FACTS DON'T MATTER ANYMORE

A special commentary by Ove Overmyer

This article reflects the opinion of the author only and not CSEA.

I am getting a little tired of listening to congressional Republicans, and to a lesser degree some Monroe County legislators - pontificating about the stimulus not creating one job or saying that public employees are the cause of our economic decline.  The fact is the stimulus bill kept America working, and saved many local and state government budgets from total collapse.

There are so many hypocrites who trashed the stimulus I can't count them all (well, actually I did count around 21 Republicans) and voted against it, and then exploited it by bragging to their constituents how great this money would be for jobs and economic development in their communities.  Some even went as far as a photo-op-- donning the hard hat and standing next to that poster-sized cashiers check.  Sheesh.

They aren't that dumb, are they? They know these falsehoods, but they say it anyway to undermine and deflect attention away the real issues facing America's working families. There is a huge difference between policy and politics-- Republicans, the party of "NO," are filibustering away while thousands of people lose loved ones to undiagnosed diseases because they do not have healthcare (for one reason or another) or a job that gives them any benefits to protect their families.  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow compared the Senate to a roach motel, "where things go in and nothing comes out." 

Take lame duck GOP Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, for example.  For the past week, Bunning has been single-handedly blocking more than a million Americans from receiving unemployment and COBRA health insurance benefits, as of today, when their benefits funded under the 2009 stimulus law run out. The suspension of benefits affects everyone from doctors to government employees.
And, Republicans are so focused on trying to make President Obama and congressional Democrats fail that they don't seem to care who gets hurt in the process-- which is the majority of the American people. This doesn't mean the Democrats are off the hook, either. They need to get off their duff and go by way of reconciliation-- there is no other way we will pass any legislation in the 2010 session.

Millions of Americans are depending on our lawmakers, Republican, Independent and Democrat alike, to get the economy moving again and to do something about out-of-control health care costs and pass a jobs bill. The Republican members of congress have made it perfectly clear that they could care less about solving the healthcare crisis, or making policy initiatives to move toward greener energy, educating our kids, or create new private sector jobs or preserve public sector ones. But they'll say and do anything - no matter how extreme - if they think it will divide voters, confuse the issues and get them re-elected.

I can remember a time when facts, nonpartisan academic citations and data really mattered. We used to use these moments in time to come to a new, higher level of understanding of the issues of the day and possibly walk away with a new order of thinking. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, where the Republicans basically turn up the volume and frantically wave their arms. Their new motto has become "Who ever yells and screams the loudest wins."  Did you see Eric Cantor's (R-VA) behavior on Sunday's (02-28-10) newcast of Meet the Press?  I rest my case.

Suppose we had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back it up, you couldn't just dismiss it that easily. You might try to undermine my facts, might change the subject, counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no significance or meaning. Now, Republican talking points ignore the facts and the truth, and then they expect the American people to believe them just because they said it was "so." Then they tell the same lie over and over again.  When did society say that this was ok? I never got that memo.

But that's the intellectual state of government today-- as evidenced by conservative lawmakers giving creedence to the emergence of the Tea Party, death panels, the birthers or that conspiracy theory called global warming. Or is it climate change?  Whatever.

But I digress, those are the facts, and the whole point here is that facts no longer mean what they once did. With the advent of all the different media outlets, people tend to gravitate to what they want to hear or believe. To listen to talk radio, to watch FOX and MSNBC, to read comments on the blogosphere, is to realize that increasingly, we are a country estranged from one another by geography and critical thinking,  We are divorced from logic and alienated from all objective truths that lie before us.

In the words of Leonard Pitts Jr., "We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we think is the truth. We respond to the world as we wish it were rather to the world as it is." If this is indeed true, what a sad, scary state of affairs.  Thank you Mr. Pitts, for telling it like it is.