8 April 2011 Extortion and the First Amendment

It’s Not Really About Spending

Published: April 7, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/08fri1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

“If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:

• No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.

• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.

• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.

• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.

• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.

Abortion. Environmental protection. Health care. Nothing to do with jobs or the economy; instead, all the hoary greatest hits of the Republican Party, only this time it has the power to wreak national havoc: furloughing 800,000 federal workers, suspending paychecks for soldiers and punishing millions of Americans who will have to wait for tax refunds, Social Security applications, small-business loans, and even most city services in Washington. The damage to a brittle economy will be substantial.

Democrats have already gone much too far in giving in to the House demands for spending cuts. The $33 billion that they have agreed to cut will pull an enormous amount of money from the economy at exactly the wrong time, and will damage dozens of vital programs.

But it turns out that all those excessive cuts they volunteered were worth far less to the Republicans than the policy riders that are the real holdup to a deal. After President Obama appeared on television late Wednesday night to urge the two sides to keep talking, negotiators say, the issue of the spending cuts barely even came up. All the talk was about the abortion demands and the other issues. “

Cassi Creek: It seems to me that we are being held hostage by legislators controlled by the various Christian cults. They have chosen to attach as riders to the budget bill, demands that would have no chance of passing if they were submitted as stand-alone bills.

For all the worship of our Constitution and Bill of Rights that flows from the mouths of the GOPers/teavangelists, they can’t stand the fact that the 1st Amendment won’t allow them to create a state religion. They wail and screech about the evils of expansionist Islam as preached by fundamentalist Imams. They can’t stand it when someone points out, truthfully, that Christianity is equally expansionist, equally sexist, and is under the influence of equally fundamentalist priests and preachers.

This seems likely to play out to shutdown. People are going to die for lack of services, lose homes and cars while fighting for BS reasons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. There is no justification for this intrusion of theocons and teavangelists into the electoral process. Such intrusion is forbidden by the 1st Amendment, should be blocked at every opportunity, and is absolutely anathema to the intentions of our founders.

This fight between the Christian right and the rational, science and reason based citizens is far from over. The contest will become more violent and bloody as the teavangelists recruit zealots and martyrs to attack anyone who tries to prevent a theocon takeover. For the innocent victims of such hatred there will be no distinguishing factor to point out which band of religious fanatics is responsible but the name on the sacred book blown apart and littering a nation that was founded to be free of such irrational hatred and zealotry.