Republicans

Shhh, people – Mitt's Trying to think

Jim Hightower — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams once offered this advice to rookies: "If you don't think too good, don't think too much."

Mitt Romney would do well to take Ted's tip to heart. The GOP presidential front-runner thought he could win the votes of Workaday Joes and Jolenes by touting his experience as a successful businessman. Indeed, Mitt was a sterling success at raking in a quarter-billion dollar fortune for himself as top dog at his Wall Street investment outfit, Bain Capital. But what he didn't think about is that Joe and Jolene might not like the way he got so rich – you see, Romney got his by taking theirs. Through Bain, he took over corporations where thousands of Joes and Jolenes worked, sold off the best chunks of their companies to grab a quick personal profit, eliminated their jobs, and left their companies in bankruptcy.

Romney didn't think this would be exposed so early. But there it is, so he had to think of some way to stop the scathing criticism he's now getting (even from Republicans) about the wealth inequality that rapacious financial hucksters like him have been creating. He thought and thought, and then it came to him: "It's about envy." I'll just say that anyone who questions us one-percenters is just envious of our success.

So, this multimillionaire recently went on national television to wail that he's a victim of "a very envy-oriented" politics of "class warfare." He even went so far as to assert that such criticism of financial barons like him "is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God." But wait, asked the interviewer, isn't it fair for America's hard-hit people to demand a presidential policy debate about the obvious and ever-widening wealth gap dividing our country? To that, without thinking at all, Romney said: "I think it's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms."

Yes, yes, people, go to your rooms and be quiet. You're disturbing Mitt's train of thought.

Rooty-toot-toot, here comes the Newt!

Jim Hightower — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

O joy – the generous gods of political commentary love me!

The poli-gods have delivered a magnificent gift for me: Newt. yes, Newt Gingrich is back! Just three months ago, the presidential campaign of this corrupt, super-bloated ego-on-legs had imploded, and commentators like me lost a sure-fire source of goofy material. Lo and behold, though, as Rick Perry stumbled over his own brain and as Herman Cain fumbled with Libya and several women – the Newt has been ascendant, now topping some polls in the GOP contest.

Explaining this exalted status, the former House Speaker was typically modest: "I don't think there's anybody in the race with [my] background," he bloated. "I have a PhD in American history, I've written 24 books, seven documentary films." Yes, and he's also been fined $300,000 by his own House ethics committee for official corruption.

Speaking of which, after an inglorious exit from Congress, Gingrich parlayed his legislative connections into the lucrative life of a Washington influence peddler, carrying water for such corporate favor-seekers as IBM and Microsoft. Now we learn that he also quietly did chores for mortgage giant Freddie Mac – a firm he had blasted publicly. He even condemned Barack Obama in 2008 for taking campaign donations from the corporation's executives.

He recently tried to dismiss his own involvement with Freddie Mac, saying his role there was short and minor. Really? No. It turns out he worked with them for six years and was paid at least $1.6 million. Nonetheless, filled with his own wondrousness, Newt insists that voters will actually appreciate his work as a hired huckster for corporate interests – "It reminds people that I know a great deal about Washington," he said, cluelessly.

Thank you, political gods – this is going to be fun!

The GOP loves the federal spending it hates

Jim Hightower — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Whatever else you think about tea party-infused Republican leaders in Congress, at least they're consistent in their opposition to big government intrusion in the economy, right?

Absolutely! Unless you count intrusions of taxpayer funds into corporate projects back in their districts.

For example, President Obama's effort to accelerate federal-backed loans to job-creating, green-energy projects has been a target of howling Republican ridicule. In particular, they're now assailing a 2009 loan guarantee to the failed solar-panel maker, Solyndra, holding it up as proof that green energy programs are a waste, driven by raw politics. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell recently sputtered in rage that "The White House fast-tracked a half-billion dollar loan to a politically-connected energy firm."

