Republican Dirty Tricks

Archive for the ‘Class War’ Category

On December 22, 2011, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner pondered, “Why not do the right thing for the American people even if it’s not exactly what we want?” letting slip a stark fact of life under Republican rule, namely that by doing the “People’s work,” Republicans are doing us a favor.

The fact is, the Republican Party has NEVER introduced, sponsored or supported a single piece of legislation that benefited the working people of this nation – NOT A SINGLE ONE.   So, as we head into 2012, it’s time to reflect on this undeniable truth and compile a list (with help from the DSCC) of 2011’s Greatest Republican Dirty Tricks:

1) Republican Assault on America’s Health. 

All Republican Presidential candidates promise to repeal “Obamacare,” thus promising kick people off the health insurance racket rolls by re-instating pre-existing conditions as a qualifier to obtaining insurance on the private market and and kick 2.5 million young adults, once again, off their parents’ health plan.

When the Republican majority took control of the House, they wasted no time wasting America’s time with a symbolic vote to “repeal Obamacare” – a move that solely benefits the for-profit health insurance racket.

Here’s what that ACTUALLY means (compiled by The Gazette):

• • Medicare beneficiaries would no longer be eligible for free preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Nearly three-quarters of these beneficiaries (71.1 percent) have taken advantage of the benefit for at least one free preventive service between January and November 201
• • The infamous Medicare Part D “doughnut hole”—the huge gap in prescription drug coverage—would grow rather than diminish through rebates and ultimately close. About 46,000 Iowans received a rebate check for prescription drugs in 2010, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In 2011, a similar number received even larger discounts—an average of $581 per person through just October—while in the doughnut hole. The gap in Part D coverage will continue to shrink each year, unless health reform is repealed.
• • Insurance companies could again deny health coverage for children with a pre-existing condition, a practice that is now prohibited. More than 51,000 children in Iowa have been diagnosed with a pre-existing condition that could have resulted in denial of coverage in the individual market prior to reform.
• • Many young adults would no longer be able to remain on their parents’ insurance. In Iowa, 25,700 young adults are now eligible to continue receiving coverage in this manner.
• • Women would continue to pay higher premiums than men. In Iowa, every one of the best-selling individual market plans currently charges a 40-year-old, non-smoking woman higher premiums than a 40-year-old, non-smoking man. Gender rating will be made illegal in 2014, unless the Affordable Care Act is repealed.
• • Tax cuts to help lower- and middle-income individuals and families pay for health care premiums would be taken away. Under the current law, 261,200 people in Iowa will be eligible for these premium tax cuts in 2014.

2) Republican Assault on the Elderly.

All Republican Presidential candidates back Ayn Rand ideologue Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a coupon program.  Thus, throwing Granny to the mercy of the private health insurance racket.

Johnathan Chait of New York Magazine wrote,

“The Republican budget would very dramatically change Medicare. The plan would turn a single-payer system into vouchers for private insurance, and the value of those vouchers would fall steadily behind the cost of that insurance, so that within a relatively short time it would cover only a small fraction of the cost of insurance.”

3) Republican Tax Giveaways to Corporations and the Wealthy

It’s no accident that the top 1% control 42% of the wealth in America.  That appalling statistic came by design of a tax structure favoring the rich that took us from the MOST to the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest income gap of all industrialized nations.

As Justice Lewis D. Brandies famously said, “”We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”  But you see, the Oligarchs can’t afford a vibrant democracy on the grounds that it’s bad for business.  An “uppity” worker is a worker not-so-easily controlled.   So the rich use the “mad money” from their low tax rates to further corrupt government and turn it into, as FDR explained, a mere appendage to their own affairs.

Case in point is Paul Ryan’s “bold” kiss up/kick down budget proposal that, not only, throws granny to the mercy of the for-profit health insurance racket, but also drops the top tax rate for rich people from 35 percent to 25 percent.  As Matt Taibbi wrote, “All by itself, that one change means that the government would be collecting over $4 trillion less over the next ten years.”

Republicans are fond of repeating the lie that “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.”  In the typical Republican fashion, the truth is exactly the opposite of that statement.

