Tuesday’s Workout
Somewhere in the middle of Tuesday’s workout, I changed channels. My standard MSNBC Morning Joe was doing a review of the year; and 2020 was bad enough the first time. So I made a foray into the alternate universe of Fox and Friends. I used that to distract me from the “special high intensity training” of a stiff resistance elliptical machine setting. And Fox often gets me fired up to work even harder. Yesterday was no exception: former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, was propounding on the state of politics today.
It didn’t hurt my motivation that one of Gingrich’s first statements was that there was no need for Congress to increase the $600 stimulus. Millions of Americans “made money” on the pandemic he said, in fact, “…millions of government workers, particularly teachers, sat on their butts doing nothing and collecting their paychecks,” during the crisis.
I retired from public school teaching in 2014, but I did take a full-time substitute-teaching job on March 9th of 2020. A week later the pandemic closed the school, and I was one of those teachers who went home to prepare to teach “online”. For the next two months, I learned all about developing video lectures and Zoom classes, Google classroom communication and online testing. I am, in the teaching world, an “old dog” but I had to learn a whole lot of new tricks. It was the hardest teaching I did in a thirty-six year career. Yes, I was at home, and yes, I was sitting on my “butt” in front of a computer. But, like most teachers then and now, I was working that “butt” off to try to teach my kids.
So that got my through a mile of Tuesday’s workout.
A Revolution?
Watching Newt reminded me of the “Revolution of ‘94” he led. This was before Trump and the Tea Party, but Gingrich was able to gain control of the House of Representatives in 1994 with his “Contract with America” program. It promised less government and more “freedom”. The overall theme of Newt’s program:
- Congress is full of fraud, waste and abuse
- Government must balance the national budget
- Legislators should be termed limited
- Social Security should be privatized
- Stricter punishments for criminals
- Cut welfare programs
- Reduce legal liability protection (tort reform)
- Reduce government regulation of business.
Now that Joe Biden is going to be the Forty-Sixth President of the United States, we are going to hear many of those same themes once again. The “Contract with America” was a “repackaging” of the standard Republican line when they aren’t in power. It’s already happening. Republicans in the Senate are now worrying that the Government is spending too much money to combat the pandemic economic collapse. This is after they have voted to give more than a trillion dollars in tax cuts in the past three years, mostly to those Americans with the top one percent of income. And this week they are ready to override a Presidential veto and spend $738 billion for the National Defense Authorization Act.
Priorities
The difference between Republicans and Democrats really isn’t about how much money they are willing to spend. It’s what they want to spend the money on. Spend money on incredibly expensive aircraft that are ready to fight the Cold War of the 1960’s: most Republican legislators think that’s great. General Dynamics and Boeing and Raytheon all need the contracts. Spend money to allow Americans to stay at home and stop the spread of COVID, like most other modern industrial nations – well, workers need to get off their “butts” and get to work. Let’s call them “essential” so they feel important, but not provide the funds to safely get their jobs done.
I look at Newt Gingrich, now an author of historical novels and a paid commentator for Fox, and I see the beginnings of the ugly “alternative news” world we live in today. He promised a “freedom” that benefited the wealthy, and that “freedom” made life even harder for everyone else. It “remade” the Republican Party into one with a “populist” agenda, but that agenda still aimed to “free” the wealthy to keep gaining wealth.
Sounds a lot like Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump today, doesn’t it?
Three miles done, uphill, both ways: time to climb down from the elliptical and get on with the day.
Thanks Newt!
