Dear conservatives...
I've been reading a lot, and listening a lot, and I've reached the following conclusions:
- You can't complain about Ian Murphy's phone call to Wisconson Governor Walker (in which he claimed to be David Koch), if you also didn't complain about the undercover stings of ACORN and Planned Parenthood. It's the same tactics, it cannot be simultaneously okay if conservatives do it, and at the same time bad if liberals do it.
- You cannot complain about Obama not enforcing DOMA, unless you complained just as loudly about Bush-the-younger adding signing instructions to bills passed during his tenure that effectively said "we're not enforcing this law." Obama, at the very least, put some level of effort into enforcing and protecting the law of which you are so very enamored. Bush didn't even try. Please note, Obama's administration is simply no longer defending the bill in court. Until the courts knock it down, the administration is still enforcing the law - there is a difference.
- You cannot complain about Obama putting thought/effort into not enforcing DOMA, instead of focusing on job creation, unless you are willing to do the same. That means, for instance, not making a big deal over abortion.
- If you want to close the budget gaps, going after the unions isn't going to help much. Unions represent a significant percentage of the American public, average rank-and-file citizens. There's some money there, sure, but not as much as you like to claim. Yes, unions wield a significant amount of power. So too do corporations - and yet, corporations were just given the A-OK to drop as much money on political contributions as they saw fit.
- Yes, public employees are paid with tax money - but once it gets paid to the employees, it stops being tax money. If you want to complain about tax money being used for political endorsements (after going from taxpayer->gov't->gov't employee->union), then you need to complain about every other organization that make political statements while receiving subsidies (such as Big Oil).
- Yes, public employees pay a smaller percentage of their health insurance costs than do private employees. At the same time, public employees are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Once you factor those two together, you see'll see that the actual costs are fairly comparable. A vast majority of the cool perks and bennies that come from being in a union comes from agreements with 3rd-party sources - such as discounts at the movies, or at amusement parks, etc.
- Leaning on the unions shortly after offering tax cuts to the big corporations and upper class makes it seem like you're engaging in class warfare. If you are meaning to do so - be up-front about it, admit it, and get it out in the open, instead of pussy-footing around. If that's not what you are meaning to do - and I honestly hope that you're not - then stop and think about it from the standpoint of the little guy. I realize that many of the Republican legislators, commentators, and pundits have never been poor, but the folks at the lower end of middle-class on down have a much different experience of the world.
- If you want to see real savings, at least on the federal level, how about looking at the cost of what out military has been doing for the last decade? We've got the "whistleblower" from Iraq recently admitted he made the whole thing up - which means that we spent an insane amount of money with little appreciable difference. Yes, Saddam is gone, which is a good thing - but Iraq is *still* a mess. Possibly even worse off than before. I've got nothing against our guys in the armed forces - nothing but respect for them - but our administration and leadership screwed the pooch.
- If the military and the "war on terror" are too much of a set of sacred cows to deal with, look at the TSA. They've blown through an large amount of money with minimal results. They wasted money on non-functional explosive detectors, the full-body scanners have a poor success rate (because it requires humans to evaluate the images - and we're not looking at the best-and-brightest in those roles), and have a PR record worse than the DMV. They need to focus on functional, practical methods (such as the ones the Israelis use), which would cut their operational budget by a significant amount.
- Yes, public employees are paid with tax money - but once it gets paid to the employees, it stops being tax money. If you want to complain about tax money being used for political endorsements (after going from taxpayer->gov't->gov't employee->union), then you need to complain about every other organization that make political statements while receiving subsidies (such as Big Oil).
- Our kids are fat. It comes from a number of sources, mostly that we've got a lot of restaurants selling food that's horribly unhealthy, and kids are eating that. Some of that is the fault of the parents (who need to put the time and effort into making good choices, and enforcing them - *and* keeping the kids active), and part of that is the fault of the corporations (since the parents can't make healthy choices if no viable healthy choices are available.) Bashing the First Lady for encouraging kids to eat healthy and exercise is throwing our kids under the bus for political gain. She's attempting to lead by example, that's all. It's a suggestion, a recommendation, that hardly makes it a "nanny state."
- Again with the First Lady - she's calling for tax breaks for parents who buy breast pumps. Breast milk is the best possible food for babies. Breast pumps are expensive - the ones that actually work well are at least $100. For some families (especially the poor ones where both parents *need* to work, to be able to pay the bills), that's a difficult expense to meet. Providing a minor tax break for that is handy. It is not, in any way, shape, or form, making this a "nanny state" or "buying one" for people.
- You cannot simultaneously be paranoid about Sharia law being enforced by US courts, while pushing to encode Christian morality into law. We realize that some folks have religious issues with folks in the LGBT community, are against gay marriage, gay adoption, and abortion, or a number of other issues (such as the infamous blue laws.) That's all well and good - but don't ask the US government (local, state, or federal) from enforcing your religious prohibitions. You want your members to obey your religious doctrine, that's perfectly fine, go right ahead, and even do what you can (within the confines of the law) to self-enforce. But just as non-Muslims don't want Sharia law to become part of the US legal code, neither do non-Christians want Biblical admonishments to be part of the US legal code. So, since you seem unlike to back off on the issue with Sharia law, to avoid hypocrisy, law off on the gay marriage stuff. You don't need to have one, don't need to approve, just get out of the way of other folks.