Republican v. Democrat - What's the Difference?

There are times when the distinction between congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans gets awful blurry. That's inevitable when you have a " bought and paid for" Congress, heavily in thrall to corporate lobbyists.

But I think there is a difference. Democrats are corporate lackeys. Republicans are corporate hitmen. Democrats softsoap legislation to ease its impact on corporate America. Republicans don't even pretend. When corporate America needs to sodomize the American people, it sends in its A-team, the Republicans.

The political football before Congress at the moment is the 1,600 page Wall Street reform bill. The fact that it runs to 1,600 pages is pretty much a telltale that this bill is stuffed full of all sorts of things that have nothing or very little to do with America's financial industry's shortcomings. Be that as it may, the financiers don't like it and some parts of it they really don't like, particularly consumer protection measures. From McClatchey Newspapers:

The bill calls for setting up a consumer protection watchdog bureau in the Federal Reserve that would regulate mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and other products.

The spread of subprime mortgages in the real estate bubble ahead of the crisis showed that consumers need better protection from aggressive lenders, Democrats say.

But Republicans say the Fed unit would be too powerful and impose excessive compliance costs and red tape on small businesses including orthodontists and florists.

Major financial firms' credit card and mortgage profits would also be threatened by a consumer protection watchdog.

Time and again congressional Republicans brazenly intervene on behalf of corporate America to the direct detriment of the American public - and they get away with it! In fact, America's rightwing propaganda media have been enormously successful in spreading the delusion that these interventions are in Joe Lunchbucket's best interests. Governing a country with America's problems is a truly Herculean chore but to do it with a large segment of the population seriously unhinged by rank propaganda is an order of magnitude more challenging. I think we need to remember that when we cast a too critical eye on Barack Obama.