Lumpy 1
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- Jun 19, 2009
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- #81
The American government is run on behalf of the Big Businesses who fund elections, staff government, and remove any candidate or sitting official who does not play ball.
The American media is owned by the same corporations.
Starting in the 70s, the Republican Party became a mechanism for turning business profits into political and media outcomes.
Starting in the 1980's -- with the help of lobbying and election funding -- the GOP moved corporate representatives directly into government - where they began drafting laws and spreading into regulatory bodies. This lead to the meticulous creation of tax loop holes and corrupt porky subsidies. Now we have monopolies in every sector which make unprecedented profits, but no longer pay anything close to the advertised tax rate. Once all the tax breaks, loopholes, and subsidies are factored in, many of the wealthiest corporations pay no taxes at all.
The result is permanent revenue crisis which gets resolved through the elimination of middle class programs.
The Reagan Revolution has replaced FDR's postwar middle class with a permanent underclass a.k.a. cheap labor.
Irony of Irony. During the Cold War Reagan bragged to the world that America was better than the Soviet Union because our working classes had material wealth, subsidized education (upward mobility) and well paying jobs. Meanwhile, off-stage, large corporations gathered, snickering at the world they wee about to create - a world where wages, benefits, programs and everything that sustained middle class consumer demand, was going to be cut on behalf of tax cuts. The corporations said that the money would trickle down in the form of good jobs and cheap prices. But: what did they actually do once the GOP installed them in Washington? Did the money, benefits, and jobs trickle down as promised? Or did their lifestyles, personal fortunes, and golden parachutes get bigger?
They took option B: cheap labor. They shipped jobs overseas and started a 30 year war against benefits and wages. Worse: to make up for the loss of income, benefits, and programs, the middle class was given a credit card. This is the dirty little secret of the Reagan Revolution: when the money didn't trickle down, they expanded debt to keep the economy afloat. [Does FOX News ever talk about how much consumer debt entered the system in the 80s - or why everybody received 3 credit cards offer a week?] When the consumption economy ran out of credit, it fueled the economy with last asset left: homes. Now - the middle class is jobless. Consumer debt is so high that it will take decades for people to start buying again. We are Japan and we are entering a lost decade.
But that's not all...
The GOP has been fooled into believing that they live in Ayn Rand's America. The same Any Rand whose father's pharmacy was stolen by the Stalin Government. They live inside a corporate-funded echo chamber which tirelessly repeats the same 3 economic cliches. Here is what they don't understand.
The Government no longer owns the pharmacy.
The pharmaceutical owns the government.
The GOP has raised a generation of morons and we are finally paying the price.
I read your post and I'm quite unsatisfied...
Sheesh .. could you share the blame a little so you'd seem at least a little balanced..