Inside the Beltway, it's
evident daily. The political news website Capitol Hill Blue says "Nobody's
life, liberty or property is safe while Congress is in session or the
White House is occupied."
Electoral politics also highlights its clear and present danger. It
involves rogue politicians competing to be part of Washington's
corrupted duopoly run system - especially the top job as president.
Both sides support corporate interests, imperial wars, and the
divine right of capital to exploit workers, plunder resources,
control markets, and rule unchallenged. Beneficial social change,
independent voices, and electoral democracy lose out under a rigged
system against them.
Democracy in America's shear fantasy. Money power controls
everything. Candidates are pre-selected. Privatized elections assure
corporate favorites win. Democrats are interchangeable with
Republicans. Differences between them are minor, and none whatever
on what matters most.
Consider the unpalatable 2012 presidential options. Voters get to
choose between a lawless, crime boss, militarist, pro-war,
anti-populist president, and a rogue's gallery of Republican
aspirants, looking more like a police lineup than legitimate
candidates for any office, let alone the nation's highest.
By comparison, Ron Paul looks good, but his platform shows
otherwise. He wants social America abolished. He believes
government's only role is to respect, protect, and defend personal
liberties.
In other words, government's responsibility for universal
healthcare, education, and other essential services is incompatible
with personal freedom. Everyone should be on their own to provide
them, even though millions, through no fault of their own, can't.
Yet he's the best of the lot. Obama proved what loyal supporters
thought impossible. On domestic and foreign issues, he's governed to
the right of George Bush. He does it lawlessly for the monied
interests that own him.
He’s waging multiple imperial wars, plans others, looted the
nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, consigned growing millions to
impoverishment without jobs, enough income, or futures, illegally
spies on Americans more aggressively than Bush, and
institutionalized tyranny to target dissenters challenging political
corruption, corporate crooks, or abuse of power lawlessness.
He also promotes regime change in Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Lebanon,
and other independent states. In addition, he targets Russia’s
military strength and China’s growing economic might. At the same
time, he supports ruthless, corrupt tyrants, and Israel's worst
crimes.
After its devastating earthquake, he militarized and occupied Haiti.
He belligerently ousted Honduran President Manual Zelaya and Libya's
Gaddafi. He presides over a bogus democracy under a homeland police
state apparatus.
He's waging class war against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
public and private pensions, as well as other New Deal and Great
Society gains. He wants more aggressive media control than Nixon,
according to former White House correspondent Helen Thomas.
He imposed austerity when vital stimulus is needed and real
unemployment approaches 23%. He promotes "shared sacrifice" to force
ordinary people to sacrifice so America's super-rich can share.
He authorized indefinitely detaining anyone called a national
security threat without charge (including US citizens). He continues
Bush's rendition and torture policies. He authorized state-sponsored
assassinations, including US citizens considered a national security
threats, whether or not true.
He deployed Special Forces death squads covertly to 120 or more
countries. They're in Syria, Iran, and other independent states
working for regime change.
He destroyed hard won labor rights, and wants education commodified
as another business profit center. He wages war on whistleblowers,
dissenters, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and environmental and animal
rights activists called terrorists.
No matter. He'll likely get another four years to do more damage and
complete unfinished business, at the expense of growing millions
enduring poverty, homelessness, hunger, and despair in the world's
richest country. He's thrown them overboard to serve wealth and
power interests alone.
Republicans On the Issues
The web site page on Mitt Romney’s skeleton closet says other
politicians call him “a phony, two-faced, flip-flopping weasel.”
Mitt Romney calls himself "the ideal" Tea Party candidate because
his views replicate theirs. Its platform calls for tax cuts for the
rich, eliminating the national debt at the expense of wrecking the
economy, ending deficit spending, free, not fair, market capitalism,
and supporting states rights
It also wants all federal, state and local social spending ended. It
wants people freed to do what they please lawfully, no matter the
consequences for others. It supports staying independent from
federal oversight or constraints.
Overall, it stresses fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited
government, free (not fair) markets, and everyone on their own sink
or swim.
Romney wants less taxes, government spending, regulation, and
federal programs. He wants more trade, energy production, local
power, human capital and labor flexibility (code language for
destroying worker rights). He calls it "a plan to get America back
to work."
He wants Obamacare replaced with extremist "market-based reforms."
