There Is No Coin

The following is the editorial I read on the Shared Sacrifice Internet Radio program (www.blogtalkradio.com/Shared_Sacrifice) on August 2, 2008:

Since the Reagan Revolution, the GOP has sought to remove choice from America. There are the obvious examples of abortion and gay marriage, but it goes much deeper than that. They have proven to be so radically ideological that the paramount concern for them is to remove choices not only from those currently living, but also from generations yet to come. To that end, they have run up a record national debt with the simple minded goal of making sure that future generations have only the ability to pay for military budgets and interest on the debt they have incurred in our name.

Newt Gingrich revealed this goal when, after the GOP took majority control of the House of Representatives in 1994, he stated that they would let the Department of Education and other government programs for average Americans “wither on the vine”.

They have so poisoned the well in American political discourse that the prospect of raising—or even paying—taxes to fund wars of choice have become a third rail of politics. Any politician who would dare to say that we need to pay as we go without running up debt would be vilified as someone who wants to raise taxes—and it is used against people who do not want to make so-called temporary tax cuts permanent. Even though the temporary nature of these tax cuts was required to get them passed in the first place.

Of course increasing taxes on corporate profits or on passive income like capital gains is out of the question—the rich should not have to pay to sustain the system that allowed them create their wealth in the first place. Workers should naturally have to pay for everything, after all they wouldn’t have jobs if it weren’t for the rich, right? Corporations and private investors have so unbalanced the system that we have no choice but to work for them. And as this imbalance continues to wreck the economy, our opportunities are increasingly, and deliberately limited. In the mind of the corporatist, only the poor and working-class should have to pay for the system. Rich people are above that indignity. They have transformed the American economy, creating an entire nation of corporate serfs.

The GOP has always reveled in the public perception of their fiscal management skills. They are supposed to be the businessmen of America. But when they take the reins of government, they are unable to act like managers. Once they have the power, they instantly turn that power to their own personal ideological interests—and the financial benefit of their cronies.

Before you accuse me of being lopsided with my polemics, allow me to turn an equally scathing eye to the other side of the corporate/congressional coin.

I used the example that GOP candidates often use the prospect of failing to make temporary tax cuts permanent as an easy and quick way to call their Democratic opponents tax-raisers. And the Democrats have proven that they are not up to the challenge of answering this. They run from it as if they were being called “weak on terror”. But the real reason that they run from that issue, and so many others, is that they implicitly agree with virtually everything the GOP stands for. There is very little light between these two parties, except at the margins, especially when it comes to deficit spending.

While the GOP loves to fight wars with other peoples’ blood and borrowed money, the Democrats are happy to sustain these wars, all the while squawking with faux outrage at the misuse of our national resources. But they won’t do anything to actually stop it.

It would be too generous to simply say that the Democrats don’t know how to frame the argument to persuade the American people to change course—that would be a simple failure of communication. No, it goes far beyond that. The Democrats are no longer an opposition party. The Democrats, while maintaining a different name, have adopted the GOP’s fiscal lack of discipline as their own. Even when we hear that Barack Obama is an agent of change the American people see is so desperately needed, he backtracks and votes to undermine the Constitution to protect GOP corporate cronies and now he says that he is willing to vote for a “compromise” which will allow off-shore oil drilling, which will protect oil company profits.

The Democratic Party has joined the Republican Party lock, stock and barrel in their subservience to narrow corporate interests at the expense of the greater good. For decades the American people have recognized that the GOP is owned by corporate interests. It is now time to accept this reality as it relates to the Democrats as well.

Many people have lamented that their only choice is to vote for a Democrat because a candidate using that label will be better than a Republican, if only marginally. That is a fallacy. The Democrats, have joined the Republicans in having no real concern for the welfare of the American people, and have adopted only one paramount item for their agenda: To attain power and maintain power once they get it, all so they can advance the agenda that every resource available to America should be channeled to the benefit of their corporate masters. Which makes voting for a Democrat no better than voting for a Republican.

Elections in this country are more important than a coin toss. Our duty as citizens requires that we do more than toss a coin in the air and hope that a D or R lands on top. These two parties are the two sides of the same corporate coin. The important thing to remember is, when the chips are down and the hard choices have to be made, a Democrat will respond in the exact way a Republican will—to use the resources of our national government to protect corporate interests first—and only—and leave every other issue to us to solve for ourselves.

We need to recognize that we live in a time of great peril, and risks must be taken if we are going to survive. One risk we can no longer afford to take is to rely on these two morally exhausted and intellectually bankrupt parties. One risk we should pledge to take is to listen to and take and honest look at third-party candidates. The D’s and R’s want to make you fear that you will throw your vote away if you vote for someone other than either of them. But the only risk we run by giving someone else a chance is that nothing will change—which is the outcome we’re sure to get regardless if we vote for a politician sporting a D or R after his name. We have been flipping this same corporate D & R coin for so long we have missed one important truth: There is no coin.