By Jim Hoover
There is a surplus of candidates for the title “Rogue of the Year,” most of them being Republicans, whose motivation involves kissing a Plutocrat so they can turn into a rich prince. Accordingly, we could hone in on members of Congress and pick many who stand out as deleterious knaves. But if I were to single out the rogue of the year, he most assuredly would be Eric Cantor, the House majority leader from Virginia.
One discernible explanation for his knavery is his motivation to be the first Jewish Speaker of the House. After that, he obviously believes that the sky is the limit. In discarding a motive of principles, we might ask, “Can principles be involved in favoring the rich over the people?”
To achieve his goals, he seems willing to walk over anyone and demonize anything that gets in his way, including the present Speaker of the House, who already has Eric’s tread marks on his back.
Eric apparently believes it can be achieved by engaging in gross demagoguery, hypocrisy, and ugly deceit, including cheap shots at the president, distortions of any media truths that benefit his rich friends, and a demeaning namecalling of “Occupy Wall Street” average Americans, who would like to see the economic justice he and his friends are purposely blocking.
I single him out because he appears to be the most intelligent, the most devious, the most ruthlessly ambitious, and the most malicious (without apparent inner awareness).
The stage is set; the knife is ready. Backs are exposed.
Cantor has shown his abject contempt for the American people, even the Constitution, every time he opens his mouth, seeming to believe that his deceit and cunning will win the day in a teabagger-flogged Congress, where Republicans hold sway in the House.
Hypocrisy and deceit reigned when Cantor last year, after suggesting sinister motives for Pelosi visits to Syria while Speaker, visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demonstrating his goal of putting Israel’s interests above those of Obama and the USA, saying the Republican Party would protect Israeli’s rights and interests over policies of Obama – in fact, defying Obama’s constitutional authority.
Earlier this year, Cantor sought to slash the US Geological Service (USGS) budget right before a rare 5.8 earthquake shook Mineral, VA, deep within his district. He also sought cuts in National Weather Service funding, and Virginia was hit with Hurricane Irene. Undaunted by the coincidence, he demanded that any disaster relief for victims, even in his own constituency, be offset by spending cuts. To exploit suffering during disasters to serve his own political agenda is beyond reprehensible, but the man seems to have no shame.
Cantor’s motive to sabotage job creation for millions of Americans is no longer even thinly disguised. By all applied logic, he simply wants Obama to fail, hoping his re-election bid fails with him.
With a vast majority of Americans wanting job creation as the number one goal, Cantor is sabotaging the effort. Hoping obfuscation and misdirection will darken the light of truth, he says Republicans are not going to vote on the president’s jobs bill because the GOP representatives have their own plan, featuring deregulation as its main job-creating policy, in effect saying that attacking labor and permitting corporate pollution of air and streams will promote jobs.
Other Cantor priorities have been denying access to Pell Grants for the college poor and waging a war on the Post Office.
Apart from the drone of committee hearings, nothing on the Republican agenda in the House directly mentions jobs and has not this legislative session with only 27 days left. In fact the number one agenda of House floor action, if inaction isn’t a better description, seems to be a bill rehashing an attempt to revisit abortion funding, HR430, a needless update of HR358, something that already abolished abortion funding. In fact, the new bill would deny health care for ER services for miscarriages, thus endangering women who are hemorrhaging.
Other bills follow the agenda of rich corporations like Koch Industries that want to kill EPA regulations that protect drinking water and the air we breathe. In addition the House will vote on a bill preventing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from taking action against a Boeing violation of a national labor law. Infrastructure spending, the number one suggestion of Obama’s elite group of job czar, Jeff Immelt, and his friends, is not to be seen in the House bills.
While Cantor deceives about job-creation efforts in the House, he, along with too many members of Congress in both parties, is actually aiding the Koch brothers in killing people in Crossett, Arkansas who live near a Koch brothers’ plant that dumps toxins into its streams, bubbling up into an airborne pollution that spreads through the air and the wind.
It’s not like this is not public knowledge among the Koch brothers, and certainly the news is known by anyone who has concerns. People have died of cancer because of the benzene (a known carcinogen) the Koch plant spews into the air.
The Clinton administration in 2000 charged the Kochs with a 97-count indictment and sought a $350 million fine. A few months later, the Kochs received help from the Bush administration and the EPA ultimately knocked down the charges to one count and agreed to a $20 million settlement. How bad is benzene? Even Sen. Rand Paul said benzene polluters belong in jail.
Cantor enjoys funding from Wall Street monoliths like Goldman Sachs and B of A, mining interests, tobacco interests like Philip Morris and private health care companies. Emboldened by the election of several Tea-Party Republicans, Cantor continues to oppose any tax increases for the rich, any reduction in corporate tax credits, any Wall Street regulations, any EPA, FDA, or regulatory restrictions on business, even if they worsen the air or the drinking water.
Though according to the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the first stimulus created 3.3 million jobs, Cantor continues to debunk it, or any real jobs program. He says it is an affront to the people. What he doesn’t say is that he is afraid that a jobs program will stimulate more employment, something he as majority leader in the House representing Republicans, does not want to happen.
Why? Because, by all appearances, goal number one is Cantor’s rise to power and Obama’s defeat.
