Shutdown terrorists threaten you
Idon’t know about you, but to me, the basics of good government service, like making the trains run, providing for a robust judicial system, keeping our roads and bridges operative and safe, providing exceptional schooling, and looking after our aged, ill, and vulnerable — put broadly, “getting things done” — are pretty damn important.
Extremely important, in fact, if we’re to live up to our reputation as “the World’s Greatest Nation.”
Enter our new 2015 class of domestic terrorists. It’s Republican primary season and all “conservative” candidates are doing their best to woo the crazy corner of the right by distancing themselves as absolutely far as they can from “Establishment Republicans” and from Washington, in general.
No act against the establishment is too far-fetched; no pain inflicted on the general population too extreme.
These outsider candidates and their allies already on the inside must prove to their primary electorate that they represent the hardest-right conservative values and nothing, no nothing, will stand in their way.
The latest: Planned Parenthood must be defunded of all government support, regardless whether that support is directed toward basic women’s health or not.
Even though Planned Parenthood performs abortions with non-government money, it still must be stopped — at any and all cost. No pain too great to remove this Planned Parenthood cancer from the American soul.
The Southern “faithful” are whipped up into a frenzy over something that’s been out and established for 50 years, but this year, from presidential hardestright candidate Ted Cruz, to Santorum, to Ben Carson, to a host of hard-right congressmen — these “God-fearing, vote-mongering say-anything-to-get-to-the-general election” — candidates are once more planning a full-on stalemate and government shutdown in a Don Quixote quest to force the shutdown of Planned Parenthood, regardless of all the good it provides to the people who need it the very most.
A recent Quinnipiac survey shows a good majority of Republicans overall do not want to experience another government shutdown to achieve Planned Parenthood defunding — or any other Republican quest.
A vast majority of Americans overall detest the idea of suffering through another shutdown. And all with good cause.
The 2013 shutdown is estimated to have cost the U.S. nearly 1 percent GDP growth that year. The uncertainty roiled stock markets, banking, and international relations.
Our reputation for highest credit rating was tarnish as the U.S. debt was downgraded to A- from sterling. Businesses, both those contracting with government and those in the private sector, were put on indefinite hold while that domestic terrorism plot was acted out against our very own people.
And all in the end for not much. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for purposefully hurting our people.
Workers for the federal government stopped getting checks. Contractors got stood up. National Parks and public services were suspended and closed.
Huge inconveniences were put upon average Joes and average Joes’ families — but the crazies didn’t care.
This new crop, as Santorum states, isn’t about making the trains run or “getting things done.” It’s all about “principles” — their “principles” — whatever that means.
(Can you imagine the hilarity of Donald Trump preaching to you and me about “principles”? Three marriages, four bankruptcies, countless courtesans and who knows how many abortions, to boot!)
While most Americans wouldn’t get abortions themselves, they’ve come to terms that some may need them or feel highly constrained to get them. That’s called “women’s choice” — in the land of free choice.
With John Boehner departing, this act of domestic terrorism has been re-cued against you and me for Dec. 11, 2015. It’s coming; it will gain steam, and the markets and investors and businessmen will begin to pull back on economic investment until clarity returns.
The pain is already beginning with market nervousness from such reckless talk of “shutting down the government.”
We all thought these “representatives” were public servants. Instead, they’re serving their campaigns to a very narrow constituency at all America’s expense.
“Shutting down the government” isn’t a righteous act. It is simply and plainly hostage-taking, where you and I and 350 million Americans are the hostages.
It is domestic terrorism, and those party to it will cost tens of thousands of jobs, billions in lost earnings and wealth, hunger to our poorest, and even illness and death to our infirm.
These terrorists mock government leaders who “make the trains run and get things done.” Looking all around me as I travel the country, I see there’s a lot we should be investing our congressional payroll on “to get things done.”
Let’s call it for what it is: Republican government shutdown actors are actual, real domestic terrorists, causing real, measurable pain, suffering, and loss.
And to the extent we support these self-serving manipulative zealots we are aiding and abetting actual terrorism.
Gary Horton is a Santa Clarita resident. “Full Speed to Port!” appears Wednesdays in The Signal.
You have some people who are just focused on making the trains run and getting things done as opposed to standing up for the that things we need to fight for ...” Rick Santorum, at the Republican Values Voters Summit