HERE'S WHAT YOU GET FROM THE TWO MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES

WARNING: Most of the words that follow are critical of elected officials.
If you don't want to read such language, stop here.

Is it really democracy when the two parties in power help each other maintain that power but prevent other parties from becoming established?

Democrats

March 5, 2006: According to columnists in the Southern Illinoisan, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) is acting more and more like retired Republican Senate President James "Pate" Philip.  As examples, columnists Kurt Erickson and Matt Adrian point out that Jones has "killed off" the governor's plans to raise cigarette taxes, ban assault weapons, and extend an electric rate freeze.  Southern Illinoisan, March 5, 2006, at 14A.  In Illinois, where Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the Governorship, one would think an assault-weapons ban would be a done deal by now.

Democrats voted to give Bush the power to go to war on Iraq.  Here's what The Nation had to say about that recently (November 28, 2005, issue at  http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/editors):

Editorial: "Democrats and the War"

    "Americans are well on their way to a full appreciation of the dimensions of this debacle. In an October CBS news poll, 59 percent of citizens surveyed and 73 percent of Democrats now want an end to US military involvement in Iraq. But this growing majority has made its judgment with virtually no help from our nation's leaders. Most shameful has been the Democratic Party's failure to oppose the war. Indeed, support for it has been bipartisan: A Republican President and Congress made the policy, and almost all of the leading Democrats--most of the honorable exceptions are members of the House of Representatives--supported it from the outset and continue to do so. To their credit, would-be presidential candidate Senator Russell Feingold and former Senator Gary Hart have recently made strong antiwar statements. More recently two other presidential contenders, Senator John Kerry and former Senator John Edwards, have begun to call for a shift in policy, though still in vague and reticent terms. More typical, however, are the other presidential hopefuls, Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Evan Bayh, who continue to huddle for cover in "the center." They offer little alternative to Bush's refrain "We must stay the course!" Nor do the party's Congressional leaders and its head, Howard Dean, once a leader of antiwar sentiment. Can such politicians, who cannot even follow a majority--in the Democratic Party, a large majority--really be considered leaders?"

It was a Democrat--Bill Clinton--who promised that gays would be welcome in the military, but the policy adopted after he won the presidency was "Don't ask, don't tell."

Democrats helped pass the Patriot Act, originally in the heat of the patriotic hysteria following 9/11 and then again as amended in March 2006.

Republicans: In general, they stand for taking from the poor and giving to the rich.  And they stand for torture and allowing the FBI to search your home or your business without a warrant without ever telling you they were there--the Patriot Act allows them to do that.

12/9/05 all the papers

Republicans pushed through their tax cuts for the wealthy.  It's really very obvious that Republicans are beholden only to their wealthy constituents.  It explains a lot.  It's a symbiotic relationship: rich people give the politicians money to keep them in office and the politicians reward the rich donors by passing laws in their favor, specifically, tax breaks for dividends and capital gains.

To summarize: Out of 32 Midwestern House Republicans, 30 of them voted for tax cuts for the wealthy, that coming one week after voting to reduce spending for Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, and other benefits for those not so well off.  Instead of cutting taxes for those who do nothing to earn them except check the stock ticker or sell off property, how about cutting income taxes on those who make just enough to get by?  Not so long ago Republicans called themselves compassionate conservatives.  Not anymore.

In contrast, out of 23 Midwestern House Democrats, only 1 voted for the tax cuts for the wealthy.  Not surprisingly, it was Melissa Bean from the wealthy north suburbs of Chicago.

12/5/05 St. Louis Post-Dispatch at A3

Republicans, the party that control the Congress and the White House, recently accomplished the following:

    reduced spending for Medicaid

    reduced spending for food stamps

They currently have the following goals, under the deceptive description, "restraining spending":

    cut Medicaid

    cut student loans

    cut other benefits

But they also want to take that money from those less-fortunate Americans and give it to upper class Americans by:

    continuing the reduced tax rates for capital gains (stock sales etc.) and dividends

    reallocating hurricane relief to matters the government was already responsible for, like highways, levees, and federal facilities

The Bush administration was asleep at the switch on 9/11.  It then used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and then morphed that into an imperialistic, preemptive war on Iraq.  And apparently the Bush administration's "values" include torture.