Here is the Neoconservative Republican political strategy in a nutshell: put your people in a good financially position. When in political power, spend as much government money as you possibly can. Take your hands off the economy and let it drive itself into a ditch, while allowing the top financial people to escape with piles of money (millions and in some cases billions) while threatening the country with a worse economic disaster than you are about to visit on them. Then sit back and use your control of the media to blame everyone else for what you just did.
Thus far it has worked. The Republicans gained 63 seats in the House of Representatives and control. They gained six seats in the Senate where they already filibuster anything that they don’t like. And they made a special effort to focus on governorships, ending up with 29 governorships in the hands of the Republicans.
This quickly, already, has been converted into a lightening strike by the Neocons to convert a mid-term election into a dominant victory. They have already begun a conspiratorial effort to eliminate all unions in the United States.
The majority of unions protecting workers in the U.S. are now in the government sector. So much union busting has been done since Reagan that the number of private unions has shrunk to less than 12%. But in the government sector, unions still comprise 32% of the work force. It is no surprise, therefore, that government workers earn slightly more than private industry workers.
Rather than trying to raise the wages of all workers, the Neocons, using the Republican Governors are trying to break the unions in the public sector. Unions not only provide the last line of defense against the Neocon, Right Wing, billionaire-sponsored attacks on the middle class…like reducing the salaries and benefits of teachers, police and firemen while cutting taxes on corporations…in situations where the states are in deficits!
One might ask…haven’t we learned that cutting taxes only puts government more in debt? Haven’t we learned that cutting taxes never does, nor…we know from the government’s own studies…can never make up for the shortfall in revenues when there are massive income tax cuts?
The obvious answer is: yes. Then why do we keep doing it? Now you are asking the correct question. Government only continues to cut taxes and try to cut income and benefits, or kill health care reform, for the middle class…when Republicans are in office.
And why only then? Because the two political parties have split the nation in two. The Republicans saw, after Reagan’s success, that their best opportunity was with big corporations…the Bechtels, the GEs, the big Wall Street firms and the oil companies.
It is efficient. You take what is essentially a bribe from big corporations…huge political contributions. Then you do what they want. You, as Neocons, no longer really Conservative Republicans…but simply Neo-conservative…that is, imitative of Conservative…Republicans pretend to be helping the people, but in truth you act only on behalf of the big corporations. You find stooges like George W. Bush and you put experienced political operatives like Dick Cheney and Don Rusmfeld behind him, manipulating everything.
You find billionaires who want regulations dumped and minimum wages lowered and want the right to pay no taxes on corporate income and virtually none on their business operations. You kill 4 million jobs in the U.S. with legislation from 2000 to 2008 and make sure that nothing prevents these big corporations from finding and using 50-cent per hour labor.
You use the money to buy huge amounts of television and radio time…not only during political campaigns, but in public relations ventures, every day, every year. Lying to the public becomes a huge industry, with television commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly…hacks…unirable by any real news organization….slutty harridans like Ann Coulter…make millions on millions of dollars a year by telling lies to the hicks.
School vouchers. The Republicans do not want better education. They want their kids to go to good schools because they can control, they believe, what their children believe by the time they get to college…put them in the right schools and put them in young conservative and religious mind-training organizations.
Vouches mean control. Vouchers are also racist. They clearly target the African American community who need the public schools because they use every dollar of their incomes to survive and have none left over to contribute with the voucher to get their kids into a private school Vouchers are designed to separate the social classes at an early age. And that includes race.
Here’s something important. If you live in Wisconsin, you already know this. You must stand up and go to the demonstrations, send money, even a dollar, to the organizations who are fighting these Republican governors and Republican state legislators. If you don’t, you will lose your bargaining power as a worker at any level…even upper-level executives.
This is about power and control by very wealthy people who need only a “tipping point” from which to control the workforce. This is Karl Rove’s old idea of only needing 50% plus one person…a simple majority…to gain power over a legislature, over labor laws, over negotiating organizations, over company policies and over individual workers if they do not have anyone to represent them.
