Post Partisanship my ass, or why Democrats need to run train in the legislature

Why are the Democrats wasting their efforts in attempts to appease the republican minority? History shows that under democratic majorities jobs are created and the economy expands. We've seen under Reagan, and both Bushes that their tax decrease only plans fail to do either of things, and we've seen that the Reaganomics hands off deregulation of our large businesses and banking systems just doesn't work. There needs to be oversight. Tax breaks aren't going to solve this problem. Money needs to be spent, and it gives us a great opportunity to overhaul our national infrastructures. If we are in a liquidity trap, as Paul Krugman believes, then no lowering of taxes will help. 

The policies put forth during the campaign in 2008 offer a lot of solutions to many of our problems. A true green revolution lead by government funds would provide billions in contracts for new wind turbines, hydroplants, and solar cells. An injection of capital into the system in this way would create 10s of thousands of jobs over the next year. Manufacturing, contracting, sales associates, construction, maintanence, you name it. This is also a great opportunity to phase out our coal fired power plants. There's no such thing as clean coal, even Obama shouldn't be catering to that. West Virginia and other coal producing states need to get over their dependence on coal and develop other industries, he no longer needs their votes, so he should stop pretending that it is a solution to something.

Carbon sequestration has a multitude of issues, not to mention the fact that it hasn't even been implemented anywhere in the world on a massive scale. It leads to the acidification of ground water, the creation of carbonic acid, plus you have mercury and uranium that are released in the ash, which you still have to deal with, the C02 is only part of the problem. The TVA disaster a few weeks ago should highlight the issues at hand with this problem. Additionally, the coal mining is increasingly taking the form of mountain top removal. The scenic areas of appalachia are disappearing because of this method. With little industry, what are they going to leave behind for future industry? They need mountains intact or down the road there will be no tourism, no reason for anyone to visit or bring money into the state. That is a significant problem.

Democrats were giving a huge victory in the election for a reason. Because the Republicans aren't willing to make these changes happen, they stick to the same tired policies that have failed in the past. As soon as Democrats came to power they started with the same complaints and hypocritical attacks they've used in the past. Democrats are going to raise taxes, spend your money, put into place a welfare state, and expand the government. Of course they ignore the fact that our government on every level is bankrupt, they just presided over the biggest expansion of our government in decades, and that it was their policies that have led to the destruction of 40% of the worlds wealth in the past two years. 

The faster the new legislature stops pretending to cater to this old mentality, the sooner we'll make progress. The current stimulus bill sucks. They need to forgive student debt and provide money to prevent home foreclosures and help people refinance mortgages through the government. That would see a significant improvement on the financial pressures that people are under. But as it stands, the bill sucks. No doubt about that, but after 1/3 of that bill becoming tax cuts to attempt to appease Republicans in a Chamberlainesque concession, there is going to be no solution short of letting them write it that would bring them on board. They lost bad, they're losing constituents and they're swinging further right to try to maintain their base support. That is a big mistake for a party that is already becoming regionalized. They need to move to the center to do that and they aren't. Their picking of Steele as RNC chairman smacks of the same desparation of the pick of Sarah Palin. This is a man who bussed in homeless black people from Philadelphia to basically work for his campaign for free in Baltimore and took advantage of them. He also passed out sample ballots that listed himself and the Republican candidate for governor as democrats attempting to trick voters. They're certainly blazing a new trail in the post partisan era. If Democrats don't run train on their asses, then things are just going to get worse.