Oh, What Did You Think Would Happen?

Lately in life, I find myself with zero sympathy for emergencies created because of poor planning. Genuine emergencies, in which things are on fire or people are in prison or someone gets hit by a potato chip truck, create totally excusable situations where people can run around doing things in crisis mode. Otherwise, it's just the lack of ability to read a calendar that causes most problems. I feel similarly about things like this:

On June 29, Christie signed a bill that stripped state employees of collective bargaining rights while forcing them to pay between $1142 and $6058 more per year for their pensions and health benefits. According to the NJ Spotlight, “Christie handed the first pen he used to sign the bill to Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), whom he praised for his bipartisanship and ‘political courage’ for joining with the GOP to pass legislation that two-thirds of his own Democratic Party members in the legislature virulently opposed.”

The veneer of bipartisanship was swept away two days later, however, when Christie “took an axe” to the state budget, using a line item veto to eliminate every proposal championed by the Democrats, ranging from a proposed tax on millionaires to funding for education, health care for the poor, and the state’s most financially troubled cities.

Sweeney was furious, especially since the governor had repeatedly promised to discuss the budget with him beforehand. “This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he told Tom Moran of The Star-Ledger in an interview Friday. “I wanted to punch him in his head.”

According to Moran, Sweeney believes many of Christie’s cuts are vindictive in nature, “designed to punish Democrats, and anyone else who dared to defy him.”

“He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons,” Moran writes, “including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services. But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.”

Well, what did you think he was going to do, you stupid fucking bologna pony? Have you met the man? Have you seen him on TV? Did you just wake up and figure out who won the election and then go, "You know, I should bake him a cake right now, because that will make him nice to me, because politics is so totally like a vending machine, and if I put in virtue I will receive virtue in return."

I mean, I'm sorry, but I seriously am starting to wonder if any of these people have been functionally awake for the last 11 years. Did they miss the memo we all got, about how Republicans want to give tax cuts to rich people and after that what they're mainly interested in is pointing out with less and less subtlety how white they are? And did they miss the memo that says if you help them out in this noble task, by agreeing with them on TV or actively pushing legislation to fuck over your own base, they then owe you exactly dick, and must in fact go out of their way to run you over?

This is like the last decade here, just day after day after day of this, of the same bullying and lack of reciprocity and I'm not talking about civility in politics, which I think personally we could all stand a little less of. I'm talking about how the best way to deal with a bully taking your lunch money is not to start giving him your best friend's and in fact collecting it for him in advance, and then acting all virginal and shocked when he kicks your dumb ass in the stomach.

THERE IS NO WORKING WITH THESE PEOPLE. They do not care. They are not working with you. They're working on their own stuff and you're basically a fashion accessory. They don't put a chip in the Bank of You Did Me a Favor and you can take that chip out later, or use it to get a boat loan, or whatever. THEY HATE YOU. They view you working with them as you baring your neck, and when the axe comes down you've really got no cause to be surprised.

A.

Comments

[RAM]

Anybody who tries to seriously negotiate with the modern Republican Party is a moron. And anyone who believes anything any Republican says is also a moron, because everything that comes out of their mouths is a lie including (thank you Mary McCarthy) "and" and "the."

[Tom Allen]

Looks like some of those votes by Sweeney and the rest of the Democratic Senate leadership were because they own or are beholden to businesses that would profit by them. (George Norcross, the political boss, runs an insurance company and chairs a medical center that would benefit. Sweeney is his protege.)

http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0621/0239/

So Sweeney's not just stupid, but corrupt as well.

[baudin]

"you stupid fucking bologna pony."

I will carry this phrase in my little pea brain for
a very long time. Your talent for evisceration is a gift
you share with your readers. Thank you.

And anyone who even attempts to reason with these people
deserves a close encounter with that potato chip truck.

baudin

[MichaelF]

Democrats view Republiclowns as political opponents. Republiclowns view Democrats as enemies. Hell, a fair number of them were/are itching for war in the Middle East, North Africa, Central or South America, or pretty much anywhere, as a proxy for their anti-librul fury.

