I am disgusted by the amount of energy that is being wasted by people who pretend to take Eric Cantor seriously. He has this stupid bill called the Kids First Research Act. It would “end taxpayer funding of presidential campaigns and party conventions and divert that money instead to the National Institutes of Health to fund pediatric research.” It’s typical for conservatives to tie new funding for pediatric research to the destruction of any sense of civic duty to support our electoral system.
Why is Cantor doing this? Because research shows that people don’t respond to his party’s all-austerity-all-the-time message. They’d rather come down with hepatitis B than listen to Eric Cantor drone on about government spending. So, he’s pushing some bills that might almost seem compassionate (it’s for the kids!) and then he can accuse the Democrats who oppose them of preferring campaigning to helping the sick little children.
What an asshole, right? You probably won’t be surprised that the article details Cantor’s difficulties in lining up support for the sick little children. Turns out, most Republicans just want to take the money they save from making our elections 100% corporate-sponsored affairs and give it to rich people.
So, you know, they’re talking to the Democrats. And some Democrats are so desperate to see the House authorize a nickel or two to any kind of non-abstinence related research that they’re actually ready to gut public spending on elections.
The thing is, this bill isn’t going anywhere. The president wouldn’t sign it even if it passed the Senate. It’s all a joke. Cantor is trying to prove that his party can appear concerned about childhood disease and he’s discovering that they can’t. They can’t even fake it.
So there are Democrats willing to become complicit in this charade? For what? For some sense or tint of bipartisanship that means nothing? Can’t they see through this bullshit or are the beltway blinders just so powerful that they are simply rendered complete idiots?
Six of them.
Are they the usual suspects?
Doesn’t the money for tax payer support of elections come from the income tax check off? Is he going to continue the check off and divert the money? I wouldn’t be surprised, after all Treasury is diverting employee 401K contributions to deficit reduction instead of buying government bonds as the unsuspecting employees thought.
If he is going to change the wording of the check off, why not just create a new check off?
But but but… I thought all the scientific research the federal government does is useless. Didn’t Sarah Palin teach us that with the fruit flies?
Or Piyush Jindal and volcano monitoring!!
“Piyush”? That’s a foreign sounding name.
Anyone seen his birth certificate?
Will the zombie come awake on September 29 to worry about cutting more spending from a continuing resolution?
But the elections already are 99% corporate-sponsored affairs. The candidates (including Obama) now routinely turn down the public financing because doing so allows them to raise more private financing. Citizens United put paid to the illusion that there was any way of limiting corporate sponsorship of the whole electoral process. “Public financing” is not much more than a fig-leaf at this point.
It only means the Republicans haven’t figured out a way to keep it all themselves.
Meh. At this point, why not?