The Season for Apathy

Politics is a dirty business, and anybody who tells you anything else is selling something. That being said, there is a certain amount of b.s. that we are inclined to take every two years and maybe it’s just me but this year seems to be…atrocious. I like answering phone calls from campaign offices because I enjoy talking politics, and what better sport than someone who has been repeating the same one-liners to total strangers that couldn’t care less for god knows how long? She sounded like she was in her 70’s, pleasant enough, her demeanor was not argumentative; she just asked me questions. Then she told me that I was very knowledgeable about politics, and because of that I might be interested in a new grassroots political movement called the tea party.

“Stop right there.” I told her

“Excuse me?” she replied curiously

“Excuse YOU. The tea party is funded by oil money and either you didn’t know that and are spreading ignorance or you did know this and are spreading lies.” As I said it I suddenly wondered how many people she’d already spoken to.

“That’s not true.” She told me somewhat defiantly.

“Truer than the Bible itself. Who do you think pays Sarah Palins six figure speaking fee when she shows up at tea party rallies. Who pays for Glenn Beck? You’re kidding yourself lady. Jeff Perry used a fake degree to get where he is and now he is using you.”

I didn’t know that otherwise sweet old ladies can slam phones like that.

Jeff Perry recently told the Boston Globe; “I went to night school for 15 or 20 years. I’m really proud of that. It hurts a little bit that people . . . try to diminish my educational accomplishments.”

Oh Jeff if you could see the irony of lying about a degree then being raked over the coals in a collegiate newspaper for it; well that would make my day.

Polls show republicans are more enthusiastic about getting out to vote this season by a margin of roughly 2:1. If republicans take control of the house and senate you can bet things will get very bad very quickly, and it will not be because of an astro-turf sham like the tea party, it will be from democratic weakness and general apathy.

When the Financial Reform bill was brought to Congress it was intended to do many things, the nuts and bolts of the bill though, were regulation of the derivative market and proprietary trading. It essentially was supposed to make it so that secondhand stocks (derivatives) whose value is beholden to another stock cannot be manipulated by banking institutions. The proprietary trading regulation was supposed to make it so federally insured banks couldn’t engage in high risk trading at the expense of the taxpayers. Together these new regulatory instruments would ensure a level of stability that would allow the stock market to function as it was pre-meltdown. The final bill signed by the President contained nothing of the sort. The Democratically controlled Congress led by the democratically controlled White House flaked in the worst way they possibly could.

As it were, the worse that can happen when democrats in control flake is a lack of meaningful reform. The alternative, republican flaking, is unnecessary wars on the other side of the planet under knowingly false pretenses, more government institutions that protect us by infiltrating book of the month clubs, corporate de-regulation one a wider scale than ever seen in the history of man, a rise in religious fundamentalism, accompanied by the persecution of minorities of all stripes, and a national debt that makes our current 11 trillion look like chump change.