Gingrich Advocates Third World Status for the United States

Newt Gingrich lives in a strange universe. Unfortunately, it's the same universe other Republican politicians have been occupying lately, such as Bachmann, Perry and Palin. Before I go further, let's look at one of Gingrich's ideas that has been appearing in various places such as the Los Angeles Times:

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said. "OK, you say to someone, 'You shouldn't go to work before you're 14, 16 years of age.' Fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school." Mr. Bumble from "Oliver Twist" could not have said it better.

What Gingrich fails to understand is that in many poor neighborhoods the janitor's job is one of the more decent jobs available. For more than forty years, corporations generally have been moving out of poor neighborhoods, not in. And millions of those jobs have simply been sent overseas. There have been exceptions in poor areas, usually organized by Democrats such as Bill Clinton, though a handful of Republican governors have managed to buck the right wing politics of their party and done a few useful things (don't include Rick Perry in that crowd—he's done nothing).

Actually, given that today's radical Republican politicians want to either end or cut social security, medicare, medicaid, student loans and various other programs, it's truly surprising they're doing as well as they are in the polls. At some point, it's going to dawn on a large majority of Americans that the vast majority of Republican ideas these days are about cutting jobs. There is nothing in any of their plans about creating jobs.

Newt Gingrich always has ideas that boomerang on Americans. He was certainly one of the people a few years back who supported the call by George W. Bush that social security should be privatized. Under privatization, people could set aside the money they put into social security and use the same money to invest in the stock market. It's one of those ideas that's great for people who are already rich, such as bankers and Wall Street stock brokers, but it's a lousy idea for everybody else.

If George W. Bush had gotten his way on the privatization of social security, tens of millions of Americans would have lost their shirts in the 2008 stock market debacle. The damage done by George W. Bush, as well as others with the same philosophy as Gingrich, can still be seen in the stock market. Quite literally, the blunders that occurred under Bush for eight years are still unfolding. Republicans have done nothing to help Obama deal with those blunders. Instead, they have obstructed him every step of the way. Republicans want to cut jobs, not create them.

If Gingrich became president and did what many Republicans really want to do, he would outright cut social security. Millions of seniors would suddenly not have enough income to be on their own. They would have to live the way old people did it in the 19th century: move in with their children. Of course, Gingrich is either ignorant of what's happening to America's middle class—not to mention the poor—or he doesn't care. For example, right now, thousands and thousands of middle class families in their fifties and even early sixties, are already hosting older children who either are having trouble getting jobs in the current economy or don't earn enough yet to live on their own.

These are not kids who are slackers. For the last 11 years, the total number of available jobs in the U.S. has been falling. The jobs simply aren't there. Republicans have worked hard for thirty years to game the system for the wealthy. One of the consequences is that Republicans have created conditions that could turn the United States into a third world country.

Here's a simple list of six things to keep in mind:

1. Republicans rarely create jobs. They see their job as protecting the rich, while throwing crumbs to various conservative groups to get enough votes at election time.

2. Democrats are job creators. Just look at Bill Clinton's record. Obama's hands have been somewhat tied by the large number of Republican governors cutting jobs and by 30 years of sending jobs to China. But Obama is also a job creator.

3. When it comes to cutting livable wages, the Republicans are the outright winner. The recent attacks on unions absolutely guarantees lower wages for everyone.

4. When it comes to benefits, who's the first to cut them? Republicans.

5. When it comes to banking costs and loans, who's the first to defend bankers instead of middle class Americans? Republicans.

6. When it comes to higher and higher health insurance costs, who resists reform the most? Republicans. When a fat cat insurance executive gets a $20 million bonus, who does he write most of his checks to? Republicans.

Do Americans really want crazy ideas from the 19th century brought back to life again? We'll find out in November 2012.

Republican Newt Gingrich: A Grand Poohbah of the 1%

He's back. Sometime presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has flown in from his vacation in Greece, Switzerland or Hawaii to assert himself in one of the weakest lineups of Republicans in years.

Newt Gingrich is a lobbyist who denies being a lobbyist and refuses to register as a lobbyist but is a lobbyist nevertheless. Although he receives money from various sources, including Freddie Mac, his real job is much broader. Gingrich believes in the right sort of 1%, the anything goes 1%, the movers and shakers 1% sucking the blood of American workers so they can buy one more estate or one more Lear jet or one more 80 foot yacht. He is a friend of Texas billionaires willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to make a buck, including taking down the American economy. Gingrich believes in a government for the rich and by the rich and will do and say anything for the party of people he serves and considers himself a member of. He is indeed a lobbyist, a bona fide lobbyist for the selfish 1% who are uninterested in democracy and uninterested in the problems of average Americans.

Personally, I think Newt Gingrich would be quite happy to be another Dick Cheney. Like the former vice president, he's discovered that it's actually easier and more fun to operate in the shadows. Would Gingrich deny himself the presidency if it were offered to him? Of course not. But in his heart of hearts he would be happier operating in the shadows.

Pay attention to what's being said in the article in The New York Times about Gingrich:

The payments were far more than had previously been known, or than Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, had acknowledged.

(snip)

Not only is Freddie Mac a longtime conservative whipping post, but the extent of his consultancy for the mortgage giant seemed to be at odds with his own statements about his work there. He has also blamed it for the collapse of the housing market, saying that at least one Democratic supporter should be jailed, and, in 2008, that President Obama should give back any money his campaign received from its executives.

