It’s the Democracy, Stupid!
No other issue for 2022 and 2024 is more important
By Pamela Hilliard Owens
Issue #42 March 31,2022
During the 1992 presidential election campaign, James Carville, who was advising Governor Bill Clinton on his eventual successful election that unseated incumbent President George H.W. Bush, came up with the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Since then, variations on that phrase have been used to highlight the importance of an issue.
In this year of the 2022 midterms, there are a lot of issues to deal with, including the economy, but there is only ONE overarching issue: our very democracy is in true peril. The current Republicans who are authoritarians, insurrectionists, white supremacists, anti-LGBTA+, anti-women’s choice, anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, anti-ACA, anti-EVERYTHING that doesn’t keep them in power are doing everything they can to squash what the majority of Americans actually want for their lives.
If we lose our democracy to the people referenced above, all other issues and challenges will pale in comparison.
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I wasn’t going to publish an article about the government today, but yesterday’s article by Professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has the #1 newsletter on Substack, prompted me to push up this topic on my schedule. Here is her article from yesterday:
Professor Cox Richardson’s article starts out by reminding everyone that all of a sudden, with the stated goal of highlighting “fair and balanced voices,” major media outlets such as CNN and CBS News are hiring former Trump administrators and Congresspeople as on-air talents. The outlets are conveniently forgetting that in one or more ways, these people tried to destroy the very departments and/or agencies over which they were in charge, and/or some even directly or indirectly participated in the Jan 6 insurrection to overturn the 2020 election.
I highly recommend that you read this article and subscribe to “Letters From An American.”
The 11-point 2022 Republican Platform to Destroy America
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that the Republicans would have no “platform” for 2022. They also did not have a published platform for 2020. They said then that their “platform” was whatever Donald Trump wanted it to be and said it was. Period.
However, almost immediately, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott, who was also previously elected twice to the governorship and was also previously the head of a company that pled guilty to massive efforts to defraud the Medicare program, announced an 11-point platform that he says the Republicans should follow if they want to take back control of the Senate. (Rick Scott is also head of the RSCC that works to elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate.)
Scott and people like him truly believe that the “radical, socialist, and immoral left” is taking over every part of the government and silencing “other viewpoints,” so here is his solution to “save America:”
Destroy U.S. Public Education Order schools to force students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day, fire teachers who teach “Critical Race Theory” just to make white children “feel uncomfortable,” shut down the entire Department of Education, and implement a voucher program that takes money from the public schools and allows those billions of dollars to be given to unregulated religious institutions.
End Diversity Training Everywhere Scott and his ilk label anything that promotes diversity as “woke.” He wants to end diversity training in the military, cut off funding for universities that desire to diversify their student bodies, and proudly proclaim that the United States has always been “colorblind,” so any program that helps underserved and/or minority populations is unnecessary.
Decimate Immigration, especially at the Southern Border Scott wants to “secure our borders” (read: keep out the brown people), finish that useless and overly expensive wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for, and actually name the wall after Donald Trump.
Destroy Our Macro Economy Scott wants to tax EVERYBODY, including poor people and retirees to pay more taxes, including on the pensions and Social Security on which they already paid taxes; he wants to give the president line-item veto power, thus reducing the power of Congress over financial matters; he wants to prohibit increases to the debt ceiling, and he wants the government to consider “socialism” an enemy combatant. Scott also wants the Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid programs to be put up for a vote in Congress every five years, meaning millions of Americans could possibly lose the insurance benefits they paid for during their entire working lives.
Make some criminals pay more and other criminals pay less Scott wants to increase the sentences of non-violent and violent criminals, while at the same time expanding qualified immunity so that police officers can more easily abuse their authority.
Reduce the effectiveness of government agencies and members of Congress Scott proposes to enact term limits for all members of Congress and to move most government agencies outside of Washington, D.C. He also wants to reduce the IRS by 1/2 so the agency would have fewer resources to mitigate tax fraud.
Limit Voting Access The Republicans under Scott’s proposals would do anything and everything to make it harder for non-Republicans to vote and easier for Republicans to count only the votes they approve of by banning same-day and automatic voter registration, banning public campaign financing and unmanned ballot collection boxes, and by not allow the counting of absentee ballots that arrived after Election Day. Draconian voter ID regulations would be mandatory, of course.
Take away the rights of people they “don’t like” The right-wing wants to ban abortion, ban porn, give special tax breaks only to “nuclear families,” and allow “faith-based” groups to discriminate against anyone they don’t favor.
Eliminate anything that is LGBTA+-related or in any way deals with gender identity and/or sexual preference Scott’s proposal would eliminate any protections for trans people (including punishing doctors who treat trans people) and also ban government forms from any questions relating to gender identity in any way.
Allow people to spread misinformation and hate speech on private platforms The 1st Amendment does not cover private companies such as Facebook and Twitter, but Scott wants to throw away the Constitution when it suits his purposes. He wants “cancel culture” and “woke politics” to be outlawed.
Revive failed “America First” policies Scott wants the U.S. to stop participating in peace-keeping missions (probably including NATO) anywhere in the world, end the $435 BILLION in annual imports from China, tamp down work on climate change, and “treat our enemies like enemies.”
Despite what Mitch McConnell claims, these ideas are what the Republicans want for our country. Notice there is NOTHING to help regular people or hold on to the rights and social safety nets that people have depended on for at least the last 85 years.
So is THIS what is meant by “Make America Great Again?” I guess it depends on your definition of “America.”
Are this the direction America should take? Let us know in the comments what you think.
