The Republican Party Morphed into Tea Party

The Republican Party is making a laughing stock of America. We are being ridiculed around the world for a government that demonstrates a complete inability to function.

The tea-party elected several radical candidates (now members of the House of Representatives with some in the Senate) pledged to thwart what had been the normal government practice of governing.

Typically, in a representative government, governing is accompolished by representatives of the people coming together to negotiate solutions from many of the competing suggested solutions. Our only hope is that our government representatives act rationally. By what has been until the most recent Congress, international expectations had us, Americans, acting rationally. Our governing system worked. We were the solid symbol to the world. Oftentimes we were imitated in the way we governed.

Our method of government works best if a two party system. Third parties, the Tea Party, effectively a third party, require coalition building. Coalitions can be built only when the respective separate groups are willing to negotiate differences and come together on a common course of action. The Tea Party has demonstrated that they are willing to accept no other position other than their own position, irrespective of facts to the contrary on the advisability of their preferred course of action. In the history of America, adamant opposition has not been a viable pathway to good government. The Tea Party has not demonstrated that it can govern all the people. Hopefully, its fifteen minutes in the sun will soon expire and these political illiterates will slink back into the muck.

Unfortunately, with the Tea-Party now in control of the Republican Party, that Party's elected representatives are not acting rationally, whether or not the more moderate Republicans are or are not members of the Tea-Party.

The Tea Party has the moderates of the Republican Party on the defensive with the threat of challenging the moderates in the 2012 Republican primaries. It is false hope of the moderates to think that they will not have a Tea Party challenger in 2012. If they are not already tea party, there is no hope for the moderates in 2012 Republican primaries. Fortunately, most Americans, other than the Tea Party fringe have learned the lesson of what elected radicals can do to America.

In a diverse country such as ours, it is inevitable that many opinions on the best path forward would be evident. With the freedom of choice and of expression among the many freedoms that we enjoy, diverse opinions on the problems, challenges and potential solutions of the day is as it should be.

Diverse but not divisive should be the credo of our elected representatives. Our governing representatives must exhibit an ability to weigh the many possibilities, the ramifications of each potential path to be taken and come to a reasonable solution that the broad sprectrum of legislators, a majority can agree to. Agreement of a sufficient number of legislators to meet the vote-count necessary to pass a Bill is the escense of our political system.

If we do not have represenatives who are reasonable people and who can be swayed by factual evidence, then we have a broken government. We are ungovernable. Government breaks-down. Soon to follow will be the break-down of society. It seems that we are nearing the point of societal breakdown in the United States ...a breakdown in America may very well trigger the collapse of the major societies of the world.

Political, cultural and financial Armageddon (the last battle between the forces of good and evil) may not be a stretch scenario.

A House divided three ways

The Congress, it seems, is quite willing to enact legislation that spends money. Bills pass with vastly underestimated costs for long term program implementation. But, Congress is very reluctant to pay for these same programs authorized by the Congress. How can this dilemma be resolved.

Leader Boehner thinks the solution is a Rubik's Cube problem.

His view, it seems is that the problem of underfunded programs can be solved by simply lining-up the colored squares on a three-dimensional, six-sided box of nine colored squares aligned in a two dimensional set of three rows and three columns for each respective surface.

Mr. Boehner's body of Congress has demonstrated neither the ability nor the inclination to move the squares to reach the necessary alignment. The preference seems to be to move a few of the squares around and let a future Congress take the necessary steps to align all the economic colors and surfaces.

The real preference of Mr. Boehner's party seems to be to look only at half the surfaces and leave the remainder of the squares un-addressed.

The problem, of course, is not a Rubik's Cube. The welfare of our country is at stake. Yet Congress, Mr. Boehner's party, most obstinately prefers to play silly blame games. They want to defeat the sitting president in the next election whatever the cost, even at the expense of destroying our country.

Mr. Boehner finds himself the titular leader of a split, contentious party that is bifurcated along the lines of the conservative and the radically conservative with the radicals seemingly having the upper hand.

