One Fewer Excuse, But Only One

(Editorial cartoon by Ted Rall and published 11/29/12 by the Los Angeles Times.  Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

I really have been giving Ted Rall short-shrift here.  It's not that he's doing crummy cartoons, far from it.  But he has been assigned California as the focus for his work, and the results are skewed to issues primarily affecting this state.  This cartoon, however, elucidates just what is wrong with Democrats everywhere, and not just California where they have all of the constitutional offices and the kind of super-majority in the state legislature that can pass any bill, including those affecting the budget without challenge by the Republicans.

Here's what Rall had to say about this state of affairs:

Having a two-thirds legislative supermajority for the first time in more than a century, California Democrats are facing intense pressure from the left to use their new powers, which they always said they wanted and needed -- before they got them.

And yet ...

Just about every newspaper and network news outlet keep saying that the Democrats can't be running amok.  The state can't afford it.  We have a deficit to fix.  It wouldn't be fair to the minority to ignore their concerns.  The legislature has to exercise discipline, fiscal discipline.  It can't go about raising taxes or closing tax loopholes or ending subsidies to in-state industries to keep them fat and happy and here.  Instead, the draconian cuts to education, health care for the poor, and infrastructure like public transportation will have to stand.  Or something like that.  And legislative leaders happily nod their nods and say, "Yes.  This."

Sound familiar?  It should.  On the national level, we are seeing some of the same bovine excrement being flung around over that damned "Fiscal Cliff."  As I said yesterday, most of our Democrats are only too happy to go along with the program to shred every decent and humane safety net to protect the budget of the Pentagon and to keep regulators away from oil companies and Wall Street.

Our current crop of Democrats in the 112th Congress will have their collars tweaked by our owners, as will the President. Social Security will suddenly be on the table, as will Medicare/Medicaid, all before Christmas. 

The same corporations and big-money players operate at the state level as they do at the national level, and they are wise enough to spread the money around enough so that everybody is happy, everybody but the 99% of us stuck with the results.  At the state level, at least in California, the lobbyists have the additional benefit of term limits so they can be especially helpful to the newcomers who just want to get along.

So I've added my state senator and state representative to my speed dial system.  I'm not too optimistic, but it beats giving up to the monsters.