Why so much bickering? Why so much vitriol, so much downright meanish, cruelish nastiness?
These could be considered rhetorical questions, but really, a simple answer exists as to why our Congress can't seem to find common ground...on anything.
They've lost the ability to negotiate.
We occasionally read that they have come to some sort of agreement on some sort of issue, but consensus is rarely reached based upon give and take; it's based on give and give.
For example, last year an historical health care bill squeaked through a Democratically controlled Senate and House and was signed into law by our President. Cool, no?
No. What actually transpired in a Congressional super majority was the pledging of favors and earmarks to buy crucial votes...from other Democrats! The G.O.P sector didn't even need to show up, since not a single Republican crossed the aisle to vote in the affirmative. The Democratic Party, on the heels of a sweeping electoral mandate, failed in their ability to negotiate, even among each other.
Pathetic, indeed.
Had the right wingers in Congress actually stepped to the bargaining table, the following demands would surely have been honked out by one orange-skinned, gravelly voiced congressman from Ohio:
"We, the Republican caucus, in representing the interests of the American people, agree to allow health insurance for thirty million uninsured Americans, including ten million children. In return, we humbly request tax-exempt status for pharmaceutical corporations, a Saturday morning cartoon featuring Joe Camel and we'd like President Obama to wear an Exxon t-shirt on his next state of the union address and tearfully deny global warming... Oh, and we'd also ask for a brand new war somewhere."
As I stated earlier, this isn't negotiation, it's insanity. Why can't these people learn lessons from other areas of their lives where negotiation is commonplace and quite effective. Here are some cases where the art of negotiation prospers:
Husband/wife negotiation—"I promise I won't laugh when you try to grow facial hair if you promise not to grow facial hair." Done deal.
Workplace negotiation—"Let's just agree to disagree on this. You think I'm an egotistical prima donna and I think you're a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. You think I'm profoundly incompetent, while I believe you are grossly unsanitary. Now, we're are we going for lunch?" Done deal.
Parent/child negotiation (slightly more cumbersome)—
Father, addressing his daughters, aged ten and fifteen: "You guys, please make your lunches for tomorrow before Glee comes on. "
Fifteen-year-old daughter: "Okay." Done deal.
Ten-year-old daughter: "Really? So I have to make my lunch and take a shower before Glee comes on?"
Father: "Yes."
Ten-year-old daughter: "How about if I make my sandwich and take a shower before Glee comes on, and then tomorrow morning, I'll add the fruit leather, goldfish and juice box?"
Father: "That's more for you to do in the morning then, and it might make us late."
Ten-year-old daughter: "Dad, technically, you should make my sandwich because you used the butts of the bread last time and we had an agreement about not using bread butts."
Father: "Fine. Add the other stuff in the morning." Done deal.
See? It's not that hard. Maybe these people are just spending a little too much time at cocktail parties with lobbyists, and not enough with their bargain-driving offspring.
Let's hope these politicians can work together...but I'm not optimistic.
Showing posts with label Democrat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrat. Show all posts
Friday, January 7, 2011
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
I'm sick of Republicans.
Writing a blog can be feast or famine.
Sometimes, ideas gush to the surface like geoducks on the first day of clam season; others, the barren desert that is my cranial cavity swirls with the tumbleweeds of cluelessness.
Today began as the latter. I awoke, thinking, okay, I guess that's it—I'm tapped out. I've squeezed the final drop of blood from my literary turnip; I've eaten the last cookie from the bag of "Thoughts Ahoy." Yet alas, no sooner had I arrived at my local gym and mounted the elliptical trainer, than I was inspired yet again.
NBC's Today Show was playing on my personal screen, the one meant to distract me from my perilously anaerobic physical condition. The topic for the opening fifteen minutes of the show was the state of the American economy and the general public's disapproval with President Obama's stewardship during its current downturn. The polls and pundits expounded about how the planets are aligning for a landslide Republican congressional takeover in November.
I'm an American. I love this place and I try not to take it for granted. But come on, folks, we can be so damned fickle. I realize we live in an age of instant gratification, where a pizza joint which serves cardboard covered in tomato sauce and cheese prospers, simply because it can answer our craving in thirty minutes or less. We want results...now.
People, how long has the President been in office? I'll answer that—twenty months. Twenty months ago, Barrack Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress inherited the worst fiscal and financial crisis since the Great Depression. We stared down the barrel of a massive federal deficit, a healthcare crisis in which thirty million Americans were uninsured and two unpopular wars.
Oh yeah, we also had a bait-switch scam known as Wall Street. I'm not going to paint one party as Dudley Doright and the other as Snidely Whiplash, here, but let's look at the deregulation fiasco as one of the major culprits to our economic demise. Ronald Reagan began the groundswell of laissez faire economic policy through a litany of legislation, wiping out many of the safeguards put in place after the stock market crash of 1929. The savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s merely foreshadowed a new era of highly leveraged, risky behavior by our formerly stodgy financial institutions.
