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Blame Clinton, Not Paul
What is so great about our bloated federal government that when a libertarian threatens to become a senator, otherwise rational and mostly liberal pundits start frothing at the mouth? What Rand Paul thinks about the Civil Rights Act, passed 46 years ago, hardly seems the most pressing issue of social justice before us. It's a done deal that he clearly accepts. Yet Paul's questioning the wisdom of a banking bailout that rewards those who shamelessly exploited the poor and vulnerable, many of them racial minorities, is right on target. So too questioning the enormous cost of wars that as he dared point out are conducted in violation of our Constitution and that, I would add, though he doesn't, prevent us from adequately funding needed social programs.
Under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, Wall Street secured the radical deregulation of the financial industry that its lobbyists had long sought. I opposed that betrayal of the sensible policies of the last great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I suspect that Paul applauded the move as an extension of the free market that he so uncritically celebrates. Where I agree with him is that with freedom comes responsibility, and when the financial conglomerates abused their freedom, they, and not the victims they swindled, should have borne the consequences. Instead, they were saved by the taxpayers from their near-death experience, reaping enormous profits and bonuses while the fundamentals of the world economy they almost destroyed remain rotten, as attested by the high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment and the tens of millions of newly poor dependent on government food handouts.
But the poor will not find much more than food crumbs from a federal government that, thanks to another one of Clinton's "reforms," ended the federal obligation to deal with the welfare of the impoverished. Yes, Clinton, not either Paul, father Ron or son. It was Clinton who campaigned to "end welfare as we know it," and as a result the federal obligation to end poverty, once fervently embraced by even Richard Nixon, was abandoned.
Concern for the poor was devolved to the state governments, and they in turn are in no mood to honor the injunction of all of the world's great religions that we be judged by how we treat the least among us. That would be poor children, and it is unconscionable that state governments across the nation are cutting programs as elemental as the child care required when you force single mothers to work.
"Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers" ran the headline in The New York Times on Sunday over a story detailing how in a dozen states there are now sharp cuts in child care for the poor who find jobs, and how there are now long lists of kids needing child care while their mothers work at low-paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart. In Arizona, there is a waiting list of 11,000 kids eligible for child care. That is what passes for success in the welfare reform saga, with mothers forced off the rolls into a workplace bereft of promised child care that the cash-strapped states no longer wish to supply.
A couple of weeks ago came the news-reading like a page out of Dickens (or perhaps like a parody from The Onion )-that the Terminator was again in action, this time terminating California's programs for the poor. The son-in-law of Sargent Shriver, who once ran the federal war on poverty, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now seeks to eliminate the Golden State's CalWorks program. By ending the once celebrated program along with child care funding, Schwarzenegger expects to save $2.2 billion. As the Los Angeles Times reported, "Ending CalWorks, which provides recipient families with an average of $500 per month, would make California the only state not to offer a welfare program for low-income families with children."
Schwarzenegger apparently doesn't care; poor kids can't complain too loudly, and while the governor backed down in his earlier threats to cut funding for somewhat more privileged college kids who protested those cuts loudly, he found the safety net for the poor an easier target: "You cannot have a safety net if you don't have the money for that safety net."
Sure you can't, and so the safety net is being shredded in state after state, but why don't we have the money, and why was responsibility for the poor left to the tender mercy of state governments while the federal government maintains a lavish welfare system for needy bankers who treat a few billion in government bailouts as chump change?
I am not a libertarian; I proudly remain a bleeding-heart liberal, as befits one who began life in a family on the dole during the Depression. But if the federal government exists primarily to serve super-rich defense contractors and bankers while ignoring the poor, I say it is time to expose as the enemy of progress the Washington bureaucracy that tends to the greedy rich at the expense of the truly needy. That is the problem; Rand Paul is the distraction.
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60 Comments so far
Show AllNAFTA?
As far as someone saying they're going "third party" from now on, I can't understand what would make them think that someone who runs for an elective office is any less corrupt just because they do not associate themselves with the Democrat or Republican party.
Senators, Congressman, whatever, they're all a big joke but trouble is nobody's laughing.
I read practically back-to-back articles the other day. First was the one dealing with how we have given $1.5 billion to Mexico to help fight their drug cartel.
What kind of accountability or "transparency" will there be as to this effort? Anything like us giving Pakistan's Masharraf government $11 billion to fight terrorism along their border with Afghanistan, only to find that the money was used for either the stockpiling of weapons for their imaginary war with India. Not all of it, mind you, much of it has not even been accounted for.
And now, the new government that succeeded Masharraf will not accept military aid as it might appear as if they are being bribed to stand up to the Taliban. We of course bend over backwards and instead give them $7.5 billion and call it economic aid.
Why is it so important that Pakistan defends itself against the Taliban? Because Pakistan has nuclear weapons they must protect. Why do they have nuclear weapons? Because the U. S. and the "international community" allow them do. Likewise with India. Likewise with Israel, but they won't admit that they have nuclear weapons.
What do we concentrate on instead of the three aformenntioned? Making sure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. Is there not something here that reeks of misplaced priorities?
