Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Republicans Make The Poor Pay for Everything
We call them “neo-cons,” but the more accurate name is “reactionaries.” Hurricane Katrina, along with the staggering deficits of the Iraq War, has allowed the current administration to enthusiastically shred the legacy of the New Deal—to shred, really, the entire progressive legislation of the last 100 years.
In a John Steinbeck novel, a character is described as having “never blamed [Herbert] Hoover for getting the country into the Depression, nor forgiven Roosevelt for getting the country out of it.” That’s a paraphrase, but it pins down the philosophy of our current Ruling Party. And it describes the Ruling Party’s financial base. To be elected to office costs lots and lots of money. More money than the donations of ordinary people: only gigantic transfusions of money into campaigns gets politicians into office. The pols know this. They also know where the money comes from. It comes from Defense Contractors, internationally operating construction companies, the oil industry, mega corporations.
The big corporations—most of which are transnational—depend on “our” politicians to do what they’re told. To make sure this happens, thousands of lobbyists apply pressure and give marginally-legal bribes to Washington policy makers. These corporate employees button-hole, coerce, and simply buy politicians. They operate in the Pentagon, as well, with promises of lush jobs if contracts go to certain clients; retiring out of a procurement position in government is a first-class ticket into a largely ceremonial job at high pay.
The cost of rebuilding after Katrina is estimated at about $200 billion dollars. The war against Iraq—never mind what that costs. Or how much is spent on spying; nobody knows that one. It used to be that government revenues came from taxes. Over the last few decades, taxes have been cut and cut. To suck up to the rich, the reactionaries insist that cutting taxes on the wealthy will stimulate the economy. Corporations now pay less in taxes than the middle-class. The rich pay almost nothing—and the Republican plan is to cut those taxes even farther. The country is deeply in debt; borrowing more money is as popular an idea as catching mumps.
Republicans plan to pay for the rebuilding efforts to come out of “entitlements.” When they say “entitlements,” though, it’s code for domestic spending in general, and social programs in particular. Cutting off the war spending might seem like a very good idea, particularly since the war is a bigger disaster than Katrina and Viet Nam put together—but the administration is determined to “stay the course.”
“Stay the course.” What bullshit. That’s all it is. It’s a justification to spend more on arms, supplies, give out more contracts to companies like Haliburton and General Motors and Blackwell, and of a policy to never ask for receipts. The war is a gift to the big donors. But people, friends of the Administration—owners of the Administration, are very happy with the results.
That’s the major difference between now and the time of the Great Depression: the big corporations like the status quo. Labor is cheap, profits are up, and the stockholders are deliciously happy. Luxury car sales are up, destination resorts are packed, home prices are skyrocketing.
How to keep this going? Keep the mega-donors happy. Raise taxes on them and they’ll look for alternatives. Get the country farther into debt and they’ll look for alternatives. But where will the money come from? It will come from the people who have no voice in decision-making: the poor. How can money come from them? It will come from the programs that help the poor keep their heads above water: medicare and medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers, even welfare checks. Who cares about them?
It’s obvious the Republicans don’t. They didn’t back in the Thirties during the Depression; they didn’t during the Gilded Age, the time of sweat shops and child labor, or during any of the struggles between labor and capital in the 19th Century. They still don’t. They have a rationale: “we’ve tried these programs for years and people are still living in poverty—we need to make the poor responsible for their own predicament. Make them responsible and then they’ll get out of poverty. It worked for Herbert Hoover.”
In a John Steinbeck novel, a character is described as having “never blamed [Herbert] Hoover for getting the country into the Depression, nor forgiven Roosevelt for getting the country out of it.” That’s a paraphrase, but it pins down the philosophy of our current Ruling Party. And it describes the Ruling Party’s financial base. To be elected to office costs lots and lots of money. More money than the donations of ordinary people: only gigantic transfusions of money into campaigns gets politicians into office. The pols know this. They also know where the money comes from. It comes from Defense Contractors, internationally operating construction companies, the oil industry, mega corporations.
The big corporations—most of which are transnational—depend on “our” politicians to do what they’re told. To make sure this happens, thousands of lobbyists apply pressure and give marginally-legal bribes to Washington policy makers. These corporate employees button-hole, coerce, and simply buy politicians. They operate in the Pentagon, as well, with promises of lush jobs if contracts go to certain clients; retiring out of a procurement position in government is a first-class ticket into a largely ceremonial job at high pay.
The cost of rebuilding after Katrina is estimated at about $200 billion dollars. The war against Iraq—never mind what that costs. Or how much is spent on spying; nobody knows that one. It used to be that government revenues came from taxes. Over the last few decades, taxes have been cut and cut. To suck up to the rich, the reactionaries insist that cutting taxes on the wealthy will stimulate the economy. Corporations now pay less in taxes than the middle-class. The rich pay almost nothing—and the Republican plan is to cut those taxes even farther. The country is deeply in debt; borrowing more money is as popular an idea as catching mumps.
Republicans plan to pay for the rebuilding efforts to come out of “entitlements.” When they say “entitlements,” though, it’s code for domestic spending in general, and social programs in particular. Cutting off the war spending might seem like a very good idea, particularly since the war is a bigger disaster than Katrina and Viet Nam put together—but the administration is determined to “stay the course.”
“Stay the course.” What bullshit. That’s all it is. It’s a justification to spend more on arms, supplies, give out more contracts to companies like Haliburton and General Motors and Blackwell, and of a policy to never ask for receipts. The war is a gift to the big donors. But people, friends of the Administration—owners of the Administration, are very happy with the results.
That’s the major difference between now and the time of the Great Depression: the big corporations like the status quo. Labor is cheap, profits are up, and the stockholders are deliciously happy. Luxury car sales are up, destination resorts are packed, home prices are skyrocketing.
How to keep this going? Keep the mega-donors happy. Raise taxes on them and they’ll look for alternatives. Get the country farther into debt and they’ll look for alternatives. But where will the money come from? It will come from the people who have no voice in decision-making: the poor. How can money come from them? It will come from the programs that help the poor keep their heads above water: medicare and medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers, even welfare checks. Who cares about them?
It’s obvious the Republicans don’t. They didn’t back in the Thirties during the Depression; they didn’t during the Gilded Age, the time of sweat shops and child labor, or during any of the struggles between labor and capital in the 19th Century. They still don’t. They have a rationale: “we’ve tried these programs for years and people are still living in poverty—we need to make the poor responsible for their own predicament. Make them responsible and then they’ll get out of poverty. It worked for Herbert Hoover.”
