American Extremist?

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Campaign contributions are bribes.

I set the $$$ limit low so that wealthy people wouldn't be able to contribute more than anybody else.

I don't allow donations to candidates you can't vote for, to prevent Massachusetts voters from contributing to defeat Jesse Helms or his current counterparts, or southern voters to defeat Ted Kennedy.

I believe that American is becoming more and more of a corporate Republic with commercial lobbyists corrupting and distracting the senate away from the more important issues.

The imperative to gut government collides with the needs and wants of the rich and powerful.

One result of this collision was that in 2004, Mr. Bush’s tax reforms gave the average millionaire a $123,595 cut, but cut the middle 20% of income earners by just $647.

The K Street Consortium also explains why all of that $647 and more got eaten up by increased medical, energy, and educational costs.

Take the Prescription Drug Plan passed in 2003. As many as 3000 lobbyists spending hundreds of millions ($116 million in 2003 alone) worked diligently to pass this Porker. The payoff for industry, according to a study by Sager and Socolar of Boston University, is that as much as 61% of Medicare’s costs will be pure profit for the Drug companies, an increase of as much as $139 billion (that’s billion with a b).

Why?

Because the lobbyists from PhRMA – one of the most powerful K Street Players – made sure that the US was actually prohibited from using its buying power to negotiate for lower cost drugs under the new prescription drug plan. Net cost to tax payers? $720 billion over ten years.

Or take the Energy Legislation: $66 billion dollars worth of pork, the majority of it going to the fossil fuel industry at a time when oil companies are earning record profits. This piece of K Street legislative pornography scarcely addresses demand, so the oil industry gets billions, and Americans get guaranteed high prices.

But if the imperative for the K Street consortium is to simultaneously shrink government and provide corporate Pork, how do the Republicans propose paying for it?

Easy. First, cut programs that benefit people, to help fund the pork. As Jonathon Weisman reported in the Washington Post, over the next several months, Republicans will try to cut Medicaid growth by $10 billion, trim $7 billion from the Student Loan program, sell out ANWR for $2.4 billion in oil revenue; cut the food stamp program by $600 million, among other cuts.

Of course, no matter how much you screw the people, you can’t afford to give rich people massive tax cuts while you give trillions to industry. So, the second part of their strategy is to simply pass on the inevitable bill to our children. If the K Street Consortium implements their policy agenda, in ten years, every child born in the US will "inherit" $36,000 of additional debt.

And that was before Katrina burst through levees weakened by budget cuts; before New Orleans and the gulf coast spun into a national purgatory as a crony-ladened FEMA bumbled around for five days.

Since Bush and his K Street cronies refuse to delay their tax cut for the rich, we’ll have to cut more programs and shovel more debt onto our children and grandchildren to cover Katrina’s and Rita’s $200 billion plus price tag.

So much for Republican fiscal conservatism.

Ironically, the K Street Consortium not only hurts the average American, it hurts American industry.

For example, when GM spends more than $1000 per vehicle on health care for their US workers, but Toyota spends next to nothing for theirs in Canada or Japan because they have universal health care, it’s hard for GM to compete, and it’s hard for the US to retain or generate manufacturing jobs. The same is true of cuts to education. The US worker is falling behind the rest of the developed world’s labor force in terms of skills so we’re losing one of our primary competitive advantages. And testing required under No Child Left Behind is all well and good, but when the testing reveals problems, the Bush Administration has not been willing to pay for improvements.

Republicans accuse Democrats of being "tax and spend liberals." The reality is, Democrats do tax a little more, but they spend less, and Americans get more for their money.

Republicans tax less but spend much more and the borrowed largesse goes to corporations and the likes of Ken Lay and Paris Hilton, while the debt gets passed on to future generations.

Look beyond rhetoric to the record. Clinton gave us a smaller government with better services. And we now know that programs supporting jobs, education, and health care – the ones that Bush and the K Street Consortium want to cut – not only foster an equitable and just society, but they also promote a prosperous economy.

So, next time you visit Washington to see the seat of our government, forget Pennsylvania Avenue. Stop by K Street.

And while you’re there, ask Grover why you can’t get a college loan; why the US has the most expensive, but one of the least effective, health care systems in the developed world; why we’re closing factories but opening Wal-Marts; why wages have flatlined; and why your child is born into debt so that David Ovitz’ $100 million plus bonus for failing as Disney’s number two man isn’t taxed too heavily. Or ask Grover why New Orleans’ levees weren’t kept in good repair, and why FEMA fumbled.

Then ask yourself Dr. Phil’s famous question, "How’s all this working for you?"

In order to start anew there must first be massive rioting, pandamonium, and bloodshead. You can't just go and say, "You know what guys. This whole goverment thing just isn't working out like it used to so we are just going to start clean. New Constitution and all."

Media is so vast, they will take any conspiracy theory