While I agree with the generalization of grandstanding, I'd call it *reactionary* grandstanding.
Christian Lopez shows us what's wrong with our country. He's the guy who caught Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit. He did "The Right Thing" and gave the ball to Jeter. The Yankees also rewarded him (without asking) with season tickets to the rest of this year's games, including playoffs, memmorabilia and a handshake from Jeter. So what do we do? The IRS is going to go after this cell phone salesman with $100K in student loans to get an estimated $13,000 in "gift taxes". From a local paper:
Quote:
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A cell phone salesman does the right thing and the IRS might go after him for thousands of dollars he doesn’t have. At the same time, GE makes $14.2 billion in profit last year and pays zero corporate tax for the second year in a row because they run an offshore hustle — sheltering more than $9 billion of it — that would get an online poker service busted
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The fact that the GOP half of the meetings in DC are still trying to protect tax shelters for their owners (multibillion dollar oil subsidies = good, few hundred million in solar subsidies = bad) has pushed Obama to his position.
This GOP is nothing like the GOP I voted for in the days of Reagan. Reagan couldn't get the nomination today. After all, he passed tax hikes, amnesty for illegals, got us OUT of small wars (Grenada, Panama) and, most sinful of all, made deals with democrats.
Personally I think the Tea Party tail is wagging the GOP dog. Boehner seemed somewhat willing to compromise on taxes (if he got enough cuts) but McConnell and the Tea Party said "if you do, we lose our jobs".
So we have another case of politicians being slaves to being re-elected instead of doing what a majority of Americans consider "The Right Thing".