Not a fan of Nader since 2000 but this article puts him back up in my book. GREAT essay and LOL lines that ring true. :applause:
from nader.org
In The Public Interest
Institutional Insanity By Ralph Nader 12/6/10
If there was a mental health hospital for institutions the Republican Party and
its top leaders would be admissible as clinically insane. Their bizarre
wackopedia seems to contain no discernible boundaries. Repeatedly, these
corporate supplicants oppose any measure, any regulation, any legislation that
will directly help workers, consumers, the environment, small taxpayers and even
investor-shareholders.
There are some exceptions. Since these Republican politicians eat, some did vote
for the long-delayed food safety bill last week so that e-coli does not enter
their intestines to disrupt the drivel drooling from their daily repertoire.
The Republicans get away with countless absurdities for at least two reasons.
One is that their nominal opponents are the spineless, clueless, gutless
Democrats (with a few notable exceptions) who present themselves as uncertain
waverers, dialing for the same corporate dollars as the Republicans chase. The
other is the political reporters who dwell on questions directed toward tactics
and horseraces that the dimmest of Republicans can handle easily.
Take the evasive next Speaker of the House, Ohio Republican John Boehner. I’ve
lost count of the times he said the recent health care law would "kill jobs in
America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our
country." I don’t recall one reporter asking him to be specific on these claims.
Instead, the questions focused on Capitol Hill timing and tactics.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, makes similar declarations
such as: “I’ve said over and over again, you don’t raise taxes in a recession.”
Really? Of all previous presidents, only Only George W. Bush did not raise taxes
but actually reduced them in wartime. But don’t expect a reporter to ask
McConnell whether he thinks the children and grandchildren should be sent the
bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Or if he thinks repealing the Bush tax
cuts on the rich would help reduce the deficit.
How many times have you heard the Republicans demand cutting the national
deficit? Probably as often as they did nothing when George W. Bush piled up
trillions of dollars in red ink. Now that Obama is president, they rarely get
specific about just how they are going to do this, other than jumping on
Medicare (where corporate fraud is indeed rampant and untreated by them) or
social security which is solvent for another 30 years.
For most Republicans, it is never about cutting the bloated military
budget—ridden with corporate crime and fraud and burdened with massive
redundancies that keep the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower
warned about deep in profitable government contracts.
Nor do the Republicans go after the corporate welfare budget—the hundreds of
billions of dollars per year of subsidies, giveaways and handouts to domestic
and even foreign corporations. Except for Ron Paul and a very few others, that
is. (See:
http://www.taxpayers.org and
http://www.goodjobsfirst.org)
Another assertion made in this year’s mid-term elections by Republican
candidates for Congress all over the country is that: “Government does not
create jobs, only the private sector does.” Let’s see. Government not only
creates jobs, taxpayers have paid trillions of dollars for research, development
and tax credits that are given over to build entire industries. These include
the semi-conductor, computer, aerospace, pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device
and containerization industries, to name a few.
The Pentagon created the job-producing Internet, for example. When the
government funds public works or expands the armed forces, millions of jobs are
created.
Will there be one reporter who challenges this Republican nonsense, often
expressed in press interviews on cell phones while driving on highways in cars
with seat belts and air bags either based on taxpayer-funded research, directly
paid for, or regulated into being through the government?
Mute Democrats and mindless reporters make insane Republicans possible. Bringing
these cruel descendants of Lincoln’s Party down their ladder of generalities is
to become concrete, to give substantiating examples that will either show that
they have no clothes or that they prefer mink.
The American people deserve to have reporters ask one question again and again:
“Senator, Representative, Governor, President, would you be specific, give
examples and cite your sources for your general assertions?”
For instance, especially Republicans regularly roar their demand for “tort
reform.” A reporter could ask for clarification such as: “Sir, do you mean by
‘tort reform’ giving more access to the courts to millions of excluded Americans
who get nothing for injuries and illnesses recklessly caused by manufacturers,
hospitals, and other wrongdoers, or do you mean further restricting the law
designed to afford these people compensation for their harms? (See:
http://www.centerjd.org)
The same demand for concreteness can be directed to the dittoheads who cry out
against “over-regulation.” Where? Over Wall Street? For health and safety
requirements that are either weak when issued, technically obsolete or rarely
enforced? (See:
http://www.progressivereform.org)
Bringing these well-greased pontificators down their abstraction ladder to where
people live, work, overpay, bleed and suffer is a major step forward so the
sovereignty of the people can begin exercising itself.
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