1115.org

What, oh what, does the Republican party stand for?

(1)
Almost unanimously, it stands for corporations screwing workers. Or to be fair, it stands for corporations getting away with screwing workers.

The background:

…the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (seeks) to restore anti-discrimination protection for workers after the Supreme Court’s May decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. undermined the intent of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Court ruled that Lilly Ledbetter, a 19-year career employee of Goodyear who was systematically discriminated against, was ineligible for compensation because she had not filed suit within 180 days of the actual decision to discriminate against her. This was a distortion of the intent of Congress when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a contradiction of 33 years of precedent and practice.

The Roberts-Alito Supreme Court held that “the actual decision to discriminate against her” was made when Lilly Ledbetter started working for Goodyear 19 years ago. She should have filed her lawsuit within the first 180 days of her employment. After that Goodyear was free to practice wage discrimination against her. After that, she was deemed to have freely consented to this ongoing act of economic rape. Her only option: grin and bear it.

Okay, that was the background. We have now heard from the Republican party where they stand on this issue. Republicans voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a margin of 193-2. (Democrats were for it, 223-6).

And President Bush has promised to veto this insidious attempt by Democrats to provide the federal government with the power to break up this ongoing economic gang-rape:

In his continued ideological assault on workers’ and civil rights, President Bush has threatened to veto the bipartisan Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act if passed into law. The president’s statement of explanation of his threat brazenly misrepresents the bill.

Hey, Lilly, how much did you contribute to the Republican party coffers last year? Either in your own name, or through PACs, or by means illegal? And you still expect justice in the time of Bush?

If you were lucky, Lilly, you would live in a country with a more enlightened legal system. I hear very good things about India, for instance. Court cases routinely drag on for 10, 15, 20 years before they arrive at the Supreme Court. Sometimes they drag on for 170 years without even arriving at the Supreme Court. The court that decides your case has no earthly resemblance to the court that existed when your case was filed. Surely that is a source of great hope to the citizens of India?

(2)
When you have two models for solving a problem, one of which clearly works better than the other by every objective measure, the Republican party stands for supporting the one that works less well. But that’s not as illogical as that might sound. They support the less effective model only because they would like it to be the more effective model. (That, apparently, is what Republicans consider logic.)

Rudee is a perfect example of this syndrome:

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday offered a consumer-oriented solution to the nation’s health care woes that relies on giving individuals tax credits to purchase private insurance.

But wait. It gets better. This is what Rudee’s plan consists of:

Critical to Giuliani’s plan is a $15,000 tax deduction for families to buy private health insurance, instead of getting insurance through employers.

Now where, oh where, have we heard this one before? (Hey, Rudee, the script calls for you to be the unofficial heir to His Holiness Ronald Reagan, and not the politically disfigured George the 2nd.)

Incidentally Rudee seems to be guilty of what would have to be described as premature political ejaculation:

Giuliani offered the broad outline of his plan but his campaign did not provide many specifics. Asked how much his plan would cost and how many of the people without insurance it would help, Giuliani said he won’t have those answers for two or three months.

No discussion either, apparently, of what taxes he would cut to pay for the health care plan.

But let this be the punchline of this segment:

“We’ve got to solve our health care problem with American principles, not the principles of socialism,” he said. “I know Democrats will say this is unfair, I know they’ll squeal… But I’m a realist. I face reality, which is: if you take more people and have government cover it, it’s called socialized medicine.”

Of course, that doesn’t apply when you take more Senators, or Congressmen, or Presidents. Everyone knows socialized medicine is taking the medical benefits enjoyed by the pigs-who-are-more-equal-than -others and extending them to other pigs, the unwashed ones. Can’t have that at all. It just ain’t right!

But I’ll play along with you, Rudee dear. I’ll do the unwashed pig thing, I’ll squeal. Except, if you don’t mind, I won’t squeal “Unfair! I’ll squeal: “Stupid!” instead.

(3)
Using parsing that is surely worthy of Buttercheeks, I’m going to sneak in this Ted Stevens story too, just bending “what does the Republican party stand for” to “What will the Republican party stand for”.

Sen. Stevens, you will remember, fought the good hard fight to build a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Now it looks like that’s where his political career is headed. In quite a hurry, too. He now has FBI agents and investigations coming out of his ears.

So what’s his next move? No one is ever going to be able to accuse him of not having balls. (Or no one except pathological liars like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Scooter Libby, etc. and those guys, of course, are not in the business of aiming their guns at anyone on their own side.)

He is threatening to block the new ethics reform bill when it gets to the Senate. This is the bill that passed in the House by a margin of 411-8.

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.

The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska (in private jets) – and vowed to block it.

And Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), confirming Steven’s threat, said bluntly: “There could be a lot of holds on this bill.”

This guy, mired as deeply as it is possible to be mired in corruption scandals,* stands up before fellow Republicans, and tells them he’ll block an ethics reform bill that passed in the House 411-8. And does anybody tell him: “Like hell you will!”? Does anybody tell him: “The Republican party will not stand for it!”? No sir, no sir, three bags full.

I guess that’s what they mean by The Culture of Corruption.

* It’s not just the VECO Inc. supervised house remodelling any more, the one for which “he paid every bill he received” (but only the ones he actually received, ha ha!):

The Interior Department’s inspector general and the Commerce Department have also joined the case to investigate Stevens’ connections with a Seward, Alaska, marine science organization that operates the Alaska SeaLife Center, a person familiar with the probe said.