The Clash of Ideology

                                                    “The Clash of Ideology”
                                            
                                                            David T. Dean

In my watching of several national news videos tonight, of which in my following of the impasse for the last several days, of in what is not only the possibility of a federal government shut down, but in also following the government of the State of Minnesota which shut down 12 days ago, I have become a citizen of Minnesota, and just like the state government shutdown, the federal government is likewise heading for a similar shutdown.
 
There are very striking resemblances between the shutdown of the government of the State of Minnesota on July 1, and the possibility that the federal government might shut down next month on August 2nd, that just as in the State of Minnesota’s shutdown, it is a spitting image of the same issues that the federal government has in its own looming crises that the State Government of Minnesota currently has.  The Federal government’s inability to overcome the impasse over increasing taxes for the wealthy and government spending for the needs of the countries less affluent, the looming crises of the federal govenment is currently exibiting just as much of an impasse over the taxation of the rich and government spending for the needs of the less affluent as the State Minnesota is now having.  In the federal governments lacking ability to come to an agreement between raising taxes and spending cuts to obtain a balanced budget,  it is no less the similar ideological belief that divided the State of Minnesota to the point of shutting the government down.  It is of the same issues that the State of Minnesota is having as is in the huge gulf of disagreement between the two parties on these two issues with the federal government.  In a very real sense, it is one and all, the same.

As we have a Democratic Governor here in Minnesota and a Republican held majority in the State House and Senate, we have a Democratic President and a Republican majority House and Senate, which just as the federal government cannot agree on spending and taxes either.  They are mirror images of each other, and without either side willing to budge, however less on spending and more on taxes, that with the impasse in Minnesota, the two sides are just as far away from an agreement now as they were several months ago.  Even as both the Governor and President have made good faith efforts to compromise on the spending issues, the Republicans of both Minnesota and the United States have not wavered in their opposition to raising taxes whatsoever on the wealthy.

It is in the same way the State of Minnesota and the federal governments rhetoric on both the
Democratic and Republican side of the aisle are one and the same.  While the Democrats speak to the unfairness of the balancing of either state or federal budgets on the backs of the less affluent, the Republicans are continuing with statements of how raising any taxes whatsoever on the wealthy would be a job killer and that they will not support any tax increase at all, most particularly for the wealthy. 

While it appears that the Republicans are using the same theory that Ronald Reagan used in the 1980’s, which in calling his economic plan “Trickle Down Economics”, it was, by theory, going to benefit everyone from the top down.  Problem was, while the rich got substantially wealthier, the lower classes got even lower and the middle class began to disappear.  It was the latest beginning of what we have now and the continuing of what we had then.  Although the Republicans do not refer to their way of thinking as Trickle Down Economics anymore, they do though, rely on the same rhetoric and the same statements that Republicans have used for years and are now using once again.  They just don’t say it outright. 
         
The Republicans have seen how well their aggression works for them.  They appeared to have learned that if they do not give in, to not compromise in any manner whatsoever, that they will win in the end.  I would not make the mistake though, to think that in the jobs that the Republicans say they will create by not raising taxes on the wealthy, that they care about the people who would work in such jobs, other than the fact that the jobs they might create would be much less a benefit to the worker that they would much more go to enrich the wealthy who would create such jobs solely to enrich themselves, the wealthy.  Such is the Republican job plan.

The Republicans have shown exactly how they care for the workers in this country when they had control over both Houses of Congress and the Presidency for eight years and did not raise the minimum wage even so  much as a penny in all those years.  What is going on now is nothing less than class warfare, and it is being played out in not only in Minnesota and in Washington, but all over the country.  The ramifications of what will result from all this is a very serious reality.  It may be that the Democrats need to be a bit more frugal in the governance of the country and it as well that they need to be in the State of Minnesota.  Perhaps they might even need to be considerably more frugal.  However, to think that any more than perhaps a few Republicans would have any genuine concern for not only the needy, but for the unemployed, the underemployed and for the dead-end job employed is something that appears to be something that is well beyond what the Republican heart and mind is capable of.