Yesterday Mitt Romney visited the NAACP convention being held in my current city, Houston, and decided to stage a reaction from the crowd in order to feed a false narrative to those who want to blame the ills of our nation on those others. He launched an uncivil attack on President Obama in an inappropriate venue. The audience did not take kindly to his forceful disregard for Obamacare and his promise to repeal it. He was summarily booed for 14 seconds. It was the perfect optics he needed to feed a false narrative.
At a fundraiser, primed with the type of reception he was hoping for in Houston, Romney framed the “boos” he received as follows: “Remind them of this, if they want more stuff from the government, tell them to vote for the other guy. More free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”
Americans know nothing is free. The vast majority of Americans are very hard workers. There is a myth being created about freeloaders. They show a few incidents of those other people freeloading and then project it onto many. The hope is that those hard working Americans would assume the ills that afflict the economy was caused by those “others”, those freeloaders.
The teacher gets up every day and goes to teach our children and adults. They ensure that knowledge moves from generation to generation. The garbage man with the sweat of his/her brow ensures we are not living in accumulating filth. That small restaurant owner feeds us, employs us, and buys products created by other entrepreneurs that create jobs. Engineers take the knowledge given by teachers, professors, and scientists and with that create products of every kind. I could go on and on about real jobs being done by American citizens but I am sure you get the point.
When Mitt Romney states that those wanting free stuff should vote for the other guy, one must assume that he will be voting for the other guy. It is important that we note that much of the vast expenditures by our government are there to allow the wealthy class the ability to make or keep their wealth. It is never framed that way by the mainstream media.
We have a large military to ensure sea lanes remain open for commerce and to protect our foreign investments. We built interstate highways and airports that allowed the existence of large airline and trucking industries. We invested in the development of drugs and the monitoring of diseases. Who benefitted financially from these types of government investments throughout the years? Who have monetized these investments and with that accumulated much wealth at the expense of the middle class? Many of the same folks that complain about taxes are those that have built their wealth because of our governmental structure.
It is obscene is that when Mitt Romney and the financial classes gutted companies, companies where real people created something of value for society, many times it was the government picking up pensions or providing some form of subsistence living as they walked off with the spoils. In other words we subsidized the wealth they extracted from many companies.
Those in the middle class want a government that works for all. Is it too hard to ask for a healthcare system that provides us health and will not bankrupt us? Is it too hard to ask that we have a robust safety net (Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid) to ensure that those that have worked all their lives or have fallen on bad times are not destitute? That is the job of government. Read the preamble of our constitution.
Our current policies have created an obscene wealth and income disparity. Taxes too low on the wealthy that have benefitted the most from our form of government as well as crony capitalism have caused this. The middle class must not be asked to sacrifice yet again.
As we listen to back and forth via the mainstream media, know the facts. Our blogs and pages are always filled with prescient, necessary, and very information pieces. Visit often.
Know that this country became great because of its middle class, the people that really make it all work. We must no longer ignore that class that moves around money and treat companies like pawns while themselves producing nothing of societal value. We must no longer allow them to dictate our success or failure. They have already proved with the destruction of our economy that the aura of knowledge was but a façade. We must understand and believe in our self-worth, engage in our community and body politic to ensure our representatives are listening to us.
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First: “… ensure our representatives are listening to us.” is not the problem. They listen to everyone but they act primarily on behalf of their donor constituency. Better response is to elect representatives who reflect our interests. They will not be found among all the usual suspects. They must be supported by their constituents if they are not to become simply the workhorses of the wealthy few. All politics is local.
Second: The Presidency matters a lot. But far too little attention is paid by ordinary citizens to the Congress, which is the first and most powerful branch – as it should be. The wealthy and corporate class understand this very well. Between the House and the Senate they can stop a bad nominee or impeach a corrupt officeholder. There needs to be much, much, much more attention paid to the Parliament of Whores. The standard for the Congress must be raised and raised very, very high.