The Republican answer to the problems caused by unfunded tax-cuts for the wealthy will always be “more unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy” because the real Republican mission is to destroy the uppity middle class so the “right” people rule, run everything and have all the wealth.

In fact, we DO have a revenue problem.  If Congress simply did NOTHING and let the Bush tax giveaways expire, the deficit Republicans scream about as an excuse to destroy the social safety net would be gone by the end of Obama’s second term.

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Attempting to grasp the American Dream during this New Gilded Age is as futile waiting for Dick Cheney to repent for his war crimes.  Thus, the ranks of the 99% Movement swells daily.

Lately, we’ve been told the system is “broken,” but the truth is, it’s not.  The “system” that has slowly been slipped back into place over the last 30 years – one  supported by all Republicans and some CONservative Democrats  – has cultivated exactly the economic environment it was designed to create – one where the rich own and run everything and everyone else is relegated to their “natural place” as cheap labor serfs who (hopefully) compliantly await their rewards in Heaven.

Since the rumblings that eventually became the Occupy Wall Street movement were heard, Republicans are feigning outrage and attempting to shame those who question the rigged system as lazy, envious and engaging in the “class warfare” Republicans themselves have inflicted on workers for generations.   The true offenses have been committed against the workers who have simply been trying to live their lives in dignity despite the ruling class’ rapacious desire to exploit their lives for all they’re worth.

The fact is, the rich only whine about “class war” when the workers finally fight back.  They know what they hoped the workers would never catch on to – that government policy as it stands primarily favors the rich and keeps the middle class and poor forever in the grips of their power.

As Jake Blumgart wrote for Truthout,

the rich “…are able to preserve their wealth from the forces that decimate the earning power of your average American. While government programs for working or jobless Americans are under constant attack, the state frequently intervenes on behalf of the rich, or at least lets them keep their earnings, tax free (leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab).
Republicans in Congress, and to a lesser extent the Obama administration, seem to believe that austerity is the best way to deal with our recessionary woes (despite all economic evidence to the contrary). Instead of unraveling the safety net, voters should consider all the ways the government aids and abets the one class of people who clearly don’t need help”
Blumgart lists 4 ways government policies blatantly favor the rich:

1. Protectionism for high-income professionals, free trade for everyone else

…But while many Americans are forced into low-wage work with no benefits, our doctors are thehighest paid in the world. (Every year the medical profession dominates the Forbes list of best paying jobs in the U.S.) How did this happen? They protected themselves from overseas competition…

2. Rich and own a big house? Here’s some money!

…Rich people have larger mortgages and higher income taxes. Therefore, they get the most out of their mortgage interest tax deductions. Households earning more than $250,000 annually enjoy 10 times the remuneration of households with income between $40,000 and $75,000. Those homeowners earning $30,000 basically get nothing (check out the chart). Those without the income to buy a home, or who just choose to rent, are probably a bunch of impoverished Communists anyway, so they don’t get a damn thing…

3. A sales tax for bread but not for bonds (or stocks or futures)

…Sales taxes, which disproportionately hit low-income families, are in force across the nation. Taxes on financial transactions, which would disproportionately affect the rich, barely exist…

4. Tired of payroll taxes? The wealthy aren’t because they don’t have to pay

…When most people get their paychecks, income taxes are taken out up front, before they ever get their hands on the money. Not so the super-rich, that blessed class of executives, movie actors, big business owners, hedgefund managers, and star athletes. Through a variety of byzantine loopholes, they get to pay their income taxes years, if not decades, in the future. (There’s no interest on this late payment either)…

read the entire article with expanded explanations here.

So… you’re not imaging things.  Our entire system is rigged to keep the rich in their catbird seats, and to limit the power of the working class.  It’s no accident that most societies throughout history have been defined by small pockets of vast concentrated wealth who run everything and a small mercantile (middle) class, ruling over large pools of cheap – and exploitable – labor.

As George Carlin famously said, “The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there… just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ‘em showing up at those jobs.”

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The American Dream has been foreclosed upon, and the wealthy few are still riding the working class all the way to the bank.  World history, both recent and past, shows us that the trajectory we are on leads to revolution. Even the rich know this. So why aren’t the American People in the streets?

