A LIBERAL VIEW OF THINGS: Life in the world of Speaker Boehner
Life is different in Boehnerville. It’s much simpler there.
There, job-creators get all the rewards, but job-performers, not so much. There, opportunity is everything; acting on opportunity, no meaning.
In Boehnerville, a stage full of musical instruments but no musicians suffices for a symphony orchestra. In Boehnerville, a fine collection of recipes exists, but with no chef it suffices as a Five-Star restaurant. There, an array of neighborhood schools exists, but with no teachers. This suffices for a kindergarten-12th grade educational system. There, a fine assortment of firefighting equipment but no firefighters suffices for a fire department. There, a state-of-the-art hospital but no doctors and nurses suffices for adequate medical care.
Yes, indeed, life is really much simpler in Boehnerville, but if we continue to listen to certain political voices, we can bring life, as it is in Boehnerville, to Anywhere, U.S.A: life where employers get all the rewards for jobs created and employees few of the rewards for jobs performed if they’re asked to perform at all.
The above idea and some examples are credited to a friend and colleague. We have contended for some time the fraud being foisted on the American people by the reckless and anti-citizen (never mind the middle class) policies of this Congress is a result of the duality that operates both major parties.
On the one hand you have the super rich, big business and banking who buy as many politicians as they can. On the other hand you have the tea party that keeps pounding the empty drum of their ignorance and hate for anything they don’t understand as they scare the mainstream Republicans.
The question, “Where were the deficit hawks when the Bush II administrations eschewed all pretense about fair and balanced economics and went hell-bent into colossal debt?” has been asked hundreds of times with almost the same number of answers.
The most obvious answer centers on the lack of real leadership in the Republican caucus. Similar to the Democrat’s problems with coherent policy and leadership, the Republicans have succumbed to perhaps the most scurrilous faction since the “plug uglies” before the Civil War.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was on the brink of a deal with President Barack Obama when U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the tea party caddy, intimidated the process such that Ohio John was left using such catchy phrases as “negotiating with this White House is like trying to pin Jell-O to a wall." Or, something equally inane about moving goal posts.
Regardless of Boehner’s poetic challenges, the point is he lets the tea party wag his dog. The cynical view of this situation clearly favors those who are "quietly” taking our capital and our jobs to the far reaches of the planet and leaving the middle classes scuffling for the leftovers. This is all in the name of fiscal “restraint," mind you.
Recent college graduates have never had this much trouble finding a job associated with their degree since the Great Depression.
The middle classes have not had this much trouble making ends meet or been at this level of food and shelter insecurity since the Great Depression. Never before has the economic gap between the rich and everybody else been this wide. While that gap continues to grow, research shows it began to increase its size about the time the Bush II tax cuts helped destroy fiscal responsibility. The gap grew as Wall Street and the banks were deregulated, allowing the greed merchants to vastly increase investor wealth while selling bad loans a few times and collecting on the margins. The gap grew when the Bush II administration violated one of its own talking points about competition and gave the drug companies guaranteed profits for not only themselves but the health-care insurance companies as well.
These policies coupled with the lethargy and ignorance of the electorate allowed the building of Boehnerville to proceed apace. Well, take a good look. The ivory towers in the middle of town belong to John’s country club pals.
The crumbling hovels interspersed between collapsed bridges, roads with potholes and decrepit schools belong to what used to be the middle class. The tarpaper shacks and the refrigerator cartons are where the poor live, just as they always have. Welcome to the future.
Turner is a retired teacher and industrial engineer who lives near Marble Falls. He is an independent columnist, not a staff member, and his views do not necessarily reflect those of The Tribune or its parent company. "The Voter’s Guide to National Salvation" is a newly published e-book from Turner. You can find it at www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks. He can be reached by email at vtgolf@zeecon.com.