The news of the full extent of his Freddie Mac contract put him on the defensive all day. And all of his corporate work, in energy, health care and other industries, is now sure to be scrutinized by the news media and his opponents.

I have no idea why Gingrich is climbing in the polls. He is a strange character. Here's a guy who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Freddie Mac but he was one of those behind the mythology that Freddie Mac caused the economic meltdown. Freddie Mac like so many other financial institutions was not innocent but it was a follower of the debacle, not one of the leaders that caused it.

Let me repeat: Freddie Mac did not cause the meltdown. But keep this in mind: President Bush was in charge during those years when regulation was lax, including at Freddie Mac. And if Republicans like Gingrich were advising Freddie Mac, do these clowns really want to put the blame on Freddie Mac?

There is very little logic or rationality in the Republican Party these days. Guys like Karl Rove work with focus groups to find out what nonsensical narratives might work on potential Republican voters. But why don't Republicans use narratives connected to the real values of the 1% that control the Republican Party? The answer is that those values don't connect with voters. Americans don't want to destroy social security and medicare. They don't want to destroy the unions, though they sometimes have gripes with unions. They don't want to see jobs sent overseas. They don't want to see the bottom line dominate everything in our country for the sake of a little extra profit for the next quarter that goes into the pockets of an increasingly smaller number of Americans.

When business corporations first appeared in America, they were allowed to exist so long as they contributed to the public good. Probably most American corporations continue to serve the public good though most of these same corporations could do a better job. A lot of the breakdowns involve the financial sector, the health insurance sector, the Alice in Wonderland world of expensive and sometimes worthless defense contracts, and corporate sectors who profit from the right to pollute in our country and to pollute in a country overseas without paying cleanup costs. There are many exceptions in all areas. For example, investors who are predatory have found it much easier since the early 1980s to buy a legitimate company and basically raid its assets for their personal use. There are articles that have been written about the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Dodgers and how their assets were stripped by their new owners. The same has happened to many other corporations.

Gingrich is an historian who knows these things. Or at least he ought to know. But he's infatuated with conservative economic ideas that no longer work and never did work, except for a very small number of Americans. He's a fossil. He's also an elitist in reality, if not by labeling in the media. When a self-important official threatens to shut down the government because he didn't like his seating on a presidential plane, that sounds like one of those self-important Dukes or Barons from the 18th century. We used to call such people Tories. We rebelled against them in 1776. We're a generous country. Guys like Gingrich, with nothing real to offer to a majority of Americans, ought to pull out of politics and enjoy his retirement.

Newt Gingrich: The Classic Right-Wing Republican

Unlike most right-wing Republicans, Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, is actually smart. Of course, that has not translated into a trip to the White House. The reason that Gingrich has not fulfilled any number of ambitions is largely due to the lack of a moral compass. That's actually another way of saying that he doesn't really believe what he says.

One of my favorite sites, The Mahablog, has a post quoting Mr. Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia, who manages to tie himself up in knots with his own words:

A lot of people are snickering about this pronouncement from Newt –

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

As Joe Klein said, “There is genius in this: no other human had located the secular humanist wing of radical Islam before.”

My goodness, Newt uses all the popular devices in that paragraph. He mentions his grandchildren, patriotism, atheism, Islam, secularism and a slight reference to "My Struggle," otherwise known as Mein Kampf.

No doubt touching all those bases is required after reading any number of reports by Republican right wing focus groups. But Newt has a problem. He's never been able to make up his mind which group should be the scapegoat used for enabling his political ambitions. Should it be unions? Gays? Immigrants? Muslims? Socialists? Rational people? All of them?

Newt Gingrich became a politician when communists and Russians were the convenient scapegoats—convenient indeed given the behavior of the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union fell, the life of the right wing conservative became difficult. It required work to figure out who to blame from month to month.

Mind you, like most right wing Republicans running for office, Newt Gingrich has no solutions. Perhaps it requires empathy to actually care about the people of the United States and then to identify the problems real people are facing. And then to think about what might be done about them besides looking for a convenient scapegoat, which incidentally has never been particularly successful at improving people's lives, though it usually works out well for the wealthiest Americans since their taxes usually get lowered and the government throws more money their way, even if they don't need it. Most right-wing Republicans know exactly who their real customers are and who's paying the bill. Like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich is raking in the dough.

Is Newt Gingrich's quote above cynical? Of course it is. This is a family man who handed his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital. This is a responsible politician who shut down the government because he didn't like his seat on Air Force One. This is a moral crusader who tried to impeach a president for having sex with an intern, while he himself was having sex with an intern. This was a brave young politician who hurled accusations on the House floor against Democrats who refused to answer him back, largely because Newt was talking at 1 in the morning to an empty House on C-Span. Moral crusader indeed!

And yet, after all is said and done, it is a mistake to underestimate Newt Gingrich. I don't believe he's really running for president. But he just might be running for Vice President, with thoughts of being another Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney and George W. Bush drove the U.S. economy into the ditch. Today's Congressional Republicans are doing their best to kill jobs (with lots of help from right wing Republicans in places like Wisconsin).

The Tea Party folks, of course, are completely out of their minds. It's pitiful that they misunderstand the American Revolution. United we stand, divided we fall, is not about politicians saying my way or the highway but about cooperating on our common problems in a pragmatic way. Most average Republicans I know are just as patriotic and American as other folks. But the Tea Party people, for all the noise they make, sound like British Tories trying to protect the corrupt privileges of the wealthy and well-connected than average Americans trying to move forward into the 21st century.