He says America "faces a bewildering array of threats and
opportunities." He calls "national security" the nation's "unifying
thread."
"When America is strong, the world is safer." Only US power can
"ensure security and prosperity," he claims. Again, no explanation's
given or threats explained at a time the nation has none except ones
it invents.
Earlier he said we "can and will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons." He called for military action "in the nature of blockade
or a bombardment or surgical strikes or one kind or another."
More recently he called Iranian leaders intolerant, repressive,
state sponsors of terrorism. He also accused them of developing
nuclear weapons, despite the latest March 2011 US intelligence
assessment and IAEA inspectors concluding the opposite.
He called for diplomatic isolation and crippling sanctions,
including denying Iran access to foreign capital and investment. He
also supports divesting from companies supporting the Islamic
Republic, and says "the military option is very real and very
credible."
On Syria, he said "it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end. And
we should use covert activity" and sanctions because he's "an ally
of Iran."
His energy program calls for drill, drill, drill. He says everything
government does business does better so let it. He wants China
sanctioned for alleged unfair trade practices. He wants more defense
spending to advance America's imperium.
He wants workers denied union representation. He's pro-family,
pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Israel, pro-war, pro-corporate, and entirely
anti-populist. He and Obama support the same hard-right agenda.
Virtually nothing distinguishes one from the other on issues
mattering most.
Newt Gingrich's web site features his "21st Century Contract with
America." It partly reinvents Speaker Gingrich's 1994 Contract on
America. It set a hard-right agenda for the 104th Congress' first
100 days.
Now he's at it again. He favors pro-business policies, including tax
cuts for the rich, eliminating the capital gains tax, a 15% flat
tax, an energy agenda favoring Big Oil, a balanced budget, and
abolishing social America to free up more resources for business and
imperial wars.
He calls it "keep(ing) Americans safe." Unexplained was the nation's
only enemies are ones invented to ravage the world one country at a
time or in multiples.
Yet Gingrich claims we're "in a long war against radical Islamism, a
belief system adhered to by a small minority of Muslims but
nonetheless a powerful and organized ideology within Islamic thought
that is totally incompatible with the modern world."
A notorious Islamophobe/racist, he supports "a unified grand
strategy for defeating radical Islamism." He wants imperial wars and
occupations continued to free the world for capital, no matter the
body count to achieve it.
Like Romney, he supports low taxes, deregulation, privatizing basic
services like healthcare and education, and whatever else favors
wealth and power.
His "Day One Plan" includes:
drill now, pay later;
eliminating Obama's bureaucratic appointments not accountable to
Congress;
stopping abortion funding, and women's right to get one;
supporting Jerusalem as Israel's capital despite its legal
designation as an international city under UN trusteeship most
countries respect;
ending federal immigration lawsuits against racist state laws like
Arizona's; and
supporting the environmentally destructive Keystone XL Pipeline.
Gingrich is also scandal-plagued. He's a serial adulterer with
younger women when two former wives were seriously ill. During his
term as Speaker, he also faced 84 ethics charges. Pressure got most
dropped. One stuck when an ethics panel found him "repeatedly
violat(ing) one rule by using a political consultant to develop the
Republican legislative agenda."
The House reprimanded him by a 395 - 28 vote, and ordered him to
repay $300,000 in investigative charges. It was the first time a
speaker was ever disciplined for ethics violations.
The House Ethics committee also said inaccurate information Gingrich
supplied to investigators represented "intentional or....reckless"
disregard for House rules.
The Ethics Committee's Special Counsel James M. Cole said he
violated federal tax law. He also lied to the ethics panel to force
the committee to dismiss charges against him.
The committee didn't agree that tax law was violated. It let the IRS
decide. In 1999, it cleared organizations connected with the
"Renewing American Civilization" courses under investigation for
possible tax violations. As a result, Gingrich got off scot-free,
despite committing what the ethics committee called 84 violations.
Later, he earned $1.6 million lobbying secretly for Freddie Mac
while attacking it publicly. A web site covering scandals in the
closets of presidential candidates said this about him:
"I've researched a lot of polticians' scandals over the years. Some
are lying, adulterious lechers (Clinton). Some are money-grubbing
and corrupt (Santorum). Some are vindictive and dangerously
authoritarian (Giuliani)."
"Some are incredibly phony and change with the wind (Romney). Some
are draft dodgers (actually, most of them are). But in 17 years,
only one man has been able to combine every one of these moral
failings into one, super-humanly despicable candidate: Newt
Gingrich."
