Republican Assaults on Democracy
August 05, 2011 at 3:30 PM
By MIKE BROWN
Repulicans love to embrace our democracy and Constitution except when they're subverting them to achieve their crass political ambitions.
They created the recent debt ceiling crisis by being fiscal terrorists, threatening to blow up our economy and country by not allowing an increase in the ceiling unless President Obama and Democrats acceeded to their demands: huge cuts in government spending, which will damage the economy and job creation and hurt middle class and the most vulnerable Americans, while not asking one dime from the wealthy and deadbeat corporations.
Yet, two-thirds of Americans in poll after poll favor tax increases on the wealthy and ending corporate tax loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies who just announced massive record profits.
Republican legislatures in 33 states are taking away American citizens' right to vote with voter ID laws and other restrictive measures that violate the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchise millions of eligible voters in population groups that vote more Democratic, such as the elderly, low-income voters, and students. These laws are cynical voter suppression schemes highly coordinated at the national level.
The recent "Citizens United" ruling by the conservative Supreme Court gave corporate money more influence in elections than ordinary Americans have. Tea partiers' attempts to repeal the 17th Amendment would strip voters of their rights to elect their own U.S. Senators.
Marylanders who believe in upholding and preserving our Constitution and democracy must do everything in our power to stop these kinds of extreme right-wing assaults.
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Posted by
Carole Curtis
on
Aug 5th, 2011
In a nutshell, a good outline of the current state of affairs with the Republican party. Next job for us is to try to counter all the propaganda they put out to misinform many, many voters. Al Gore pointed this out a few years ago in his book "Assault on Reason". He reminded us of Ben Franklin's comment that in order for our democracy to succeed we needed an informed electorate. The likes of Fox News, Americans for Prosperity and other "astro turf" organization. which are really propaganda machines for the far right are doing everything they know how to misinform our body politic. Leave a Reply
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