Fair enough – the Solyndra deal does stink. However, Mitch's tirade would've had a lot more moral punch if it was not for Zap Motors. In 2009, even as the Kentucky senator was loudly deriding Obama's original stimulus program, he was quietly urging Obama's energy secretary to give a quarter-billion-dollar loan guarantee to Zap for a clean energy plant it wanted to build in McConnell's state.

Never mind that Zap Motors had its own shaky financial record, it was (as McConnell now says of Solyndra) "a politically-connected energy firm." Connected directly to him, that is. The senator's robust enthusiasm for Zap came after the corporation hired a lobbyist with close ties to Mitch, having been a frequent financial backer of the senator's campaigns.

The moral of this Republican morality tale is it's okay to hate government spending, except when you love it. Decry federal largesse loudly, but when it serves your own political needs, hug it quietly... but tightly.

CUTTING BACK THE MIDDLE CLASS TO SUBSIDIZE YACHT OWNERS

Jim Hightower — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

With a tsunami of economic pain swamping America's working families, our stalwart national leaders are rushing to provide aid and comfort. Unfortunately, not to workers, but to CEOs, Wall Street speculators, and every pampered plutocrat with a Gucci-clad lobbyist.

At least President Obama recognizes that the workaday majority has been knocked down: "Our economy as a whole," he says (with what passes for keen insight in today's clueless Washington) "just isn't producing nearly enough jobs." Indeed, as one economic analyst put it, "June's employment report [is] awful from start to finish."

So, congressional leaders and the president have been trying to cut a deal – not to launch the bold, can-do jobs program that America urgently needs, but to slash spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other essential programs that most Americans count on.

Adding to this Kafkaesque disconnect from reality, Republican leaders are locking arms (and minds) to prevent any cuts to the insane tax handouts now going to billionaire hedge fund speculators, Big Oil, and multinational corporations that are hiding massive profits in offshore tax havens. While they cut the poor, no tax giveaway to the rich is so revolting that GOP lawmakers refuse to kiss it right on the lips – even the $300 million a year doled out in tax breaks for corporate jets, or the subsidy that Uncle Sam gives to yacht owners. Seriously, jets and yachts! Sen, Jon Kyl whined that Democrats "want ordinary Americans to believe that they will not be affected by the president's tax-increase proposals."

If anyone knows what planet Kyl lives on, please beam the news to him that ordinary Americans don't have corporate jets and yachts. We can laugh, but clowns like Kyl are destroying our middle-class to make America safe for plutocrats.

A LYING HYPOCRITE FOR PRESIDENT

Jim Hightower — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

If you find it necessary to declare on national television that "I am a serious person," you're probably not.

Meet Michele Bachmann. She's currently running for president, but suffering a few credibility problems. One is that she keeps creating her own fanciful version of history. For example, she recently bewildered Iowa voters by asserting that the Founding Fathers had magnanimously included every American in the nation's new government: "It didn't matter the color of [people's] skin," she marveled, "it didn't matter whether they were of a higher class or a lower class, it made no difference." Seriously.

Indeed, Bachmann plowed straight ahead into a fantasy about the Founders' glorious work to free the slaves. She insisted that these wealthy, white, slave-owning men "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." Seriously.

No surprise, then, that the congresswoman also invents her own personal history. While she unsparingly attacks "Washington's spending addiction" – she apparently doesn't own a mirror. It turns out that her husband's counseling clinic has received thousands of dollars in state and federal grants. Oh, she dodges, those tax dollars didn't come to us. Seriously? Yes, she explains, the money went to train our clinic's employees – as though that's not a subsidy for their business. Then there is the $260,000 in subsidies for her family's farm. Oh, she dissembled, that went to my father-in-law, adding that, "I have never gotten a penny from the farm." Seriously? But wait, she's listed as a partner in the farm, and her financial disclosure forms report that, in fact, she has received $105,000 in income from it.

Bachmann says she wants to take government back – and, in all seriousness, it looks like she's already clawing back her piece of it.

