I hate politics. That's a sad commentary coming from one with a degree in Political science. I mean, the end of Dick Nixon's presidency in 1974 was just the end of a long depressing period, part of which I managed to spend living in D.C. as a disillusioned college student. So I tried to lay off, ignoring most of it and voting for every losing presidential candidate until Bill Clinton's second term (OK; in all honesty, I missed voting entirely in 1992 because I was traveling.). I really hated the Reagan-Bush years.
I spent the end of the Bush I administration working with the poor in Akron, Ohio. I held a position as the coordinating attorney for the three county pro bono projects administered from the offices of Western Reserve Legal Services. I also spent that time at war with our funding source - the Legal Services Corporation. [LSC was enacted under Nixon almost as a follow-up to the Johnson administration's groundbreaking civil rights legislation. It was a good thing to do and it was the right thing to do. By the time Ron Reagan rolled into D.C., poor people were making some actual headway in securing the legal rights they could not usually afford to pay out of their pockets. It was harder to simply evict by changing locks and it was harder to cut off their benefits with the misguided stroke of a pen because legal services attorneys were there to see that things were done properly instead of at the simple behest of those who had, or held, the cash.] My office was perpetually under investigation by the LSC to find evidence that we were abusing the money entrusted to us to do our job. The short term result was that many programs were put 'on probation' or had their funding suspended for transgressions of the endlessly-changing requirements. Long term, Reagan and Bush were trying to abolish the LSC entirely, so every anecdotal bit of 'evidence' could be fed to Congress. For a couple years, I played their silly games. Finally fed up with it all, I did a simple cost-benefit analysis. What I found was that, for the single year studied, we had referred over 350 cases that averaged ten hours of legal work per case. That's over $350,000 worth of legal services, very conservatively valued at $100/hour for attorney time. That was on a $62,000 budget. The LSC 'monitors' (actually, a more accurate term is 'pecksniffs' - look it up) were amazed. Extrapolating that over the 4½ years I was there, this single year's benefit was still $71,000 over what had been spent - and we did hundreds of referrals every year. In the end, it was clear to me that Republicans hate poor people. They want to disenfranchise them, take away their dignity and their few remaining human rights, objectify them, demonize them, and make them disappear. But this doesn't prevent the Repubs from putting on a dog-and-pony show to use them. As long as poor people still get one vote each, they have more votes than Georgia Pacific, General Electric, AIG, Citibank, and Exxon, combined. That's a real sticking point with business owners. They think their artificial beings (corporations) should get to vote, too.
The big shove to the right, by the fanatical splinter groups who regarded Reagan as some kind of god, made the Republican party completely immoderate, to the consternation of its most reasonable members. Those members lost most of their voice then and it hasn't gotten better since. After the brief and somewhat embarrassing (but actually harmless) respite of the Clinton administration, when The Shrub came along, I was well nigh furious at this. First, Bush underhandedly torpedoed John McCain (the last Republican I might have supported), then stole an election, then was the lucky recipient of the largest terrorist attack on US soil ever, and proceeded to ruin the economy, but fell short of stripping everyone of all human rights. He was too moderate for the right in that regard. Apparently, so was John McCain who not only reinvented himself as George Bush II (with actual military service) but made the most stupendously stupid vice presidential pick since Thomas Jefferson ended up with Aaron Burr. With no clear winners in sight, but one clear loser, the result was obvious.
What was not so obvious was how remarkably a Democratic majority and executive could fail so miserably to actually accomplish anything. I mean, of the clearly delineated goals set forth in the election campaign, we have only health care insurance reform. We are still at war (having moved the major conflict a few hundred miles northeast) and we still have prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Nothing else to show for this but frantic and feeble attempts at damage control for the idiotic financial transgressions of the previous administration. "I am disappoint." [OK; after I wrote that paragraph, Osama bin Laden got snuffed, which is very cool of Obama. Still, there's more to be done - somehow.]
As punishment, we (as in everybody, not just Democrats) got taken to the cleaners by slimy unprincipled jerks who were bought and paid for by the likes of the Koch brothers and their mega-rich industrial cronies who would like nothing better than to have a nation of English-speaking worker drones at wages lower than the Chinese at their disposal. Yes; that's their vision of the future. It has nothing to do with making life better for all Americans; it only has to do with making life better for THEM: a bunch of dried-up greedy old farts reminiscent of Lionel Barrymore's character, Mr. Potter, in It's A Wonderful Life.
People think that I'm pro-union because I hate Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers. Not at all. In fact, if I have a bias of any kind, it's against unions. I think they've long since outlived their usefulness in the US and they've made our manufacturing base noncompetitive in the world market. What I'm outraged about is the way that Walker and his minions have set out to remake Wisconsin in the mold of Stewart's nightmare community of Potterville. If Walker isn't recalled next month, I wouldn't be surprised to see him indicted for some of the stunts he pulled in Milwaukee County - the same kind of stunts that got him bad press while still in college at Marquette (from which he was not able to graduate). He is no less devious and manipulative than Mr. Potter, but he has worse script writers. He seems to be perfectly comfortable waging war on the lower and middle classes while coddling corporate interests in the big national circle jerk of states vying for the last places companies relocate before finally fleeing the country. Far from fulfilling his campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs, he currently leads the US in jobs lost. Wisconsin can do better.
Too many simpletons believe that they can simply slash government spending to fix all the problems. They don't take the time to figure out what ought to be cut - unless it's obvious that it's something they don't want to be cut. A local city attorney told me of a disgruntled woman annoyed because she couldn't see anyone in the city assessor's office when she was there. The reason? The assessor's office now only has one employee, who is expected to do field work as well as administer the office. Good luck having an office open 40 hours a week with that! The same will go for all other government service cuts. Someone will be annoyed and disappointed because, whether they realized it before, they used that service.
I don't have an ending other than a call for a return to compromise and civility. The recall primary election is today. I have seriously considered voting in the Republican primary for Scott Walker's opponent because, honestly, he couldn't be as bad. But then I'd be sinking to their level - and I hope I can refrain from doing that.
