Translations 1

Listening to Limbaugh and Hannity is confusing for progressives and liberals, and I suspect conservatives too but that's a different issue.

I will attempt to translate what it is that conservatives are saying on a few issues.

The conservatives say that now that the Democrats hold Congress, they will raise taxes. This is a not exactly correct.

The Democrats may repeal some of Bush's excessive tax cuts to the very wealthiest Americans, the top 1% of billionaires. However because conservatives like to work very hard at the framing game, that is finding the deeper emotional issues as expressed with simple slogans that catch people's ears, the removal of an incredibly unfair disproportionate tax cut is transformed into: they are going to raise taxes. The intentional dishonesty here is to raise fear among the listeners of the show. I suspect there are no show listeners that are in the affected tax bracket, excepting Limbaugh himself.

Bush tax cuts to the extremely wealthy are cited as being a part of the overwhelming deficit that we are facing. Curiously conservatives like Limbaugh make no mention of this direct relationship between tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and the deficit. Why is that? Instead the removal of these tax cuts is labeled as Democrats raising taxes again.

Then there is the issue of "smaller government." This was confusing to me at first because I interpreted it to mean, efficient, smart, and less bureaucratic government, something along the lines of a lean, efficient, precision directed organization. I was very wrong. Smaller government means removing all entitlements, period. That means removing all social programs. This would include all welfare, food stamps, social security, federally insured student loans, medicare, medicaid, and for some Republican conservatives even public schooling. That it what is meant by smaller government.

You see conservatives come from the strict dad side of politics. The strict dad wants you to assume all responsibility for yourself. You alone are to take on social security AKA your retirement, medicaid AKA your healthcare, etc etc. The sense of equitability is not important to the conservative. It gets easy to understand why poor minorities stay away from conservatives.

The notion of "corporate welfare" is not even on the radar for conservatives. You will never ever ever hear Limbaugh talk about the massive corporate bailouts that the federal government gives to ailing corporations, sums of money that exceed social programs costs by staggering amounts. So smaller government does not include corporate welfare, corporate welfare is just fine with the conservative.

Why would a working class person vote for conservatives when this would harm their own financial interests? To be continued......