The idea that we have labor laws to protect us is crap. If we had good labor laws, the country would not have lost 612, 000 members of labor last year when workers were still being laid off in huge numbers and workers needed union support more than ever. The fact is that anti-labor legislation and anti-labor propaganda is at an all time high.
If you live in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Texas, New Jersey or any state that is now enacting anti-labor legislation, this is the time to get out of the house and get into a demonstration. Think about it.
Republican legislators will vote against the people if they think that this last election truly means that the people don’t care enough to protect their rights. If they think that we are lazy, then they will think that the American middle class is getting what it deserves if it loses the right to bargain for better incomes in return for better skills or experience.
Some have already been paid off or promised things that they are still working for. Mitch Daniels clearly thinks that he is headed back to national office in some capacity. Scott Walker thinks he will be given a shot at something more. They have been rewarded but also have been shown the carrot. If they want more, they must destroy the unions for the owners and managers of the big corporations.
Who is fighting for health care for all Americans? And who is fighting against health care reform, trying to repeal it. The very first thing the Republicans said was not that they wanted to improve health care…because they don’t…but that they wanted to repeal it.
Why repeal rather than modify the reforms? After all, Obama gave them two hours of national television time last year…after the bill was pretty much settled…to tell Americans and the President which things they wanted to change. But they had none. Why not? Because repeal is the only thing that will keep private health care insurance companies profitable at your expense.
The Republicans were given $400 million in 2009 to try to stop health care reform, even after 66% of Americans, even after scare campaigns, said that they wanted health care reform. If the Republicans were so concerned with the health care of Americans, why weren’t they railing against the Health Insurance Industry that has been jacking up its prices as fast as they can last year and this year…15 to 20% increases in rates in anticipation of health care reform that is coming in 2013.
The Republicans attacked Obama, trying to deflect attention from their patrons, the health insurance industry. Obama doesn’t set prices. He did insure that some prices were reduced. People on Medicare now pay less for drugs and those prices will continue to go down. People who have children who are under 26 and who have no job or are out of school…or even if they are still in school…if they choose can have their kids on the parents’ policy until the children are 26.
Here is the Republican Plan…and you can look it up. Part one is to resurrect the health savings plan tax breaks. The problem with health savings plans is that a.) the marjority of Americans do not have savings at this point, and b.) health savings plans only cover a fraction of what happens to you when you get an illness or have and accident.
Part two of the Republican plan is about the health care and insurance industry. First they want tort reforms so that no one can collect more than $250,000 for pain and suffering from a serious malpractice of medicine. That’s a non-starter. And second, they talk about protecting drug patents for a longer period of time. That means that when you have a $5 generic, you still have to pay for you $50 prescription for, say, five years longer than under the President’s health care reform bill.
Remember…it is pretty clear to everyone…everyone…not on a Repblican or corporate lobbying payroll…that health care reform is going to bring down costs dramatically. Similar plans for individuals in both Massachusetts and Oregaon have cut health care costs in half.
Remember the names of the governors and the states that they now run: Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rick Scott of Florida, Johnn Kasich of Ohio, Rick Perry of Texas. These are the men who are trying to roll back the clock on unions. They want to cut the pay of union members and then break the public unions.
It is not true that government unions members make exorbitant amounts of money. On the average government workers make about $500 more than the average worker in the private sector.
It is true that federal government employees make more but that is because in that figure are included the salaries and benefits of Senators, Secretaries of the Treasury, Four Star Generals and other federal employees who make substantially more than the average worker, public or private.
There is no good alternative system to collective bargaining. You cannot go in to your boss, in a company that may be making huge profits based upon very low wages and no benefits, and bargain on your own for a better job. It simply is not possible in 98% of cases. You have no leverage.
Since the Republicans will not raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, that 1% who now earn 55% of all income, then we cannot allow unions to fail. If they do, the imbalance will continue until the Middle Class…on the ropes right how in a fight to keep themselves from falling into poverty…is eliminated completely.
Fight against the Koch Family money. Fight against the well-heeled Tea Party people who are both fools and, yes, bigots. Given what we can see with our own eyes on the web, there is no doubt. It is time to stand up before it is too late.
