Is This What You Wanted, America?

Oil execs from left: Douchey McFuckpants, Bumscag Shitsmeller,
Swifty O'headcheese, Burt "Subsidy Sucker" Froomps and Slickback.

Perhaps the one good effect the Iraq War had on the presidency of George W. Bush is that it made all of his other disasters nearly forgettable. Well, if you ever regret flipping Bush the finger think of this; one of Bush's gifts to the American people was bankruptcy reform. Bush with his Republican majorities in Congress gave banks what they had been lobbying for – a way to make more money. The trumpeted purpose of the bill was to crack down on bankruptcy abuse. Never mind that over half of the bankruptcies filed in the U.S. are the result of medical bills. That had no bearing on the final outcome. By portraying the general population of people who go into deep debt as frauds and crooks, Bush and the Republicans presented their gift to the banking industry.

In 2006, shortly after the Democrats won control of the House they held hearings with CEOs of big banks to question their accountability for the abuse rampant in the credit card sector. Just over two years later when Barack Obama, a Democrat was in the White House and Democrats had both houses in Congress, the Credit Card Act of 2009 was passed. The bill prevented the random and reckless fee structure banks exercised that penalized customers who simply paid their credit card bills in a timely fashion.

Last Thursday Oil company execs had their day in the hot seat as the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee tried to make the CEOs defend their call for continued oil subsidies from the government, in spite of the billions upon billions oil companies earn in profits. Meanwhile the Republican committee members stood in defense of the oil companies with boilerplate moves from the Republican playbook.

1. They referred to the dropping of oil company subsidies as a tax increase because they believe labeling anything they don't like as a “tax increase” galvanizes the support of Republican faithful and wishy-washy “independents.”
2. They warned that unemployment and gas prices would rise if we didn't let oil companies have their way.
3. They claimed that liberals just wanted to take away the oil company handouts as a means of punishing the oil industry's success.

When Republicans rave of the need to get spending under control, they aren't talking about the billions we hand over to oil companies. They only mean the millions that go to healthcare and NPR. After all, Republicans have integrity. When they get campaign contributions from the oil industry, Big Oil wants something back. On days like this past Thursday they get to see their money in action as Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee portray oil execs as victims.

I am tired of hearing the apathetic and/or ignorant talk about the lack of difference between the two parties. The past few years have been a bonanza of legislative reward in favor of the average consumer that would never have been realized under a George W. Bush. Those rewards also include a new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection which Republicans also fought at the behest of the banking industry. It is a pattern as identifiable as a checkerboard. Republicans support handouts and favors for those who need the least handouts and favors.

The idea of change or doing things differently probably gives most Americans a case of anxious runny bowels. That is the appeal of the Republican Party; everyone knows they won't change shit. Yet the order that they work so hard to uphold is completely antithetical to building up and supporting the middle class. So those fearful Republican faithful and wishy-washy "independents" continue to fall for the same tricks over and over again. When Republicans ran for House seats in 2010, they ran on jobs, jobs, jobs. After they won they focused their efforts on phasing out programs they don't like such as Medicare and protecting corporate welfare. Nothing passed by the House since the start of 2011 has had anything to do with creating jobs, so they applied their tried and tacky trick of framing their corporate favoritism as “job creating.”

The years 2001-2009 were not that long ago. The country is still reeling from the torrid love affair Republicans had with the ridiculously wealthy. In those years. George W. Bush who for most of his Administration enjoyed Republican congressional majorities gave Americans what Republicans wanted. He left America in  a near depression with massive deficits and with the lowest approval rating since Richard Nixon. Two years later, amid a slow, but measurable economic recovery Americans bought back in to the devastating philosophy of Republicanism. It was either insanity or idiocy, but here we are actually debating over whether oil companies need to be given taxpayer dollars in order to succeed. People deserve the government they vote for.