A look into the GOP platform: Part two

This the sec­ond install­ment of a three-part series. If you missed part one, you’ll want to read that one before con­tin­u­ing. As in the pre­vi­ous install­ment, text in bold is from the GOP plat­form; the rest is the author’s commentary.

Chapter 1.

Republicans will rein­state President Trump’s Deregulation Policies, which saved Americans $11,000 per house­hold.  Lofty goal but I don’t remem­ber sud­den­ly see­ing my house­hold income go up by $11,000 between 2016 and 2020.

Republicans will end glob­al chaos.  One of the sug­gest­ed meth­ods for accom­plish­ing this is by low­er­ing com­mod­i­ty prices.  Not sure how the two are relat­ed but Trump has already indi­cat­ed that he plans to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase tar­iffs on near­ly every­thing which can only lead to an ele­va­tion of com­mod­i­ty prices, not a lowering.

Chapter 2.

We will com­plete the bor­der wall.  Wonder if there is going to be any greater suc­cess at get­ting Mexico to pay for the remain­ing work, con­sid­er­ing how Trump did with that promise before.

The Republican Party is com­mit­ted to send­ing ille­gal Aliens back home.  Regrettably the Republican pol­i­cy on deport­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants has also includ­ed send­ing back chil­dren and sep­a­rat­ing them from their par­ents, even if the par­ents are here legally.

Republicans will use exist­ing Federal Law to keep for­eign Christian-hat­ing Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.  While it is doubt­ful that fed­er­al law spec­i­fies that unde­sir­able immi­grants must be Christian-hat­ing, one has to won­der why only the “Christian-hat­ing” ones were sin­gled out for spe­cial treatment.

Chapter 3.

Republicans will slash Regulations that sti­fle Jobs.  Since “Jobs” was cap­i­tal­ized in the plat­form, is it pos­si­ble that it is refer­ring only to Steve Jobs?  More like­ly the par­ty is focused on weak­en­ing OSHA, which has, for sev­er­al decades, worked to assure work­er safety.

Republicans will make per­ma­nent the pro­vi­sions of the Trump Tax Cuts…and pur­sue addi­tion­al Tax Cuts.  That pre­sum­ably means that the very wealthy in this coun­try will con­tin­ue to enjoy the largess they received under his pre­vi­ous cuts.  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has cal­cu­lat­ed that the Trump pres­i­den­cy added 7.8 tril­lion dol­lars to the nation­al debt, large­ly through his tax cuts for the wealthy.  All this while the Republicans con­sis­tent­ly tout their fis­cal responsibility.

Under Republican Leadership, the United States will cre­ate a robust Manufacturing Industry in Near Earth Orbit, send American Astronauts back to the Moon, and onward to Mars.  Why?  There is absolute­ly noth­ing that con­cludes that near-Earth orbit man­u­fac­tur­ing can pro­duce ben­e­fits beyond the costs of pur­su­ing this goal — and the funds being spend for Moon and Mars explo­ration could be more expe­di­ent­ly spent deal­ing with glob­al warm­ing and inves­ti­gat­ing our oceans, which promise much greater short-term benefits.

Chapter 4.

Cut unnec­es­sary reg­u­la­tions that raise hous­ing costs.  The term “unnec­es­sary” is unset­tling since it seems to posit that gov­ern­ment politi­cos will be in a posi­tion to define what “unnec­es­sary” real­ly is.

Support the cre­ation of addi­tion­al, dras­ti­cal­ly more afford­able alter­na­tives to a tra­di­tion­al four-year College degree.  The plat­form con­tains no infor­ma­tion as to how this goal will be achieved.  Are these the same Republicans who want to abol­ish the Department of Education (they almost achieved it when Trump appoint­ed Betsy DeVos as Commissioner) and get gov­ern­ment out of pub­lic edu­ca­tion policy?

Expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.  Notice the word “new” here.  They obvi­ous­ly have some­thing in mind oth­er than expand­ing the Affordable Care Act.  And these are the same peo­ple who have con­sis­tent­ly refused to write leg­is­la­tion to allow the cur­rent health­care sys­tem to nego­ti­ate drug prices, which would dras­ti­cal­ly low­er health­care costs.

Chapter 5.

Republicans will sup­port base­line Tariffs on Foreign-made goods.  See Chapter 1, Item 2 above.

Revive the U.S. Auto Industry by revers­ing harm­ful Regulations.  Again, they insert one of those puz­zling adjec­tives, with­out stip­u­lat­ing which ones are harm­ful.  With Republicans the harm­ful ones usu­al­ly turn out to be those that are good for the man­u­fac­tur­ers and harm­ful to the workers.

Chapter 6.

Restore Economic Stability to ensure the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Social Security.  Republicans should read the Social Security Office of Retirement and Disability Policy study titled The Future finan­cial Status of the Social Security Policy and they would dis­cov­er that “restor­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty” is not the sim­plis­tic method of mak­ing Social Security sus­tain­able.  There are far more con­cert­ed efforts that need to be under­tak­en; Congress has repeat­ed­ly refused to address the issue adequately.

Chapter 7.

Restore Parental Rights.  Which ones have par­ents lost?

Allow var­i­ous pub­licly sup­port­ed Educational mod­els.  Aha!  Guess who’s in bed with the char­ter school industry?

We sup­port Universal School Choice in every State in America.  Same prob­lem, stat­ed differently.

Republicans will sup­port over­haul­ing stan­dards on school dis­ci­pline, advo­cate for imme­di­ate sus­pen­sion of vio­lent stu­dents, and sup­port hard­en­ing schools to help keep vio­lence away from our places of learn­ing.  These are all issues best left to state and local school jurisdictions.

Republicans will ensure that chil­dren are not taught Leftwing pro­pa­gan­da.  We will defund schools that engage in inap­pro­pri­ate polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion.  Again, one of those wor­ri­some adjec­tives, and why is it that only “Leftwing pro­pa­gan­da” is sin­gled out?  Shouldn’t all pro­pa­gan­da be ruled out, or at least dis­cussed as a subject?

Reinstate the 1776 Commission.  This was a com­mis­sion estab­lished by Trump the day before the 2020 elec­tion and abol­ished imme­di­ate­ly after Biden took office because it was noth­ing less than an attempt to infuse fed­er­al con­trol into edu­ca­tion.  The com­mis­sion was most­ly com­posed of right-wing conservatives.

Will cham­pi­on the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school.  Funny, I don’t ever recall read­ing that right in the First Amendment, and I’m pret­ty sure none of the sub­se­quent Amendments insert­ed it.

We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington D.C. and send it back to the States.

The abo­li­tion of the Department of Education seems some­what anti­thet­i­cal to all the pro­pos­als out­lined in Chapter 7 regard­ing all the new things that the gov­ern­ment, under Republican con­trol, wants to insert into the edu­ca­tion­al system.