John McCain

Study Shows Funding Problems

David Blatt, director of policy for the Oklahoma Policy Institute, has published a new, must-read study brief about how federal government funding guidelines and unfunded mandates are affecting state government here.

It’s not a pretty picture. The Oklahoma Department of Health, for example, has recently absorbed millions of dollars in federal budget cuts, and this means it cannot hire people for budgeted positions to investigate nursing home complaints, according to the report. The department, among other cuts, has cut back on some community health programs, the report shows."

(Click here to read the report.)

The report also shows how unfunded federal mandates continue to adversely affect Oklahoma’s disabled people and educational system. The federal government also continues to shift the costs of Medicaid to the state. Federal grants have been reduced as well, the report shows, and the federal government has restricted state taxing policies.

The bottom line is that Oklahoma government is taking a big hit from the federal government. Recent state tax cuts, which primarily benefited Oklahoma’s wealthiest citizens, have not helped the state budget situation either. The federal government’s reckless fiscal policies under President George Bush have compounded the problem. Bush and his incompetent regime are more interested right now in rescuing Wall Street bankers from their own greed than inspecting nursing homes or providing health care to children. What else is new, right?

Blatt, whose research and writing is always evenhanded, scholarly and exemplary, writes, “Our goal with this brief is to offer those engaged in state budget debates a clearer understanding of the impact that federal policies have on the state and, hopefully, to encourage state-level policymakers and advocates to devote greater attention to educating our federal elected officials on these matters. No one should expect the federal government, saddled with its own burgeoning budget deficit, to solve all the state’s budget troubles. However, we should encourage the elected officials we send to Washington to pay greater attention to the impact that their policy choices have on state budget situations and to promote policies that reflect a cooperative partnership between our various levels of government. “

McLiar and Paliar

When you’re counting up all the John McCain and Sarah Palin lies in sheer astonishment, don’t forget George Bush has changed the way in which people here and throughout the world view the American presidency and its relationship to the concept of truth.

McCain and Palin, the Republican nominees for president and vice president, are just pushing the new modus operandi of lying, secrecy and hypocrisy that most people in the world tragically expect from the GOP and America these days. Bush, as I have argued for years now, has changed the very nature of our democracy and presidency and how we perceive truth and reality in this country. To lie is to be normal under the prevailing GOP rubric. To tell the truth, under this same rubric, is a sign of weakness, perhaps an artifice of elitism or an archaic, laughable liberal gesture.

McCain’s and Palin’s lies are so numerous we need counters. Keep score here.

The bigger the lie the better its chances so Alaska Governor Palin says she stopped the so-called “bridge to nowhere” when, in fact she once supported it, was certainly not the reason for its demise and still allowed her state to pocket your tax dollars for it. Still, she lies and lies. McCain claims Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, called Palin a pig when, in fact, he did no such thing and didn’t even come close to it, never, no-how, no-way. It’s all so ridiculous and surreal.

The corporate media has been the complicit enabler in this mess, which unfortunately threatens basic democracy. It fails to call a duck a duck or an apple an apple or a liar a liar. Why not simply state, “Sarah Palin lied to an adoring GOP group today when she told them that she stopped the so-called ‘bridge to nowhere’”? That would stop her from lying about it again. Why not simply state, “The McCain campaign lied again today when it claimed Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig”? That would stop McCain from repeating the lie.

The corporate media has essentially given itself its own death sentence as newspapers dwindle to nothing and television stations lose viewers. Newspapers and television are losing out to the Internet, where freedom of expression still prevails for now. This is what happens when you cheapen the political discourse and report obvious lies as if they were salient, important arguments. Can the major media outlets redeem themselves this election and by doing so perhaps help their declining financial predicaments? There is some hope for that in the often-maligned “reality” community, but no one I know is overly enthusiastic.

The national Republican Party, now under the leadership of a 72-year-old serial liar, has become a surreal, bizarre spectacle that defines the country’s broken political system.

Do we laugh? Do we throw our hands up in despair and give up? Is it really possible that some 60 million people—even if in a losing effort—will actually vote for Republican presidential nominee John McCain? What motivates these voters? Ideology? Party loyalty?

The Republican Party “brand” now reads like a Joseph Heller novel. The current GOP plot reveals its anti-logic, a cobweb of irrationality, contradictions and lies.

The corporate media serves as more than a stenography service for McCain and his new beauty pageant queen. It tries to normalize this carnival freak show. It argues that not only is the three-headed, talking snake real but it also represents what is normal and even natural.

For example, McCain’s choice of vice president is the epitome of gender tokenism and crass political calculation even as it utterly undermines months and months of supposed serious political argument. McCain, who simply cannot run on the Republican Party’s accomplishments, has based his entire campaign on the supposed inexperience of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. But then, in a breathtaking example of contradiction and illogic, he chose as his vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, the 1984 winner of the Miss Wasilla (Alaska) beauty contest. She later served as mayor of the city, population 6716.

To be fair, there is more to Palin than just physical beauty. She is, for example, under investigation for using her gubernatorial powers to try to hurt the career of her sister’s ex-husband, who happens to be an Alaska State Trooper. Meanwhile, news flash, we hear the news today that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Palin apparently proudly believes in abstinence-only sex education in schools.

Thomas Schaller, writing in Salon.com puts it this way: "What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!

What will happen in the next episode of the Palin soap opera?

What we do know and what is most important is Palin, who has only served as governor for two years, obviously lacks the world experience and intellectual curiosity she would need to lead the country since she has rarely traveled outside the country. What we do know is her positions on cultural wedge issues reflect the radical rightwing in this country. What we do know is McCain would be the oldest president ever inaugurated in this country, and he has a history of cancer. The untested and radical Palin, with enough family baggage to fill an airport luggage carousel, would be his immediate successor.

As the Palin drama unfolds, Hurricane Gustav reminds us of how the federal government under Republican control now despises the very people its claims to serve. “We Are NOT In This Together, America,” could easily be the Republican National Convention’s slogan. It might not even cost the GOP a vote given the normalization and embrace of anti-logic among conservative voters and the un-American corporate media.

It is a national disgrace with worldwide reverberations that the Republican Party has to supposedly tone down its annual convention because of Gustav, which hits New Orleans as I write this. President Bush, the most unpopular president in recorded American history, has canceled his convention speech on Monday and McCain has said, well, it just is not right to party down when thousands of Americans are displaced and major destruction looms.

Of course, we all know this is a lie, this sudden GOP concern for ordinary people faced with a natural disaster. The GOP faithful are calculating how to use the Gustav’s wrath to their political advantage, nothing more, nothing less. Will it be good or bad for the GOP convention if the levees break? This is the hollow, political calculation that defines the Republican Party and their enablers in the corporate media these days. One thing the GOP will not do this week is discuss the impact of global warming on the growing intensity of recent hurricanes.

So this is the biggest storyline of the political season so far: A major political party in the United States has to cancel portions of its convention because of a weather event that might remind voters of how its bogus Laissez-faire ideology has failed and will continue to fail regular Americans.

Still, recent polls show McCain and Obama in a dead heat.

What can be more surreal than that?