Republicans vs. Democrats

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Javierdude22: Just came back from a vacation in the US, which gave me time to catch up on some reading. I did 'Fast food nation' (yes, it is out for some time already, bare with me, i'm in the Old World) and am starting on this new book called 'Politics'.

Somewhere while I was reading Fast food nation my mind started buzzing and I just didn&#39;t really get it anymore. Not the letters, the ethics <_< .

The following is kind of how I see the Republican party, and why it is successfull. I realise this might be stepping into a lions pit, but, all the more reason to discuss it.

According to this widely recognized as accurate book, the Republican congressmen seem to be consistently banning any consumer or employee rights, in favor of multinational companies with billion dollar revenues and a substantial donation to each of the individual members of Congress they need votes from. These consumer and employee rights directly save lives on the workplace or in consumers kitchens, increase wellbeing by raising working conditions, workers pay, and benefits. No, these are not words from hell spawn by some diabolical creature, these are logical things.

If food is contaminated by a deadly virus we should be able to send it back: NOOOOOO&#33;&#33;&#33;...Republicans yell frantically. Why, I ask? Is the immigration level too high? Do we need a certain amount of deaths?

If a worker is killed, yes killed, in a meatpackingplant by circumstances so filthy or dangerous that it was grossly illegal, a billion dollar making company is fined a maximum of 40,000 dollars. Is that what a human being is worth these days? I should invest...

The Midwest in large parts is being turned into a crime infested place with the lowest incomes ever. I actually saw these villages travelling through Idaho and Colorado. How does it help that an entire Midwest of people is poor because they are squeezed by corporate policies supported by a Republican Congress, while a few multimillionaires who own land in the US the size of Delaware add another zero to their bankaccount? Doesnt one of the first economic policies tell us a rise in pay for low income families will be spent, whilst a rise in pay for high income families will gain interest and do nothing for the economy?

Ill step off my soapbox. The weird thing is that the same farmers being squeezed by Republican policy vote Republican with a blindfold on if necessary, on every occassion. Colorado, and Idaho being Republican states. Why, why why why????

My personal concern is that many, not all mind you, faithfull Republican voters do so on the advocacy of simply to understand values like family, faith, and such tangibles as guns and the price of gasoline from the Republican party . I really doubt if a big part of the American Republican voters, that could tip certain states in favour of the Democrats, really understand what other consequences their vote will have on their lives. It is true, Democrats in overall seem to have a flavor for juicy personal lives, and they do advocate pro choice in many cases and rights for gay people. Quickly, put all that under the spell of ´liberalism´ and we´ll be a senator McCarthy short of a witch hunt. But if you look closely at the platforms, and the track record of each party on several issues and the logic and ethics behind them, shouldnt you conclude that what they advocate is pretty damn logical?

We are supposedly in an economic slowdown, yet companies STILL report record profits keeping the already rich shareholders happy while factories are closed and workers are layed off with a landfill, chemical waste dump, polluted air or river, or physical injury as the only reminder the companies were ever there.

Bill Clinton proposed more health inspections to make sure no E Coli bacteria get into the beef most Americans eat every day. The meat industry called their allied Congressmen of the Republican party to vote against. Why?&#33; What possible logic could be behind it?

In might be way off, maybe I am standing on a soapbox with termites in it. But as far as I see it, many Republican voters should read more and determine whether a few moral values outweigh the cruel reality of living off of 1000 dollars a month while the leaders they elected lavish in luxury.

Sometimes I do wonder if Cheney ever turns to Bush saying while he chuckles: ´Buncha suckers ey´.

Yes, very muddy. Please refute all of this, show me the Republican party has compassion for the little man, human and consumer rights, or for anything other than money for that matter. I don´t see it as of yet.

How do you view the Democratic party...how do you view the Republicans?
 

MisterMark

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I agree with you, Javier. It&#39;s very frustrating to see so little sympathy for the downtrodden in this country. The Republicans seem to believe very much in "survival of the fittest", however, and so they&#39;re very reluctant to help anyone out. I&#39;ve even heard some extreme Republicans say that homeless people should be allowed to die because they&#39;re not able to support themselves. It&#39;s Darwinism to an extreme level.

By the way, Idaho and Colorado are usually considered to be western states, not midwestern. And it&#39;s not just the rural midwest that is suffering, although I do understand that the middle of the U.S. is rapidly losing population (I&#39;m talking about the plains, not the industrial midwest).

One out of every 5 children in the U.S. lives in poverty. In California, it&#39;s one out of 4. In a country as wealthy as ours, these are tragic numbers.
 

BobLeeSwagger

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You&#39;re right that a lot of lower-class Americans vote Republican because of "culture" issues like gay marriage, abortion, gun control, etc. Logic would dictate that their pocketbooks would matter more, but they don&#39;t seem to vote that way. This isn&#39;t limited to the Republicans by the way. There are many wealthy liberals who would seem better served by voting for the party of tax cuts, but they don&#39;t because other issues are more important to them. One thing you have to keep in mind is that Americans have a long history of distrust of government. Republicans tend to address this better than Democrats, at least rhetorically.

