If that Party should still remain in contention, it should be renamed in a manner that outline its real purpose vis-a-vis the citizenry. Something like The Randian Party (after Ayn Rand). The 'Republican' is a deep offence to the republican principle upon which is erected the notion of politics as the art of good government and a just administration of the state.
Just wondering...
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
From: Iorhemen Kyeleve <kyelevej@yahoo.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2012 01:58:53 -0700 (PDT)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Radical Agenda of Republicans
Afolayan,
I had a chat with an American professor here with us in Universiti Brunei Darussalam and posed a similar question to him. He is from Michigan. He informed that over 28% of Americans dropped out of school before year 7 and these drop outs at the hard core group in the heart of Repulblican party support base. They are very ignorant, gullible and believe the republican lies rather than truth. When you repeat a lie over and over, alot of people would become convinced of it being the truth! And that massive political adverts overwhem and mislead a large group of Americans. He concluded that Obama would still win because his groundwork and foot soldiers too too far ahead for the republicans to match.
IJK
From: "shina73_1999@yahoo.com" <shina73_1999@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2012 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Radical Agenda of Republicans
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2012 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Radical Agenda of Republicans
Thank you for this analysis.
My question is: If the Republican Party is all these funny things and support all these equally funny legislations, why is there apparent troubles for 0bama and the Democrats winning this election by a landslide? Why do people, the middle class, ever vote for the party? Why is there even a contest in the first place?
Adeshina Afolayan
The super rich can have most anything they want. What is it they want? All too often, they want their own military, their own state department, their own CIA and more, for they have vast interests to protect that stand in sharp contrast to the interests of ordinary working people.
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-- My question is: If the Republican Party is all these funny things and support all these equally funny legislations, why is there apparent troubles for 0bama and the Democrats winning this election by a landslide? Why do people, the middle class, ever vote for the party? Why is there even a contest in the first place?
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
From: Public Servant <public.servant@anniebirdsong.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 16:03:12 -0700 (PDT)
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Radical Agenda of Republicans
The super rich can have most anything they want. What is it they want? All too often, they want their own military, their own state department, their own CIA and more, for they have vast interests to protect that stand in sharp contrast to the interests of ordinary working people.
Former General Smedley Butler, said: "I won't go to war again to protect some lousy investment of bankers.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service in the marines. I helped make Tampico, Mexico safe for the American oil interests in 1914; Cuba and Haiti safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue, helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 and helped save the sugar interests in the Dominican Republic."
The father of former President George Herbert Walker Bush was the managing partner of the International Banking House of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Company.
What else do they want? Dr. Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and professor of economics at Princeton Unverisity says they want their own political party, which is what the Republican Party is. His book shows how their key agenda is to create income inequality.
"Money is the glue of movement conservatism, which is largely financed by a handful of extremely wealthy individuals and a number of major corporations, all of whom stand to gain from increased inequality and an end to progressive taxation," said They want "a reversal of the New Deal," he said.
For instance, Ronald Reagan spent $750 billion in tax cuts, most of it to the super rich, though he had to rob the Social Security Trust Fund to do it, and though it created an immense budget deficit.
Reagan then increased the payroll taxes, which increased the tax burden on the majority of workers.
Why would you want to give huge sums of money in tax cuts to the rich? In other advanced countries, they use the high taxes on the rich to fund -- or help fund -- pensions for retirees, unemployment insurance, free health care for all, child care for the young families and more -- whatever programs they need. Some advanced countries provide free college education. After all, the labor of the workers helped generate the wealth of the rich.
We could have a happy time spending that money -- choir teachers, violin teachers and piano teachers for all of the schools and free public transportation such as light rail and subways powered by electricity generated by solar panels etc.
Because of their opposition to high taxes on the super rich to fund the New Deal programs, conservatives are for "rugged individualism," which means stand alone -- don't ask for help from the government, in contrast to collectivism, which means we help each (especially with the high taxes on the super rich, since the gains in productivity go mostly to them.)
Conservatives are also lassez-faire -- which means the government should not regulate the economy except to bring law and order. (They can get really rich if the Democrats will leave them alone.)
Republicans are followers of Adam Smith, who said the free market regulates itself as if there is an "invisible hand." The wealth will be distributed just right due to the forces of self-interest, competition and supply and demand.
So when the Democrats fought for minimum wages, the Republicans filibustered -- blocking the legislation -- again and again. But the Democrats finally got a minimum wage increase through by giving tax cuts to small businesses.
(Ted Kennedy, a Democrat who is now deceased, wanted to increase minimum wages even more than they are, to $10 an hour.)
Republicans passed the Taft Hartley Act which made it more difficult for unions to strike, prevented unions from contributing to political candidates, made "closed shop" illegal where workers at unionized work places are required to be members of the union and pay dues as a condition of employment and prevented socialists from being in charge of labor unions.
Democrats wanted legislation keeping employers from hiring workers to replace strikers but it was filabusted by Republicans.
Republican are there to ensure
that the Democrats do not intervene when the health insurance companies turn people away for preexisting conditions.
If the costs of health insurance are rising, Republicans filibuster (prevent) reform.
Republicans are there to oppose environmental protection. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an environmental attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Fund, George W. Bush Bush gutted or deregulated 200 environmental regulations.
