Veto Republicans

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"What the data shows, with regard to most issues, we do not need to speculate about the future, for we already know what the past has shown us namely, that it is Republican policies that have repeatedly, regularly, and with remarkable consistency brought us large increases in the rate and duration of unemployment, in the frequency, depth, and duration of recessions, and depressions, in socio-economic inequalities in wealth and income, and in rates of suicide, homicide, and (since the mid-1970's) imprisonment and capital punishments; and it is Democratic policies that have brought us equally large decreases in all of those destructive phenomena (even in imprisonment and capital punishment, as the contrast between the Red and Blue States shows.)" James Gilligan: Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous Than Others.
" ... the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."
Sheldon Wolin: Inverted Totalitarianism
"The Republican party has become an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics,it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the countries most pressing challenges..." Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein: It's Even Worse than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism
...movement Conservatives that had taken over the Republican Party ... an ideology that permitted wealth to concentrate wealth at the top, just as the defense of antebellum slavery had been. The Republican Party in the twenty-first century adhered to the position it had organized in the nineteenth century to fight. And like their southern predecessors in the 1850s, Movement Conservatives in 2004 were boasting that “Republican hegemony” would last “for years, maybe decades.” Like their predecessors, they were wrong. A looming crises soon revealed that their devotion to an ideology divorced from reality meant they no longer knew how to govern. Heather Cox Richardson: To Make Men Free, a History of the Republican Party.
There is no question in my mind anymore that the Republican Party has reconfigured itself as a Confederate party. Not because it is so largely white, though it is. Not because it is largely Southern, though it is that, too. And not because it fights so hard for vestigial accoutrements like the Confederate battle flag. The Republican Party is a Confederate party, I think, because that is its view of what the government of the United States should be. It is written quite clearly in the party's platform that the Republicans adopted last week in Tampa: "The Republican party... stands for the rights of individuals, families, faith communities. institutions — and of the States which are their instruments of self-government." Charles Pierce: Esquire Magazine 9/2012
"What the data shows, with regard to most issues, we do not need to speculate about the future, for we already know what the past has shown us namely, that it is Republican policies that have repeatedly, regularly, and with remarkable consistency brought us large increases in the rate and duration of unemployment, in the frequency, depth, and duration of recessions, and depressions, in socio-economic inequalities in wealth and income, and in rates of suicide, homicide, and (since the mid-1970's) imprisonment and capital punishments; and it is Democratic policies that have brought us equally large decreases in all of those destructive phenomena (even in imprisonment and capital punishment, as the contrast between the Red and Blue States shows.)" James Gilligan: Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous Than Others.
And for the Republicans in Congress, there’s another interest—namely, to undermine anything that Obama, you know, the Antichrist, might try to do. So that’s a separate issue there. The Republicans stopped being an ordinary parliamentary party some years ago. They were described, I think accurately, by Norman Ornstein, the very respected conservative political analyst, American Enterprise Institute; he said the party has become a radical insurgency which has abandoned any commitment to parliamentary democracy. And their goal for the last years has simply been to undermine anything that Obama might do, in an effort to regain power and serve their primary constituency, which is the very wealthy and the corporate sector. They try to conceal this with all sorts of other means. In doing so, they’ve had to—you can’t get votes that way, so they’ve had to mobilize sectors of the population which have always been there but were never mobilized into an organized political force: evangelical Christians, extreme nationalists, terrified people who have to carry guns into Starbucks because somebody might be after them, and so on and so forth. That’s a big force. And inspiring fear is not very difficult in the United States. It’s a long history, back to colonial times, of—as an extremely frightened society, which is an interesting story in itself. And mobilizing people in fear of them, whoever "them" happens to be, is an effective technique used over and over again. And right now, the Republicans have—their nonpolicy has succeeded in putting them back in a position of at least congressional power. So, the attack on—this is a personal attack on Obama, and intended that way, is simply part of that general effort. But there is a common strategic concern underlying it, I think, and that is pretty much what U.S. intelligence analyzes: preventing any deterrent in the region to U.S. and Israeli actions." Noam Chomsky comments on Netanyahu talk to the Congress 2015
America's fundamental problem, in my opinion, since Ronald Reagan came to office January 20, 1981, and declared the fateful words: "Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem" we have been on a more than a 30 year jag of dismantling the very means to address the challenges we face as a society. Jeffrey Sachs CSPAN 2/17/12

The week it became accurate to compare Trump to Hitler (6/29/2019)

Donald Trump doesn’t know what’s about to hit him (6/28/2019)

Why Isn’t Trump a Real Populist? (6/17/2019)

Lies, damned lies and Donald Trump: the pick of the president's untruths (4/29/2019)

Five Critical Takeaways From the Mueller Report (4/18/2019)

How not to think–and what the Mueller Report won’t tell us–about Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation (3/24/2019)

George Conway diagnoses Trump with narcissistic personality disorder (3/18/2019)

It Isn’t Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence (3/17/2019)

A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago (3/9/2019)

Can America recover from Trump? A radicalized right wing suggests dangers ahead (4/9/2019)

How the neocons captured Donald Trump (2/5/2019)

Trump’s Popularity Slumps to Record Low in January

Putin must be smiling as he watches Trump carry out his agenda (1/17/2019)

The People vs. Donald J. Trump, He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for? David Leonhardt (1/5/2019)

No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along (11/23/2016)

Paul Krugman: What's It Going to Take for Voters to Understand How Dumb Republicans Are? (8/31/2015)

Republicans don't like government. Their single-minded goal is not about good government, because their values are mostly about money, their priorities are warped. In short, they are determined to get power, and they don't much care how they do it. They win by gaming elections, misinformation, gerrymandering, voter suppression, or even dirty tricks. That's how W won Florida (with his brother's help) that resulted in massive tax cuts for the wealthy, two pointless wars, and his legacy, clueless Supreme Court that assured the corruption of the US with Citizen's United.