Republican presidents and congresses established policies which resulted in the two largest financial scandals since the 1930s—the aforementioned "junk bond" fiasco and the "sub-prime" crisis, which began with the Republican controlled Congress in 1998.
Our current President has sought to stimulate our economy through numerous measures including the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (or TARP), aimed at eliminating "toxic" assets from our financial markets. He has pushed through an economic stimulus package, which, according to Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, is short of what is truly needed to get us back on our feet, yet has staved off another full-blown Depression.
With a crumbling national infrastructure and nearly ten percent unemployment, the prevailing Republican talking point is the same ol' same ol': cut taxes and count on the old "trickle down" theory to create new jobs out of increased corporate profits. Right. Corporations are not benevolent organizations. Profits trickle across to shareholders, not down to employees.
After World War II, our federal government instituted the G.I. Bill to pay for veterans' higher education. The result was a thriving American middle class which enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, yet which has eroded with each passing decade. We need to stop being so very short-sighted and let these new programs take effect. Public works, healthcare and education can and will work if fully funded, but it seems that America's new Tea Party movement brands as socialism the same type movement that the greatest generation employed sixty years ago. Ironic.
The Republican party learned an important lesson from their matriarch, Nancy Reagan—just say no. No to improved infrastructure. No to healthcare for all. No to campaign finance reform. I'm willing to listen to any new proposals from the right, but all I've heard is warmed over retreads of George W. Bush's failed efforts. In other words, a whole lot of nothing.
It's time for America to wait more than thirty minutes for its pizza.
Sometimes, ideas gush to the surface like geoducks on the first day of clam season; others, the barren desert that is my cranial cavity swirls with the tumbleweeds of cluelessness.
Today began as the latter. I awoke, thinking, okay, I guess that's it—I'm tapped out. I've squeezed the final drop of blood from my literary turnip; I've eaten the last cookie from the bag of "Thoughts Ahoy." Yet alas, no sooner had I arrived at my local gym and mounted the elliptical trainer, than I was inspired yet again.
NBC's Today Show was playing on my personal screen, the one meant to distract me from my perilously anaerobic physical condition. The topic for the opening fifteen minutes of the show was the state of the American economy and the general public's disapproval with President Obama's stewardship during its current downturn. The polls and pundits expounded about how the planets are aligning for a landslide Republican congressional takeover in November.
I'm an American. I love this place and I try not to take it for granted. But come on, folks, we can be so damned fickle. I realize we live in an age of instant gratification, where a pizza joint which serves cardboard covered in tomato sauce and cheese prospers, simply because it can answer our craving in thirty minutes or less. We want results...now.
People, how long has the President been in office? I'll answer that—twenty months. Twenty months ago, Barrack Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress inherited the worst fiscal and financial crisis since the Great Depression. We stared down the barrel of a massive federal deficit, a healthcare crisis in which thirty million Americans were uninsured and two unpopular wars.
Oh yeah, we also had a bait-switch scam known as Wall Street. I'm not going to paint one party as Dudley Doright and the other as Snidely Whiplash, here, but let's look at the deregulation fiasco as one of the major culprits to our economic demise. Ronald Reagan began the groundswell of laissez faire economic policy through a litany of legislation, wiping out many of the safeguards put in place after the stock market crash of 1929. The savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s merely foreshadowed a new era of highly leveraged, risky behavior by our formerly stodgy financial institutions.
Republican presidents and congresses established policies which resulted in the two largest financial scandals since the 1930s—the aforementioned "junk bond" fiasco and the "sub-prime" crisis, which began with the Republican controlled Congress in 1998.
Our current President has sought to stimulate our economy through numerous measures including the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (or TARP), aimed at eliminating "toxic" assets from our financial markets. He has pushed through an economic stimulus package, which, according to Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, is short of what is truly needed to get us back on our feet, yet has staved off another full-blown Depression.
With a crumbling national infrastructure and nearly ten percent unemployment, the prevailing Republican talking point is the same ol' same ol': cut taxes and count on the old "trickle down" theory to create new jobs out of increased corporate profits. Right. Corporations are not benevolent organizations. Profits trickle across to shareholders, not down to employees.
After World War II, our federal government instituted the G.I. Bill to pay for veterans' higher education. The result was a thriving American middle class which enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, yet which has eroded with each passing decade. We need to stop being so very short-sighted and let these new programs take effect. Public works, healthcare and education can and will work if fully funded, but it seems that America's new Tea Party movement brands as socialism the same type movement that the greatest generation employed sixty years ago. Ironic.
The Republican party learned an important lesson from their matriarch, Nancy Reagan—just say no. No to improved infrastructure. No to healthcare for all. No to campaign finance reform. I'm willing to listen to any new proposals from the right, but all I've heard is warmed over retreads of George W. Bush's failed efforts. In other words, a whole lot of nothing.
It's time for America to wait more than thirty minutes for its pizza.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)