Puts into perspective the Republican Party's summer theme song, "Do-Nothing Congress." It bears remembering as just one example of the difference Democrats are trying to make in how our country is governed—and evidence that the Republican spin that Congress can't get anything done under Democratic rule is just plain wrong.
There is a list of Republican scandals: Rep. Billy Tauzin getting a lucrative pharmaceutical trade association job after pushing through Congress a bill benefiting the industry, Jack Abramoff buying favors from Republican lawmakers with lavish trip and other gifts, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham inserting money into an appropriations bill for a defense contractor whose owner bundled campaign contributions on his behalf, former Rep. Bob Ney receiving illegal gifts from lobbyists but, though jailed and disgraced, still able to receive his lifetime pension.
Republicans promised ethics reform in 2006, when they replaced their ethically defiant majority leader, Tom DeLay, with the ethically nonchalant John A. Boehner. But they did not deliver. They had to be pushed out of control of Congress in order for a consequential ethics reform bill to get through Congress. The bill now going to the White House is not perfect, of course, but the dark alleys where lobbyists and lawmakers cut their deals will be better illuminated and more regulated—that is, if President Bush signs the bill, which the White House has hinted he may not.
In spite of accomplishments such as this one, conservatives will nonetheless pound that "do-nothing Congress" line relentlessly this month, with the expected result that public approval of Congress, already low, will get even lower. If Republicans can't have their way, it seems, they will wreck the entire governing process if necessary to make sure Democrats don't, either.
The Republican Party should be a wake-up call to all Americans.
The Republicans are responsible for taking a country with balanced budget and a surplus, to a country ravaged by war and debt — a debt with which our grandchildren will find impossible to fulfill in years to come.
Then takings us to a War were a Great controversy emerged when no stockpiles of WMDs were found, leading to accusations that the United States, The present Administration had deliberately inflated intelligence or lied about Iraq's weapons in order to justify an invasion of the country. The Center for Public Integrity asserted President Bush's administration made a total of 935 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States, add some 5,000 Americans killed, 30,568 more wounded or permanently maimed and a 1,255,026 million Iraqis killed or maimed (including a lot of children) and millions of other Iraqis made homeless.
This baleful heritage also leaves a record number of jobless and homeless, right here at home, with the gulf between rich and poor ever widening blaming undocumented Immigrants for most of the our problems.
Three out of four Americans, including large numbers of Republicans, blame President Bush's economic policies for making the country worse off during the last eight years.
Even America’s trade deficit shot up in July to the highest level in 16 months as oil imports hit an all-time high, offsetting strong export growth. The deficit with China climbed to the second highest level on record, rising 16.1 percent to $24.9 billion.
The Commerce Department reported today that the deficit rose by 5.7 percent to $62.2 billion in July, much worse than the $58 billion deficit that Wall Street expected.
With the mortgage crisis with 119 billions of mortgages held directly by financial institutions in the US had gone bad, no one would have noticed outside any specific failures.
The McCain campaign has said it would privatise both institutions after they had been restructured and the credit markets had stabilised.
”McCain has been out there with a hasty ’privatise and shrink’ approach,” Mr Furman told the Financial Times. ”It has been ideologically driven and not sufficiently mindful of some of the public functions that Fannie and Freddie currently perform. The trick is how to disentangle their private and public functions and how to manage the complex task of the transition.
McCain will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatises and eliminates their links to the government.”
Economists say that although the two campaigns have distinct political approaches, they continue to be light on detail. The Obama campaign has been specific about which guiding principles it would apply to the disentanglement of the two institutions. But it has yet to offer detail about what functions the shrunken government-chartered Fannie and Freddie would be permitted to carry out.
At the same time It is no surprise that Americans are feeling very pessimistic about the economy -- with rising gas and oil prices and food prices affecting their pocketbooks. There has been a lack of leadership and a lack of timeliness of leadership, of not being conscious of the magnitude of the American problems. Politicians and Government They don't see the rise in prices. . . . Americans blame the president, along with the oil companies, for not having done enough to stem the tide of rising gas prices. The rising cost of fuel had caused hardship for their families, and the pain appeared to be spread across all income groups but not understanding people the root and cause for being on this hardship situation rather than blame them for making a poor decisions.
Given the facts, it is hard to believe that the Republicans will get away with spinning their obstruction strategy into something that makes Democrats the obstructionists. But it would be dangerous to underestimate a conservative movement that has consistently over the 40 years succeeded in persuading people to buy into nostrums like Ronald Reagan's "government is the problem" even as it hoards more and more government power for its own oligarchic ends.
You want to vote this agenda back into office? C'mon, Let's get real and require a real change. As I always said: In my fight for Equal Justice and Rights; I am not a Republican -I am not a Democrat -I am not an Independent -I am an Mexican American a Human Being.
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