There is broad agreement that US government is dysfunctional now, and that our institutions do not function for the people. See, for example, Francis Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs September 2014)

CBS 60 minutes interview with Boehner and McConnell (1/25/2015) demonstrated that colossal dysfunction will continue.

Republican Economic Policy is short-sighted, regressive, widely discredited, destructive, and, let's just say it, corrupt.

"the real incomes of middle class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans." Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy, the Political Economy of the New Gilded Age
"The Republicans have a pretty simple philosophy: they say if those at the top have more — more power for Wall Street players to do whatever they want and more money for tax cuts than somehow they can be counted on to build the economy for everyone else. Well, we tried it for 30 years and it didn’t work. In fact the consequences were nearly catastrophic." Elizabeth Warren

Dynamic Voodoo: Paul Krugman (9/9/2015)

A Princeton study has determined that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy.

Congress responds to the funders, not to the people.  * The US Congress is thoroughly corrupted by money. (See this video of Larry Lessig or his excellent public domain book: Republic Lost which is free on-line.)

The Federal budget is the opposite of what people, when polled, would want.

Members of Congress are quite wealthy. So it is no surprise that the US is now a feudal state, one run by the very wealthy. See this video (Joseph Stiglitz)

In the face of massive unemployment, Republicans decided, against advice of our best economists, that austerity should be at the top of the agenda and they proposed a budget to match. Since unemployment was certain to go up with their policy, many of us think they intended to crash the economy to win election. History shows austerity doesn't counter recession. Ask the Europeans. Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, elaborates this in his book: End This Depression Now!

'Supply Side' economics has been completely discredited. Bush senior rightly called it Voodoo Economics. The Congressional Budget Office has been packed with supply-siders to do "dynamic scoring". When in office, Republicans don't care about deficits, and pass big tax cuts for the wealthy at taxpayer expense.

In Republican states, austerity resulted in massive public sector layoffs, degradation of services, reduced pensions, devastated schools, and soaring student debt, and more unemployment. 17,000 people may die because they live in a State that refused Medicaid expansion. Republicans are openly hostile to labor unions, and, as in Wisconsin, rolled back public sector bargaining rights. Republican logic: Low wages accompanied by tax cuts for the wealthy makes a State "business friendly". When the tax cuts cause revenue decline, Republicans cry emergency and they find the easiest cuts to make are for public sector pensions. New Jersey underfunded pensions for a long time, until Governor Christie decided to fix the problem by having employees pay more and cutting benefits. When he found that the New Jersey was still over $800 million out of balance, he decided to hit the pension fund again. Although lower wages, shrunken pensions, and corporate welfare widen income inequality, many State's compete to sink the middle class, and persue fastest possible path to the bottom

Since Reagan, the U.S. has not seriously enforced anti-trust, and that has led to concentration in many industries. That has driven out competition, a pre-requisite for a free market, and created oligarchs who lobby to further game the system. It has been particularly damaging to media. Americans are very badly misinformed.

We have seen that deregulation favors polluters, encourages financial corruption, results in public health hazards: all from loss of public accountability.

Republicans motivated the dismantling of New Deal economic stabilizers like Glass-Steagle, they are working tirelessly to eliminate safeguards in Dodd-Frank, nullify the Volker rule, shut down the CFPB, the Republican Senate assured banks that they will be bailed out if their derivative trades go bad leaving them free to gamble with taxpayer's money and allow them to exploit consumers.

These policies have propelled the U.S. to unprecedented income inequality with all of the toxic consequences that brings: a volatile economy, anemic demand, corrupt government, weak democracy, rising poverty, a sinking middle class, failing schools, rotting infrastructure, and dysfunctional institutions no longer able to address the critical problems we face. Republicans not only don't recognize the problems, they are making them much worse.

In spite of the evidence, Republicans continue to argue that tax cuts increase revenue. In a particularly short-sighted piece of legislation, they are cutting the budget of the IRS. Republicans are irresponsible tax dodgers.

Republican tax policy is always regressive. Republicans have changed tax policy so that unearned income is taxed at much lower rates than income from actual work. The estate tax (aka the death tax) doesn't apply to 99% of the people, its elimination benefits only the very wealthiest but Republicans are determined to eliminate it.

Trump's determination to eliminate the inheritance tax (which applies to only the very wealthy) could alone make his Presidency worth billions. The Walton family would personally save many billions, so would the Koch brothers, so It makes sense that billionaires back Trump. Like subprime mortgages, casinos, payday loans, bank bailouts this is yet another way to shift the burden to taxpayers. Republicans, being a largely a Party of Confederates, would make a great resurgence of the Southern Plantation economy, or even a new aristocracy. 