THE GOP'S ASSAULT ON MEDICARE

Jim Hightower — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Remember the hoorahs from Republicans just 4 months ago, when House budget chairman Paul Ryan issued the GOP's "bold" plan to slash federal spending? Gosh, how quickly that cheering turned to silence.

That's because the budgetary jewel in Ryan's creation was the elimination of Medicare. He proposed replacing it with a privatized voucher program that would pay only a fraction of what Medicare covers. This turned out to be a spectacularly stupid idea, resulting in angry seniors showing up at one of Ryan's town hall meetings to whack him over the head with his own proposal. The "bold" plan suddenly had a stench worse than week-old road kill, and Republicans are now trying to disown it.

But don't mistake the GOP's sudden squeamishness for meaning that Ryan's Let's-Kill-Medicare effort has gone away. The big stinker is still in the Republican budget and still a core tenet of right-wing orthodoxy. Indeed, all eight of the party's presidential contenders are on record in favor, but not publicizing it.

Mitt Romney says he's "on the same page" with Ryan. Michele Bachmann voted for the Ryan plan and says we need to "wean everybody off" Medicare. Tim Pawlenty waffled, but, when cornered, said that "of course" he's for killing it. Jon Huntsman supposedly the moderate in the race says "I would've voted for it." Herman Cain, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum also are enthusiastically on board. However, in a rare moment of candor, Newt Gingrich called the plan "radical, right-wing social engineering." But he got a public spanking by party dogmatists and now says he would've voted for Ryan's scheme, too.

The GOP intends to make an all-out assault on Medicare in the next Congress, but don't want to campaign on it. So, get in their face – the time to confront them is not after the elections, but now.

DEBT CEILING HYPOCRISY

Jim Hightower — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

"No," shout Republican leaders at President Obama, like pouty two-year olds. "We won't raise the government's statutory debt limit in order to avoid a national default," they cry.

Four whiney GOP congressional leaders – John Boehner and Eric Cantor in the House, Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl in the Senate – insist that it'd be the height of irresponsibility to raise America's debt ceiling without first slashing spending on programs for the poor and middle class, while simultaneously protecting Big Oil and hedge fund billionaires from any increase in the paltry tax rates they pay. What the four pious partisans don't say is that their pose of resolute fiscal responsibility is an entirely new shtick for them – and they're hoping that you won't remember the Bush years.

George W had strutted into office promising to eliminate the $6 trillion federal debt in 10 years. Instead, he rushed America into his budget-sucking Iraq escapade, handed unwarranted tax cuts to corporations and the superrich, and oversaw a devil-may-care deregulation of Wall Street that caused our economy to crash. To cover these achievements, Bush had to get Congress to jack up the federal debt ceiling – not once, but five times in eight years. Far from eliminating the national debt, he expanded it by $4 trillion!

Guess who was side-by-side with him on this joy ride? Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, and Kyl, that's who. Not only did they gleefully vote again and again for Bush's war, tax giveaways to the rich, and coddling of Wall Street greed, but also to keep raising the debt limit. Kyl voted for four of Bush's five debt-ceiling increases, while Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell had a perfect five-for-five record.

These crybabies aren't against debt, they're against Obama – and the games they're playing with the national budget are putting party politics over country.

AND THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE IS: [BLANK]

Jim Hightower — Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Nothing personal, my Republican friends, but – Good God! – is this all there is?

You're barely a year away from choosing your contender for president of the U.S.A., and Donnie Trump is leading your party's polls? He's at the pinnacle because of his non-stop freak show over "birtherism," which is, of course, a top worry among America's struggling middle class majority. Obama tried to quell this squall of silliness by ordering up his actual Hawaiian birth certificate and displaying it publicly. But The Donald, after exclaiming how proud he is of himself for having personally made this nonsense an "issue," then questioned whether the document produced by the president is genuine. "We have to look at it," he said in all seriousness. As Paula Poundstone wittily noted, next the birthers will demand to see the placenta.

