On the Contrary

Or you could title this, nothing really ever changes.  I am sitting in my chair with my knee up (ruptured Patellar Tendon) listening to NPR (National Public Radio) and I hear Carly Fiorina, who is going to challenge Barbra Boxer for the California Senate seat, say,  “We need to cut taxes and reduce the deficit.  We know how to balance our own budgets so why can’t Washington.”  In another piece I hear a Republican Strategist tell NPR that the lesson from the election is that the Democrats need to be more bipartisan and that John Boehner will work with the Democrats on a health care bill.  Both of these statements are beyond outrageous.

Let’s start with Carly.  She had a disastrous run at HP as CEO where she was widely criticized for mismanagement and her bullying leadership of one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies and then was ousted to return the company (HP) to profitability. (CNN)  Then she became an advisor for economic policy for John McCain, but her ego got out of control when she told two separate interviewers that neither member of the Republican ticket would be capable of running a company.  (Huffington Post)  This would be the woman you want to send to Congress to get things done?  She would be just one more of the dinosaurs up there.

But let’s look at her standard conservative mantra of cutting taxes and reducing the deficit.  Now unless I am confused, cutting taxes reduces cash flow into the treasury, i.e. increases the deficit. Remember, that is what George did. Oh, I forgot, flow down.  Once taxes are lower, then revenue flows into the Treasury.  Problem with that is it has never happened and our tax rate on the rich is the lowest it has been since 1931 and the recessions continues.  But wait.  She will cut spending by removing waste.  Well name names sweetheart and you will find that one person’s waste is another person’s lifeline.  The biggest wasteful program is military spending and I’ll bet that is not on your chopping block.  And just what are you going to do about all that infrastructure spending that we have put off for years and now needs major investment.  As I like to say the devil is in the details.  So if we fall for this again as another example of conservative free ride-ism, we deserve to slowly fade as a great country. She would be a disastrous for California and the nation.  If this stuff doesn’t sound like the Republicans in 2000, we really do have memory failure.

Now for the bipartisan approach, are we that dumb?  The lesson here is that bipartisan to Republican means the Republican way.  After the Stimulus bill, the health care bill, the climate bill, what we should have learned is that they don’t want to play unless it is their rules.  But even more relevant is that their solutions are what we have been doing and as a result we are in a mess.  So we should bring them into the process and water down real change so that nothing ever changes? The Republican Party is the party of corporations and status quo.  The status quo is destroying us.  So lets bring them back into the process so we can do more failed things harder?

I don’t know, but if these messages that these Republicans are selling catch on, we are truly doomed as a nation who cannot learn from their mistakes.  There are no easy solutions to our problems and they are going to take sacrifice from all of us to build a better tomorrow.  Buying into the conservative shtick is just another attempt at denial of our basic problems and how we got here.  It is really time to put these people and their ideas where they belong, on the junk heap.