As bad a year as this is for the Lakers, it's an even worse one for Washington. (photo: AP)
28 February 13
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do the LA Lakers and Congress have in common? One is a group of
privileged, entitled old guys past their prime who still get paid way
too much to do a job that they aren't doing. The other is a basketball
team.
While I normally just follow NCAA basketball and don't pay much attention to the pros, I can smell the stink of the Lakers' 2013 season
all the way from Wisconsin. On paper, LA has some really great players
on their roster, like Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Kobe
Bryant. But in reality, despite the skill level of these individual
players, they're just a few games out
from being disqualified from the playoffs. And the problem is, they
just don't care. No matter how they perform, the star players on LA's
roster know they'll still get paid millions of dollars whether or not
they play their hardest on the court, even in spite of the fact that
this is one of if not the Lakers' worst seasons since Kobe Bryant first
started playing for them. But as bad a year as this is for the Lakers,
it's an even worse one for Washington.
The 112th congress, elected in the Fall of 2010 at the peak of the Tea Party's influence, had the lowest approval rating
in the history of congressional polling. Their key goal wasn't actually
creating jobs or breaking through the corruption at Washington's core,
which they all included in their platforms. Rather, their goal was the
same as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell's goal – to make Barack
Obama a one-term president. And to do this, they relished their low
approval ratings, because in their minds, the American people would
blame the president for Congress's inability to get anything done or
make deals with their opponents when serious issues needed to be
addressed. Instead, Barack Obama won in a landslide, and some of the
worst do-nothing, mean-spirited, corrupt Tea Party Republicans in
Congress like Allen West, Frank Guinta, Chip Cravaack, Dan Lundgren and
Joe Walsh – were all soundly defeated in their districts. This happened
despite a 2-year strategy of obstruction and finger-pointing, a
nationally-coordinated effort to elect Republican governors that would gerrymander congressional districts to the GOP's advantage, and literally billions in dark money
spent by right-wing groups to influence the election. You would think
having their strategy backfire so bad that their heads got handed to
them last November would make the Republicans have a major come-to-Jesus
moment and get their shit together, right?
Instead, Republicans are doubling down on the strategy
of sitting on their thumbs and obstructing anything that isn't in total
lockstep with their backwards, irrelevant agenda. Even though sequestration
would result in millions of hungry families not getting food
assistance, low-income residents of wintry cities not getting heat
assistance, and millions of kids not getting their immunizations, House
Republicans have refused to even consider cutting any of the corporate
tax loopholes that offshore billions in tax dollars per year. They've
insisted that the F-35 joint strike fighter, which has already cost us $400 billion and would require a total operating budget of at least $1 trillion and has been indefinitely grounded due to faulty construction, get full funding
even as they ask hungry people to go without food. In fact, Eric
Cantor, the #2 Republican in the House, believes the best way to save
the economy is to end overtime pay for hourly workers. This is coming from a guy who only works 126 days a year and still gets paid vacations courtesy of the taxpayers.
Now, I'm fully aware that some Democrats are also to
blame, though I'm never one for false equivalency. After 4 years, the
Obama administration still hasn't brought one banker to trial for the
2008 financial crisis and we still continue the $83 billion annual
subsidy to Wall Street. Harry Reid still included 6 times as much
in corporate welfare as in unemployment extensions in the "fiscal
cliff" deal reached with Mitch McConnell. The Democrat-controlled Senate
still unanimously approved a $700 billion military budget in December
on a 98-0 vote, and out of 200 House Democrats, only half
have agreed that cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should
be off the table. But at least one of the two parties is willing to have
a conversation about stopping the coming cuts that would adversely
affect thousands of government employees and their families.
Tech companies alone dodged $225 billion in taxes
over the last three years, but these $85 billion in cuts are being
directed at programs like Meals on Wheels and early childhood education,
instead of the multiple egregious loopholes exploited by multinational
corporations. And every member of Congress, no matter their party
affiliation, must be held accountable for making us suffer so their
campaign donors can keep their tax breaks. The only thing stopping us
from giving these corrupt politicians a boot on the ass in 2014 is,
well, us.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a
nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of
thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts
in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and
other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not
Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently
lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at
carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
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