Unfortunately, this corporate ownership of the Republican party theory is misplaced. Not because it&#39;s not true, but because the Democratic party is squarely in the pockets of big business too. Clinton was a major supporter of multinational corporations during the &#39;90s and he went to bat for them in diplomatic circles, just like every president of every party in the last century. Major deregulations occurred under Carter (airlines, trucking) and Clinton (telecommunications), both Democrats. Republican administrations tend to favor big business in their tax policies, but both parties cater to them in many ways.

I agree that there are far too many problems in the United States that could be fixed, but aren&#39;t. And while I tend to lean a bit leftward, I think both parties are to blame. If you want to read some fresh ideas, check out the book "The 2% Solution", by Matthew Miller.
 

SpeedoGuy

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Well said, aloofman.

Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats tend to favor legislative action to address perceived problems while Republicans tend to encourage free market solutions with a minimum of government interference (or, if government action is absolutely necessary, then accomplished best at the state or local level).

Of course, its amusing to see both parties trade places on these philosophies when convenient. Democrats loath the Patriot Act and limits on abortion. Republicans, on the other hand, seem to have few qualms about letting John Ashcroft use federal power to thwart state initiatives on gay rights, doctor assisted suicide or gun control.

Like aloofman, I hold both parties responsible for many of the problems U.S. citizens face. The Republicrats are beholden to special interest money at every turn. I guess I agree with Ralph Nader&#39;s statement that the only real difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is the speed at which their knees hit the floor when confronted with special interest money.

SG
 

jonb

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Well, Javier, it&#39;s supply-side economics, the old perpetual motion machine.

Jon (In this voting booth, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.)
 

KinkGuy

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I&#39;ve got a job. I have health insurance. I own a home. I have a few bucks in the bank. Fuck everybody else. :ph34r:
 

overshot

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*Kisses and Cuddles Supply-Side Economics*




Recommended Reading: A Weath of Nation

Money in the bank does do something aside from gaining interest.
 
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Javierdude22: Yeah, that&#39;s another rather paradoxal thing about companies backing Republicans...advertising free market and less government, while they beg for government subsidies and defy many other normal market features.

My main point is: Why do many republicans with a farmers or proletarian background still vote Republican, even when it is clear many Republican policies work against them. The meat market is one example, taxes another. Are they really unable to identify clearly the link between Republican policy and the way it can affect them negatively? And do they thus only see the more surfacing features the Republican party exhumes like values, faith and patriottism?

Or dó farmers and blue collar workers know Republican policy largely ignores them, but they simply place more value on the beforementioned social values?
 

ponybilt

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Hmmm... all really interesting. I&#39;m not necessarily so much a Democrat as I am an Independent who happens to vote Dem a lot of the time.

As far as the business side of politics, I observe that Democrats want corporations to pay their fair share in maintaining an organized society, and Republicans have leveraged that into a "tax and spend" argument. However corporations are legal, individual entities like you and me, but if they&#39;re the beneficiaries of politicos along with savvy tax accounting, they pay little or no taxes to support the country. There was an investigative report.... 20/20 I believe.... about BoA (some bank, I was too pissed off to recall), that paid *zero* taxes but made a billion US in profit. I paid more in taxes last year than a bank that *cleared* a billion in profit. This, dur to the laissez faire attitude of Republicans to let businesses govern themselves, not be responsible for their fair share of taxes, not be responsible for their pollution of the environment (last time I checked, I could get fined for throwing trash on the street), and worse, not being responsible for being a good corporate citizen.

Case in point: Cheney asdmits that while he was CEO of Halibuton, they made contracts with Libya and Iran. He denied dealing with Iraq. Later turns out that Haliburton did indeed have multi-milion dollar deals with Iraq under Cheney&#39;s watch.

Now, dealing with a country that the US has imposed sanctions against is a federal crime (while getting a blow job in the Oval Office is not a crime). Cheney did it three times&#33;

Even worse, while Haliburton and Cheney go on without worry, Bobby Fisher, who played a chess game in Yugoslavia (while the US had imposed sanctions against it) was detained at Narita Airport (Tokyo) and the US is pressuring Japan to extradite him so that he can be tried in federal court.

Sorry for being so long and rambling, but this shit is just crazy.