THe other article had to do with the several states not being able to provide subsidized child care for many mothers who want to work but cannot do so without it. Well, who really cares if these people work anyway? If they're in such bad straits that they need financial assistance to put their children in child care, what is the likelihood that they will have any funds to contribute to any political campaigns? So, if they can't kick some bucks into our political process, who really gives a damn whether they're working or not.
The way our government dishes out foreign aid, not to even mention expenditures related to the wars in IRaq and Afghanistan, while ignoring domestic needs really entitles us to be known as the United Hypocritcal States of America.
As an example, let us for the moment disregard what those wars are costing us in military expenditures, contractors (like Haliburton which probably still gives kickbacks to Darth Vader) related medical costs, and the intangible figures we cannot place on the hardships that families must endure.
Instead, go find out (and I'm sure you can Google your way to it) how much it cost us to build the George W. Bush Country Club (sometimes known as the U. S. Embassy in Baghdad) and how much it costs annually to maintain it. While you're at it, how many people are employed there and what the hell could they all possibly be doing there to even begin to substantiate this expenditure.
I don't really think that this is the America that was envisioned by the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jeffrson, Benjamin Franklin, etc. Why do we even bother to keep their faces on our currency?
With George being on the dollar, the lowest value bill, I think he could easily be replaced with maybe Rush Limbaugh. I'll let y'all use your imaginations as to how we would replace those who are printed on the next higher denominations.
Well, this is the first link in CD I've clicked onto today so I've gotta save a little for the others.
But remember to always keep your chin up as it makes your throat an easier target to be cut.
"As far as someone saying they're going "third party" from now on, I can't understand what would make them think that someone who runs for an elective office is any less corrupt just because they do not associate themselves with the Democrat or Republican party."
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Because Green Party candidates pledge to refuse contributions from corporate sources thus freeing themselves from the strings attached to said contributions, that's why.
"Why is it so important that Pakistan defends itself against the Taliban? Because Pakistan has nuclear weapons they must protect. Why do they have nuclear weapons? Because the U. S. and the "international community" allow them do. Likewise with India. Likewise with Israel, but they won't admit that they have nuclear weapons."
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By what right do you insist that the US either gives or denies nuclear weapons to any nation? Who are we that such status and power accrues to us? Nelson Mandela noted rather aptly that US nuclear policy is a form of apartheid.
"I am not a libertarian; I proudly remain a bleeding-heart liberal, as befits one who began life in a family on the dole during the Depression. But if the federal government exists primarily to serve super-rich defense contractors and bankers while ignoring the poor, I say it is time to expose as the enemy of progress the Washington bureaucracy that tends to the greedy rich at the expense of the truly needy." --Robt. Scheer
Lily Tomlin is not exactly a =think tank= but she has the insight to espouse this aphorism: "No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up."
J'ever notice that a typewriter carriage has a block pin to prevent it from shifting so far left it falls out of the typewriter onto the damn floor?
Since the inauguration of John Kennedy, each day as I have listened to the News of my species I have felt mirconic shifts to the Left. By the end of the Reagan oligarchy and heist I was a virulent Nihilist. The 2000 SCOTUS decision to anoint George Bush broke the pin. Like Elvis, my carriage has left the typewriter. There are no words for how far Left I am, no Stephen Hawking equation left upon some blackboard forgotten in Time.
So much of what gets written here is eloquent, optimistic shifting of deck chairs on the Titanic. As the list of the vessel increases the pace of the dance increases, to the frenzied Mills Brothers song of "Somebody Oughta Be Punished For This, Somebody Oughta Do Something".
Trylon
Nicely put.
My critics point out, "You were born the same day as Calvin Klein but no woman has ever wanted to wear your underwear." I admit this has been a disappointment.
I'm curious. If we're all suitably and maximally cynical about government, and have long ago accepted the proposition that, unknown to the massses, our government is "run by the corporations," isn't it two-faced, stupid and hypocritical to "blame" Clinton for his "apparent" capitulation to the corporations, to WTO, to NAFTA, etc.? If we judge Clinton by what he "left us with," after 8 years in office, he's among the most remarkable and beneficial presidents since FDR. The morons in the republican party, and the poseurs, hiding their hateful conservatism, in the democratic party, may despise Clinton for his "morally objectionable behavior," especially if that allows them to spit their hatred for his liberalism, are incorrigible. Conservatism, especially of the stupid variety, which it almost invariably is, distinguishes itself by its stubborness, its rock-hard refusal to look at reason rather than prejudice in what they call their thinking, have, long ago, took over the republican party, and their counterparts among democrats, have ruined the democratic party for me, and numerous other past democrats. I'll return to the democratic party, when it actually espouses and defends democracy. The right wing hypocrites and the fake democrats love to call Clinton one of the best "republican" presidents we've ever had. But, in fact, he was as far "left," as any democratic president can have been allowed to be.
This is why so many soft-brained democrats demanded that Obama be president, assuming he'd be "liberal," even though he ran as a conservative, though hardly anyone noticed, since his "color," was demonstrable evidence of his liberalism, as if the likes of Clarence Thomas didn't exist. Hillary Clinton, with ten times the intelligence and seriousness of Obama, was pushed out by the same corporations that are ruining our economies and our oceans, though, argue all you like, she won the "popular vote" against Obama by a thread.