Imagine if he ends up president. Though unlikely, his rogue
"credentials," in fact, qualify him for the job only miscreants or
candidates likely to govern like one can hold.
Rick Santorum served lawlessly in the Senate like Gingrich did in
the House. George Lakoff believes his agenda involves much more than
being president. It's about advancing "a radical conservative future
for America."
He wants to continue decades of right-wing politics and harden them.
No matter who's president, he'll succeed "unless Democrats
dramatically change their communication strategy" effectively.
Power isn't limited to becoming president. It's also about
controlling Congress, state and local governments at all levels down
to school boards.
Santorum wants the top job. Getting it will make him maestro of
misery. His web site asks "Why Rick? saying:
He "became one of the most successful government reformers in our
history, taking on Washington's powerful special interests from the
moment he arrived in our nation's Capitol."
Saying it gives chutzpah new meaning, but he added more about
"maintain(ing) fiscal sanity," supporting a balanced budget,
so-called responsible reforms, leading the fight against America's
threats, taking credit for being "one of the most conservative
senators in Pennsylvania's history, and much more."
He ended saying he's "most proud of his role as a husband and
father" of seven children. How that qualifies him for president
wasn't explained.
On the issues, he says here's "where I stand," citing the following:
His "first 100 days economic freedom agenda" includes:
approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, no responsible leader would
allow;
eliminating all anti-business regulations;
cutting $5 trillion over five years, virtually entirely targeting
vital domestic programs, while at the same time supporting annual
defense spending increases, as well as pro-business tax cuts and
other generous benefits;
replacing Obamacare with entirely free-wheeling corporate-run
healthcare to do what they please and charge what they wish;
balancing the budget on the backs of America's most vulnerable by
eliminating vital programs they need;
cutting taxes for corporate America and super-rich elites;
supporting one-sided unfair "free trade" agreements, benefitting US
corporations at the expense of trading partners;
reforming entitlements by ending them; and
reviving housing by letting corporate crooks game the system freely
for maximum profits.
He also promises "no more leading from behind for America," saying:
He'll support America's global interests, including its terror war
on humanity, vilifying Islam for political advantage, supporting
Israel's worst crimes, and replacing independent regimes with
pro-Western ones.
"It is time that America stop leading from behind and stand for
freedom once again. Pretending that this battle isn't raging will
not protect our families and our interests, nor will it strengthen
our allies; it will only diminish our nation, increase our risk and
grow our security challenge."
"Stand for freedom," he added by ravaging the world one country at a
time, and leaving a trail of mass deaths, destruction, and human
misery behind.
Santorum combines racism, ignorance, militancy, and
pro-corporate/pro-war extremism. His agenda threatens humanity.
He'll make America more than ever unfair, unstable, insecure, and
unsafe.
Like Romney, Gingrich, and Obama, imagine America in his hands. All
of them advocate similar destructive agendas. Ordinary people will
be harmed most.
The Santorum's Skeleton Closet site calls him "one of the most
corrupt politicians in America." The clean government group CREW
twice named him one of the nation's three most corrupt senators.
He bragged how he steered millions of earmark dollars to lobbyist
American Continental Group clients. They paid him handsomely for
services rendered. So did Consol Energy and Universal Health Service
(UHS) for other corrupt practices.
In fact, UHS paid him $395,000 for "insights" after he left the
Senate and appointed him to its board. In 1995, he began his Senate
tenure as one of its least well-off members. When he left in 2007,
he bought a $2 million Great Falls, VA home.
As part of Tom Delay's "K-Street project," he filled lobbying groups
with Republican loyalists. In return, he earned $500,000, more than
any other federal official. He got rich by lying, cheating, and
betraying loyal constituents who elected him.
His public statements openly display racism, contempt for the poor
and disadvantage, attacking high-achiever women as radical
feminists, and numerous other outrageous comments most people
wouldn't think, let alone say.
Imagine what's ahead if he's president. Imagine it under Romney,
Gingrich or Obama.
Given the post-9/11 path followed, the worst is yet to come
domestically and abroad unless grassroots rage stops it.
If wanting better futures and imperial wars stopped aren't worth
fighting for, what is? If not now, when? If not us, who? If that's
not important enough, what is?
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to
cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network
Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.
All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/
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