While the actions of the conservative mainstream shouldn't be too surprising to anyone anymore, the resistance by many on the political right to accept reality still has a way of shocking us.
Both the fact that the Occupy movement is still growing, and that its general reason for existence is legitimate are both facts we've seen, heard, and read and that most on the far right are attempting to stomp out.
For example, "Biden Warns of More Rapes and Murders If Jobs Bill Is Not Passed," a headline that screams from the conservative 'Weekly Standard' website, is a disgusting attempt to impugn Vice-President Joe Biden. The facts that the V.P. stated yesterday in Michigan aren't unusual. As the economy has worsened, Flint, Michigan's murder rate has climbed as the ranks of its law enforcement personnel have been reduced.
This isn't some wild-eyed statistic. Numbers like these, saying almost the exact same thing, have been common, factually-based knowledge for years.
When there are more people out of work, crime rates go up.
In a sane world, the goal of a normal society in an economic situation like the one currently facing the U.S. would be to do whatever is necessary to increase the number of jobs as fast as possible. Passing a bill which would directly create or save jobs in the public sector and encourage job creation in the private sector would be one rational choice.
Something, perhaps, like the American Jobs Act, proposed by President Obama.
In the U.S. Senate, however, legislators seem to have a different goal. In case you missed it, the U.S. Senate voted on the right to debate the President's bill this week - they weren't even voting on the actual Jobs bill, just the right to talk about the jobs bill - but Republicans effectively filibustered the discussion, so the bill went nowhere.
It's an obvious fact, Republicans don't want the economy to get better. Period. We're not going to beat around the bush about it any more. Far too many Republicans have become dangerous obstructionists, acting as though anything that's good for the President is bad for them. Cowardly centrist Democrats, like Montana's Jon Tester or Nebraska's Ben Nelson, enable those Republicans with wimpy behavior of their own. Nelson and Tester are obviously more concerned with saving their own jobs than they are with saving the jobs of their constituents and putting folks back to work.
Their actions, and the actions of any legislator who stands against a jobs bill right now seem counter-intuitive to us, since two thirds of Americans are in support of President Obama's jobs policies. Further, one of the key provisions of the President's bill - to make sure that the jobs projects are paid for - was to raise taxes on the richest Americans.
Sixty four percent of Americans agree with raising taxes on the rich - and that includes Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Many of these people may still be out of work in 2012 - and they will certainly remember which Congresspersons stomped on a perfectly viable plan to help more Americans get jobs.
