Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Kevin Baker and Neal Gabler: Winter Is Here ... by gimleteye



Some serious reading. From the New Republic, "A Modest Proposal For Separating Blue States From Red" by Kevin Baker. I'm on board. To the point, a good case could be made that South Florida, south of the I-4 Corridor, should separate from North Florida. I'll sign up for that and so would most of South Florida.
Dear Red-State Trump Voter,

Let’s face it, guys: We’re done.

For more than 80 years now, we—the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way—have shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike.

From Bill Moyers' blog, Neal Gabler writes a more sobering piece, "How The System Got Broken, And Why It Can't Be Fixed".

The system wasn’t supposed to work this way. The Founding Fathers deliberately devised a structure in which someone like Donald Trump — a vain, self-centered, mendacious demagogue — could never become chief executive, and in which the legislature could never be captured by a reckless, ideologically obsessed minority bent on overriding the majority interests of Americans. Those Founders labored to create an independent judiciary that was not captive to any single ideology or party. They carefully crafted a set of checks and balances in which no single branch of government could overpower another, and in which each held its own prerogatives dearly. In doing so, they thought they had provided posterity with a wise, cautious and magnanimous governmental operation that would serve the larger public weal rather than advantage any particular group or party, and that could withstand the gusts of any given historical moment.

It actually worked surprisingly well for 250 years, which is not to say that it didn’t have plenty of hiccups or that special interests weren’t often privileged. But it doesn’t work anymore, and though I am optimistic enough to believe that we will have a new president and Congress someday who will change policies and perhaps set us back on the road to rationality and common decency (“Make America Good Again”), the Trump presidency and the Republican Congress have nevertheless exposed the flaws in the system itself.

The prognosis isn’t good: These flaws are embedded in the Constitution and cannot be repaired without wholesale change, which isn’t coming. These defects are now openly visible for the next demagogue and the next gaggle of political hypocrites and power mongers to exploit. You can forget all the alleged fail-safes. The Constitution was supposed to protect us from this. It was expressly designed to do so. It didn’t.

6 comments:

tac123 said...

So who is going to lead us to create a 51st state, South Florida? I'm ready to help!

Anonymous said...

If you think you're going to be happy with a South Florida State, then excluding the Fanjul's and they're likes is imperative, otherwise the behind the curtain rulers will stay the same.

Anonymous said...

Phew! I still have trouble getting my mind around just how bad this is. Vain and mendacious - narrow minded and ideological. I want to believe I will out live this and the Dutch have given me some hope.

Anonymous said...

Imagine the Dutch providing leadership to the free world. At this point if we could get just two weeks of normalcy, and rest from chaos aimed towards our way of life, it would be fine. Then we could start up again with the fight in two weeks. We need a break.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but there is not going to be any break. The plug has been pulled. The dizzy feeling is from your observing the swirling of the dirty Water, as the GOPE'R finally as promised, drown government in the bath tub.

The ship has sailed,
The kid is careening down the slide,
The cake is being backed,
Its monkey wrench in full action, with complicity of the GOP (Gynecological Opportunistic Perverts)
It's deja vue all over again, as the power brokers confidently think, they can manipulate and use monkey wrench for they're aims.

This is a real live history lesson, folks.

Anonymous said...

You can't take a break. In two weeks ACA could be gone, and Medicaid cut enormously. Meals on Wheels food for seniors could be gone because they said they have different priorities. The school lunch program for poor children is also on the chopping block because they say the food was suppose to help them learn, but they are not learning and it did not achieve the intended results, so let them starve. Section 8 housing grants could be gone, as well as major cuts in other HUD programs including CDBG programs. Many EPA programs could be gone. Anything funded related to climate change is scheduled to be eliminated from the budget because they say they don't believe in it, and it is a waste of taxpayer money, so everything related to climate change will be eliminated. No, you take an hour at the ocean, and relax, then come back to the fight.