Across the Midwestern United States, from Minnesota to Ohio, we have observed the result of a "wave" election in 2010 where Republicans made great political gains as a result of a low turnout election last November. This electoral wave hit other parts of America as well, but no region has been as profoundly affected as the five states of the Northwest Territory plus Minnesota. Radical new governors are sitting in Governor's Mansions in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Radical legislatures sit in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Note: I recognize that Minnesota is not a state from the Northwest Territory, but it is close. The five states carved out of the Northwest Territory are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsn. Of these five, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin have the trifecta of radical Republcan governors and both houses of their legislatures under the control of radical Republicans as well. I don't have statistics from the other states, but in Ohio, we have all statewide administrative offices (Gov, Lt. Gov, Sec of State, Auditor, AG and Treasurer) all in Republican hands and a 6-1 majority in the Supreme Court in Republican hands). Minnesota has a radical Republican majority in both houses of its legislature, but this is balanced by a DFL governor, which blunts to some degree the ability of the legislature to fully radicalize the state, and Illinois has a Democratic government with the courage to raise taxes when the need to balance its budget arose. Governing is supposed to be about making difficult choices, and Republican politicians who take the no tax pledge have pledged not to do their duty to balance public needs and public resources, and in effect have chosen not to make hard choices, as their minds are already made up, and choices are unnecessary.
These radical legislatures and governors speak with a single voice, and that voice belongs to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
We'll come back to the American Legislative Exchange Council later, but I want to further discuss the radical Republican strategy of failure in America as a means to gain even more political power.
The Republicans believe that if President Obama is prevented from taking the steps necessary to improve our economy in a meaningful way before November, 2012, then the American electorate will take this failure to move the economy forward as a signal to elect an even more radical Republican president than George W. Bush was, and to complete a radical Republican takeover of the Senate, and achieve the trifecta of radical Republicans in control of the House, Senate and White House, which would allow the truly radical Republicans to consolidate their power over our economy, our laws, they already have control of the interpretation of our laws by maintaining the majority on the Supreme Court and most Federal District courts. Couple that thought with 20 state legislatures which also exhibit the same trifecta at the state level, and we then have the political forces in place to repeal not only the 20th Century, but part of the 19th Century.
If this failure of America strategy is succcessful in causing the toppling of President Obama, and the ascension of radical Republicans in control of the congress, we will see the Trust Busting of the 1890's and Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900's fall by the wayside. A stated legislative goal of the radical Republicans is the complete repeal of all Anti-Trust legislation that is on the books, all the way back to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, from 1890. We would stand to return to the abuses of Big Rail, Big Oil, Big Steel, and any other Big you wish to name, except Big Labor, which they will initiate legislation to crush because countervailing power will not be tolerated. Want proof? Cato Institute Downsizing the Federal Government, No. 40. Read the first page. There is no need to read further. However if you do, you will find that an endnote references a publication by Alan Greenspan edited by his heartthrob Ayn Rand that was written in 1966. Oh, the ecstasy!
Greenspan, Alan. ‘‘Antitrust.’’ In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, edited by Ayn Rand.
New York: Signet, 1966.
Rand Paul, a leading Senate radical Republican believes it is unconstitutional to regulate worker safety or mine worker safety, preferring to return America to the unregulated mining environment of the 1930's when America averaged 1500 miner deaths a year, seeing dramatic drops in the 1940's and continuing to this day when we averaged less than 50 miner deaths per year in the 1990's. 50 is still 50 too many, but Mr. Paul sees nothing wrong with returning us to the regulatory environment that allowed 1500 miner deaths each and every year in America. This would be like having 75 companies with the safety attitudes expressed by Massey Energy Company. This is what the radical Republican strategy of failure in America may reap if it succeeds.
From MSHA, here are the grim statistics:
http://www.msha.gov/...