Brian Merchant wrote in The UTOPIANist, 

“There are a number of obvious reasons — the quality of life is on average higher here, our elected leaders enter and exit office (generally) according to the rules, and so on. But there are some not-so obvious reasons, too. For one, most Americans don’t realize how severe our income inequality has become — one study found that “Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.” Furthermore, that same study found that most Americans supported a Sweden-style wealth redistribution system — so as long as they didn’t recognize it as such by name.”

It is also due to the fact that the People don’t really know who their true oppressors are.   Tragically, as the tax burden shifts more and more to the middle class and poor to pay for tax giveaways to the rich, rather than turn their angst upwards where it belongs, it’s not uncommon to hear average working people bash, for example, “greedy” Union members for committing the sin of wanting to retire in dignity.

When President Obama went to speak to Wall Street executives at Cooper Union in April, 2010, he hawked a familiar patronizing platitude: “Ultimately there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. We rise or we fall together as one nation.” A lovely sentiment, but full of shite. Wall Street continues to thrive, collect outrageous bonuses, and have no accountability for their crimes while their Republican operatives sharpen their knives for 2012 – when they hope the abysmal state of the economy they’re purposefully cultivating will trick the average dupes into voting for the people who have their orders to turn the middle class into “cheap labor” serfs. To the big moneyed interests, this is simply the way of the world… as Rush Limbaugh so succinctly explained what every Conservative believes, “some people are just born to be slaves.”

But that’s not supposed to be America.

So, no. It doesn’t matter how much empirical evidence points to the fact that Trickle Down economics is a failure that turned America into the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest gap between rich and poor of all industrialized nations – THAT IS THE POINT! The only thing left for Conservatives to do in the wake of their destruction is to push more of the same policies to further empower the powerful, and convince the working class to forget the days of the New Deal created “Great Compression” and accept the NEW definition of the American Dream… namely, “maybe one day YOU TOO will be a billionaire.”

WATCH Paul Krugman explain how the middle class was the DIRECT RESULT of New Deal government policy:

From the assault on unions (whose decline is linked directly to the decline of the middle class), gutting OSHA Safety regulations, attacking the EPA, labeling anything that protects the earth and the People who upon it as “job killing” (while they REWARD companies that outsource jobs) and yes… even working to end child labor laws, the Republican vision for America as a society of Serfs and Lords is evident in all of their policies.

Reagan’s own Budget Director admitted the Republicans destroyed the economy, and that despite the lingering Great Recession CEO compensation is rising and top executive pay levels are all the way back from their pre-recession levels. Yet the further ingratiation of the wealthiest Americans and dismantling regulation is STILL presented as the only key to let the mythical “Confidence Fairy” out of her big government-created cage… because the GOAL of Republican policies has ALWAYS BEEN to concentrate wealth in the hands of their benefactors and weaken the only institution large enough to force the big-moneyed interests to play nice with the Plebs – our government – thus, purposefully creating a society of haves and have nots.

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Despite what Faux News would like you to believe, a recent study by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely on how Americans think about income inequality concluded “given a choice, Americans would prefer to live in a society more equal than even highly egalitarian Sweden.”

Never ones to pay mind to the people’s desire to enjoy a decent standard of living, the Republican remedy for the bad economy they created is to push for more of the same exact policies that turned America from a creditor to a debtor nation, with the widest income disparity and the LEAST upwardly mobile of all industrialized nations… namely MORE trickle down, tax-cut terrorism.

By disingenuously labeling any attempt to put a Band-Aid on the severed artery of the once-vibrant middle class as “job-killing” , the 24-7 GOP media protection rackets convince their rank-in-file to cheer their own demise.  Sadly, here in Reality World, the only “killing” is literally visited on the workers as the result of the Republican penchant to deregulate and throw to the whims of the greed-centered market anything that poisons our air, Earth, food, water supply, causes our sick and old to freeze and starve while the current generation of workers are forced into the same unsafe working conditions their ancestors fought and died to prevent.

Just a 100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Republicans are on an unholy mission to roll back all government regulation - including child labor laws -  meant to end the abuses of the Gilded Age  – another time of appalling income disparity, government deregulation and corporate greed that not-so-coincidentally looks familiarly like the America in which we currently reside.