Democrats aren&#39;t necessarily better, they&#39;re just less evil.
 

jonb

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Yeah, Javier, it&#39;s basically a matter of prolefeed served up by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others. I mean, does gay marriage really affect heterosexuals? Can someone explain that to me? Other times, it&#39;s clear idiocy, such as teaching the Bible in a science class. (Scientifically speaking, something can only be true if it can be proven false but hasn&#39;t.) Another popular tactic is saying that anyone who questions any American policy "hates America"; no wonder Bush thought a dictatorship would be easier.
 

madame_zora

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Sometimes I wonder if the Republicans really care at all about gay marriage and prayer in school, or if they just use those easy topics to secure the religious right wing voters&#33; I think the "moral majority" is exactly what it says- the Majority of Americans, and therefore voters. If they can just manage to get elected (or squeezed in by some other means), then they are free to do as they please. This country was founded on the principles of individualism and personal value of everyone, but more and more as we become a world power we are becomming the world&#39;s biggest bully, to our own people as well as other nations. "Might makes right" seems to supercede individual rights. Not bad for 200 years, it took a lot of other nations much longer.
 

jay_too

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Jav..

Others have pointed out that party association is aligned with common interests such as conservation, the environment, an AK-47 in every closet [sorry, I could not resist}, and the idea of “Do we want the crooks in Washington or here at home looting the public coffers?” or how much Federalism? The growth of the Federal government in the 1930s was in large part due to the belief that a federal bureaucracy insulated from political appointment by a civil service system would be less likely to embezzle and misappropriate public moneys and a reaction to the widespread graft and corruption bu state and municipal governments in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1980s the federal bureaucracy was overlaid with an administration of political appointees. Today, there are more state and federal employees than there were when Reagan began his revolution of returning government to the states. And more graft at all levels of government&#33;

Our parties are very similar. The Republican Party idealogy stretches from the John Birchers to Sen. Chaffee and from Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell to Bush No. 1. Within each, there is a continuing battle between competing wings of the party for dominance. Sometimes a party would rather lose an election than let the other wing of the party win. A Truman win in 1948 over Dewey may have been in part due to the disaffection of conservatives. In the following election, moderate and liberal Republicans exacted their revenge by recruiting Eisenhower to keep Sen. Taft or Gen. MacArthur from getting the nomination. Goldwater conservatives took the party back in 1964 only to lose to the Johnson landslide. Nixon and moderate Republicans regained dominance in the next election and elected Nixon.

The Democrats are probably more dysfunctional because the political and social ideologies are more diverse. In the 1960s liberals were embarrassed that the party should contain the social Neanderthals of the segregated south. Purging the party of Southern social reactionaries was the most important item on their agenda. When Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he is quoted as saying that the Democratic Party had lost control of the south for a generation. My point is that usually the fight for control of the heart and mind of either party spills more blood than the general election.

An additional point on the selection of a party affiliation is the justification that my family is Democrat/Republican, and I am too. Dude, that is the way we were brung up&#33;

Political parties in the U.S. are not organized along economic lines per se. Both believe that we are upwardly mobile and hope that the next generation will have it better than the present. For the first time since the great depression, this generation is facing fewer opportunities and is facing an economic quagmire.

This is off the top of my head from memories of a polysci course a few years ago. The basic tenet is correct, and there are better examples from 20th Century politics. Since no one else hit this topic, I did.

jay
 

jonb

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Originally posted by madame_zora@Aug 1 2004, 01:43 AM
Sometimes I wonder if the Republicans really care at all about gay marriage and prayer in school, or if they just use those easy topics to secure the religious right wing voters&#33;
What&#39;s funny about it is that the "school prayer" issue is about mandatory prayer in school. I always ask them how they would feel about praying to another deity. Or perhaps we should just have one prayer after another until we&#39;ve taken up the whole day praying.
 

madame_zora

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Wow, I always assumed it was about allowing prayer in school, not requiring it&#33; That would sure step waaaay over the boundary of separation of church and state, I would have to seriously consider if I wanted to stay here then.
 

ponybilt

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Never before have I heard so many people I come in contact with say they&#39;d consider leaving this country if things continue in the fashion of the past four years.

I&#39;ve even said it myself.
 

jonb

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Oh, I was writing a filk about Bush&#39;s foreign policy TTTO REM&#39;s Stand.

(chorus)
Afghanistan is the place where he lives
bin Laden
Think about Osama
The guy behind the attacks
Pakistan is the place which sells nukes
Abdul Khan
While Bush keeps Iraqis
From holding free elections

If you&#39;re confused, you&#39;re not the only one
Record the news to help you along
Rather than fictional uranium
Examine deals with Halliburton

(chorus)

If half-truths were trees, trees would be cloning
In Abu Ghraib, Muslims get a serious boning
Rather than fictional uranium
Examine deals with Halliburton

Afghanistan (stan)
bin Laden
Think about Saudi funds
Wonder why you haven&#39;t before
Pakistan (stan)
Abdul Khan
Think about no-bid contracts
Wonder why you haven&#39;t before

(chorus)

Afghanistan is the place where he lives (bin Laden)
Pakistan is the place which sells nukes (Abdul Khan)
Rather than fictional uranium
Examine deals with Halliburton
 

madame_zora

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OMFG jonb&#33; That&#39;s a side splitter if I ever heard one. I&#39;m quite sure THAT will be as funny tomorrow as it is now at 5 am&#33; Oh, thanks for using REM, I sure they would appreciate that one greatly.