A picture says a thousand words:
To a radical Republican, the regulation of a business, be it to help make the workplace safe, or to prevent a company which burns a fossil fuel, or combines chemicals to make other chemicals to perform some industrial or agricultural function, that regulation, which governments around the world have determined that the failure to regulate the pollution of the air and water we drink and breathe, is a taking of property from the polluter, no matter the public good that is accomplished through that regulation, and must be stopped. They consider this to be a taking of property, even though the regulated polluter has the ability to recapture and even profit from the application of the regulation. They are arguing their right to pollute the air and water is more important than the right of 310 million Americans to breathe clean air and to extract clean water from streams that will be more severely polluted in the absence of regulation. Easily over 200 million Americans draw water from rivers and streams that are subject to upstream pollution from sewage, industrial discharges, farm runoff due to fertilizers, synthetic plant hormones intended for weed control, factory farm manure and urine runoff, and thousands of other non point source polluters.
I have news for Rand Paul and other so-callled "free marketeers" who think regulating the environment is a taking of property from them and their corporate supporters. When they make the air we breathe and the water we drink polluted with their operations, that is a taking of property from 310 million Americans too, and we aren't going to let you take that property from us. The property rights of 307 other millions among us far overbalance the property rights, if they exist, of 3 million radical right republican funders to dump their waste in our air and water. They have the right to recover their costs associated with environmental regulation by building that cost into the price of the goods they sell, so did they really have property taken from them? Or are they simply creating misleading rhetoric? You decide.
If the reader wishes to do further research on the topic of regulation as a taking of private property, using "regulation of business is a taking of property" as a search argument on Google will yield 83,000,000 results. Adding the term "Cato" to the search will yield many arguments from that leading proponent of radical Republican libertarianism and its opinions regarding regulation and taking of property. I leave it to the reader to decide if the radical right republican-libertarian agenda expressed in organizations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation and their ilk don't find their way into the agenda of ALEC, the corporate-funded vehicle to both write and disseminate radical right republican legislation among the 50 states.
The bottom line for America is that if our governments (federal, state and local) cave to the demands of the radical right republicans, and expressed at the state level through their direct pipeline shadow government ALEC, then the property rights of all Americans will have succumbed to a policy of Repubican Failure.
Select any topic that is on the agenda of the radrightreps, and you will find that their agenda is to advance failure. Mitch McConnell has been right up front for years that the number one goal of the radreps in congress is to make Barack Obama a "one term president", and that they will pursue a policy of failure to make that happen. The radreps in the Senate have made the filibuster their weapon of choice to extend gridlock and failure on the economy of the United States of America. Nearly every bill and even procedural motion has been subjected to the filibuster by the radreps under the "leadership" of Mitch McConnell. No bill intended to help reduce unemployment during the Obama administration will get through the picket fence of a senate filibuster and the radrep House majority under the "leadership" of Ohio's John Boehner and Virginia's Eric Cantor, each of whom control differing radical factions of the house. This wrecking crew is intend on making it impossible for Barack Obama to govern the United States, and their tactics are taking the economy hostage (witness the debt ceiling debate which stopped job growth in its tracks, and now the stalled appropriations bill (aka Continuing Resolution or CR, which in this case is a misnomer) which has stopped Wall Street in its tracks, and has the world economy teetering in the balance because the radreps in the house have left the building, with a United States Government Shutdown hanging in the balance. The fate of the Euro, the European and world economies are hanging in the balance, while Radical Republicans in Congress work to make the American president fail, to make the American and world economies fail, just to make it easier for the radrightreps to win the presidency in 2012.
Failure is the policy of the Radical Right Republcan congress and legislatures from coast to coast and beyond. Failure is the policy of the Radical Right Republican governors and legislatures, and their agenda of failure is advanced every day by The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Are we going to let the Radical Right Republicans, as a policy move, destroy our environment, our economy, the world's economy, and the freedom we all enjoy which has been earned by the lives and sacrifices of countless American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardmen? Or are we going to stand up and demand, yes, DEMAND that the Radical Right Republicans govern, or face the consequences of the largest electoral turnout in America history to turn them out of office forever?