The GOP War on Working Class America

Freshmen GOP - 2010

Paul Krugman recently questioned the sanity of Congressional Republicans who, he contends, have inflicted such a level of dysfunctionality on the federal government as to leave America ungovernable.

Robert Reich, however, seems method in the madness of the "Party of No."

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get — which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy.

Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market on Wall Street. That’s because the Fed is committed to buying long-term bonds as long as unemployment remains high. This keeps bond yields low and pushes investors into equities — which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street commissions, thereby keeping regressives’ financial sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies — that their biggest worry should be that “big government” will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving” minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;” and that new immigrants threaten their jobs. 

What Reich is claiming is that the House and Senate Republicans are waging a covert war on working class Americans, blue and white collar, - the masses - for the direct financial benefit of their richest of the rich patrons - the few.

Does Reich's take sound extreme to you?  Maybe you've got a better explanation for the insanity Krugman describes as a willful effort to render America ungovernable.

There's a coup underway in America, one that will oust democracy and install a fascist corporatism in its place.  Congressional Republicans are the spear carriers of the plotters and, so far at least, they appear to be winning.

For a deeper insight on the coup that has befallen America, read Paul Craig Roberts' "In the Grip of Tyranny."

Mitt Romney - Class Warrior

Mitt Romney wouldn't be the first really rich man to enter the White House.   But, as Robert Reich points out, he'd certainly be a lot different.

America has had hugely wealthy presidents before — think of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt; or John F. Kennedy, beneficiary of father Joe’s fortune.

But here’s the difference. These men were champions of the working class and the poor, and were considered traitors to their own class. Teddy Roosevelt railed against the “malefactors of great wealth,” and he busted up the oil and railroad trusts.

FDR thundered against the “economic royalists,” raised taxes on the wealthy, and gave average working people the right to form unions — along with Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and a 40-hour workweek.

But Mitt Romney is not a traitor to his class. He is a sponsor of his class. He wants to cut their taxes by $3.7 trillion over the next decade, and hasn’t even specified what “loopholes” he’d close to make up for this gigantic giveaway.

And he wants to cut benefits that almost everyone else relies on — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and housing assistance.

He’s even a warrior for his class, telling his wealthy followers his job isn’t to worry about the “47 percent” of Americans who won’t vote for him, whom he calls “victims” and he berates for not paying federal incomes taxes and taking federal handouts.

...Money means power. Concentrated wealth at the top means extraordinary power at the top. The reason Romney pays a rate of only 14 percent on $13 million of income in 2011 — a lower rate than many in the middle class — is because he exploits a loophole that allows private equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent.

...So much wealth and power have accumulated at the top of America that our economy and our democracy are seriously threatened. Romney not only represents this problem. He is the living embodiment of it.

It's time Americans busted this myth of the "self-made man" Romney and his clan steadfastly hide behind.   Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz in his recent book, "The Price of Inequality", traces how government policies, not normal market forces, have created the inequality that plagues today's America and has resulted in the undeserved transfer of wealth and power from the middle classes to the richest of the rich.   The government "of the people, by the people, for the people" turned its back on the people, lining its pockets richly in the process.


The frightening thing is that there a great many Americans, especially the prominent and affluent, who don't think this is corrupt.