Now that the Neocon Republicans have shown us their colors in the bright light of day….no tax cuts for the lower 98% of Americans unless they can have huge tax cuts for the top 2%…we can get on about our business. They have made it clear who they are and whom they favor.
Here is what we know.
1. Anyone who supports what is currently still called the Republican Party has some kind of a personal agenda. It may be racism. It may be one of these distorted religious ideas. It may be just a vicious hatred of anyone who isn’t like them, whatever that is. Or it is someone with an obligation to or vested interest in the super-rich.
2. The Republicans feel that they have complete control of the political process. People like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have so indoctrinated the rag-tag, uneducated, inexperienced, untraveled, unread segments of this country that they no longer are able to reason for themselves. They feel so strong that when Democrats propose to extend tax cuts for 98% of the people, the Republicans voted against it, and then called it a tax increase. And no one responded at all to this blatant, out-and-out lie.
3. Those who vote for the Republicans, e.g., the bigots, hicks and those in the upper segment of the Middle Class, have completely given up on the United States as an institution of freedom and democracy. They continue to vote, for example, for people who lie to them repeatedly. They don’t seem to care at all any longer what happens to their children.
They pretend to care. Some of them even march and appear in groups. But they are always the kinds of groups who call the President names, or the kind who spout the same kind of Republican propaganda that they members of the Senate use when voting in a bloc against things like jobs, better health care, and against financial and corporate reforms that will make lives better for all Americans.
4. The Neoconservative Super-Rich are in a real, live struggle with the Middle Class for the future of the country. Why do they want another 4% cut from their already low top income rate? It isn’t about having the money to spend on themselves or their families.
It is about having more money to spend to literally destroy the ability of the working class of this country, people in the range from $25,000 per year up to $175,000 per year to have a secure job. When you can put 15 million people out of work; when you can provide limited, contract-only work for the next 10 million, and when you can grow those in poverty from 30 million up to what is now 40 million, then you have power. You don’t need to earn more money. You simply need to insure that they have less money. It is cynical, but, yes, there are real cynics, just as there are real criminals and there were real Nazis. Six million Jews really did die. It was not something created in Hollywood.
This is about the power of some members of the Super-Rich to have complete power over the vast majority of workers in this country. It is about breaking the unions. It is about restricting upward mobility by removing the option of a state funded education for the intelligent poor. The Super-Rich are funding the Neoconservative Republicans to tell you what they want you to hear. And what is that?
5. Greed has taken over a segment of the Super-Rich. It may be difficult for many Americans to believe, but there are people who will pass a man lying in the street. There are doctors who will throw an indigent patient out of the hospital, still unable to cope with injuries, and not be concerned.
There are people who simply do not care about others. It is why we have religion. Because many of us are naturally inclined to help others, and the example of a Godlike man or a man identified as a God offers the opportunity to show other men what goodness and charity and kindness is. When the choice for some is between greed and charitable action, unfortunately all deistic power is not enough to concern them about their fellow man. Such people now control the Republican Party.
5. The Conservative Media controls the message. The Super-Rich use spokesmen whom they have paid well to persuade the average citizen that a person who relies on government is weak, lazy and stupid. When the fact the opposite is the case. We all work very hard to pay into Social Security and Medicare for example. Social Security is a stipend from insurance payments that we make throughout our working lives. Medicare is like private health insurance, except that private health insurer will not insure the elderly. That is why we have a public system called Medicare and the same is true of the health system for the poor, Medicaid.
Rush Limbaugh is paid $40 million a year by a group of RightWing Neocons who own the thousands of stations who are forced to take his show. Limbaugh attacks everything that the average working stiff should believe in. Sean Hannity makes $20 million a year, every year, by attacking people who want to bring troops home from Iraq, by attacking Congressmen who want to reduce the power of the giant health care industry and by attacking those who dare to complain that they have lost their homes through Wall Street corruption.
And there are so many others who make millions a year, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly, all millionaires from promoting the viewpoints of the Super-Rich—and whose entire job is merely to divide, disrupt and diminish the power of the people.
How do we know all this? For one simple reason. Let’s say you have a man who consistently makes over $1 million a year and he is supposed to pay about 35% of his income in taxes but with deductions he only pays about $230,000. Now you want to give him an additional $40,000 or 4%.
But if you do, you won’t have money to help some of the 14 million people who are currently unemployed. So what do you do? Do you give people who have a prospective after-tax income of $770,000 another $40,000? Now that would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?
But the people doing it are not stupid. They are very, very smart. And they want a number of things. They want you in your place. That means that you should not organize, nor ask for more wages, or better health care or complain about not being paid for overtime.
That extra $40,000 is not going to them. It is going to pass right through their hands and be shipped off to the owners of the media who will give it to the Right Wing radio hosts who will, for example, denigrate the health reform plan to make you forget the fact that you got a 15% raise in rates this year and last year, and at the same time your service went down…less costly medication, higher co-pays, fewer visits, fewer items covered. But the Rush Limbaughs of the world encourage you to support the “repeal” of health care reform.
That is because they are paid by these same millionaires, the CEOs of the health insurance companies who average $14 million a year. They don’t want to lose a good thing just so that 50 million more Americans can get health care. They make about 400 times what the average person in health care makes. They should be making about 50 or at very most, perhaps 80 times.
It is not just health care. It is everything, from not wanting to follow regulations on the preparations of meat and eggs to not wanting to follow mine safety instructions. The multi-millionaire owners don’t want you to make waves. But they will be glad to take the money that many average citizens will be dumb enough to allow their Senators to give them, even though it will eventually be borrowed from China and paid back by our grand children.
So it is pretty clear where you are today. Simply put: You are in big trouble.
