It All Comes Back to Politics

On Thursday, Charleston County Democratic Women hosted three young women who spoke about their greatest concerns.  The talks were informative and inspiring.  And most interesting was that they in fact, intertwined.

Savannah Frierson, Ali Titus, Monica Tanouye

Savannah Frierson spoke to issues of racism, and how they are reinforced in our politics and our lives.  She brought up the drinking water in Flint, and in fact, problems with drinking water on our own Wadmalaw Island.  Environmental problems hit the poor and rural areas first.  Monica Tanouye spoke about the environment, not as a "tree hugger," but as someone who sees our environment as a resource that we need to maintain, in order to maintain our lives on earth and in our communities.  Finally, Ali Titus spoke passionately about obesity and the blame-the-victim mentality that is so prevalent in our society.  She pointed out that the same big corporations that made fortunes selling foods that lead to obesity also share in huge profits from the health problems and dieting regimens caused by obesity.

As the women spoke, and for these days afterwards, I have been thinking about how all these issues relate to one:  capitalism as political power, and political power run amok.

With all the Tea Party talk about reducing the deficit, big agra continues to profit from huge government subsidies:  subsidies to grow sugar and corn, the latter used not as a healthy vegetable but as corn syrup.  Meanwhile, our local farmers struggle against the extreme weather conditions of global climate change with little aid that only comes when those extremes cannot be ignored, as with our October floods.  This means healthy produce grown locally is far more expensive than McDonald's or a bag of cookies.  Note that here in South Carolina food stamps cannot be used at many farms or farmers markets.

With all the light shone on Flint's water crisis, it has become more than apparent that decisions were made to cut corners in a town where the poverty rate is the second highest in the country.  It was easy to do this because Michigan has an "emergency manager" law that allows the governor to appoint someone to run the city, bypassing voters' choices.  And as we all know, the main function of government these days is to cut costs, and it is especially easy to do so when the people are too poor to fight back.

It's all politics, and politics has gotten so convoluted that the good guys have to run the same cons as the bad guys.

Take Wadmalaw Island, where I live.  As Savannah spoke Thursday night, someone near me mumbled that that wasn't true that Wadmalaw had bad water.  In fact, it is not true for me, because I live in a development that is only about 25 years old.  A couple of years ago, based on my low income, I even qualified for a new well, which was dug last week.  I know that there were also people who qualified that had bad wells that were fifty years old.

But suppose you don't qualify?  Suppose you work hard enough to fall just above the federal poverty line?  The assumption is that you can pay that $6,000 for the new well.  And whatever other problems there are that need to be corrected for the water to be potable.  Impossible for so many.

And yet, I am fortunate that I qualified for that federal grant.  I imagine I can thank Democrats like US Representative Jim Clyburn, the late Senator Clementa Pinckney and Representative Robert L. Brown.  I imagine County Councilwoman Anna Johnson pulled some strings as well.  There has to be a reason, in fact, that while South Carolina skinflints in the Statehouse refuse to raise the gas tax to repair bad roads, the two main roads on Wadmalaw have been repaved twice in the seventeen years I have lived here.

But for republican strongholds, politics is all about money and influence.  And for wealthy donors, politicians will spend whatever of our tax dollars it takes to keep them happy.  If the air or water gets bad where they are, if a hurricane blows their home away, they move to higher ground, build a bigger newer home with the insurance money.

Meanwhile, the working poor get made promises of more jobs while being sidetracked with messages of refugee and immigrant invasions.  The poor, a high percentage minority, are victimized by government decisions to cut what little aid they get, and by inadequate services.  When you aren't allowed time off from work, or you don't have a car, when getting to a supermarket is a hurtle, not only do you not get out to vote, you don't really see that it makes a difference.

For those who are living in the shaky middle class, they live with financial insecurity that makes them vulnerable to the fearmongers that convince them that the EPA, immigrants and unions will cost them their livelihood.  Financial insecurity for the right wing is political gold.

I would like very much to invite our three speakers back.  I would like for them to maybe be a panel that addresses political solutions to the huge problems that they posed to us.  I would like to keep this conversation going.

And I want to thank them for opening it up for us.  

A Heavy Heart

We liberals continue to be defeated by our own in the Democratic Party.  We are unable to stand up for those who we say we represent.

Harry Reid had not only the ability to change the course of the Senate when he had the power to stop the silent filibuster, he had the backing of the American people.  Instead, he made a deal with Mitch McConnell.  Of course, McConnell interpreted the "deal" as Reid backing down, and the Senate republicans continue to batter us -- the American people -- with impunity.

And then there are the Democrats who have never found a cause that is worth standing together on.

Health care?  Gun control?  Taxation?  Whether it's closing loopholes for pharmaceutical companies, gun shows or Exxon Mobil, you will always find a Democrat willing to stand up for the powerful.

There are always good reasons, too.  Mostly, it has to do with risking losing the next election.  This is why the big donors give to both parties.  And why the right wing and fat cats have been able to pick off any liberal that is willing to take a stand against the powerful.

If only.  If only we had the courage of our convictions that the right wing of the Republican Party has.  If we had people that care about the poor, the disenfranchised, those who are unable to fight with millions of dollars and highly paid lobbyists, like for example, elected Democrats, we would be able to get our country back on the right track.

Which leads to the subject of sequestration.  Let's not even talk about whatever possessed Obama to buy into this nonsense.  It sounded reasonable at the time, but in retrospect, we know we are dealing with unreasonable people.  While the poor and the sick are being denied services, the Tea Partiers in our Congress are taking victory laps.  They alone have saved us from our deficit.  And, it turns out, done it without ever having to inconvenience the wealthy and powerful.

It shamed me that our Congressional "leaders" voted to override the cuts to air traffic control in order to cater to those with the clout to be heard.  Oh, and themselves.  And shame on the Democrats who voted in large numbers to undermine the little bit of power the sequestration actually had.

What's it going to take for us to stop spiraling into self-absorbed obscurity?  Money only being spent to make more money for those who already have it; cutting jobs and government services, trains and teachers, bridges and health care.  Strangling regulators who have not in decades had the power to protect us from bad food, bad water, bad air, unsafe airplanes, Wall Street and corporate fraud.  Defunding research that would lead to better lives for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

And while the right wing is taking that victory lap, the moderates are clutching tightly to their own purses afraid of losing their own job security.

So today I am saddened.  Yet I hope there will be a liberal backlash.  I imagine that like the courageous fast food workers, more of the weak in our country will risk everything to stand up to the powerful.  Perhaps mayors and moms will become as powerful an influence on our legislators as the NRA.  And maybe the real small business folks who have been fooled by the right wing into thinking they are being represented will realize that they have been sold out to corporate power.

Maybe President Obama will find his spine on all these issues, as he seems to have done with gun control.

But the bottom line really is -- and the Republican right wing know this -- if we don't care enough to stand together, we are lost.