Republican Ideas
Some ideas ARE better than others. Our best information is based on science, but Republicans are often science deniers.
They are, especially since the election of Trump,
habitual liars, almost always wrong. That is also why they cannot govern.
Republicans say they are the party of ideas,
but their bad ideas are the cause of our national dysfunction,
many are lies.. Trump lied thousands of times.
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If Republicans don't like
government, they shouldn't be in it. They are bad at it.
Being authoritarians, they think the market should govern.
The hidden hand is really government by oligarchs (aka Fascism).
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The notion that the market should govern has been the cause of failures
in public health, regulation of pollution,
financial markets, corruption, protection of the commons,
climate devastation. It has also caused distrust of government, the only
way to solve such problems.
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The private sector is always better functioning than the
public sector. No it's not. Decades of experience with healthcare demonstrates the failure of privatization.
Other countries do it better and cheaper in the
public sector. Cuba is rated 39th in healthcare, the US is 37th.
Not much difference between 37 and 39 until you compare the
budgets. Cuba spends a small fraction of the US's budget to get
almost as good a result. Privatization allowed new companies like
Blackwater to go to the 'market' (i.e. government trough) and feed
bountifully... all while building up a praetorian guard. Privatization
efforts for schools has not made improvements. See Diane Ravitch's
book "Reign
of Error".
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cutting taxes will lead to
increased revenue. Except it never
has. Since Trump was elected it is clear that 'tax reform' will be a gift to wealthy donors at the
expense of everyone else. It will be mostly paid for by deficit spending since Republicans were unable
to repeal healthcare or otherwise cut social programs.
Supply siders (Bush Sr called it Voodoo
economics when it was first proposed ) What kind of country goes into
serious debt for the benefit of a wealthy
elite? The Trump tax bill doubled down on this,
actually part of the Republican scam, and a deliberate policy to keep
government small, weak, and dysfunctional.
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Our problems will be solved by economic growth. No. The
planet is being ravaged by overpopulation,
pollution, over consuming commercial
interests and it is being changed irreversibly in the process. The
economic tide does NOT lift all boats. As a result of Republican always regressive policies, it
only lifted the yachts. We should adjust our economic
activity to allow for the continued habitability
of the planet.
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The private market will take care of shortcomings in
healthcare delivery.
While most countries of the
world have health care for all, Americans don't. It was always a bad idea to tie health care coverage to
employment. Job change, sickness, or financial stress can mean
the loss of health insurance, and can frequently lead to
bankruptcy. PBS recently compared Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan,
Britain, and French health care systems and noted that they all
have universal coverage and are much more cost effective than the
US model. Privatization assures that US healthcare will
continue to cost at least twice as much as any other country.
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Deregulation makes the
market work better. Except it caused bank failures, train derailments, pollution,
child labor, workplace safety risks,
a carnival of corporate corruption,
followed by market collapse. The financial sector has grown until it was able
to consolidate media, downsize it, and run
it right into the ground. Journalism has deteriorated until it is
now more informative to read the foreign press. Enron was only the
beginning. The banking industry made ninja loans (no income
verification, no job verification, and no asset verification) which
were known to be bad, then they bundled them up, rated them AAA,
and sold them overseas. Insurance companies like AIG insured these
loans. No question there has been systematic fraud. Then taxpayers
bailed them out. Using the proceeds the banks then lobbied Congress
to avoid any regulation. The banks are even larger and more
concentrated now, so it will likely happen again, usually when Republicans are in office.
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Even student loans were targets for predatory lenders. Because
the financial sector ran rampant, the real part of the economy did
not return the go-go interest rates, and real production moved
offshore leaving behind armies of unemployed or under-employed. The
corrupt companies that enable all this fraud, were too big to fail
and have been rewarded with almost unlimited amounts of taxpayer
dollars. The obscene CEO salaries and bonuses are likely payoffs to
look the other way at corruption. A Republican success story:
socialism for the rich.
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Extreme wealth distribution is not a problem. Markets,
government, democracy, and the general welfare are not in good
condition when there is extreme income
disparity. Markets don't work well because demand is anemic and economic stagnation can result.