Mr. Boehner is unable to lead this disjointed coalition with the normal conservatives having more of a pragmatic approach to governing while the radicals are more inclined to throw sand into the gears and eliminate any possibility of sane government.

The Republican Party has a majority in the House of Representatives. Mr. Boehner is the Speaker, the Leader of the House, but most specifically the leader of his majority party.

Unfortunately, the Speaker has developed neither the credibility nor the skills required to lead his party to a sane approach to government. We have gridlock, not the normal gridlock between the Republican and Democratic representatives, but rather, gridlock between two factions of the Republican Party. The radicals and the more liberal conservative Republicans seem uniquely unable to agree on anything.

How did we get to this stage of American government? Public apathy. The radicals were elected by an apathetic public that allowed a relatively small number of voters to elect a group of representatives who are as inept as any members of Congress have ever been. Their resolve seems driven by a misguided belief that they were elected by the American people to destroy its government. They seem hell-bent to do just that.

If the Republican Party is unable to reign-in its members, anarchy becomes a real possibility for our country. Disrespect for our country, our constitution, our way of life will destroy our peaceful society. We will be doomed to many years of painful recovery. What a legacy we leave for our children and grand children. Shame on us for our failure to be responsible adults.

If you are a high school senior ...

If you are a high school senior today, you should be interested in the chart shown at the bottom of this posting. It depicts the distribution of the debt of the Federal Government out to the point where you will be a twenty-five year old young man or woman in the early stages of your lifetime of work.

In a 538 Blog, authored by Nate Silver, the will of the American people is spelled out regarding preferences for attacking the country's debt.

Mr. Silver's chart based on a recent Gallop poll clearly demonstrates the will of the people. Americans believe that a split of approximately 65% cuts and 35% revenue (tax) increases is the appropriate mix for the debt reduction plan.

Republicans taken alone believe the split should be 74% cuts and 26% revenue increases.

The President has offered an 80-20 (cuts to revenue) plan that Republican Congressional leaders reject arguing that their colleagues in the House of Representatives will not vote for one dollar of revenue in any compromise plan.

Given the chart shown to the left, it is little wonder why the Republican leaders make such statements. The Republican majority in the House stems from a 2010 election in which many independents and Democratic voters failed to vote. Consequently, the field was left open to the right-leaning and right-wing electorate. Unfortunately, the Tea Party, right wing evangelicals and other extremest groups dominated the election.

Approximately eighty-five House members came from the far right movement in the Republican Party. These eighty-five of the 435 members of the House of Representatives have the power to block any compromise that the Republican Party might otherwise pursue.

If the Party is unable to compromise on legislation with the Democratic minority in the House, no legislation can get through. The debt ceiling extension is stuck in that political no-mans-land as we speak.

Obviously, the no-compromise adherents to the Republican right ideology that now populate the Republican side of the aisle of the US House of Representatives have been pushed over the edge into the abyss. Their constituencies will not allow them to compromise.

The more liberal Republican House members who otherwise would be open to compromise are now running scared. They are threatened by the Tea Party and their lobbyist overlords that any move to compromise will lead to a primary challenger in their next election cycle. The Tea Party minority of the Republican Party has forced grid-lock in their party caucus. This Tea Party intransigence within their Party is shutting down the federal government.

Given current trends, it is inevitable that by 2019, the national debt will expand to a minimum of approximately $17.3 trillion. That is your debt and my debt; the debt of our children and grandchildren; their children and grandchildren.

This chart from an article by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post depicts the Congressional Budget Office projections for the debt distribution out to 2019. As is plainly evident, the Bush Tax Cuts of the early two thousands, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the recession that began in 2008 are the major contributors to our long term debt. So the Rights' answer to this American problem is to leave the Bush tax cuts in place, continue the wars, cut off any government programs that invest in job creation, and of course stamp-out any program in place that benefits the poor, the elderly, students and other groups too vulnerable to fight back and already suffering the economic pain inflicted in the last ten years.

