http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Corporate-Power-s-Big-by-Steven-Jonas-110209-282.htmlAnd so, the "small government" folks are now firmly entrenched in the House of Representatives. As they were in the last Congress, through the filibuster rule they will never be too far from the levers of power in the Senate either. But boy, since the last election they have become more vocal than ever. First and foremost they tell us that the "American people" demand "small government" and told us so in the last election. Well, they hardly ever tell us precisely what it is they mean by "small government" other than "cutting taxes" (especially for the wealthy), "down-sizing" government functions (of the type they don't like), and de-regulation (of many corporate activities for which of course they don't supply specifics). Indeed, not too specific all around.
Further there is this "the American people demand" stuff. Well, about 42% of eligibles voted in the last election and the GOP numbers amounted to somewhere around 22% of the eligibles. But those are numbers no one seems to bring up. Of course with a media that characterized the GOP win in 1994 as "the Gingrich landslide" when 37% of the eligibles voted and the GOP got slightly more than half of them, what do you expect, except that would it be too much to expect that a Democrat or two would do so? Well, I guess so. And so we are subjected to the "the American people demand small government" bombardment, which also includes the claim that "the American people want repeal of the health care reform" when poll after poll shows that they do not.
But let's get back to this "small government" stuff, first raised when Reagan claimed that "government is the problem, not the solution." Of course, Reagan wasn't the only one. I remember cringing in my seat when in his first State of the Union Address, Bill Clinton, Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council before he became President of the United States, said "the era of big government is over." Of course when the GOP/Tea-Party/Paulite (as in Ron and Rand, not Saint) uses/re-uses and over-uses the phrase, they are referring only to a certain particular set of Federal government functions, not just any or all of them.
These include: taxation (without bothering to tell us taxation for what), regulation of such things as financial markets (which most Tea-Partiers just don't seem to be able to get, so they are just viscerally against it when you-know-who is for it) and the environment (which right-wingers are against until something happens to THEM, like a railroad tank-car spill or a ground pollution event or a BP blow-out disaster that could have been prevented if there had been regulation); of course health insurance reform (which they have been convinced by the Sean Hannitys and Mark Levins of their world means a "government takeover of health care" when the whole operating system remains in private hands just as it is now, except for those chunks which are now in public hands, like the VA health system from which one can be sure a goodly number of Tea Partiers get their health care), and just about anything that might help the "undeserving poor" (especially if they are not white), however that term might be defined. It is absolutely fascinating that the new GOP/Tea Party Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, has actually called for the repeal of national child labor legislation. One wonders just how that would help solve the unemployment problem for so many of the nation's adults, but that's another matter.
More at the link --
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