Republicans filabustered an energy bill that would have extended incentives for wind and solar energy, reduced tax breaks for oil companies, imposed tougher fuel and appliance efficiency standards and increased spending on biofuels.
Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, put solar panels on the White House. Ronald Reagan took them down.
Jimmy Carter announced that his technicians found that fuel efficency standards of automobiles can be increased. He presented a plan for how this was to be done. But Reagan came to office and blocked these plans. He also let automakers roll back fuel efficiency standards.
Republicans filibustered the debate over a national renewable energy standard requiring utilities to obtain 15% of their electricity from homegrown, renewable energy sources by 2020.
Reagan's housing budget was only 15 percent that of Carter's.
Republicans have filibustered campaign finance reform.
While Democrats are for a more cooperative foreign policy, Republicans are for pre-emptive strikes and don't even want to pay their United Nations dues or abide by their rules to prevent war.
They have had a profound effect on the broadcast coverage of political issues --especially on radio broadcasts and on Fox News -- so that now it is biased and one sided like you would see in a totalitarian regime.
Republicans did this in two ways, by passing legislation to relax media concentration rules that once helped kept billionaires (with immense vested interests) from owning everything we read and see back when Newt Gingrich and other Republicans had a majority in Congress, and by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that broadcasters ensure that contrasting viewpoints on issues are given equal weight. This was during Ronald Reagan's administration. (See my article below on the Fairness Doctrine.)
Now don't be sucked in by the Southern Strategy, a political gimic to get the Christians to vote against their interests. They talk about God day and night, but is there any substance to it?
George W. Bush said, "I'm going to hold back big hollywood." That's a funny thing for a former financer of Hollywood movies to say.
The Houston Chronicle, July 9, 1998, wrote: "Bush was a paid director of Silver Screen Management Inc. for about 10 years. Silver Screen raised more than $1 billion to finance Disney movies, including 21 R-rated movies, 32 PG and PG-13 flicks and 9 G-rated films."
The New York Times, June 19, 1999, Section A, Page 15, Column 1, wrote "George W. Bush has served on the board of Silver Screen, the company that helped finance the first R-rated movies at Mr. Eisner's Disney--though, to his credit, M. Bush has so far spared us any hypocritical sermons on pop culture."
The Houston Chronicle, July 23, 1998, said with George W. Bush as a member of its board of directors, Silver Screen financed the R rated movies The Color of Money, Down and Out in Beverly HIllls, Good Morning Vietnam, The Good Mother, Pretty Woman, Ruthless People, Scenes from a Mall, Shoot to Kill, and Stakeout.
It is just laughable to think the big owners of Hollywood entertainment are liberal, the ones who tax and regulate the rich. (Some of the media giants running Hollywood want to take the heads off liberals.)
How about Rupert Murdoch that owns Fox Broadcasting, one of the largest owners of television stations in the United States and that owns all kinds of programs, many with indecent content and expletives.
Murdoch's programs include Temptation Island, Glee, Beverly Hills, Melrose Place, New York Undercover, Party of Five, The Simpsons, Martin, The X Files, The Cosby Show, Married With Children, American Idol, Fox News and lots more.
Murdoch has been showing soft porn in Asian countries by satellite, against government wishes.
Murdoch is the chairman and controlling shareholder of News Corp, a $53 billion New York-based company that buys out newspapers across the world and puts pornography in them.
Yet many Christians come to Murdoch's Fox News -- a very conservative broadcast -- as it is on their side. They just don't understand what is going on.
News Corp. bought out one of the finest newspapers in England, called the "London Times," and turned it into yellow journalism, promoting the interests of the rich.
Many groaned when News Corp bought out the Wall Street Journal.
All of his papers promoted the war in Iraq.
In 2010 Murdoch's News Corporation gave $1M to the Republican Governors Association and $1M to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is largely working to elect Republicans this year.
Murdoch used to serve on the board of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that often advises Republicans.
Republicans have many libertarian ideals, such as support for deregulation -- for maximum liberty in economic matters. This is also called lasseiz faire and free market economics.
George Bush the younger appointed Andrew Biggs, a former researcher for the Cato Institute who advocates privatizing Social Security, to be deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
It appears to me Republican support for abortion was merely a political strategy. For three Republican Supreme Court justices, Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter, "concluded" that "Roe's rigid trimester framework is rejected."
With these words, they struck down the strict rule Democrats had supported that restrained women from having an abortion after the first trimester.
This was in the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision.
Justice O'Connor was appointed by Ronald Reagan, Justice Kennedy was appointed by Reagan, and Justice Souter was appointed by G.W. Bush.
Also in this decision, the justices said, "No change in Roe's factual underpinning has left its central holding obsolete, and none supports an argument for its overruling." This means they stood by Rowe v. Wade.
Furthermore, Republicans have been united in their stand against the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for protection of the "unborn child." This marvelous human rights treaty is now international law.
The treaty would also ban indecent broadcasts (which the FCC already has authority to regulate), for it calls for "protection from information and material injurious to the child's well being," "protection from any kind of exploitation prejudicial to any aspects of the child's welfare," and "protection of the family unit."
See the article below entitled: "Something Worth Dying For: The Convention on the Rights of the Child." I also have provided a link to the treaty.
See my website for more information:
Annie Birdsong http://www.anniebirdsong.info/
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