Ding Dong! Democracy's dead.

I no longer have a suit to wear to the funeral of Democracy.

See, I’ve gained a little weight and no longer fit into my dark blue suit. I don’t know what I’m going to wear to the somber gathering at which we’ll mourn the loss of the system of government that served us so well…for a while, anyway.

I was on the way home after picking Anita up from work last night when I heard on the radio that although polls are showing that people want Medicaid and Medicare left alone, Washington isn’t listening. Paul Ryan (R-Eddie Munster), the GOP’s go-to guy on Screwing People through Use of the Federal Budget, wants to make Medicare a voucher program and Medicaid a block grant program with $750 billion less in funding.

The Ryan plan forces seniors to pay more for the same benefits, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and jeopardizes vital health care services for millions of low-income Americans. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Pussy) recently went on “Faux News Sunday” and argued that Medicare and Medicaid sometimes provide a “safety net” for “people who frankly don’t need one” and that the shift of the burden from the government to the beneficiary will teach government “to do more with less.”

Cantor is the dickhead who admitted on television that Republicans were emboldened by their success in bending the POTUS over a barrel during recent budget negotiations so now they’re going to refuse to raise the nation’s debt ceiling – causing the government to default on our debts – if they don’t secure more spending cuts.

This is not about cutting spending and streamlining government and balancing budgets. (The endless, unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost over a trillion dollars to date but no one’s talking about bringing our soldiers home.) This is about widening the divide between the rich and everybody else and taking away any chance of bridging the divide. It’s class war, pure and simple. It’s a complex, coordinated, multi-faceted, insurmountable assault on the idea that the supreme power of government is vested in, and exercised by, the people.

• I’m still struggling with the fact that a few months ago President Obama betrayed his vow to end Dubya's tax cuts for the wealthy - the promise that helped him get elected - by agreeing with greedy Republicans on a "temporary" two-year extension of all cuts in order to obtain a measly 13-month extension of unemployment benefits. Based on Treasury Department estimates, the cost of this b*llsh*t move is likely to approach $700 billion.

• I already wrote about how taxpayers are still on the hook for cleanup costs if we have another Deepwater Horizon-esque environmental catastrophe because Congress hasn't changed the law that caps oil companies' liabilities. 

• I also already wrote about Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signing a law making it possible for emergency financial managers appointed by the state to go into struggling cities and school districts and usurp the authority of local elected officials, with mostly poor, black Benton Harbor being the first municipality in the state to experience this assault on representative Democracy. And Snyder’s budget proposals are consistent with the “Take from the Have Nots and Give to the Haves” philosophy currently being advanced in Washington and across the nation.

• Last month the Missouri State Senate voted to overturn an anti-puppy mill referendum approved by 52 percent of state voters last year. A few years ago, both houses of the Missouri legislature voted to overturn a proposal approved by 76 percent of voters declaring that the state minimum wage should rise along with inflation.

Want to know who should be convicted for the murder of Democracy?  The United States Supreme Court is certainly complicit 'cause of its “Corporations are people too” ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. The nine robed twits aren’t alone, though. They should be joined in a police lineup by David and Charles Koch.

Last summer, The New Yorker magazine featured an interesting and depressing article about the billionaire libertarians who’ve declared war on Everything Obama. The magazine points out that “the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies – from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program – that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.” Another exposé reveals that the Koch network has donated $11 million to federal candidates since 1990, 89 percent of which went to Republicans, and that $1.2 million was spent to help elect conservative Republican governors last year, “including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich, both of whom are trying to take away collective bargaining rights.”

Yep, Democracy is clearly dead. Its ass was kicked by Oligarchy. Since there probably won’t be a formal swearing-in ceremony, I won’t have to worry about squeezing into a suit anytime soon.


Democracy: noun.  A form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents.

Oligarchy: noun. A form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.





Sources: Think Progress, CNNMoney.com, The New Yorker magazine, Alternet.org