Cynical Republicans Running Congress
(Or Why do Republicans Act Like They
Hate the American Worker?)
As the recent contrived
political melodrama over raising the minimum wage shows, the irresponsible Republicans
running Congress are nothing if not brazenly cynical. They have resisted it for years now but saw
the polls and realized that most Americans were in favor of raising the minimum
wage. To our country’s amazement, at
least to those of us who are paying attention, they managed to twist this help
for the poor around in a such a way that they cynically used the issue to try
and slip in more welfare for the rich by adding yet another tax cut for the
4500 richest families in the form of a permanent repeal of the estate tax. How could any but the most politically craven
ideologs tack such an unpopular tax cut for the rich onto a publicly supported
bill that was supposed to help the poor of our nation? And they call themselves compassionate
conservatives.
They knew that adding the
estate tax cut to a minimum wage bill was a poison pill amendment. They did not want the minimum wage to pass so
they cynically added the estate tax cut to insure Democrats, the party that
cares for the workers of the country and fiscal responsibility, would not vote
for it. Now you will hear scrambling
Republicans falsely claim that the Democrats are against raising the minimum
wage (it has already started). What the
Democrats are against is giving Paris Hilton a free pass. If the Republicans want to help the poor all
they have to do is bring the bill up again without the poison pill and the bill
will pass, but that will not happen in this Congress. If they can not spin they will not win.
The Republican ideologs will
tell you that they are just trying to save the family farm by making the
federal estate tax permanent. The next
time you hear someone say that, ask them for one example. Unless they lie to you they will not be able
to come up with a real example because it has never happened. The story is a rhetorical fabrication
invented by the right to help them sell an unpopular idea.
Republicans will say that
the estate tax is double taxation. This
too is a myth created by the Right to sell their scams to give more tax
windfalls to the rich. Most of the money
inherited by the folks like Paris Hilton has never been taxed. It has been sheltered by slick tax lawyers
using loop holes in the tax law, inserted in the tax code in the middle of the
night by a scandalous Republican Congress.
The estate tax is the only way our government will ever tax the
Aristocracy’s wealth.
Our founding fathers
specifically did not want an American Aristocracy to form; they had just fought
a war to get out from under that kind of financial and social repression, yet
the neo-cons are working unrelentingly to reestablish one. If the rich are given a free pass on paying
taxes the rest of us have to make up the difference. We fight their oil wars for them and now they
want us to pay their taxes too. The
folks that benefit the most from our country’s prosperity should help the most
to pay for its infrastructure and massive military.
The Republicans will tell
you that raising the minimum wage is inflationary and it kills jobs. Both are not supported by the facts. All you have to do is look at the dozen or so
states, including Washington state, that have voted to help workers over
corporate greed to see how inaccurate that thinking is. Jobs are growing 50% faster in states with
higher minimum wage laws than the federal level. Why is this? It is because when lower paid workers earn
more money they spend it and this helps the economy grow and thus creates more
jobs. Inflation is no worse in the
states with living wages than any others.
However poverty is lower in states with a higher minimum wage, and
consequently there are less folks on welfare.
Raising the minimum wage helps the economy, generates more tax income
for the government from higher wages, and reduces government spending by having
less folks on welfare.
Giving more money to the
rich does not create as many jobs because they do not spend everything they
get. Trickle down is a cynical myth that
did not work for Hoover, who coined the false concept in the depression of the
30s. It did not work for Reagan in the
80s and it will not work today for the Republican Party that is, by, and for
the social elitists of this country.
We have seen that the ‘help
the corporations at any expense strategy’ of the Republican Congress has led to
a larger and larger national debt. The
Republicans keep saying they oppose big government, but that is not what is
happening. They are cutting taxes, while
increasing government spending more than ever before. They appear to be completely out of touch
with reality as our debt level increases at a phenomenal rate every year.
Some will say that in a free
market economy the government should stay out of setting minimum wages. These are the same people that want the
government to give millions of dollars in tax cuts to oil corporations “to
encourage exploration” (and not research renewable resources). In their way of thinking it is OK for the
government to provide exorbitant corporate welfare to obscenely profitable
companies, but the government should not help workers to earn a living
wage.
Republicans consistently
vote for bills that screw the little guy.
Their justification is that the laws are needed to protect the almighty
profits that are made by the people who do not do the work (who is Paris
Hilton?). This may be shocking to the
neo-cons, but the government in this country was formed to protect the people,
not to insure corporate profits.
The ideology of the neo-con
Republicans in power is designed to help one percent of the population and
concentrate wealth in their hands. They
want to do this because they honestly think that the inbred one-percenters can
run things better than the rest of us, even though American history has proven
this concept wrong over and over again.
They want to enshrine an American Aristocracy. They think by eliminating the middle class
corporations can be more profitable because they can pay their workers
less. According to their plan this will
cause an inevitable downward spiral where workers are always worried about keeping
their jobs, resulting in less resistance to corporations making working
conditions worse, lowering salaries and thus raising profits at the cost of the
workers health and welfare. In the
Republican corporate mind set, workers are expendable; what is important is
unbounded untaxed profits for those at the top.
What the ‘next quarter
profit at any cost’ mongers are missing is that without a middle class this
country’s economy cannot exist. As Henry
Ford said, “You have to pay your workers enough to buy the products they build.” Because of their ideology Neo-Cons actively
work against this fundamental principle.
What they are choosing to overlook is that the middle class of the
United States drives the world’s economy.
Without the middle class wages paid in this country, the whole world will
go into long-lasting depression. There
just are not enough rich folks to consume enough to drive any economy. We need good middle class wages and jobs to
keep this country prosperous. Instead
Republicans are working hand in hand with greedy corporate moguls to send our
good jobs over seas.
Republican group think says
that only teenagers earn the minimum wage.
Wrong again. Eighty percent of
the folks earning the minimum wage are over 21 years old and many are trying to
raise families on this sub-poverty wage.
Why do Republicans hate poor families so much? Why are Republicans denying these hard
workers the benefit of a living wage?
The obvious reason is control. It
is easier to control a poor population than one that has choices. From immigrants to the shrinking middle class
the Republican attack on wages is driving the standard of living down in this
country, except of course for those at the top.
If the Republicans in
Congress were really interested in helping American workers they would be making
laws that encourage job growth in this country and discourage corporations from
sending jobs overseas. Again the
neo-cons would rather help the upper one percent over helping the American
worker by making un-fair open trade agreements that are sucking our chance to
stay in the middle class out of the country.
Since taking over Congress
Republicans have repeatedly and consistently voted in favor of corporations
over the individual. They have voted to
take our freedoms away and they made laws that are designed to reduce or
restrict the number of voters. They are
working against this country’s founding principles with one goal in mind:
keeping themselves in power so they can turn the clock back to a time when
corporations had an unrestrained strangle hold on the working people of this
nation.
There is only one solution
to reverse how they are treating us and that is to vote them out while we still
can.
7 Aug 2006