There is a strong correlation of Republican Presidency's and massive bank bailouts. Banks are even larger now than when they were too big to fail. Next time, and there is almost certain to be a next time (coincidentally the bailouts always seem to occur when Republicans are in office) we should nationalize the banks. Congress has made a committment to bail them out again.

Government is not a business and shouldn't be run like one. Business people are not particularly good at economics.

Republican austerity does more harm than good. It leads to more unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, degraded internet, poor services, and a depressed economy. Everyone loses.

Republicans only care about deficits when public money is being spent on people.

Growth cannot be unlimited, it has only lifted yachts, and it will not solve any of our problems. More likely it will exacerbate them.

Instead we are building a new round of nuclear weapons, denying climate change, and attempting to rule the world empire.

* History shows that every democracy is short lived. Republicans economic policy is always regressive. As wealth becomes concentrated, people in general lose their voices, an oligopoly then governs, financial volatility increases, an empire ensues, and finally it is all destroyed. The US is well along this path. When most people do not agree with the opinions of the affluent, studies show that the wealthy prevail. Republican initiatives have created an oligopoly, a strong-man head of state, ripped off the middle class, crashed the economy, downsized our civil liberties, and are putting the next generation into debt servitude. The Constitution was designed to protect us from concentrated power, but Republicans are not paying attention to that part. What they have accomplished is treasonous: Government by Corporations. (aka fascism)

Watch Bernie Sanders CRUSH Every Argument Against Raising the Minimum Wage in Under 6 Minutes! (Video)

Krugman Takes Down Right-Wing Deficit Scolds (8/21/2015)

How the Republican Budget Cons Conservatives (5/7/2015)

Refuting Conservativce Economics (3/1/2015)

The US Debt Ceiling For Dummies

How to Ruin An Economy: Some Simple Ways (video) 2/10/2014

...a doctrine that even Republican economists consider dangerous nonsense has become party orthodoxy. And what makes this political triumph especially remarkable is that it comes just as the doctrine’s high priests have been setting new standards for utter, epic predictive failure. Paul Krugman (2/20/2015).

Republicans Are Determined to Cut Social Programs

Just about everywhere in the West except the United States, where there is no mandatory paid time off, workers not only get vacations but also short work weeks, government health care, large pensions, high minimum wages, subsidized childcare, and so forth. Why is the United States the exception?" Claude S Fischer, Boston Review

When Republicans vow to make government smaller, the most important cuts for them are for people.

Republicans want to downsize Social Security, food stamps, Head Start. block grant Medicare, reduce any programs that actually benefit people.They are waging a war on the poor. Just as income inequality has reached new levels of unfairness, they are driving the massive downward mobility of the US middle class.

Although they have no credible replacement, they have attempted many times to repeal Obamacare. In Republican States, rather than help the uninsured, they would rather let people die. They would shrink healthcare options for women. They are pro-life only for the unborn.

This is not new. Republicans have, at least since Ronald Reagan, opposed any effort to assist the underclass. A strong social safety net is not just an economic stabiliser, it is a moral attempt to assist the poor. As automation, corporate consolidation, off-shoring, and overpopulation make paying jobs more scarce, it will be increasingly important to strengthen the welfare state.

Welfare 'reform' cut support for the vulnerable. As overpopulation and technology advances lead to higher unemployment, the social safety net should be stronger. Higher productivity should make for a better standard of living, but because all the gains have gone to the top, the opposite has happened. Americans are working longer hours for less pay and benefits.

Republicans do not recognize the toxic effects of income inequality, which can propel most people into debt servitude and crash the economy. Although polls show it is very popular across the political spectrum, Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage. Income inequality is not only unfair, socially corrosive, but also lessens demand and weakens the economy

Rs would privatize education, shrink the post office, but they have no problem growing the world's largest military. Privatizing prisons has been profitable but counterproductive.

In 1995 we had a government shutdown. Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. Than, as now, Republicans were determined to cut Social Security, Medicare, and welfare was also a target. They haven't changed. Now they are determined to gut the Affordable Care Act, voucherize Medicare, and block grant other programs for the truly vulnerable. However they can always find money for tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate welfare, the world's largest military, the burgeoning National Security State, and the world dominating empire they envision. The reality is that a weakening US economy can no longer support the American empire, although, since Republicans cannot give up, we are losing our standard of living to pay for it. There must be great secrecy for this policy, and black agencies are well funded so that Americans are ignorant about it. Police are being militarized to keep people under control.

* Republicans have been engaging in brinkmanship with full awareness that the economy could crash, They didn't care very much if the US loses financial stability or if the world economy crashes, what they want is to cut programs that actually benefit people: like Social Security, Medicare, head start, food stamps, and especially Obamacare. It is extortion. They have broken the social contract.

While protecting tax breaks for millionaires, they oppose relief for working Americans. They bust unions, oppose consumer protection agencies, and don't even protect school children from fast-food companies. The Ryan Budget reflects the mean spirited, regressive Republican approach. See this video of Elizabeth Warren.