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In the waning days of the Bush administration, 8 years after the Supreme Court interjected itself into a state vote count to usurp the will of the people and install the losing candidate into the Presidency, many could never have imagined that Barack Obama – the person we knocked on doors for, donated parts of our dwindling paychecks to, and voted for with the hopeful assurance that he would work to restore the balance of power between working people and their well-heeled “betters” – would be offering Social Security and Medicaid to the people who have wanted to destroy it for generations.

We rested assuredly that the election of Barack Obama would prove that our system of government worked and the crimes and abuses that inevitably accompany power, greed and financial influence could be rectified through our electoral process for the sake of the General Welfare – without the pain of bloody revolution.

But we were warned. Ralph Nader, who famously called Obama an “Uncle Tom” for corporate interests, and Cynthia McKinney were widely chastised for throwing cold water on the “hope” that the system of government passed down would be enough to remedy the tyrannies our founders knew all too well – one tyranny being the subjugation of the working class by the rich who use their wealth to corrupt government into an appendage to their own affairs.

After Obama’s win, Cynthia McKinney wondered what was the “change we could believe in,”

“What kind of change are we really going to have? I wish we could assume a break from the special-interest orthodoxy that seems to have a grip on Washington, D.C. It is this special-interest orthodoxy that has led to war and occupation, civil liberties attacks, social injustice, unemployment, poor yet very costly education and healthcare.”

The tragedy and shame is that America’s inequality between rich and poor is worse than Cameroon, Ivory Coast and revolutionary Egypt and hopes for Obama to champion actual “change” don’t seem to be coming to fruition.
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The Reich-Wing corporate media protection racket is outraged, I tell you, outraged that President Obama challenged Congress to eliminate tax breaks on corporate jets in order to help stave off a default crisis – accusing Obama of waging “class warfare.”

Any half-awake person with a brain knows that Republicans always accuse the other side of engaging in the very dirty tricks that they, themselves, have honed to an art. Their tactic of projection and deflection goes like this – reproach the other side for doing what you are flagrantly guilty of before the other side can accuse you of it. The preemptive accusation disarms the opposition, leaving them looking petty, unoriginal and unable to bring it up in their own defense.

Despite the fact that progressive taxation is essential to maintaining a free society, the accusation of “class warfare” is an old standby that Republicans charge whenever anyone dare suggest that the rich should actually pay their fair share to maintain the civilization that has benefited and profited them.

Tax The Rich – For The Sake of a Free Society

Class Warfare is as old as recorded history. Our Founding Fathers – students of the Liberal Age of Enlightenment – were aware of the corrosive influence of money in government.

Thomas Jefferson said, “another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise.”

Teddy Roosevelt observed that American democracy could easily be destroyed by the rich through subversion of our political institutions from within. After the bank panic of 1907, he said the “malefactors of great wealth” were “responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy the fruits of their own evil-doing. . . . I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”

President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned Americans about the great dangers of “the military-industrial complex.”

Franklin Roosevelt warned, “the liberty of democracy is not safe if people tolerate growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger that their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism” and Abraham Lincoln warned, “I have the Confederacy in front of me, I have the bankers behind me, and for my country I fear the bankers more.”

Still, Republicans champion policies that serve to destroy the economic security of the working class.

Philip Slater wrote in the Huffington Post,

“Republicans, who have always hated democracy, wanted to create the caste system that exists in the most wretched Third World nations — a system in which a tiny minority of wealthy individuals live off the labor of the deeply impoverished 98%, and maintain their stranglehold through a corrupt military dictatorship. This pattern, which prevailed in most of Latin America throughout the 20th Century, with strong support from corporate America, is one for which Republicans have always secretly yearned. Hence Republican policies have consistently pushed us toward it — bolstering the military, concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands, shifting taxes from the rich onto the poor, and seeking, with considerable success, to make education a privilege of the wealthy rather than a right for all Americans.”

Despite the fact that Republican policies turned the surplus they were handed into a deficit, the US into the LEAST upwardly mobile with the widest income disparity of all industrialized nations, and crashed the economy 2x in a century, they are promising MORE OF THE SAME. While working people suffer, the RICH have never had it so good. Why promote these policies? Because a desperate workforce is an obedient workforce – and the Republican ideology can be broken down to 2 words – CHEAP LABOR.

