Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Elephant in the Room



The Koch brothers and the extreme religious fanatics, usually Evangelists, own the GOP who are following the desires of their true masters and ignoring the needs of their constituents. The GOP is evolving from a Party that loved this country, even when they have always shown favoritism for Corporations it was never to the point of sacrificing the well being of the regular American, the working class to a Party that is only loyal to the elite and fortunate few, the 1%.

For the last twelve years, the Republicans have been giving tax breaks to large corporations, the famous trickle-down economics that has never worked but that the Republicans keep insisting stimulates the economy. For twelve years the largest corporations have paid little or no taxes but have received a hefty sum from the government to promote job creation. Basically, the working class is giving the wealthy money to create part-time or under paid jobs for the working class. The working class is the one paying the taxes that provide these incentives, does that make any sense to anyone? You don’t believe me? Let me begin by saying that for 2011, the total Revenue of the United States collected from Individual income taxes was of $1,091 billion vs. $819 billion from corporate taxes. There alone is a huge discrepancy. At a time where unemployment is high and salaries are low, the working class is the one providing the largest amount of revenue for the country. Let’s not forget that those billions are only from income tax, after the government takes those taxes from us, we still have to pay sales taxes, state taxes etc. Corporations pay sales taxes too, but since they have the ability to purchase in bulk the sales taxes they pay are usually lower plus they can claim an infinite amount of things as expenses and losses, the regular working person can't. So no matter how you slice it, the working class is being squeezed to the max for every penny the government can get from them, and the GOP likes it that way just fine. They don’t want to fairly tax Corporations or the wealthy; at least we can say they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them but a country cannot flourish economically when its economy it’s mostly carried on the shoulders of the weakest. It is unsustainable.

The GOP is constantly claiming that the tax cuts they request are for small businesses. When we hear this, we all think of the mom and pop’s store in our neighborhoods, but we are wrong. Most people don’t know what constitute a small business, the ones benefiting from these tax cuts. Everything that I write here can be traced and confirmed and I will supply the links to support my statements.

The list of the top 200 “small” business listed in Forbes magazine even includes oil companies. I must admit that these oil companies are not Exxon, Mobil or BP but still it is not what most Americans consider small business. The list of small businesses show sales ranging from a minimum of $5 million dollars to $750 million, that is definitively not a mom and pop’s store, yet the tax cuts are geared towards them.

Another thing I heard from the Right is that Democrats are against development, growth and capitalism. I have no idea where they get their information (well, yes I do) but this is not true. Democrats are considered progressives and as such we are in favor of progress, whether this progress is manufacturing, science, development or anything else if it is to improve the lives of all of us. We are not against capitalism, we want everyone to have a chance at succeeding in life and have a fair shot at a better future. What we are vehemently against is for the working class to be abused, taken advantage of on the name of capitalism. There is a big difference there. There is no excuse for a CEO to get a salary in the millions of dollars, a great retirement plan, stocks, bonuses, expenses paid etc. while the worker gets more responsibilities, lower benefits, longer hours and their salaries see little or no changes, and if they get a raise is at best an extra dollar an hour. That is simply a modern way of slavery and that is what Democrats are against. I will never understand a middle class worker justifying such injustice.

Republicans don’t understand what Regulations and Unions do either. They like to blame the high unemployment rate on this. Nothing could be further from the truth.

President Ronald Reagan, the GOP’s demigod, inherited an unemployment rate of 8.5, and during the first year of his administration it peaked to 10.8; we can say that this was not his fault since he inherited an unemployment that was increasing from Jimmy Carter. To his credit, he managed to bring down the unemployment to a 5.4, which is commendable. Of course, we all know that Ronald Reagan would be considered too liberal to be part of the GOP as they are today. President Bill Clinton inherited an unemployment rate of 6.3 and after implementing some tougher regulations he managed to leave the White House and pass to President George W. Bush an unemployment rate of 4.0 and a sound economy. During the eight years that the country had to endure all the damage inflicted by G.W. Bush, he left office with an economy in shambles, an unemployment rate of 5.0 and rising as well as the collapse of Wall Street and the banking industry. This collapse didn’t happen by chance, it started by Reagan deregulating the banking industry and culminated with Bush deregulating almost any other industry, it was and still is the GOP opinion that businesses can regulate themselves even when the results has been a complete failure of our economic system. Yet, the GOP it is still pressuring for deregulation.

The GOP has also made sure to paint a devil out of Unions. Unions are the only force that can truly look after the worker. The only reason why companies can’t get away with hypothetical murder is because of Unions. The regular worker can’t afford legal representation against giants such as multinationals, many times they are not educated enough to negotiate for themselves a raise or defend their seniority within a company or an abusive and dangerous work conditions and that is when Unions come in. Without Unions large corporations would take advantage of workers – after all, all that matters for them is their shareholders, can you imagine what these companies would do to us if we didn’t have Unions?

To demonstrate how compassionate these corporations are, one only has to look at the cost of living during the last 30 years. It has increased 300% during that time. Three hundred percent, that is a lot. In the same token, the minimum wage during the same time span has increased by a little more than 100% ($3.35 in 1980 to $7.25 today); there is no way that a person earning minimum wage can survive on one salary, and everything keeps raising, everything except salaries.

I can’t understand a moderate Republican. I can’t understand how can they shoot themselves on the foot and continue supporting a Party that keeps stealing from the poor to give to the rich; the party that believes that only the wealthy deserve a break, good medicine, a good education and a sound future. Can some one explain it to me?

We must vote Democrat in November. President Obama deserves four more years but we must help him by giving him a Congress that will help this country, not obstruct any progress!  

Vote for Obama and Vote 100% Democrat in 2012!

No comments:

Post a Comment