* Republicans oppose efforts to assist the middle (working) class. They oppose raising the minimum wage, which would lessen poverty and be an economic stimulus. They would cut social programs, they would privatize Social Security, voucherize Medicare, cut food stamps, save money on head start. have no credible answers for health care issues, and have a stealth program to privatize education. Cuts to higher education pushed tuition higher and graduating students now face heavy debt (which they cannot escape with bankruptcy), but Republicans have not stopped student interest rates from doubling. and in the House of Representatives have attempted to repeal Obamacare 60 times in what was not only a complete waste of time. They have NO concern with the millions of Americans who are uninsured and no credible improvements. Universal healthcare is not part of the Republican dream for America. Republican States have managed to sabotage Obamacare though, thus depriving their uninsured of any benefit. Oddly, these Republican States are quite poor and more in need. Conservative States, mostly the old Confederacy, are more backward.

* Concentrated wealth leads to oligarchy, economic instability, toxic media, political corruption, social pathology and fascism, It can be damped down with stiff graduated taxes, but Republicans think a flat tax is a good idea, although, not surprisingly, quite regressive. Since they are the party of oligarchs, R's are anxious to abolish the estate tax also. Such policies DO redistribute wealth...upward. Republicans are the party of the very wealthy, and their concerns are much different than most of the people.

If Republicans get their way, our shredded social safety net will be cut further. the economy will sink as a result of austerity, poverty will continue to soar, the wealthy will continue to receive benefits from the government that they have bought, the wall between church and state will be smashed. People will suffer because Republicans impoverish the poor to benefit the already wealthy. Yet another vicious cycle occurs as the wealthy game the system even further for their own benefit. This is yet another short-sighted Republican policy in which everyone becomes poorer as a result.

As the middle class sinks, so does the economy because demand dries up, and a vicious downward cycle causes recession and misery.

James Gilligan, formerly at the Harvard Medical School, Director of Mental Health Services for Massachusetts prisons, and now Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University has written a book "Why Some Politicians are more Dangerous that Others”. In it he gathers statistics for the U.S. and finds that violent deaths (murder and suicides) are strongly correlated with Republican Presidencies.

* Although US infrastructure is in poor condition, many jobs might have been created by repairing it. Interest rates are low, and it would have been a good investment, Republicans opposed all real job creation efforts, and there is no doubt that repairs will be much more costly later. An initiative to repair or improve infrastructure would create jobs, the economy would recover, but Republicans wouldn't get credit...so they won't approve. You are no safer. (See Bob Herbert's book Losing Our Way.)  Our infrastructure is old, deteriorating, unsafe, and wasteful. Instead of fixing it, Republicans would rather build a wall across Mexico.  Remember when Reagan said "Tear down this wall ?"

The Republican mantra is YOYO: your on your own. It is every man for himself, and you should be armed with automatic weapons for your own safety. Picture those old wild west movies enhanced with assault weapons. Check out Charles Derber's book, Wilding of America, for some of the consequences.

Republicans have wrecked US media

Media, when it is not otherwise distracting us, mostly covers elections like a horse race, but unwittingly, we actually vote for an agenda because the winning cndidate will think its a confirmation of his beliefs. He may or may not do what he said he would. Both of out leading Presidential candidates have mostly unfavorable ratings.

When Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine and suspended enforcement of anti-trust laws, corporate America rolled up into a few large monopolies. No where has this been more damaging than in media.

The FCC buried a report that concluded that concentration of media causes loss of local jobs, loss of local news, and loss of local accountability. Republicans usually try to bury information that is not consistent with their ideology...even if the facts contradict them.

Journalism is on life support, universal surveillance stops informed comment, whistleblowers are harshly punished, ideologues dominate the news, conglomerates judge the election as a competition for money freezing out candidates without deep pockets, and all the while keeping Americans distracted, pacified, and ignorant compared to people in well-governed countries.

Toxic political commentary has resulted from Republicans turning over media to oligarchs and relieving them of public responsibility. Media concentration has not only created a few billionaires, it has contributed mightily to income inequality, cut local jobs, made elections obscenely expensive, forced politicians to be fund-raisers, corrupted politics, reduced much that is broadcast into outrage, trivia, stealth advertising, and misinformation, and made a mockery of the competitive 'free market' (a free market, by definition, has reliable information and many competitors. US media has neither. ) .  Fox News has made itself gate keeper for Republican Presidential candidates.

Expensive media assures that only the wealthy can have opportunity in politics. It is shameful and quite dangerous that only two or three families with large donor bases are eligible candidates for the Presidency. Similar ancestry dominates the Congress.

The internet is subject to the same consolidating forces as the rest of media, but has the additional danger of becoming a universal surveillance panopticon. Notice that massive wealth for a few oligarchs results when people freely give up their information.

Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon and AT&T together have spent more than $374 million lobbying to block Net Neutrality legislation. Not surprisingly, Republicans are fighting net neutrality.

Almost all corporate entities caved to government and collaborated in implementing universal surveillance. See this video.

Since Citizens United assured that floods of dark money foul our media, culture, politics, recent media coverage has been overwhelmingly Republican.

The oligarchs are politically powerful, so we are no longer a democracy.

Democracy, like journalism, is on a death watch. So are civil liberties. Privacy is dead. So is the Fourth Amendment.

Republican ideology is streamed constantly by Fox News, CNN, and the rest of corporate media. Citizens United guaranteed a cash bonanza for media owners, so you won't hear about it from them.

Corporate media, over the last decades, has corroded American culture. You need only take a close look at your TV screen... or schedule.

