Via Think Progress, it’s nice to hear the occasional congress critter who’s still speaking sense. And in this case, Chris Van Hollen couldn’t be more right. The Republicans will throw up any smokescreen they can to obscure the fact that they haven’t done a damn thing about “jobs, jobs, jobs!”:
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) rebuked House Republicans yesterday for suggesting the government require drug tests of individuals seeking unemployment insurance, calling such proposals “insulting” and a “red herring” in the unemployment crisis:
VAN HOLLEN: I think the drug testing thing is a red herring. The reality is that people are not out of work because they have substance abuse problems, people are out of work because there are four people looking for every job that’s available in America.
We’re willing to look at reforms, but the Republican rhetoric has been insulting to a whole lot of working Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own… I have to say, this Republican effort to kind of blame people who lost jobs through no fault of their own shows a total insensitivity to the stories that we’re hearing from districts around the country. Frankly I think the American people are hearing that tone and they’re not very appreciative, because they know that everybody, but for the grace of God, could also be in that position.
All Republicans and their Democratic enablers made this economic crisis happen. It’s what their corporate overlords have planned and executed. They want to destroy government and privatize its services to fill their own pockets. They want a cheap domestic source of labor. They have to beggar us into submission so they can bugger us into subservience.
All the politicians want is money kick-backed to them so they can run for office or run to the Caymans with their loot.
Republicans have become adept at fighting abortion and trying to smother this country. They talk about personal responsibility, but fail to take the blame for the economic crimes they knew were happening on their watch. They focus on gayness and guns and say one has no right to be and the other is a right guaranteed. They are gay for guns, but not for people. They are Koch-suckers.
All they do is project what they are doing onto others and blame the victims of their treachery. These people have gotten away with their rape and theft of this country long enough. When will things change? As soon as someone (or a group of someones) just stands up and says, “Enough! No more!.”
JB, it was Bill Clinton who set the stage for Bush/Cheney to not only plunder the wealth of the 99%, but to illegally and pre-emptively invade Afghanistan and Iraq. What can you say about George W. Bush?! Except that he knew nothing about anything so he allowed Cheney to run the country for 8 years. Cheney believed in the economic thories of Friedrich Hayek (Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics) as did Reagan, Clinton, Thatcher, Blair etc. In their laisez faire capitalism world debt and deficits “don’t matter.” Because 6% of the federal budget ($200 billion dollars [defense gets 20% or $680 billion dollars]) each year goes to the capitalist 1% in the form of interest payments on the money they loaned the government. Bookies call that the vig. It’s no wonder Clinton is now worth $100 million dollars after leaving office penniless.
Obfuscation about Bill Clinton doesn’t change the facts.
Milton Friedman, Grover Norquist, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Cheney, et al are about economic elitism. They are white patricians that see the world turning brown and want to monopolize the resources necessary to project their DNA into the future – Resources and Reproduction, that’s what this all about. The rest is smoke and mirrors.
As for Bill Clinton, I bet that none of his money has pollution, loss of health care, destruction of the middle class and war crimes profiteering attached to it.
It’s a schoolyard argument to say “Well, Bill did that too.” Setting the stage is different than going on it and acting out the tragedy that the Republicans (and their Dem enablers) are forcing on us.
I respect what you said, but don’t agree it.
This, then that, JB. First pass NAFTA and then destroy the middle class by shipping millions of high paying union jobs overseas. Never spending any of your own political capital by putting your wife in charge of getting a health care bill passed. She failed. Pre-emptively bombing Kosovo just because NATO can. Sounds like a war crime to most people. Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act allowing your bankster buddies to kill whatever remained of the middle class after having passed NAFTA. Finally somehow making $100 million honest dollars by telling anyone who would listen just how great a job you did for 8 years. Bill Clinton is a bigger thief than most.
So, the 8 years of Republican rule – Iraq, Afghanistan, The Patriot Act, lowering taxes on the rich during 2 wars, lying us into those wars, allowing 9/11 to happen, a drug act that was not paid for, allowing investment companies to bet against instruments that they developed as a scam, and paying companies to ship jobs overseas (just to mention a few) don’t count?
And what about going from a surplus that would pay off our debt to a deficit that could ruin next 2-3 generations? This was not by accident. This is a PNAC wet dream. The goal is to destroy this country so that the “white patricians” can run things “the right way.” Greed is a word that doesn’t cover these crimes. Pointing your finger at Clinton is an attempt to take our eyes off the real thieves. Everything you lay at his feet were voted on by a Republican Congress that was in the pocket of the economic elite. Those neocons have been very successful, until now. Hopefully enough people realize how they have been misused and will do something about it.