I remember how disappointed I was back in November, 2000. An intelligent, science-minded candidate splitting the vote so closely with a old spoiled rich kid who showed serious evidence of difficulty speaking in his native tongue. I was disgusted with the collective lack of wisdom of the electorate, and then, dismayed by a partisan Supreme Court selecting our president instead of letting the votes be counted.
I consoled myself with the thought - how much damage could the Republicans really do in four years? We all know how much of a "misunderestimation" that proved to be.
So now, the Republican Congress has "only" two years to show us how much damage they can do to the progressive policies and society that they so fiercely disdain.
So here's how I see the next two years: a continuation of a Congress that does nothing for the general welfare of the citizens who gave them their jobs. There will be more attempts to mangle the new healthcare law. Very strange; Obama gives the parasitic health insurance industry thirty million new customers, but the party owing more allegiance to the Chamber of Commerce than their constituents wants to overturn it. Maybe just because it wasn't their idea? Oh yeah, that's right - it was their idea! The sheer insanity, opposing the policies of Obama at every turn, no matter how much it hurts 99% of the populace.
Two more years of
- Fighting an increase in the minimum wage, using warnings of job killing results that have proven wrong in every jurisdiction where the minimum wage has been raised.
- Fighting anything that would lead to more jobs and a stronger economy. No infrastructure investment for them - that would create too damn many middle class wage jobs, maybe even force the owners of our country to pay higher wages throughout the economy because of increased competition for workers. Better to have employees who put up with all kinds of crap for fear of being unemployed.
- No investment in high speed rail to connect our most densely populated urban areas.
Just because the rest of the developed world spends and has spent billions on this is no reason for us to add a 21st Century asset to our public commons.
- Helping the 1% continue to win the class war with no change in the tax rates, giving subsidies to the oil and gas industry even though they continue to rake in record profits, and shoveling vast sums of money to the military industrial complex, even though it creates the fewest jobs of any government spending while ignoring obscene profit margins for the no-bid contract players in that game.
And finally, and worst of all, two more years of doing nothing to address the changes we need in our economy and our technology to move away from the petroleum-based civilization we know is fouling our nest. The Republicans will continue to say the science isn't settled, as they point to the conclusions of the 3% of scientists who don't agree with the concensus of the other 97%. The models are wrong, they say.
Yes, the models are wrong! Benchmark after benchmark predicted by climate models have arrived years before they were predicted to be reached. All those grant-grubbing hoaxsters, thousands of them around the world, across dozens of fields in the realm of the earth sciences, have been wrong. We don't have another fifty years to work on the problem.
As Cassandra, I say that within another five years it will be very obvious that something is wrong, that climate change is happening too damn fast. It may still be a few decades before there is a serious threat to the stability of our global civilization; I just hope I live to see the people who have gotten wealthy by waving the banners of the deniers jailed for their participation in the real hoax still being promoted in our exceptional country. Namely, that Republicans really give a damn about the vast majority of us that don't help them get rich(er).