Profit, Not Jobs For The GOP!

Republicans want a market that is tax-free and value-free. And businesses that are worker-free. By various measures, they are halfway home. Focused on the balance sheet, proclaiming it as the oracle of success (without proof!), workers in low paid positions that perform labor have increasing come to be seen as dregs, as non-contributors–as costs rather than producers. They are denied raises, training, benefits, and livable wage hours.

A glaring instance in the primary and campaign is the GOP only made automated robo-calls–not one live human being paid even $.7.25 an hour to read a script with human passion in a local accent. Their billion campaign contributed little to local employment. Their policies contribute even less. Not even part time.

Profit is central to GOP policy which has responded to persistent unemployment with hollow, unanswered promises. Going forward, the Presidents and Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to push forward on a key issue of pain for families in every state, red or blue. Record profits across the board for corporations hardly make creating jobs an entitlement.

~~As long as Walmart and all the others can get cheaply-made food and chachkes for people to buy, it doesn’t matter whether or not we have a thriving middle class. The profit margins are wide enough for the Waltons to make billions.

It’s all about the immediate profits, and not whether or not roads and bridges will collapse. They could care less. It’s not about whether or not our kids can go to college, it’s obvious they don’t intend to hire them. (/RR)

Obama Knows How To Govern

“There were ways to get to 60 votes. The White House just had to scratch it out with a real strategy and a never-let-go attitude.” —Maureen Dowd, NYTimes Columnist

Dowd’s view is naive and racist.  

To add to the wide and ever expanding ways and examples of how to blame the victim for the faults of the system or others, especially within the historic legacy of race in America, a review, representative offenses listed first:

“Running away.” A very bad thing; those enslaved who did, were scientifically diagnosed with drapetomania, a mental disorder identified by a GA physician. Whipping was the cure.

“Uppity.” Failing to display proper deference to whites after freedom. Beatings/Murder/lynching were punishments. (Riots in Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, et.al.)

“Laughing.” Stick your head in the discreetly placed laughing barrels to preserve the peace. (Sundown towns.”Be out by dark;” IN, IL, AK, MO, map used online today by supremacists who laugh that it was prepared by a black scholar.)

“Becoming an officer.” Shunned, given the silent treatment for all 4 years at West Point (Henry Flipper).

“Organizing for civil rights.” Malcontent communists; lose of passports, arrests, intimidation, phone taps, spying, and secret files used to track/restrict Robeson, DuBois, King, Malcolm, et. al.

“Perfecting the union.” Reverse discrimination.

New: “Getting elected to high office.” Tom Brady, favored, fell short in his bid for California’s governorship, but Harold Washington (mayor, Chicago) knew as does Barack Obama what (and why!) it is impossible to “learn” (condescending! reminiscence of John Sununu’s “Barack “needs to earn how to be an American.” ) how to govern–as did Mr. Mandela, Gandhi, Kwame Nkrumah, Salvador Allende, and others denied for great periods, power–and the opportunity to “learn.” What Dowd suggests is the use of the same old levers of influence and corruption that divided the spoils for votes–rather than progress.

II.

I say this carefully: this sort of genteel racism, denying the heavy presence of resisting forces while paternally suggesting Obama isn’t qualified was common in Reconstruction salons and Romney’s campaign. For all his “not knowing,” how to govern is clearly not one that comports with evidence of acts, speech, facts, achievements, or conditions; in fact, governing is Obama’s strong suit!

The angst here should not be over Obama’s achievements–though I think too many columnists are using old paradigms in a new era–but that the column contributes to the further erosion of journalism standards! Column writers were once expected to be aware of other voices. To use inductive logic to tie specific cases and conclusions to the larger context. This column is an echo chamber of word play; cute tricks and sentence licks. It provides, by proxy and example, cover for the more egregious examples of public discourse that qualify as the looking glass syndrome: those who simply proclaim it is what I say! What I call the myth of because.

It is possible to build a case using the process entrusted to journalism, but today, ends are valued above means. That inversion of values muddles facts, ignores positions, and reduces a dialogue to sound bites and robs us of real discovery and engagement.

It’s not the writing or the star power that special, it’s the process. I wish that we could protect it and agree on its importance and use.