Unfortunately, it isn't election day. For if it were, America would solve the debt issue by the time polls closed at the end of the day.

For Matt

Critical reading, is it necessary?

Absolutely. Life in America and the world does not present itself to you in aural mode only. Much of the stimulation that we, our brains actually, receive each day is auditory from word of mouth; the music of a wind symphony caused by, string, percussion or other instrument, the various noises of our environment, pleasant and unpleasant. Additionally we have the visual input from television, movies, the visible world around us, the script of a book, a magazine, a newspaper provide much more of the input to our thinking process.

A picture may be worth a thousand words.... A visual image may give you a quick sense of a situation or issue.... But frequently to understand the world, the living universe that surrounds us all, we must be able to read, analyze and understand the written word. The written word holds the secrets that allow us insight into the universe in which we live. To find those secrets and to understand the oftentimes hidden meaning of the secrets, critical reading is the answer.

How do you go about developing your critical reading skills?

• Do you read? Hopefully, you are able to answer in the affirmative to this question. Reading, especially in college is a prerequisite to doing well in whatever your chosen path of study.
• What do you read? Here again, it is important to read for pleasure whether books, magazines, newspapers or on-line content. It is also important that you read to become informed. In today's fast-paced electronic media, content is usually boiled down to simple and short sound-bites. Sound bites are today what newspaper headlines were in times past. Sound bites should tweak your interest in finding the facts behind the headlines. This requires the critical reading that we mentioned above. Critical reading leads to critical thinking and a much better informed you or me.
• Do you own your own dictionary? Do you use it when you come across a word that you do not know the meaning? Do you have an online dictionary on your homepage? The dictionary.com website that I linked in the previous sentence is an excellent source. It provides a dictionary and a Thesaurus with related words and the context of use within sentences. It also provides a set of Flash Cards with word definitions for words most often used on the SAT tests ...well worth exploring.

  If you normally skip over words because you do not know the meaning of the word(s), in the future, you should have a pad to write down the word and look it up on your laptop dictionary. Better still is to have the laptop open with the dictionary page available to search words real-time. This may slow your reading, but it will add to the comprehension of the words you read. Reading is probably the critical skill to master while in the pre-college years. Critical reading is even more important as you transcend into your college studies.

As an exercise for the remainder of summer, my suggestion is that you read various newspaper articles in your local papers, on-line at the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Mother Jones Blog and some of the blog links that I show down the right side of this blog. I especially would read: Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, Think Progress, Jared Bernstein, Irving Wladawsky-Berger among the ones that I show. Some have complicated subject matter. Some are tough for anyone to fathom, but the key for your needs is to understand a complex sentence, a paragraph and the vocabulary used within the overall postings or written articles.

As an additional suggestion, read the articles of my blog. Mine is more simple-minded than many of the postings in the links that I have suggested. Comment on what I have written. Challenge the conclusions that I have stated. Critically read my blog and the postings of others. Analyze with a skeptical eye and mind. Be thorough and freethinking in your analysis, let me know by your comments what you think, what you have concluded from your reading of my postings and from what you know from other sources.

Engage in critical thinking. Analyze the content and formulate your own opinions / conclusions on the subject matter. Find your own thinking on the meaning and write your comments in the comment space provided on each of my blog articles. I will respond to your comments. Maybe others will as well. We can enjoy a continuing dialog and maybe each of us will learn from the other.

Keep thinking, that is the critical process. I was very impressed by your comments in our discussion the other day at Smash Burger. Obvious to me is that you have already done some critical analysis about what you want for your future. Let's keep the thinking going and try to expand to other areas, other subjects, other possibilities. The key is to keep an open mind, think about what you know, seek additional information and rethink previous conclusions. The environment changes every day, every hour, every minute. It is important that you keep pace and change as new information presents itself.

In our commentary, if you wish you can refer to me as GP; I'll refer to you as Big "D" with the other guy being Baby "D". Other than your first name used above, we shouldn't use other personal data ...after all, you never know who might be reading our postings.