Conservatives Oppose Our Political Priorities

Dave Thomas

I doubt that any liberals disagree with the following priorities, although we may disagree about how to realize them. Conservatives may argue that they also agree with some of these priorities. But their actions speak louder than their words. It is especially the new conservatives, Christian conservatives and libertarians who opposed these. And traditional conservatives have generally gone along with the new conservatives and libertarians.

Conservatives Oppose Fair Elections

Both Liberals and Conservatives will claim that they support fair elections. But their actions speak louder than their words.

Republicans have gerrymandered districts to give them more victories than their support makes fair. Republicans have continually resisted measures to make registration and voting easier, citing fantasized possibilities that voters may cheat. Republicans have given voters false information about where and when elections are to be held.

Under Republican control in 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio, legitimate voters were deregistered, too few voting machines provided, and ballots miscounted. In 2000, Republicans successfully resisted the fair counting of ballots.

Republicans have resisted attempts to substitute public campaign financing for private campaign financing, enabling wealthy and powerful private interests to support the election of officials who will put their interests before the public interest.

Conservatives Oppose Open Government

Liberals believe that open government is necessary for voters to make informed decisions. Conservatives typically don't want voters to make informed decisions. They believe in privacy for government; but oppose privacy for people.

The Bush administration has instituted an unprecedented reign of privacy in government, while invading people's privacy to an unprecedented extent. The purpose of the secrecy is keep the public unaware of unpopular and even illegal administration actions and incompetence.

During the Bush administration, huge numbers of documents are stamped secret, even ones which have long been available publicly. Freedom of information requests have been denied, delayed or delivered with so much important content eliminated so as to be useless. Presidential papers are kept secret. Cheney met secretly with lobbyists to formulate environmental policy. Executive privilege is cited to prevent disclosure of executive decision making to congressional oversight committees, rendering oversight impossible.

Conservatives Oppose Fair Taxes

The Bush administration's income tax cuts and attempts to eliminate estate taxes are grossly unfair, not requiring high income and wealthy people to pay for the institutional and cultural heritage that enables their high incomes and wealth. Most lower income people pay more FICA job tax than they do income tax, but no attempt was made to reduce it. Auditing of high income and business tax cheats has been much reduced, while auditing of earned income tax credits for low income taxpayers has greatly increased.

For tax fairness, we need to establish progressive income and estate taxes. For example, a progressive flat income tax might be 40%, with a deduction equal to the medium income of similar families. Thus half of our families with the lowest incomes would pay no income tax. Above the medium income, the tax rate would increase with income from zero to close to 40% for the extremely wealthy. Auditing should be proportional to the probability of cheating and the amounts which might be recovered.

To quit discouraging employment, we should shift our taxes to support social services from the jobs tax to a value added tax (VAT) which would discourage consumption. Both the jobs tax and the VAT are somewhat regressive, but the proposed income and estate taxes would be quite progressive.

Conservatives Oppose Competent Spending

Our Conservative Reagan and Bush administrations have brought many business executives into their administration, with their lower ethical standards than are customary to government service. Our Bush administration and congressional colleagues have richly rewarded their campaign contributors with jobs, corrupt contracts and pork. They have attempted to turn our government into a collection of profit centers for their private supporters

Iraq and Katrina are only the most obvious examples of the corruption and waste that results from unmonitored non-competitive cost plus contracts, often awarded to campaign contributors. Whistle blowers are removed from responsibility. The Republican controlled congress provided no oversight. Money has also been wasted on ideologically driven programs such as 'abstinence only' sex education.

Our federal government's debt has soared, with most of the money wasted, ending up in private pockets without performance for the public good. Our massive and growing public debt may expose us the greatest economic meltdown we have ever experienced.

Conservatives Oppose Investment for Productivity

Private investors refuse to invest in projects and programs which benefit the public, but not the individual investor. Public investments in such projects and programs have repeatedly proved beneficial and even crucial to enabling productivity.

Conservatives have consistently argued against public investments. They have insisted that all cost beneficial investments should be made by private entrepreneurs.

The Bush administration has grossly under funded our physical and social infrastructure. Our roads, bridges, dams, public buildings, parks and other physical infrastructure are deteriorating to become dangerous and a drag on our productivity. Funding has similarly declined for scientific inquiry, health, education and other aspects of our social infrastructure.

Increasing personal financial risks and declining social insurance reduce our productivity. It is a no brainer for Democrats to resume public investments.

Conservatives Oppose Quality Health Care for All

Conservatives have attempted to destroy Medicare instead of expanding it to include health care coverage for everyone. Bush has under funded Medicare instead of instituting cost-benefit controls. He has restricted our State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Conservatives insist that health care coverage should be provided by private insurers, making it far too expensive to include everyone.

Conservatives continually say they oppose socialized medicine, including government provided health care or government paid for health care. But they never note that under these definitions, popular veterans health care and Medicare are socialized medicine.

Conservatives added prescription medicine coverage for seniors by making them a captive audience for private insurers, who were paid to offer coverage with no regulation of medicine or insurance prices. The result is an enormous public expense and fewer benefits to seniors than if they had simply expanded Medicare to pay for medicines for all seniors.

Conservatives Oppose Quality Education for All

Conservatives have opposed spending enough money for public education to provide preschool education, to reduce class sizes, to provide equal educational quality to all students and to increase teacher's salaries to adequate levels, with higher salaries to attract excellent teachers to schools serving culturally deprived students.

