I am always amazed at conservatives who talk about the constitution and the declaration of independence.
They talk about the fact that if the forefathers would have wanted health care to be a right and not a luxury, like they believe it is, they would have said: life, liberty, healthcare and the pursuit of happiness.
But I don’t see anywhere in the declaration of independence that corporations should be deciding elections, and that they should have a voice.
With the new legislation passed in states such as Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan we are simply going back to times of slavery, with corporations deciding what we should eat, where we should work, was in environmentally safe, and next thing will be if we have the right to assemble.
Conservatives believe that we are better off if the board of a company decides if we should receive healthcare.
They will also decide if we should vote, if our vote counts, because they don’t want anybody rocking the system, and challenge their authority. They already have the right to destroy communities, by sending jobs overseas, as long as the boards of those companies can pay themselves bonuses by impoverishing cities, to pollute the environment, to lower the standard of living for the middle class and the poor in this country.
And all this is so that the top 10% of the top 1% maintain everything they have, and accrue more, if possible.
The theory that if we cut taxes for them they will share a little bit of their wealth with us by investing and creating jobs, has been totally debunked. The proof is that tax cut create nothing, except transferring wealth from the middle class and the poor to the wealthy, or in other words, from the have-nots to the haves. During the first eight years of this millennium we ended up losing jobs in this country, salaries going down, and Wall Street provoking one of the biggest collapses in history, if the not the greatest, again making the rest of us pay for all their eccentricities.
Only in America. When I talk to friends that I have around the world they cannot believe this. And still conservatives want to make us believe that the wealthy are paying too much. If that would be the case they would have moved somewhere else.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
What the election of 2010 has given us
The United States of America is starting to live a very “interesting” period. I wrote recently how the middle class is under attack and it is facing the possible destruction by the top 1% of Americans who earn more than the bottom 50%.
Several governors that ran the last election did it as fiscal conservatives taking advantage of a mid-term period with high unemployment, and with unhappiness towards democrats, as if they had created the Wall Street collapse of 2008.
Their campaigns were all about the budgets and how to balance them, of course without specifics, helped by a very low turnout.
Now that they are in office they are coming out of the closet. It is no longer about the budgets and the deficits, and more about giveaways to the people who paid for those campaigns.
In states such as Wisconsin where they have majorities in both chambers, but not enough votes to shove down the throat of its citizens without some kind of compromise they will have to negotiate, or face the unhappiness of its citizens, with some members of the senate possibly being recalled.
Governor Walker of Wisconsin said that the only way of balancing the budget was stripping the right of collective bargaining of state employees. That includes firefighters, police, teachers and other workers.
What he didn’t tell the public is that he created the deficit by giving away $160 million to corporations the moment he walked into the governor’s office.
In other states such as in Ohio where governor John Kasich has done away with collective bargaining for state employees. He is also cutting education and middle class programs to give tax giveaways to the wealthy.
In Florida Governor Rick Scott is cutting funds for public education by 1.75 billion dollars, not to balance the balance his budget but to give 1.60 billion to corporations.
But we have to put the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, as the person who hit it out of the ball park.
His argument is that because the state is facing a deficit he will not only cut funds for education and other programs that help the poor and middle class, he is cutting assistance to communities all across the state, but this is the best, he will also decide what towns, who are in the red will survive. What I mean by survive is he will put a member, chosen by him, to replace the mayor, school board, will merge school boards, etc. This is truly amazing. Republican always talk about everything being local, but this sounds more like a tyranny than a democracy. This is more of a similarity with either Hitler or King Henry VIII.
I wonder if this is what the citizens of Michigan bargained for at the last election.
One common theme in all these governors, and I cannot forget my governor, Mr. Christie, is the increase of subsidized private education at the expense of public education.
I always say that education is an investment in our future. Republicans agree with that as long as it is in their own kids, and of those who help finance their campaigns, not the rest of the population. An educated population is harder to mislead, so the less educated the better.
Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff of Obama, and present mayor of Chicago said in 2009 that you should not allow a crisis go to waste. He was criticized by all the right wing pundits. What a bunch of hypocrites. They are the masters of that. We don’t have to go too far back, after 2001 the previous administration used all kinds of lies and excuses to invade a country that had not been involved in the attack of September 11th. Republicans use fear mongering at every single opportunity, scaring senior with the health care reform, saying that Obama raised people’s taxes, that Obama wants to take the 2nd their guns away, and so on and so forth.
Hopefully at the next election the people of Ohio will wake up and see how their interests and those of the corporations are completely opposed.
Unfortunately by then the damage will have been done, like it was for the first 8 years of the previous decade with the Bush Administration, involving the whole country in wars we did not need, with nothing but lies, and paid pundits to scare this country’s population.
Several governors that ran the last election did it as fiscal conservatives taking advantage of a mid-term period with high unemployment, and with unhappiness towards democrats, as if they had created the Wall Street collapse of 2008.
Their campaigns were all about the budgets and how to balance them, of course without specifics, helped by a very low turnout.
Now that they are in office they are coming out of the closet. It is no longer about the budgets and the deficits, and more about giveaways to the people who paid for those campaigns.
In states such as Wisconsin where they have majorities in both chambers, but not enough votes to shove down the throat of its citizens without some kind of compromise they will have to negotiate, or face the unhappiness of its citizens, with some members of the senate possibly being recalled.
Governor Walker of Wisconsin said that the only way of balancing the budget was stripping the right of collective bargaining of state employees. That includes firefighters, police, teachers and other workers.
What he didn’t tell the public is that he created the deficit by giving away $160 million to corporations the moment he walked into the governor’s office.
In other states such as in Ohio where governor John Kasich has done away with collective bargaining for state employees. He is also cutting education and middle class programs to give tax giveaways to the wealthy.
In Florida Governor Rick Scott is cutting funds for public education by 1.75 billion dollars, not to balance the balance his budget but to give 1.60 billion to corporations.
But we have to put the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, as the person who hit it out of the ball park.
His argument is that because the state is facing a deficit he will not only cut funds for education and other programs that help the poor and middle class, he is cutting assistance to communities all across the state, but this is the best, he will also decide what towns, who are in the red will survive. What I mean by survive is he will put a member, chosen by him, to replace the mayor, school board, will merge school boards, etc. This is truly amazing. Republican always talk about everything being local, but this sounds more like a tyranny than a democracy. This is more of a similarity with either Hitler or King Henry VIII.
I wonder if this is what the citizens of Michigan bargained for at the last election.
One common theme in all these governors, and I cannot forget my governor, Mr. Christie, is the increase of subsidized private education at the expense of public education.
I always say that education is an investment in our future. Republicans agree with that as long as it is in their own kids, and of those who help finance their campaigns, not the rest of the population. An educated population is harder to mislead, so the less educated the better.
Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff of Obama, and present mayor of Chicago said in 2009 that you should not allow a crisis go to waste. He was criticized by all the right wing pundits. What a bunch of hypocrites. They are the masters of that. We don’t have to go too far back, after 2001 the previous administration used all kinds of lies and excuses to invade a country that had not been involved in the attack of September 11th. Republicans use fear mongering at every single opportunity, scaring senior with the health care reform, saying that Obama raised people’s taxes, that Obama wants to take the 2nd their guns away, and so on and so forth.
Hopefully at the next election the people of Ohio will wake up and see how their interests and those of the corporations are completely opposed.
Unfortunately by then the damage will have been done, like it was for the first 8 years of the previous decade with the Bush Administration, involving the whole country in wars we did not need, with nothing but lies, and paid pundits to scare this country’s population.
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