Speaking of biological evidence, has anyone run a DNA test on Trump's hair? Just asking.

But he's not the only contender. Here comes Mitt Romney 2011, running furiously against that jackal of Republican liberalism, Mitt Romney 2004. The old version was the one that passed Obamacare in Massachusetts, while the new Romney 2011 says he hates it. Which Mitt fits you?

Meanhile, former Sen. Rick Santorum says he's ready to win the presidency, even though he couldn't even win re-election in Pennsylvania in 2006, in part because he didn't actually seem to live there. And if Sarah Palin just isn't flighty enough for you, Michele Bachmann might be your cup of strange brew. Or Newt, the pompous professor of political poppycock, who says that he was unfaithful to his first two wives because he was driven by excessive love of country. What a giant.

Wait, there's more. Tim "Sleepy" Pawlenty is available... and Mitch Daniels... and Buddy Roemer... and Herman Cain... and gosh, who knows who else might pop up?

GOP HOUSE CHOOSES BIG OIL OVER GRANNY

Jim Hightower — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Republican congressional leaders don't seem to be the quickest bunnies in the litter.

Having taken their blunt budget ax to Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, EPA, NPR, and dozens of other popular and effective programs, they then scampered to save one of the least popular and least effective federal programs on the books: the annual taxpayer subsidy for Big Oil.

As gasoline prices were rising to $4-a-gallon and higher, the House GOP voted unanimously to let the oil giants continue siphoning $4 billion a year out of our public treasury. All 241 of the Republican/tea party House members – with not even one dissenter in the bunch – declared that in this time of a supposed budget "crisis," the neediest among us are not the elderly and the poor, but the little waifs of Big Oil.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil just announced a 69 percent leap in profits this year, while Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and others are enjoying similar jumps in theirs. Guess what percentage of those enormous profits the corporations are likely to pay in taxes? Zilch. Their lobbyists have punched such gaping loopholes in our tax code that they can escape paying anything for the privileges and benefits they get from America. Exxon, for one oily example, had a $19-billion profit in 2009, but not only did it pay exactly zero in federal income taxes, it manipulated the system to get a $156 million rebate from us. Likewise, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips had multibillion-dollar profits that year, paid not a dime in taxes, and also got refunds.

Republican lawmakers had a clear choice in dealing with the deficit. So why did they choose to cut off your granny's health care, while helping these corporate billionaires make off like bandits? I guess it's a matter of who you really love.

TRUMP SHOWS WHAT HE'S MADE OF

Jim Hightower — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Who says America lacks innovations to create new industries these days? Why, in just the past few months, a huge growth industry sprang up from nothing but a novel theory, and it quickly swept across the country. It was a truly simple idea, namely that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.A. and, therefore, is disqualified to be president.

This humble theory gave birth to the "birther movement," whose diehards refuse to accept anything (such as facts) that might discredit their theory. Originally the work of beyond -the- fringe goofballs, it rapidly metastasized into a "truth" propounded daily by right-wing radio yakkers and internet-connected conspiracists. Then it moved inside the GOP – in an orchestrated political stunt, Republicans in at least 13 state legislatures are pushing bills to require presidential candidates to produce their birth certificates. And most recently the birther theory emerged as the Number One national issue fueling Donnie Trump's cockamamie presidential campaign.

How absurd is The Donald? When a fed-up Obama finally shoved his Hawaiian birth certificate in the face of Trump and the whole birther circus, Donnie saw it as validation of his seriousness as a presidential contender. "Today I'm very proud of myself," exclaimed the strangely-coiffed ego who takes pride in being proud of himself every day, no matter how big a jerk he's been. Yessiree, you've got your George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons, Abe Lincolns, and both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelts, but who could (or would) touch Donnie Trump for true presidential greatness?

The Donald says he's still not convinced that Obama's birth certificate is legit. "I want to look at it," he sniffs, thus showing all of America what he's made of: silly putty. Not quite the stuff for the White House, much less Mount Rushmore.