The Linear Canvas
This journal is about the wrongs and rights of the world, as I see them.

The Linear Canvas

The Republican Party Incorporated

April 17th, 2016 . by Alexander Fisher

 

For the last half century, the national Republican Party has had a track record for not achieving the goals of their conservative electorate. I considered myself a Republican, the Party of Lincoln, when I was young. I thought being conservative meant being responsible with the public’s tax money and keeping government out of one’s personal affairs. A naive boy I was.

Then the wedge issues came along. Opposition to same sex marriage, abortion rights, and other controversy’s that became embedded in the Republican Party platform. On those issues however, they actually failed to change, outlaw or control any one of them in any meaningful way nationally. There was even a period during George W. Bush’s residency in the White House that the Republicans controlled the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and no doubt the national media dialog. But still, the Republicans made little change to the existing laws or proposed any legislation that had any chance of being enacted concerning those issues.

After the Republican’s Reagan Revolution, Corporate Taxation, Government Spending, the Environmental Protection Agency, Terrorism and Voting Rights have all been on the national party’s agenda. Since that time, there are now lower taxes for corporations, greater government spending, a worsening environment, highly visible acts of terrorism and more restrictions on the democratic process. It seems the Republicans can make changes, but only to benefit the special interests that profit from anything related to those things. The party has been taken over for some time by a well dressed criminal class and has become a party that wastes public money on political agendas and giving preferential treatment to others based on lives of wealth and privilege.

The Republican Party needs to explain to their voters why so little has been done on the wedge issues they were elected to change. They should have to tell whether they are ever going to make any effort to change things in the future or not. Beyond just sound bites and symbolic gestures. I think conservative voters deserve to know that. Whether I agree with any of them or not. I would want to know. But If someone is waiting for The Republican Party Incorporated to do anything about the perpetual wedge issues that galvanize conservative voters who keep voting them into power because of them, they will be waiting for a really long time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-obamacare-replacement_us_570ffe63e4b06f35cb6f08ee

President Nixon: A Bullitt Dodged

April 1st, 2016 . by Alexander Fisher

 

I am currently reading John Dean’s book “The Nixon Defense”. The content of the book is mostly transcribed from White House recordings made during Richard Nixon’s years as President. Dean helps to organize the conversations and adds some commentary, but not that much. He was working in the WH then and helps to explain some of the seemingly ambiguous conversations. The Nixon aide quoted in the article at the link below, John Ehrlichman, is one of the players in this book as well. In it, he even discussed with the president rounding up all blacks and putting them on trains, then dropping one off in every town to work as domestic servants.
President Nixon was also making plans to round up newspaper reporters he didn’t like and jail them. He was using the IRS and the FBI to target his enemies. He believed he was above the law, so therefore he was not committing crimes. He went on about how honest he was and how his enemies were not. Then he would break the law to get back at them. Nuts.
As it turned out, the Watergate scandal saved America and our free speech for a few more years. Nixon’s goal was a country run for the benefit of himself and his rich friends. Had he not been hobbled by press and congressional scrutiny in his second term, he would have put his fantasy into action.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html