Lately, Republicans have their class war cards plainly on the table. Republicans blatantly promise to end every policy that made the American middle class possible in the first place. This means they promise to end the minimum wage, end child labor laws, destroy unions, end Medicare, turn Social Security over to their Wall Street benefactors AND permanently slash taxes for the wealthy while upping them for the rest of us.

All the while, their transnational corporate media protection rackets blare on about the poor, put upon, rich… and the selfish working people who dare attempt to retire in dignity after a lifetime of work.
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As the great recession continues, failed “trickle down” theories are being recycled under a different name – “kick start.”

When politicians – Republicans and DINO Consevatdems alike  - promise to enact policies that will “kick start” the economy, they are not referring to proactive, job-creating, initiatives reminiscent of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corp, but the same, tried and failed class warfare “trickle down” policies that collapsed the American Working Class to begin with.

Economist and Professor Richard Wolff was interviewed for the public affairs program called “Making Contact.”  He said, “Capitalism has a built in tendency to collapse,” and “we are in the middle… or to be more honest… in the early stages of a really big one.”

He explained, “In a Capitalist system, the economic crisis we are in today was entirely predictable.”

In other words, one does not have to be a “Psychic Friend” to predict that rampant deregulation and low marginal tax rates similar to the atmosphere that plunged us into the FIRST Republican Great Depression in the 1930’s, would have a similar result when implemented a second time.

On the back of the most recent Conservative-policy-induced collapse, Republicans are pushing for even more tax cuts for the wealthy, despite the fact that today’s tax rates are low by historical standards-and even lower for the rich.   In fact, the economy we are in today is STILL the Bush economy…  you remember… the economy that Republicans held unemployed Americans hostage to continue.

The budget shortfalls are allowing Republicans in local governments to cry “we’re broke” as they make up the gap by enacting heavy cuts to state worker pay, community colleges, state health care programs, childcare programs and other programs vital to the populace they economically hobbled.

Listen to Richard Wolff explain how we got into this economic mess, who’s to blame, and how, if we get organized, the flow of resources might be reversed, here:

It doesn’t matter that the Congressional Budget Office confirmed that tax cuts have the LEAST simulative effect on the economy.  It doesn’t matter that even their own Bill Kristol admitted that corporations have plenty of money and corporate tax rates aren’t hurting anyone. Businesses invest when there is an unmet demand. As the Billings Gazette reported, “The Clinton era slogan of “it’s the economy, stupid” should now be “it’s demand, stupid.” To stimulate the economy and create jobs, good policy gets the money to the folks with the highest propensity to spend. That’s not the wealthy, who will spend very little if any of their tax savings.”
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The term “plutocracy” is defined “a government or state in which the wealthy class rules.” It also applies to a form of government where a wealthy class controls government from behind the scenes, dominating the political arena, directly or indirectly.

Economist David Korten writes,

“Our curent economy is accurately described by investment advisors and marketing consultants as a “plutonomy,” a combination of the terms “plutocracy” and “economy.” It refers to an economy in which income growth is confined to those at the top of the wealth pyramid. They use the concept as a guide to framing profitable investment and marketing strategies.

The is the mirror opposite of economic democracy, which is an essential foundation of political democracy, both foundational to the Living Democracy of Earth Community.

Bringing democracy to these United States, begins with a new story that acknowledges we have never had it. In the words of Frances Moore Lappe, “To save the democracy we thought we had, we must take democracy to where it’s never been.”

In other words, in order to truly realize the dreams of our Founders and create a government of, by and for the People, we must ensure economic egalitarianism through policies that promote it. We came close with the New Deal, so vehemently opposed by the “privileged princes” of the ruling class that they actually plotted a fascist coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Watch this chilling BBC documentary on the “Business Plot.” Pay special attention to the similarities of what we are up against today… including FDR’s own “Teabaggers” – “The Liberty League.”
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

President Barack Obama was asked at the Facebook town hall about Paul Ryan’s “bold” and courageous” plan to further empower the powerful and responded, “The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous,” explaining that the Republican budget plot would (par for the GOP course) reduce taxes for corporations and the wealthy by, among other ideologically-based initiatives, cutting funds to clean energy programs and transportation.

