The Watering Hole: Tuesday September 23, 2014 Environmental News and Food Politics

So the climate march was big, almost 400,000 in New York. Will it change anything? Did 500,000 marchers stop the Iraq war from going forward? Well the UN Secretary marched in this one, but I’m afraid climate change will be addressed locally for the next who knows how many years. Nothing will change in Washington. We need  Democratic presidents to continue to be elected until the Supreme Court can be changed, so that gerrymandering can be legally ceased, and this the balance of power (one person = one vote) can be restored. Right now Republicans hold a hugely unfair advantage in many rust belt and mid Atlantic states because of the way districts are drawn at the state rep level and the congressional level. I weep when I think of how long it will take for our political apartheid (marginalizing Democratic majorities) to be rectified. This will be a 50-100 year war, I am afraid. The stakes are high. The powerful never relinquish willingly.

 

 

In a Nutshell: THE END OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

This is the best explanation of where we are, and why there’s no realistic hope of things getting better:

How do House Republicans end up convincing themselves of unrealistic plans, particularly when they’ve seen them fail before, and when respected voices in the Republican and even conservative establishment are warning against them?

RC: When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don’t face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don’t get heat from back home.

It will take years before new districts are drawn. By then, it will be too late.

A lady asked Dr. Franklin “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy.”
“A republic” replied the Doctor “if you can keep it.”

Class warfare came to a head a hundred years ago when the labor movement spawned the advent of Unions. Workers joined in solidarity to help each other against the capitalists, the ruling class of their day.

Their gains have been slowly but surely chipped away. The ruling class has been working n the halls of power for decades. They took Lincoln to heart – they didn’t try to fool all the people all the time, just enough of the people at election time. They succeeded.

When a republic is no longer represented by the majority, but by the wealthy few, it ceases to be a republic and is instead an oligarchy. This is where we are now. And the oligarchs will not give up their power willingly.

The Watering Hole, Wednesday, July 10, 2013: The Handwriting on the Wall

47% of this country will not vote for Republicans. Or so Mitt Romney said behind closed doors when speaking to his wealthy benefactors. Yet Republicans are hell-bent on alienating even more of the country, attacking women’s rights, attacking immigrants, attacking minorities, attacking everyone who is not white and rich.

Why? Don’t they see the handwriting on the wall?

Yes. The do see it. And they ignore it. And rightfully so.

They are taking full advantage of the power they have to gerrymander districts and to restrict the ability of anyone who might vote against them to cast a vote. And they’ll succeed, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling striking out portions of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans wasted no time pushing for the very restrictions they were prevented from implementing these past 40 years. They will ram them through, just as they have rammed through new ways to legislate women’s uteruses.

Tea Party Republicans in the House signaled they are willing to hold the country in economic hostage – again – if they don’t get their way and privatize Medicare, Social Security, gut food stamps, etc.

They do all this because they firmly believe they will get re-elected. And they most likely will, no matter how many people disagree with them. Because they get to choose who votes.

The Republican efforts to “eliminate voter fraud” is itself the greatest fraud on voters – their restrictions, if successful, will allow a shrinking minority to continue to wreck havoc on the rest of this once-great country.

The only way to combat their tactics is to educate the masses to do whatever it takes to jump through the Republican-made hoops to get registered to vote, and to vote.

If we don’t, if we cannot affect change at the ballot box, what is happening in Egypt and Syria will happen here. And that is the handwriting on the wall.

OPEN THREAD