Democracy does not work if government is gamed by wealthy
interests. Government is itself dysfunctional when well funded
lobbyists determine its direction. The graduated income tax and the inheritance tax are partial
antidotes, but a strong social safety net can also make for a more civilised
culture. Scandinavian countries are better off than we are in many
respects. Their people are in control of their government. No doubt
their strong unions were helpful in
maintaining strong social programs that include generous sick
leave, universal health care, . The US is one of the most hostile
countries for unions and our social
programs show the result.
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The 'free' market is good for democracy. Look
around. China, a communist totalitarian country, has a vibrant
capitalist economy. Many of the worst dictators, like Pinochet,
were free market advocates. There doesn't seem to be much
disagreement. The US is run by and for well funded
corporate
interests, the Congress is money driven,
and the people have very little to say about it.
Actually, wealth inequality is at the root of many of our problems.
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We cannot afford Social Security because it is
broke No it's not. This, like healthcare coverage,
is a moral issue. We CAN afford to take care of our elderly, sick,
and disabled. We should not compromise on that. As
an added benefit, SS like unemployment compensation
mitigates the impact of an economic downturn. Don't let the
privatizers scam these programs. Be thankful Republicans did not
get their wish to privatize (loot) Social
Security.
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We need
smaller government. This is an excuse for privatization,
a way to plunder tax payer money, and make government functions much less transparent,
and too weak to regulate polluters and others.
Making government smaller and Republican can also made it a lot less
capable. Although an unusual high level of incompetence
contributed, you saw this in New Orleans after Katrina. While Bush rhetoric was about 'freedom' and
'democracy', the bill of rights shrinks but government surveillance programs expanded dramatically. We
now have no fourth amendment rights. The government listens in to anyone's phone calls
in complicity with major communication companies. Watch what you say. The
most successful economies are mixed. Striking a proper balance
between public and private is important, particularly because the
public sector has been downsized so much in the last few years. One
of our problems is our plutocracy now
controls government.
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Bush insisted on weakening the Civil
Service...and that allowed him to pack Federal agencies with
political minders. They are important to the War
on Science because often the science makes
the policy look counterproductive. James Hanson, a NASA climate scientist, was censored in
Republicans corporate motivated campaign to discredit climate
concerns. Trump would like to replace civil service with loyalists.
See Project 2025.
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Countries that use their resources to benefit their people
are communist enemies. Republicans
use the big red scare to strike fear into the people, bust unions, build up the military,
privatize everything, and reward their corporate cronies. Since corporations
actually control the media, and
most of the government, they can cry "socialism"
at any attempt to benefit the public. See CIA.
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We need to remake the middle east into a democracy.
Where, exactly, in the Constitution is there a justification for
that. Turns out that none of the pretexts for the Iraq
war were valid. How'd that work out ? We needed
a new enemy because the Communists were no longer an excuse. Now we
have a new Crusade. Their religion is not like ours. But we are
certain that our 'faith based' schools are educating much better
than their 'faith based' schools. Anyway, we are assured that it
will be an endless war. At Nuremberg
pre-emptive war was deemed a war crime. Who would have predicted
that the US would be guilty of torture, renditions, secret prisons. Although
the Bushies
were keen to start a war (really a power grab), they
couldn't quite find the courage to pay for it. The cost of the war
had to come in the form of 'supplementals'. Rachel Maddow aired a
documentary (2014) which made the case that the war in Iraq was really
for oil. If you factor in the $4 trillion cost of the war (Stiglitz
estimate), what would be the cost of gasoline at the pump ? How good an
idea is "Drill Baby, Drill !" ?
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We are not facing a climate crisis. The Republican war on science is really about
allowing corporations to dump pollutants into the environment, and
about allowing irresponsible plundering of the planet. Religion (and polluters) motivate the Republican the war on science. The message
is: it is not cost effective to save the world so why bother. Armageddon is our destiny
anyway. Guy McPherson
thinks we have already passed the tipping point and that we have only a
few decades left before the planet becomes inhospitable.
