The election is over and by a 3% margin Americans have decided to reelect President Obama. I will be the first to say that I believe President Obama governed like a centrist Republican in his first term. I think he did that to ensure a second term.
After-all the President’s stimulus was heavy on tax cuts, Republican candy that has a lower effective multiplicative effect to stimulate the economy. His signature healthcare bill The Affordable Care Act lovingly called Obamacare maintained the inefficiencies of having private for profit insurance companies that transfer middle class wealth via healthcare premiums to the mostly wealthy shareholders of the insurance companies. In every policy or bill he passed he compromised to appease Republicans for which he got no buy in from them.
My hope is that in his second term he will mobilize America to allow his inner most liberal to raise its head. Conservative supply side economics has decimated the middle class for 30+ years as the wealthy have morphed into an effective plutocracy.
It is time for the wealthy to thank the middle class and give its Right Wing puppets the authority to work with the president to increase their taxes for the better good of the country and to ease the pain on the middle class they have provably pilfered since the institution of Reagan’s supply side economics. They used our government to create policies that placed most of the middle class in peril. These are not just empty words but facts that are reflected in the charts that illustrate the income and wealth disparity in America.
This is not sustainable. This is immoral. This will change either peacefully or by force when the population realizes they have no further recourse and have been had by a few deceitful titans of finance led politicians.
Politicians must begin by passing legislation to ensure that the policies which currently are effectively legalized theft are dismantled and corrective recovery of the pilfered occurs. Before any discussion on the reduction of the safety net occurs it must be ensured that all income is treated at least equally.
Passive income should actually carry higher tax rates than the income from somebody who goes to work every day. In other words capital gains from stocks or the appreciation of any asset should have no preferential tax treatment from someone who works. It is the only way that we can ensure that either the working person has unmitigated access to real wealth.
Legislation that makes it easy for ALL workers to unionize is essential. Businesses all have unions in the Chamber of Commerce and the dozens of other trade organizations that lobby on their behalf. The individual worker has no wage recourse by themselves and said disadvantage is evident with their wage decline as unions have declined.
We must not be fooled by the catered and tested messages to misinform the citizens to vote against their own interest. The same middle class decimating policies is what the GOP is attempting to maintain even though most Americans are clamoring for the ability to succeed.
It is important that we stand up once and for all for middle class policies. We are the job creators. We are the brains. We are the intellect. We are the creators of products. We are the providers of services. Those that move capital are just movers of capital. They have no other inherent value to society and as such a system that gives them more worth must be dismantled. That starts with the middle class taking back their government and dictating policy that rewards those that really produce.
Viewers are encouraged to subscribe and join the conversation for more insightful commentary and to support progressive messages. Together, we can populate the internet with progressive messages that represent the true aspirations of most Americans.
Over the years I have noticed that the claims of the right wing of the Republican party tend to be not just false, but the opposite of the real truth. This is evident in the talk of “makers” and “takers” during the last election cycle. The Republicans claim the rich are “makers” while the poor – anyone who uses government services – are “takers” who are draining the economy. The truth is that the country really is divided into “makers” and “takers”, but it’s the rich who are the “takers”. This is especially true of those (like Mitt Romney) in the financial services industry – they produce nothing, but make their money by draining it out of enterprises that actually produce value. It’s the working poor – anyone with an “individual contributor” position in any enterprise that actually provides real goods or useful services – who are the “makers”.
A quick note to Brian: Have you ever heard of oil subsidies? That’s where the government takes your tax money and hands a big chunk of it over to oil companies that are already making record profits (Exxon = $22 billion in 2011). Nuff said.
Egberto: From your lips to God’s ears. That said, it ain’t going to happen. In my opinion, the problem with your approach is two fold. First, you are asking us to close the barn door after the horse has already escaped. The time to act was during the election cycle. If we really want to kick big money out of government, level the economic playing field, and revive the American Dream, then we needed to vote for candidates pledged to doing so. The real problem is that we were NOT given that choice. Which leads to my second issue. You are presupposing that Democrats are on the side of The People — which they are not. Republicans and Democrats alike are only looking out for themselves; and the best way to prosper while in office is to do the bidding of big business and the uber-wealthy (top 1%). Sure, It’s easier to vilify the Republicans because they are very overt about their greed and dislike of the poor. However, thinking that just because they oppose them, that Democrats by default are the good guys, champions of the people, or defenders of the weak, is a major mistake. How else do you explain the fact that the Obama White House forced the then Democratically controlled House of Reps to add bailout money so that Goldman Sachs executives, the very same people that helped cause the Crash in ’08, got paid their “too big to fail” bonuses? The only thing those bastards should have seen was the inside of a jail cell. Instead, thanks to the Democrats, they were off sipping Pina Coladas in the Caymans. Meanwhile, did anyone here get bailed out? No? Hmm. I guess the Democrats AND the Republicans figured that we were just the right size to fail.
But here’s the good news. 90 million people did not vote in the past election. 90 million! That’s a voting block 50% larger than the one that reelected the President. All we need to do is galvanize them into a cohesive unit bent on resting power from big business and the wealthy and returning government to The People. Then the Republicans and the Democrats can do whatever they want while the rest of us straighten things out. But we need to start preparing now! The mid-term elections will be here before we know it.
Dan,
We do not disagree at all. The problem is structurally the country is a two party country and I really do not see an independent takeover. What I see is just as the Tea Party has given the Republican Party a spine to be completely “factless” and plutocratic; a faction of real progressives usurping the Democratic Party can as well. I think it is easier because of all the road blocks.
The Right made a term so that it would sound bad if you oppose this.
Class Warfare!
That’s funny, in a pathetic sort of way. Since Clinton, it is the poor who have been sacrificed (sometimes quite literally, based on increased infant mortality among the poor, falling life expectancy, and increased death rates among the poor in between). The fortunate ones are put to use as super-cheap workfare replacement labor. Workfare is an interesting concept. America’s poor have been so dehumanized that even liberals see no problem with using them to essentially establish a Third World workforce right here, saving the cost and bother of shipping jobs to foreign countries. Recently, a rumor went around that President Obama was considering relaxing mandatory workfare, at least for the seriously ill/unemployable, and the middle class went into a bit of an uproar. Funny thing is, they never ask where all those workfare jobs come from. The middle class continues to shrink, but dare we wonder where the post-middle class went?