“I guess you could call that bold. I would call it shortsighted,” and later added, “Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor or people who don’t have lobbyists or people who don’t have clout.”

The good news for normal people (non-Republicans) about Paul Ryan’s budget is that we can finally all stop pretending the GOP has the same goal as Democrats to create a strong, economically vibrant, working class, but simply holds different ideas how to get there. If those days ever existed, they ended in the late 1890s when they sold out to the Railroads and never looked back.  Since that time, the Republican Party does not get out of bed in the morning unless they can turn the government into a mere appendage to the affairs of banksters and corporations and continue to be so wedded to the same policies that have tanked the economy twice in a century that economists like Nouriel Roubini (as well as anyone with a brain) are forced to speculate that Republicans are actively trying to tank the economy for political gain.

The GOP agenda can be boiled down to 2 words: CHEAP LABOR… and Paul Ryan’s budget plan is about ensuring the Plutocrats finally eliminate the last vestige of middle class “uppityness” – our Social Safety net. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.” Paul Ryan is an ideologue who admitted that his budget was not just a budget, but a “cause.” That “cause” is the subjugation of the working class to plutocratic masters.

Obama buys the Republican myth of CUTTING our way to prosperity.

A last-minute budget deal cutting billions in spending postponed the Republican threat of a government shut down until next Thursday… thus giving Obama more time to capitulate to GOP terrorist demands.

Clearly, rather than fight for Democratic ideals – say… like the ones that lifted us out of the disaster of the FIRST Republican Great Depression… The so-called leader of the Democratic Party has bought into to Republican meme that we can “CUT” our way to prosperity.  We cannot.

Look at history.  Economists attributed the economic recovery out of the first Republican Great Depression from heavy government deficit spending. From the time he was inaugurated, Franklin D. Roosevelt increased spending with programs directly geared to putting people to work and the economy recovered partially from 1933 until 1936 until he caved to a Republican Congress bloviating about an unbalanced budget, cut spending, and the nation plunged into another recession.

Watch Thom Hartmann explain how Republican polices created and prolonged the Great Depression:

Republicans believe that tax cuts for the rich and just plain CUTS for everyone else is the “remedy” for the economic disasters Republican policies create, not because it creates a vibrant economy and strong middle class, but simply because it is Republican dogma. 

The Republican answer to the problems caused by their love of deregulation will always be “more deregulation” just like their answer to the problems caused by unfunded tax-cuts for the wealthy will always be “more unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy.”

It doesn’t matter a whit to Republicans that David Stockman, the father of Republican “trickle-down” economics recently made the media rounds to tell the late, great American Middle Class something they already know – that Reaganomics was a abysmal failure.

Yet, Barack Obama capitulates to the same class war policies that got us into the mess to being with, promising nothing but more of the same widening of the gap between rich and poor.

It makes no difference that Repug policies are the lynchpin on which all the destruction is hung–their true goal is to maintain the Plutonomy. Period.

In their own private Republican apocalypse, a world where the rich run and own everything is not a problem because everyone else, as their hero Ayn Rand says, is a “parasite.”
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The alarm is ringing and many Americans once too exhausted to face the fact that they were been hoodwinked by 30 years of misinformation and myth into believing the American Dream was within their grasp, have stopped hitting the snooze button.  They’re living in the dreams of yesteryear but the reality of today.

It’s all their fault, they’ve been told.  If only they work harder, longer hours without ever taking a vacation or day off… they’ll be able to eventually grasp the prosperity those on the upper end of the income ladder have been holding in front of them like a carrot on a stick.

But let’s face it, my fellow Americans.  We’ve been are under attack…  sometimes stealthily, sometimes overtly…  In fact, we are at war.  Class War.

Being the aggressors, Republicans know this, so they have tried desperately through their corporate protection racket propaganda outlets to redefine “Class War” to mean that horrible thing that occurs when society dare request that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

The common retort is that the rich already pay most of the taxes, but Republicans neglect to complete the second half of that statement… which is… that the rich pay more taxes because they control the vast majority of the wealth.   Simply put, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay- a fact of modern American life that began to come to fruition with the inauguration of Reagan.

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