The Republican Party's and its minions work to protect an ideology that is fundamentally flawed and undemocratic! It focuses on protecting those who have by beating on those who have not; by a total lack of empathy or compassion for human beings who differ from them; by believing there is absolute truth which they have have grasped and are destined to use to police the rest of the world; by seeking power over righteousness; and by being hypocritical in their core!
The criminal governor of the state of Florida provides an up-to-date example of all of the above. ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is an extremely powerful lobbying group consisting of persons and corporations that work through, among other venues, state legislatures to get bills passed which promote their particular extreme-right views. ALEC actually writes bills which are then utilized by cohorts in state legislatures. The great majority of its funds come from corporate groups and from such dangerous extremists as the Koch brothers (and all the groups affiliated with them) as well as other right-wingers like the Coors family.
One of these bills was passed by the Republican dominated right-wing Florida legislature and has now been signed by the criminal governor of Florida, Rick Scott. It is a bill designed, as all such bills are designed, to fill the coffers of the rich by ensuring that the poor get a lesser slice of the financial pie. The bill says in essence that city governments cannot force business to provide paid sick leave for businesses in their jurisdiction.
The Orlando Sentinel put it this way: "The Republican governor [note they left out the "criminal" designation] sided with Walt Disney World, Darden Restaurants [including Olive Garden and Red Lobster], the Florida Chamber of Commerce and a broad array of powerful business interests that argued the ban was needed to avoid a patchwork of local employment rules for companies."
As if they gave a damn about "a patchwork of local employment rules for companies." The bill says they do not have to provide sick leave for their employees. That's one for the rich guys and ZERO for the poor guys! It's all a crock and one more example of how the poor and almost poor have no representation in our political bodies.
Unfortunately, many of these people vote into office the very morons who would take away their livelihoods and even their lives if they could. Why anyone in the state of Florida would vote for a Republican is beyond understanding!
But, the real hypocrisy is evident. Those who represent the GOP has always talked about their love for democracy, for local rule, for less government intrusion in peoples lives. Since the advent of that "B" grade, no goodnik movie actor, Ronald Reagan, government has become the "problem" and acts as a heavy chain hanging on the necks of states and cities and corporations and small businesses and education and ... blah, blah, blah. The government, says Scott of Florida and Perry of Texas, as well as a whole host of other really bad Republican governors, cannot be trusted and wants merely to take control of their states and their people.
Perry even went so far as to suggest that Texas might secede if this situation could not be controlled. The sad thing is that millions of people hear this crap coming from these crooked, hypocritical Republicans, and believe them. Especially when, like Perry, they pretend to be Jesus-lovers and good Christians. That's a crock, too. Good Christians don't lie. Good Christians don't beat up on poor people to help rich people! Perry and Scott are about as good Christians as was Caligula or Atilla the Hun!
Perry runs on about how the government in Washington is making life miserable for the people of Texas by demanding more and more in taxes. The truth is that for every dollar in taxes that is sent from Texas to Washington, Texas gets more than a dollar in return! In Florida, Rick Scott is just one more Republican hypocrite who speaks out of both sides of his mouth; one more Republican hypocrite who whines and cries about how government is bad and tries to force good Christian people to do things they shouldn't have to do. We hear this mantra over and over again, especially in an election cycle.
So what does Scott and his ragtag bunch of Republican bums do? They pass a law which forbids cities to do the right thing by the people who live in their jurisdictions in order to put more profits into the pockets of corporations. On a national level, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives strives daily to pass legislation which would take away a woman's reproductive rights and right to an abortion. This same bunch votes over and over again to repeal Obamacare and thus force their nastiness on the entire nation.
All of which shows that Republicans really don't think of the government as being bad, it's matter of who gets what. If the government can enforce Republican ideology through passing laws, that's a good thing. If the government passes a law which contradicts Republican ideology (which again is based upon more riches for the rich, and less of everything for everybody else) then that's a bad thing. Republican ideology is based is hypocritical to the core!
A side note: One of the worst, nastiest, ugliest Republicans to come along in many years in Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas. He revels in exactly the same kind of smear tactics that Joe McCarthy employed. Have you noticed how much he looks like Joe McCarthy? My god, they could be twins! It's like the evil McCarthy rose from his grave!
