Drowning Visions the Norquist Way

The Washington Spectator reports that Grover Norquist said we don’t need a president with ideas.

What’s even more astonishing is that a vast majority of Republicans have signed onto Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes on the wealthy ever; essentially pledging their allegiance to a faction, the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), over the United States of America.

The founding fathers and the Revolutionaries pledged themselves to the ideal that man has natural rights which were bestowed upon government, the radical opposite from the belief at the time, that rights were given to men by the government.

Yet when interviewed on the NewsHour, Grover Norquist said, if any Republican dares to even think of raising taxes on the wealthy, they will be going back on their pledge to their constituents. Ha, wielding conformity as a threat, hardly a radical idea.

From the Washington Spectator-”Norquist used a corporate analogy to make his point. The Coca Cola company works hard to ensure the quality of it’s product, because product defines brand. Were someone to discover a “rat head in the bottom of the bottle,” Norquist said “Coke’s brand would be ruined for everyone.” “Republican elected officials who vote to increase taxes are rat heads in a Coke bottle”.

Grover’s brand is tax cuts for the wealthy; which were renewed last December but no jobs were created. But rather than believe the reality that tax cuts do not create jobs, the country is convinced all we have to do is lower taxes for the rich and the economy will right itself. Thanks to elitist right-wing factions like the Americans for Tax Reform and the evil media megaphone Fox news; owned by Rupert Murdock is the tea party and republican’s personal broadcasting media station spewing the propaganda that the idiots believe, and it is the ‘gun’ that is shooting the bullet to the brain of the United States, leading to our downfall as a great nation.

FDR said without vision the people perish. What’s Grover‘s vision, to drown government in a bath tub. When that happens, (and we’re well on the way), the founder’s vision of the self governing rights of man, will be drowned by factions. James Madison warned us against factions, a lesson corporate fascists like Grover Norquist and Fox News, have convinced the masses to forget.

Hedging the Debt Ceiling

The politicians are willing to have a “showdown” over raising the debt ceiling but not much discussion on where all this debt is coming from, other than the policies of this president. There’s a lot more to it than that, but making a simplistic answer it’s more easily acceptable to the public.

Wall Street has failed the country. In June 2011 the AP reported that “JP-Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing.” And “J.P. Morgan Securities a division of the powerful Wall Street bank, failed to tell investors that a hedge fund helped select the investment portfolio all the while knowing and betting that the portfolio would fail.”

In July 2010 The Securities and Exchange Commission has

reached a $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs in its case accusing the company of misleading investors in mortgage-backed securities, the agency said in a statement ."

The role of Wall Street is to channel investment money into activities which create jobs. Instead two of the biggest banks pay millions for rigging the system while funneling billions into their pockets. In 2010 Wall Street bankers took in $20.8 billion in bonuses.

Where’s the showdown over this failure of Wall Street? There isn’t one, and despite this gargantuan failure, the Republicans refuse to raise taxes on these same hedge fund managers (who pay less in taxes than the working stiff).

If the Republicans are so concerned over government spending then why don’t they increase the income by taxing these hedge fund billionaires who set people up to fail then bet they would fail? And why aren’t the banksters doing jail time for what they’ve done?

According to book “Thirteen Bankers” by Simon Johnson banks today have more power over President Obama than he has over them. And if they have more power than this president, they’ll have even more power over the next president. Just blaming Obama isn’t going to reduce their strangle hold over the economy.

Then, to add insult to injury, Standard & Poor’s said if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised and the US government only paid the interest on it’s debt, then this would result in a lowered credit rating. Well some of the “investments” picked by hedge funds were made up of interest only mortgage loans. And these same credit ratings agencies were paid to lie about these risky securities, and gave them triple ‘A’ ratings, which investors bought in droves due to the high credit rating.

And now they’re going to lower our credit rating after they helped spark the economic tsunami engulfing the world? What an affront. They should be facing jail time not giving out credit ratings. The reality of the situation is that Wall Street and the bankers are rewarded for letting the country down and transferring responsibility to the citizens through bail outs and blame for the housing crisis. All which has been achieved through decades of bipartisan submission, resulting in monstrous gains for the few and massive suffering for the many.