The 'No Child Left Behind' approach has penalized deficient schools instead of granting them more resources. Conservatives have attempted to increase inequality through providing vouchers to parents which they can use for private schooling.

Conservatives have attempted to introduce Christian fundamentalism into our schools, including the teaching of Creationism and of abstinence only sex education.

Conservatives Oppose Quality Jobs for All

Conservatives have supported globalization which does not protect our workers, consumers, or environment. They have opposed unionization, including allowing companies to unlawfully oppose attempts by workers to create unions. They have eliminated and failed to enforce many worker safety requirements. They have opposed family leave and other family friendly work requirements. They have opposed protecting our disabled, gays and lesbians, women and seniors from job discrimination.

Under the bush administration, labor participation rates have declined, as many workers have given up trying to obtain full time employment. Temporary jobs have increased. Needed foreign workers are denied entry to the United States. Immigrant workers are denied legal rights and are harassed.

Conservatives Oppose Quality Retirement for All

Conservatives support regressive taxation that hurts low income retirees. They have tried to destroy Social Security. They have allowed grave deterioration of pensions and retirement savings. Instead of simply expanding existing single payer coverage, they passed Medicare Part D which mandates expensive private insurance for prescription medicines.

Conservatives Oppose Protecting Our Environmental

Conservatives have supported private and public activities which consume scarce resources and pollute our environment, without concern for mitigation, paying for externalities or consideration of long term costs. Especially damaging has been their support for military activities, while exempting them from environmental protection laws.

Conservatives have attempted to eliminate environmental protection laws, render them ineffective, or failed to enforce them. Instead of protecting environmentally sensitive areas, they have attempted to make them available to developers and mineral extractors. They have not maintained our National Parks and other public lands, attempted to privatize them and replaced highly qualified public employees with private firms which provide much less service. They have allowed private uses of public lands which pollute them.

The Bush administration has far surpassed Reagan as a despoiler of our America. It has mounted a huge attack upon all of our environmental legislation. It has only belatedly given lip service to global warming, with no actions to reduce it. It has also restricted states from taking action to reduce global warming.

Conservatives Oppose Energy Independence

To become independent of foreign sources of oil, we must either reduce our consumption of oil or produce more oil. But in spite of Conservative claims, we can not produce more oil, without unbearable environmental and economic costs. We can only reduce our consumption. We can reduce our consumption through using oil more efficiently. And we can find renewable energy substitutes for oil.

Conservatives have opposed attempts to use less energy, including oil. They have resisted requiring increased vehicle mileage. They have resisted placing taxes on oil. They have resisted subsidizing homes and businesses which adopt technologies for reducing energy consumption.

Conservatives have generally resisted rewarding the substitution of other sources of energy for oil. An exception is subsidies for using corn based ethanol for fueling vehicles, since agro-businesses repay Conservative in campaign contributions. But production of corn based ethanol uses almost as much oil as using oil directly as vehicle fuel. And it diverts corn from food to fuel, raising the prices of food.

Conservatives have supported oil consumption to the profit of oil companies which repay them with campaign contributions. Our oil reserves are dwindling such that increased drilling produces little additional oil. Yet conservatives have continually supported additional drilling even in environmentally fragile locations.

Instead of supporting energy independence, Conservatives have supported heinous dictators in the Mid East to maintain access to the oil they control. They have even used false arguments to invade Iraq, partly in an attempt to obtain access to Iraqi oil.

Conservatives Oppose Equal Rights

The Bush administration has continued to illegally invade our privacy, spy on our communications, invade our homes, violate habeas corpus, deny legal representation, torture prisoners and render them to other countries for torturing and more. It has often resisted measures to enhance the equal rights of women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, gays, our disabled, wounded veterans, our poor, etc.

They have attempted to politicize our justice system through the appointment of regressive judges and politically responsive U.S. attorneys. The number of investigators of white collar crimes has been reduced, including the investigation of companies which violate consumer protection regulations.

Unfortunately the general public and many of our Democratic legislators have scarcely protested these steps toward a police state. This is perhaps the area where liberal principles are required more than any other.

Conservatives Oppose Protecting Our Personal Security

The Bush administration ignored El Qaeda until after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Our occupation of Iraq has distracted us from destroying terrorist networks. Our national guard first responders and their equipment have been sent to Iraq. Our homeland security has been irrationally implemented, with many senseless expensive responses, while other more obvious protections remain unimplemented.

Katrina revealed how inadequate our homeland security is. The Bush administration has corruptly granted no-bid unsupervised contracts to political supporters in both Iraq and the gulf coast. It has assigned incompetent political cronies to replace competent experts.

The Bush administration has focused law enforcement upon terrorist threats to the extent that white collar and other crimes are not being investigated and prosecuted.

Conservatives Oppose International Cooperation and Leadership

From Kyoto to nuclear proliferation to the Criminal Court to conducting war, the Bush administration and Republican congress have given the middle finger treatment to the rest of the world. From being a world leader, the United States has become a power to be feared. Our global reputation is by far the worst it has ever been. Nor will it easily be restored even when Democrats resume control in 2009.

In Conclusion

The cynics are completely wrong. There are enormous differences between Liberals and Conservatives, between Democrats and Republicans, between the blue majority of American opinion and the red minority. While our liberals and Democrats are not always consistent in holding and attempting to realize our liberal values and priorities, the conservatives and Republicans are almost always consistent in opposing them. Dave Thomas