Boehner's Jobs Avoiding House

You might be wondering why HR 3 has nothing to do with creating jobs.  I would have been confused about this just a short while ago.  But in a horror-movie kind of way, the more I see it, the more inevitable the right-wing strategy becomes.


Just as the republic party screamed about reducing the deficit, except when they were screaming about cutting taxes for the wealthy, and about abolishing the estate tax so that people who did not earn the wealth of the wealthiest .05 percent get to keep every penny.  Just as those right-wing critics who attacked Obama for the Wall Street bailout fight him with every breath over every proposed reform of Wall Street.  Just as Boehner and McConnell and friends insist on stretching the poor and middle classes ever further beyond the ablity to live, much less live well, while insisting on huge corporate entitlements for oil, pharmaceutical, insurance, banking industries.


And before their less well-healed constituents can say, "Wait just a minute, what about the deficit?", in comes the vote to repeal Obamacare, in which the republic powers that be just plain old refuse to believe the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's finding that it would save rather than waste government money.  Because the health care "debate" in the summer of 2009 brought so much fear and confusion to the issue, it will continue to be a popular song in the republic playlist.


Which has to be followed by an anti-abortion bill.  Again, no fan of the facts, it creates the falsehood that abortion is a scourge of the country, made common by government funding (which in fact does not exist).  Not relevant of course, that abortion has been on the decline, affecting less than 20 out of 1,000 women.  We need to keep beating this dead horse, because it fuels the fears and anger of the right-wing contituency.  Without ever addressing the fact that inadequate income, housing, health and education are the primary factors in unwanted pregnancies, not the availability of abortion services.


So why this strategy?  First of all, fanning the flames on social issues, in other words, that the sins of the poor are what are bringing down the country, always take attention away from the sins of the wealthy.  And, most important, it is the wealthy that pay for protection from Congress.


As long as we have a Supreme Court that gives corporations the rights of individuals without the responsibility, as long as lobbyists are payed grand salaries to deliver grand promises to our congress, until we elect an honest politician to fight for campaign finance reform AFTER the election, we will continue to see the party of wealth and power attack the freedom and wellbeing of the poor and powerless.  It is an easy fight to manipulate, and it seems to win every time.