Republican Hypocrisy or Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Losses

I remember doing a project in my political science class one day. We were supposed to guess how the federal budget is divided by percentage. I remember that the military budget was much less than expected and welfare was much more. But that just didn't make sense to me.

If there were really that many billions of dollars invested in welfare, wouldn't there be fewer poor people? And if we spent that little on the military, how is it that our military budget increased so dramatically over the course of the Cold War and continued to rise through the Clinton and Bush administrations? If that were true, what the hell did we fight World War II with?

So I did a little research. The budget is actually very flexible depending on how you interpret it, which is why you never really see a simple breakdown of the budget. Basically, the cost of war and a lot of military spending goes into our national debt, which is not a part of our yearly budget. Since China is buying up our national debt, we are basically taking a military loan from China.

Heh, don't support Communism, Republicans? Maybe you should add "except when there is profit to be made."

As for welfare, I found out that by far the majority of welfare is corporate welfare. That's when the government takes tax payer money and invests it in a private business. This might sound familiar because its happening right now with these controversial corporate bailouts. It is also where the titular phrase comes from: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

It's a phrase I found a few months ago that describes the Republican economic position perfectly. The idea goes "When a business is doing well, it is wrong to interfere with their business practices because the free market has decided that they should prosper, and to control the way they run their business in any way would be a violation of their freedom," but when the business is doing poorly, we have to bail the company out so that people don't lose their jobs and other businesses that are dependent upon them are not impacted.

Now, I've never been one to take a person at their word since what someone says rarely has much relation to what they think, much less what they do. Rather, I try to find the motive that matches the effects. The effect of Republican economic values is to maintain the wealth of the rich. That's it. Period. The whole thing about self-reliance and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is the same bullshit that every ruler has said since the beginning of time to justify their position.

To this end, the Republican position has always been that businesses must have as much freedom as possible including zero regulation on executives (whose pay and perks have absolutely no relation to their performance), lax regulation on pollution (see Kyoto Protocol), eliminating socialized institutions (i.e. communications, energy, and education), and promoting the idea that private business can do anything better and cheaper. The problem is IT DOESN'T WORK!

Executives live by the creed "It is only business." Given a choice between polluting and not polluting, they will go with whatever produces the most profit. Only if there are potential lawsuits or negative publicity associated with the action will they choose to do a moral thing when it is easier and cheaper to do the wrong thing.

The energy companies were deregulated during the Reagan administration to the praise of the party, but after Ken Lay and those other fuckers at Enron withheld power to drive up prices during the energy crisis, the blame was laid on the Democrats in power at the time of the scandal including Bill Clinton and California Governor Grey Davis... which led to the special elections that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office.

Republicans have also undermined the educational system by bad mouthing the teacher's union. (Does anyone actually think teachers have it easy? They are paid crap and have to try to get kids to learn.) They have tried to promote school vouchers to use tax money earmarked for public schools to be diverted to private and parochial schools. Again, tax money going to private businesses (and economically speaking, schools are businesses). They have starved public schools of funding, tried to replace sex ed with abstinence only (a program that has been shown to contribute to teenage pregnancy and the spread of STDs), tried to promote intelligent design as a legitimate alternative to evolution, and declared the American educational system a failure that should be turned over to private hands.

How could anyone in their right mind believe that a private enterprise, with absolutely no accountability to facts, is more capable of teaching children than a democratically accountable institution? And if schools are privately run, how will the poor become educated? Yes, I know. You will hand out vouchers, but can you guarantee that these vouchers will consistently be able to pay for a quality education? Of course you can't. Nor can you guarantee that they won't be taken away entirely.

As far as I'm concerned, any party which seeks to undermine public education has something to be gained from having a stupid population. This isn't just political bias. This is the party that elected a C-student whose daddy got him into Yale to the presidency because they wanted to have a beer with him. This is the party that admires a bad actor who had Alzheimer's and increased the national debt by 1000%; the party that put the world's fifth largest economy (Yes, California has a larger economy than most countries) in the hands of a roided-up action star with no political experience whatsoever; the party that invited a man they call Joe the Plumber (who is neither a Joe nor a plumber) to a political strategy meeting.

So if you aren't ashamed of being a Republican, I sure as shit won't be ashamed of being a socialist.