Republicans Have embarked on a National Campaign of Voter Suppression

* US elections do not meet international standards. The two parties have a lock on the discussion. Citizens United enables a flood of dark money that funds Candidates selected far in advance by plutocrats. They are backed by corporate media that renders anyone without money invisible. Republicans have blocked laws requiring financial disclosure. This guarantees corruption, institutional failure. Download Lawrence Lessig's book: Republic, Lost.

Election rigging is rampant...and mostly Republican.  Republicans restrict registrations to exclude unwelcome voters (minorities, students, and others). That's how they win without a popular majority.

* Republicans, in states that they control, after gerrymandering Congressional districts, have attacked public sector unions, laid off massive numbers of employees (further depressing the economy ) and are engaging in a campaign of voter suppression. They have been empowered to do this by partisan hacks on the Supreme Court.

* Given Republicans effort to make voting more difficult, we should have substantial election reform. The last Republican primary was an ugly, negative campaign by remarkably undistinguished candidates trying to sell bad policy. They call themselves 'conservatives', but they are anything but.

* Illegal immigration is, of course a stealth Republican wedge issue, (others are God, Gays, and abortion) a continuation of the Republican war on the underclass. Like the "war on drugs", it also benefits for-profit prisons. Because felons are often not allowed to vote again, harsh crime policy effectively suppresses minority votes. The US record levels of incarceration are a win-win for Republicans because they profit private prisons, they are a tool for increasing the population of rural areas, and they suppress voter eligibility. Michel Alexander has written that they are the new Jim Crow.

* They celebrate Reagan's 'Tear Down This Wall' speech in Germany, while funding an even more secure wall the length of the Mexican border. This is profitable for a number of military contractors and rouses the zenophobe base.

* Having been paid off by UPS and Fedex, they have made the Post Office a casualty of their privatization efforts. Next , with Rupert Murdoch and Jeb Bush leading, will be privatization of schools.

* Republicans, in opposing any sensible regulation of firearms, have brought an epidemic of gun violence upon us. They are funded by the NRA, a front group for the arms industry, and apparently only pro-life for the unborn. They are not too concerned about the 137,000 deaths that result from Americans who have no health insurance coverage. deaths resulting from widespread famine in other countries, or deaths from domestic gun violence. Although the Republican House talked a lot about jobs, what they spent time on was abortion. Their policy on population is, long-run, self destructive. See this for example.

* The right-wing government of Israel has contributed millions of dollars to the GOP, so the one thing the Republican candidates agree on is that they will support Israel in all circumstances. Israel is seriously considering military action against Iran. All Republican Presidential candidates favored war with Iran.

* Face it. Republicans are war mongers and profiteers.

Republicans oppose civil liberties

Republican strength in the former Confederacy was rooted in dog-whistle racist discrimination. It still is.

Republicans continue to lead in obstruction of women's rights. They are ignoring the threat from over population, the primary driver of climate change.

LGBT rights are still strongly resisted by Republicans, especially the religious fundamentalists.

When people enter the work place, they give up almost all liberty. The right to organize a union was written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but Republicans resistance to union organizing has been a powerful damper on wages and benefits.

The universal surveillance programs, implemented by Bush Neocons, that have proved so ineffective did destroy trust in US based multinationals, and will accelerate the Balkanization of the internet. Except for the Libertarian branch, Republicans are rolling back the Bill of Rights. Forget about the fourth amendment, we have lost all privacy.

U.S. law does not apply to the wealthy

Republicans are Theocrats

* The single most important indicator that somone is a Republican, is whether they are regular church attendees.

* For every major religion, doctrine says: love thy neighbor. So who are Republican's neighbors ? Immigrants ? Muslims ? Poor ? It seems not, but they love their guns.

* Republicans religious hypocrisy is on full display as they cut taxes for the wealthy, and then cut welfare, food stamps, meals on wheels, and other services for the poor.

* Republican policy has led to increased poverty. Poverty drives people to religion for comfort. Religion is media that denies science, so its education casts doubt on evolution, cliimate change, and fuels the tribalist beliefs that breed terrorism. A bake sale is no substitute a for robust social safety net.

* Republicans often proclaim religious zeal. Many of them are trying to break down the wall between church and state. Notice that the most religious countries (or states) are also the most backward. Our most prosperous and highly educated communities are also the most liberal. Republicans frequently deny climate change, evolution, and many of them say higher education is indoctrination or snobbery. It appears that they are waging a war on science and, using large money incentives, are politicizing higher education and funding ideology driven 'think tanks'.

* Republicans claim to favor small, unintrusive government, but they have no problem defending the Patriot Act, the universal spying, government secrecy, or mandating invasive procedures for women. Women were not allowed to testify about this. Further, this was used as an excuse to allow employers to tailor their health insurance coverage any way they want. It appears that the hidden hand of the health insurance industry and the Catholic church are motivating these policies. They have opposed equal pay for women (the Lily Ledbetter Act). They are doubling down on the war on women.

* It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that religion is the main motivator for terrorism.  Why should it be tax exempt when we have massive military expenses to be prepared for the consequences of religious intolerance.

