6.07.2005

A Flooding Sea Change: Small Government GOPers Who Want to Control Everything

Remember the old stereotype of the GOP? Get government out of our lives! The government has no right to tell me what to do with my life and family! Damned taxes.

But with the GOP in reigning control now for several years, government spending is drastically up and along with it, incredible pork barrel spending that usually goes right back to red states. And there's nothing the extreme right wants more than to have the government leave them alone while controlling the lives of everyone else.

These folks want government to only finance religion based social programs so their religious beliefs can decide who gets helped and not. Welfare for the poor is bad while welfare for the very rich and for corporations is good.

You can have someone like a Rick Santorum who, at around 50, needs checks from his parents to support his family (despite the roughly $200K/yr he pockets from his job and the perks that come with it), and then pushes a bankruptcy reform bill that helps wealthy cheats escape payment but will severely hurt individuals who are in legitimate financial distress.

I bring this up because of the Supremes ruling on marijuana yesterday. I got angry last night thinking of the Freeper/GOPers I've known who went against the law to have pot themselves (one in Connecticut used to grow it in his tobacco fields where the big tobacco plants would ring the outside of the field and the pot deep within), but want to be sure that someone with a serious illness who benefits from marijuana can't have it without risking prison time.

I don't quite understand how people can deliberately create double standards. I realize they often get created subconsciously. But we have a GOP now hell bent on deliberately exacting of such double standards and that I don't understand.