If Democrats actually fought fire with fire, they might could get somewhere: Driftglass recently suggested balancing out the tax burden vis-a-vis red and blue states (with some exceptions, notably Texass [sic])

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/07/voting-them-off-island.html

My own .000002 cents worth is giving the wingers what they claim to want -- less government. Pull all federal dollars, projects, contracts, etc. out of places like Mitch McConnell's Kentucky, John Kyl's Arizona, etc. See how long it takes before they start howling. And then make them publicly beg for more government to save their States and their sorry asses.

[pansypoo]

it's time democrats realized republikkklans are at war on america.

[fourlegsgood]

Clearly not one of these people paid attention to what happened when Ted Kennedy tried to work (in good faith) with chimpy on education. Chimpy turned on Teddy before the ink was dry on the "no child left behind" bullshit. So what does Sweeney get for fucking union members over? Squat.

Memo to dems everywhere - "YOU CANNOT TRUST ANY REPUBLICAN, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, on ANY ISSUE"

and, this was good "you stupid fucking bologna pony." also, too.

[Palli]

"...then make them publicly beg for more government to save their States and their sorry asses." But would they? I suspect this whole crop of republican encumbants would just pull up political stakes and "retire" to their government pensions, go into easy martini lunch lobbying and moonlight as Fox liars lamenting the decline of American society.

[Todd]

Yeah.. It is like that story with the frog that helps a scorpion across the river, gets stung midway and asks why? The scorpion says, duh, I'm a scorpion.

Just like that but if the frog had been watching the same thing happen for YEARS.

[MichaelF]

Oh, I think they might beg. Power is their sole motivation and the less government nonsense has always been tripe- disguised-as-red-meat for their idiot base. You see all the time when clowns like Mike Pence insist on funding for an unneeded military project because it brings jobs to his district. Pence of course lies about it, so call his bluff: if the project IS vital, it shouldn't much matter where it's built. So build it...in a Democratic district that could use the jobs. And show Mr. Pence's constituents what less government really looks like.

[Jerry]

I ask you to reconsider the time length. Instead of '11 years', it has been 30 years. This crap started with President Reagan and has not let up since.

[evil is evil]

Moran needs to go to a county court and file papers for a name change. I suggest dropping the "a" and adding another "o."

[Brooklyn Girl]

Anybody who trusts Christie for any reason is an IDIOT. He and all the rest of the Republicans are disingenuous dickheads, and I can't for the life of me understand why we can see it but the current crop of Democrats can't. Or won't.

[willf]

So, we're mad at Sweeney because he trusted Christie, not because he made a deal to screw over the poor and the unions in the first place?

That's pretty sad.

[tata]

For all Sweeney's bluster and false outrage over completely predictable events, there are only three possible explanations: he is either so stupid he needs a keeper or he is wholly corrupt or a piquant combination of the two. This is a person who should never again hold office anywhere.

[CVS]

Amen, except its *our* necks being put on the chopping block, not his.

[filkertom]

willf: Yeah, actually. Sweeney trusted Christie enough to make that deal. It was a foul and obnoxious deal, but apparently he thought he was buying protection for all the other programs Christie slashed two days later.

I will take up the Teabagggers' cry: I want my country back. Thing is, my country is the one that cares about the people, cares about the environment, produces jobs in all sectors without outsourcing or stupidly high corporate salaries, and recognizes that both political parties are on the same team. It wasn't all that long ago, dammit. And it sometimes seems as long-gone as my being thin.

[lambert streteher]

Sweeney and Christie both hate you. Christie's the bulley, and Sweeney's the virginal friend who handed Christie your lunch money. Reminds me of Ian Welsh's great post, Why Politicians Get Bribed For So Little:

I've long thought that the problem with politicians isn't just that they're constantly passing bills they've been bribed to pass, but that they sell out so cheaply.

But it's the cheapness which used to puzzle me. No more though. My friend Eli pointed out what should have been obvious to me.

(They sell out cheap) because it's not their money. It's like selling your neighbor's car for twenty bucks.

America's politicians: cheap and crooked.

I mean, in cartoons, the ever-green Lucy and the Football gag works time and again; Lucy is forever Lucy, and Charlie, Charlie. In the real world, after twenty or thirty years, you start asking yourself whether words like "enabling," or "complicit," or "kabuki" might also cover the situation.