* Many religious beliefs are in direct contradiction of settled science, so we ought to call them what they are: failed science or destructive ideology. Religious 'education' is, in many cases, profoundly contrary to the public interest. If you are poor in this life, feel a duty to further the religious cause, want to speed up your reward in the after-life, why not blow yourself up.

Republicans cannot Govern for the people

When Republicans claim to want small government what they mean is they are for privatizing everything, expanding the military, but cutting consumer protectiion, voting rights, equal rights, the minimum wage, Social Security, social programs, the EPA so that there will be freedom to pollute, in short they want to give corporate predators everything that they want.

They want small government and deregulation, they say, but they would regulate your sex life.

They are 'pro-life', they say, but, unlike other advanced countries, they favor the death penalty, see little reason to regulate guns,  and  in many Republican  States  turn a blind eye to  the thousands  of deaths  resulting from their refusal to expand Medicare.

They are destroyers of the commons. As a result, our infrastructure is in sad need of repair. (See Bob Herbert's book Losing Our Way.)

Republicans are Fascists

Republicans are corporate supremecists. Government run by corporations is, by definition, fascist. See this video. (Lawrence Lessig)

The 'conservative' justices of the Supreme Court have accomplished a coup: they have removed the government of the people and replaced it with government by the corporations. That is, by dictionary definition, fascism. Our government is not broke, it is bought. Congress overwhelmingly decides for the wealthy.

* The Supreme Court, packed with corporate supremacists and right-wing ideologues, has accomplished a coup: we now have a corrupt government by the corporations instead of government by the people. We have, as Lawrence Lessig has documented so well, lost our Republic.

* Corporations are not people, and they should not be allowed to pour cash into politics. It is corrupting. Cash is not speech. Profit is not their highest goal. Citizens United assures government by corporations, not people. Rule by corporations is, by definition, fascism.

* Republicans are corporatists. they represent the interests of the already wealthy. They want regressive tax cuts, suppression of labor unions, and religion that subjugates people. Deregulation, like privatization, is a strategy that removes oversight, transparency, accountability, and it is a major cause of the latest market crash. Just as Bush I, taxpayers had to bail out the banks again because Republicans have not learned the lessons of the great depression and continue to fight for less financial regulation. Expect another crash, only this time it will be worse because banks are even larger than last time.

* We have media that Congress allowed to become dangerously concentrated. Rupert Murdoch, found unfit to run a major corporation in Britain, not allowed in Canada, owns the Republican party and is actively spreading misinformation. Since he has not been held accountable, toxic politics will continue in the US. He can be credited with incitement to right-wing terrorism: the assassination of abortion doctors, death threats on high-profile liberals, and other civil disorder. See this video. (Robert McChesney)

* Except for Ron Paul, Republican candidates agreed that water boarding is effective. Although they strongly defend the second amendment (they are well funded by the gun industry), they stood by silently as the rest of the bill of rights has been eviscerated.

Republicans, like other fascists in history, don't care about the well-being of the people. That's why they are persistent in cutting all constructive social programs.

Police are being militarized, universal surveillance implemented without public discussion, and the US is number one ... in incarcerations.

When Republicans don't like other countries politics, they criticize them for human rights violations...while condoning torture , renditions, capital punishment, and even assassinations.

See Corporation Nation: Charles Derber.

Republicans are the party of the Military/industrial complexDon't Let Republicans Get Between Us and an Iran Deal

Militarization is the enemy of democracy, and history shows it has ended most republics.

The US not only has the world's largest military, it is number 1 in WMDs, and Republicans want to spend even more.

The Republicans are marching us to war.

Republicans demonize Muslims, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and others in the 'axis of evil' to justify increasing funding for the military. They don't believe in diplomacy.

The Republican appetite for military spending is insatiable, and it comes at the expense of the general welfare. U.S. military misadventures have inflamed the world and made us much less safe. Those drones that we now deploy will one day fly over our cities. Nuclear weapons will proliferate.

War is a deeply counterproductive way to conduct foreign policy, it has been disastrous for the Middle East, we are engaged on a world-wide battlefield in an apparently endless war, yet Republicans are clearly planning for much more of it. Don't think that we are safer as a result. 

The US has a seemingly unbreakable habit of relying on Military Keynsianism. Weaponry is the source of jobs for a large majority of Congressional districts, and it is not only a terrible jobs program, deprives us of civil liberties, civilization, and may prove to be our own self-destruction. No one is exceptional, but Republicans can't accept that.

Since there is no credible threat to justify it, Republicans have been provoking threats from Iran and trying to revive the cold war relationship with Russia. By placing missiles on the Russian border they have incited a new arms race. War is profitable.

* Republicans are the party of the military-industrial complex, so although we have no major enemies in sight, they refuse to cut the military budget. Like any fascist government, they would expand the military by cutting programs that actually benefit people, With the exception of Ron Paul, they are always ready to arm themselves to go to war. They have funded expensive, provocative weapons programs like 'star wars' that cannot and will not work. This benefits corporate war profiteers, and robs people of necessities like health care as well as efficient infrastructure like high-speed rail. Because the US is now an empire, the US military, now the largest in the world is dispersed to over a hundred countries. It is the reason we are facing financial ruin, opposition abroad, loss of our civil liberties, deteriorating services, rotting infrastructure, declining standard of living, and a militarized country. See this video. (Chalmers Johnson.)