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Blame the Victim. Republicans blame immigrants for many of our problems. It
used to be welfare mothers, but with their niggardly welfare program
that is now not an issue. Welfare is only for the corporations that are 'too big to fail'.
These have always been issues for the right wing.
As Steig Larson wrote, the right wing is always racist.
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We need a military that is larger than the rest of the
world's combined. We pay for a military
that is larger than the rest of the world's combined.. That's because the military-industrial complex
has taken over and it is, in reality, a widely dispersed jobs
program, and taxpayer-funded security for oil companies. We have troops
in 146 countries. Looks a lot like an empire
doesn't it ? That's because it is.
One of the characteristics of an empire is its ability to tax
people in remote places. Because the dollar was the reserve
currency, we were able to tax outsiders and they had to hold our
debt because of the power of the currency. That may not last
long.
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The Second Amendment is the most important one of the Bill of Rights. They don't
seem to care about the other Amendments like, say, the fourth which
is totally gone. Behind the scenes, the armament industry lobbies
mightily to be sure that Americans are well furnished with guns.
The combination of social insecurity and a heavily armed population is random acts of violence at a rate that
far exceeds that in the rest of the world. Guns are the leading cause of children's deaths. So police are being
militarized and installed in schools and various other places. We have a new arms race: the people vs the police.
Security ratchets up. Right wing violence and political intimidation increase.
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The President is above the
law is truly an insult to the Constitution
and a violation of Nixon's, Bush's, Trump's oath of office.
If he can create the law all by himself simply by
writing signing statements, we have a tyrant. A strong man
dictator...similar to the ones we have put in place in many
countries of the world.
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Most of the world had a good opinion of the US when Bush took office. He changed that. Gratuitous
wars, secret prisons, renditions, torture,
universal surveillance, and Guantanamo lost the moral high ground and
made us less safe. Trump destroyed it.
Should people be excluded from office because of their beliefs ? Yes.
Election denial, insurrection, fascism, theocrats should be excluded.
Such people remain a majority of the House of Representatives.
Those who think religion is a better way to determine fact than science.
Religious fundamentalists (aka theocrats), climate deniers who don't
think we need to take action to avoid slowly developing catastrophe,
or, since exponential population growth is the major cause of the
climate problem, advocates of unplanned parenthood, election deniers who are enemies of democracy.
Those who think cutting taxes or saving money is more important than safe
infrastructure, that health care for all is not a worthy goal, that
extreme income inequality is consistent with a healthy economy or a
civilized society.
Those who think that money is speech (money corrupts, speech does not),
that corporations are people whose only goal is profit, and that it is
ok for corporate interests to control government (aka fascism.)
Those who ignore human rights, ignore Geneva Conventions, make law
available only to those who can afford it and stop it at the waters
edge (Guantanamo.), secretly implement universal surveillance, ignore
privacy rights, cloak government activity in secret, or want to round
up the underclass and process them out.
Those who think that international law should not be guidance for us.
Globalization requires support of stabilizing global institutions.
Those who think that war is a better way to solve problems than
diplomacy. Expanding the world's largest military has not made us
safer, it has increased personal insecurity. Those who think more
nuclear weapons are a sensible investment.
Any of these would disqualify major Republican candidates.
Murdoch minions, Fox News, Tabloids, or Talk radio usually are strong Trump proponents.
It would be good if we could have a discussion of these Republican
"ideas", but it is unlikely because, with Republican (corporate)
support, media has become more
concentrated. So it no longer tells an honest story. Without good
information there is no democracy. Be
skeptical because you are usually NOT getting good information from
US corporate, mainstream media. The press, like academia, labor unions, civil
service, have all been intimidated or bought out by the plutocracy. Similarly, Election integrity is doubtful. Americans are
not upset. Why ? Because media never questions the mechanism. Anyone that speaks out is marginalized.
Bibliography
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
by Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Erik M. Conway
Merchants of Doubt: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
Arguing With Zombies, Economics, Politics, and the Fight For A Better Future, Paul Krugman
The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Matt Miller
Foxes In The Henhouse, How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland, Steve Jarding and Dave Saunders
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