as it stands now -- they are the ONLY force left standing to oppose the Socialist Juggernaut set in motion by the election of President Obama and the unwavering support the advance of the socialist agenda enjoys from the permanent alliance between the Democratic Party and the Enemedia.
"Bipartisanship to a Democrat means only one thing. Do it OUR way or be DAMNED. PERIOD!"
The word "compromise" never has and never will be in the leftists' vocabulary.That means that Conservative-Libertarians, most of whom are thoroughly disgusted with the Establishment GOP, cannot afford to admit the concept into their lexicon either.
Thanks for pointing out the facts on Obamacare... 100% a creation of the Left.... despite the claims of certain trolls ( whose minds are hermetically sealed) that it was a Republican creation.
DeleteYou may want to check your "facts" dmarks. Check with Romney and work back.
DeleteFeel free to provide reputable links in support of your position.
I am unable to find any reference to Mitt Romney being present at the Obama administration meetings/etc in which the ACA was crafted.
DeleteAnd, no, I am not mistaking some partial resemblance between "Romneycare" and "Obamacare" as some sort of Republican input into the ACA.
We would have a far different healthcare plan if only the Democrats crafted it.
DeleteYes, far worse. Authoritarian. Much more centralized. The opposite of the direction we need to go in.
DeleteI have no further comment dmarks, your last comment is quite revealing.
DeleteNot sure what you meant there, RN. What I meant at the end is that we need many tiny payers, not a huge single one.
DeleteTrolls, Dennis, or people residing in the reality-based community? That the ACA is based on RomneyCare and RomneyCare is based on an idea put forward by the Conservative Heritage foundation is simply a fact. Not one that any of your lies change, BTW.
DeleteAgreed, and to a large extent they have become and acheived exactly what they what they perceived their purpose to be. Agents of DOING EXACTLY NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteMillion Dollar Question... As a nation are we better off for it.
In the minds of most Americans the answer is a resounding no, or so the polls reflect. Note Congressional approval rating.
Above in response to FreeThinke.
DeleteBut, Les, Harry Reid's iron grip on the Democratically controlled senate has stifled every single initiative by the Reublican-controlled house -- and there have been many. If we must affix blame, let it be in the electorate who have been so incredibly naive and stupid as to elect President Obama to a second term and to put in place bitterly divided houses of congress.
DeleteI wouldn't worry if I were you. When Hillary becomes our next president and both houses of congress return to overwhelmingly high democratic majorities, the GOP will go the way of the Whigs, and then you will be able to enjoy the kind of ruthless legislative efficiency that brought us the New Deal. The Supreme Court too will be packed with partisan Socialist bigots who will rubber stamp anything Madame Chairman and her Socialist satellites want.
When that occurs -- as surely it must -- I'm certain a good time will be had by all at America's WAKE.
FreeThinke, I am, philosophically much closer to your views than you might think. In a world we both would prefer, one fueled by reason rather than emotion the issues of which you speak would be moot. They simply would not exist. But alas, such is not the case, and it never has been.
ReplyDeleteIndeed the electorate is ultimately responsible for the political realities we see today. Our inefficient national governance and lack of consistency is directly related to the behaviors and whims of the American electorate. Democrats unfortunately understand this by far better and are far and away more effective at exploiting it than republicans, libertarians, or conservatives.
Nonetheless, this being said we remain a democratic republic and naive as the electorate may be as the electorate goes so goes the nation. If what you predict happens it will be the result of the failure of conservatives, libertarians, and republicans to CONVINCE the electorate WHY it should embrace their vision for America. They might start by being honest and straight forward with them and follow with a plan that will work for ALL of America and her 320 million inhabitants, not just the 2%.
We might start by first recognizing, followed by acknowledging, and then acting to put America first. In other words reduce the money train that leaves daily for foreigm soil. But that is an issue for another day.
Excellent discussion....
ReplyDelete