Republicans have no desire to stand down nuclear weaponry. We will spend a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons over the next ten years even though it is in violation of international law

The Bush family has, for generations, had strong connections with the military-industrial profiteers.

The Republican government in waiting, as selected by Bush or Mitt Romney, was staffed by the same warmongers who lied to go to war in IraqIraq and Afghanistan and are determined to build a world-dominating empire. Republicans have not been held accountable for criminal acts including wire taps, torture, renditions, and lying to go to war and that means the felonswill be back if they can win elections.

A large part of the US 'defense' budget is secret because it is used for purposes that citizens would never approve and to fund state terrorism world wide. (See, for example, SOAW.org)

If Republicans had the moral superiority that they claim, they would want peace. They would have some respect for international law, join the International Criminal Court, and pay their dues to the UN. Instead they oppose efforts to reduce numbers of nuclear weapons and support the provocative star wars boondoggle. But war is profitable, and world-dominating empire is their goal, so they are warmongers. Like fascists in history, they are not concerned with the well-being of actual people. Only corporations. The Trump administration looks like a get rich quick scheme.

Someone said: We might as well have burned the four trillion dollars we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. See Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz book: The Three Trillion Dollar War: Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes (Stiglitz revised his estimate: It's now more like $4 trillion.

We are embarked on perpetual war, because war is profitable.

History shows that Republics cannot survive empire.

Republicans Disdain International Institutions

"The U.S. Senate has not ratified a major multilateral treaty since 1997." GlobalSolutions.org

The Iraq war caused world opinion of the US to plummet. After WW II the US signed the UN Charter which allowed war in only two circumstances: one, self-defence from an outside attack, or two, with the unanimous agreement of the UN Security Council. We did not get such agreement, and additionally there is now recognition that the case for war was fabricated.

The Bush administration's prison at Guantanamo showed that American law stopped at the waters edge. Torture made NEOCON officials war criminals. Criticism of other countries human rights activities can only be seen as hypocrisy now.

"TeleSur" - An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close. (1/17/2015) or (10/21/2014)

Our most serious challenges are global: pollution, climate degradation, over population, nuclear proliferation, ...

Global challenges require global institutions.

Republicans work tirelessly to weaken the UN, attack the International Criminal Court, withdraw from other agreements such as the WHO, Nuclear arms agreements, many others. Most of the most challenging problems are trans national and Republicans are useless in dealing with them.

War is profitable. Although our economy is no longer able to support it, it is necessary to renounce our empire to avoid complete ruin, but Republicans will not. So we are building a new generation of nuclear weapons which will cost a trillion over the next 10 years. "The risk of a nuclear catastrophe is far greater than we think."

Many Republicans think torture is ok. Some should be prosecuted for war crimes. That's why the U.S. cannot join the International Criminal Court.

As we continue to destroy the habitability of our planet, more of our challenges are global. (See Kishore Mahbubani's book 'The Great Convergence' for that argument.) It seems apparent that the US has great disdain for international opinion and institutions since it has consistently opposed adequate funding for the UN, and crippled the WHO and the IAEA . It cannot bring itself to join the ICC (International Criminal Court).

Republicans oppose science: They are Climate Change Deniers

With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate - including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning - accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. New York Times editorial 10/18/2010.

* Republicans, representing polluters and corporate oligarchs, using tobacco industry tactics, have been the force behind climate change denial, demonizing scientists with actual evidence. This, alone, is sufficient reason not to vote for them. (See Merchants of Doubt.)

We are destroying nature: an extinction is underway, temperatures rising, forests burning, glaciers melting, drought intensifying, deserts expanding, soils depleting, pollution growing, oceans rising, and population is out of control.

* Corrupt media sides with money, and rarely lets on that there is a problem with climate.

* The most profitable corporations, notably the fossil fuel industries, back the climate denying 'experts' and the Republicans. While real conservatives would leave carbon in the ground, Republicans cheer for the polluters, the XL pipeline, fracking, and more drilling. We should repeal payroll taxes and replace them with a carbon tax, but we won't because Republican tax policy is short-sighted, self-serving, regressive, misguided, and corrupt.

* In 1972 the club of Rome computer models showed that growth cannot be unlimited and recent studies show their forecast is on track. Republican's ideas about population, resource use, and market fundamentalism assure that as we reach resource limits, the results will be catastrophic. See this video. (Bill McKibbon)

* The pressure of population has caused the plundering of the planet: fisheries are collapsing, glaciers melting with declining fresh water, desertification accelerating, crop land shrinking, soil deteriorating, forests diseased, species going extinct, and weather becoming more extreme. Although the IPCC has escalated the warning, Republicans ignore these problems. See Guy McPherson's web site: "Nature Bats Last".

"In the past fifty years we've doubled our irrigated cropland and tripled our water consumption to meet global food demand. In the next fifty, we must double food production again. Is there really enough water to pull that off ? In his book When the Rivers Run Dry environmental journalist Fred Pearce describes in vivid, firsthand detail the stark reality of impending water crises in more than thirty countries around the globe. We now withdraw so much water that many of our mightiest and most historic rivers - like the Nile, the Colorado, the Yellow, the Indus - have barely a trickle left to meet the sea." (From the World in 2050: Laurence C Smith)

* Mass extinction has already begun. Republican efforts to defund the EPA are most likely suicidal for humanity.

* We live on a planet that is unique as far as telescopes can see. Republicans refuse to acknowledge that the climate is rapidly deteriorating and see no need to stop profligate burning of fossil fuels, slow population growth, or even to take care in harvesting resources or controlling pollutants. If they can make a buck, they would rather destroy the planet. Most likely, they will.

With Republican policy of disaster capitalism, humanity is doomed to an inhospitable planet if not extinction. That is their legacy for their grandchildren. They are like Jim Jones on a planet-wide scale.

Summary

"It is difficult to find even a single, constructive Republican policy choice". Robert L Vogel

The Republican government is a group that includes tax dodgers, polluters, corporate supremacists, Neocon war mongers (see Iraq or Iran), misogynists, bigots, racists, theocrats, homophobes , fascists, gun lovers, felons and other right-wing nuts. They have brought on us a corporate empowering Supreme Court that selected W and his wrecking crew, and has all but destroyed the republic with Citizens United.

This Republican Congress is the most obstructionist, dysfunctional and unproductive in our history. Their misguided agenda will put the majority in debt servitude to profit the oligarchs that own the party. But they are primarily tax-dodgers unwilling to pay for services required by an advanced country. They are the party of ideas...only bad ones.

Republicans values are all about money. They do not think the American dream includes healthcare for all, nor do they respect the role of science in establishing fact (they deny the looming climate crisis), they twist their religion to invert its dictum to burden the poor and profit the wealthy, they do not believe economists assessment of the damage from their austerity and brinksmanship, they are corporatists which by definition is fascism, their voter id laws and gerrymandering degrade elections and reveal their racism, their 'stand your ground' laws grant a right to vigilantism, their appetite for all things military is insatiable, they cry out for small government but don't worry about the NSA, or the growing national security state. They don't like government which is why they are so bad at it, their YOYO (your on your own) attitude is largely responsible for the "Wilding of America" (see Charles Derber's book of the same title), their obstruction has made US government dysfunctional. Although they yell they are defenders of the Constitution, their actions will shred it. Carrying the confederate flag, it is apparent that many of them are secessionists. Should you vote for them ? Not if you are an actual patriot.

Now that Republicans control the Senate, if they stay on their course, they will continue denial of climate change and head for certain disaster. They will deny the unfairness of extreme inequality and the corrosive social consequences. They will cut programs for the poor and vulnerable claiming that the deficit is more of a threat. They will continue the corrupt privatization of public facilities including schools, the internet, media, Post Office, and more. Universal surveillance will continue, civil liberties will be a distant memory, real journalism will disappear, and, as the economy tanks (Banks too big to fail are even bigger now) militarization of the police will be appropriate for an arms race with right-wing protesters heavily armed with assault weapons. They refuse sensible gun regulation. A recent study determined that the U.S. is an oligopoly now, and Thomas Piketty's, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, forecasts that the one percent are going to benefit from an even greater concentration of wealth which will be accelerated by Republican policy.

Another Republican President will bring the Neocon warmongers back to public office to continue endless war (most likely in Iran), appoint even worse corporate supremacist judges to the Supreme Court, and accelerate our fast move to a fascist police state. Existential threats will be unaddressed because Republicans are all about denial of the facts for short-term profit.

Expect destruction of democracy and a new Dark Age in America. Here's the forecast.

...we can look forward with confidence to character-building bankruptcies, picturesque bread riots, thrilling cavalcades of splendidly costumed motorcycle police. Lewis Lapham (Harper's Magazine Oct. 2005)

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." Sinclair Lewis (1935)

Water for Elephant

or see What's Wrong With Republicans ?

Consider also Republican History.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.- FDR
"The refusal to provide very minimal living standards to people who are caught in this monstrosity — that's just pure savagery." –Noam Chomsky
Republicans are driving a very bad bargain: "we are in the process of destroying a great many things which are real air, soil, water, energy, resources, other species, our health for the sake of something that exists chiefly in our imagination: money. from DeclineOfTheEmpire.com
“When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.” ~ Cree prophecy

Bibliography

...what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture -- a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture. Of course, the Dark Ages were not uniformly monochromatic, as recent scholarship has demonstrated; but then, neither is present-day America. The point is that in both cases "dark" is the operative word. Morris Berman
Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post, said the Republicans are willing, essentially, to allow World War III to commence unless the IRS does not enforce the law on dark money, such as from the Koch brothers. To quote him "It's bananas". It is pretty crazy. "Allow us to break the law in order to win elections, or we allow WW III". Rachel Maddow show 3/24/2014

Links

Stop the Republicans' Wall Street Giveaway: Elizabeth Warren, (12/11/2014)

Republicans' Wall Street Giveaway (12/11/2014)

Want to Fix Our Dysfunctional Congress? Vote Right-Wing Republicans Out of Office (10/29/14)

The GOP’s victim-blaming strategy

The GOP Autopsy Had 11 Proposals To Change Its Image. How’s That Going? (12/5/2013)

Republicans Are Too Expensive In Jobs and Dollars For America (10/8/2013)

Republican Lunatics vote against the Rights of Disabled People (12/4/2012)

Mitt Romney's Real Agenda (9/28/2012)

Republicans Filibuster the disclose Act so Wealthy Donors Won't Get their Feelings Hurt