Showing posts with label Child Labor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child Labor. Show all posts

Monday, December 16, 2019

A MESSAGE TO CJ GOODE III, KANYE WEST, AND ALL OTHER BLACK BIGOT-HUGGERS


Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

A MESSAGE TO CJ GOODE III, KANYE WEST, AND ALL OTHER BLACK BIGOT-HUGGERS


TRUMP IMPEACHMENT PLACES CONSERVATIVE HYPOCRISY ON FULL DISPLAY

There’s an age-old axiom that says that one should ignore what people say, and watch what they do. The truth of that axiom is on full display during this Trump impeachment effort. In spite of the fact that conservatives have a long tradition of wrapping themselves in the flag, wearing flag pins on their lapels, and claiming unfettered patriotism and loyalty to our Constitution, now, when push comes to shove and their self-interest is on the line, the truth of their grossly flawed character has come to the fore, and that truth is, their only true loyalty is to the maintenance of their power, bigotry, and greed. 
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The very word “conservative” in a political context means that a person is dedicated to “conserving” past traditions, and in America, that means the preservation of White supremacy at any cost – and that’s exactly why conservatives are fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. Many of them don’t even like him personally, because they know that he’s neither conservative nor liberal. His one and only philosophy is promoting Donald Trump. But the GOP and over 81% of White Evangelicals have entered into an evil alliance with him to protect Trump, as long as he protects them from their waning power due to the rapidly changing demographics that threatens their grip on power over the country.
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That explains the fanatical fixation that conservatives have on so-called "security" on our Southern border. Their fixation is not on national security at all, it’s actually about White security, and disallowing any more non-White people into the country. If their concern was actually about national security, why aren’t they just as concerned about our Northern border, where hordes of White people cross into the country illegally? It doesn't make sense. Why put bars on your back door and leave your front door wide open?
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And if White Evangelicals are actually following the teachings of Jesus, how could they possibly turn a blind eye to Black people being murdered by rogue cops on the street, and in their homes, and be completely accepting of
the atrocities being committed against non-Whites on our Southern border? If they truly viewed America as "That shining light on the hill", and truly followed the teachings of Jesus Christ, they wouldn't tolerate the abuse of another human being. They'd rise up in protest. Melania Trump protested her son, Barron's, name being even brought up in the impeachment hearings, while she hasn't said a word about her husband literally tearing the children from the arms of immigrant mothers and putting them in cages - and she's an immigrant herself, but she's a White immigrant.
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Melania got into the country on an "Einstein Visa", the EB-1, reserved for people who are highly acclaimed in their field - the government cites Pulitzer, Oscar, and Olympic winners as examples - as well as respected academic researchers and multinational executives. Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I fail to see any special talents that Melania possesses, other than the talent to maneuver her way into bed with a billionaire, which probably wasn't very hard with Donald.
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So the fact is, so-called Evangelical Christians and patriotic conservatives only adhere to their highfalutin Christian and patriotic values as long as it’s convenient. When it becomes inconvenient they revert back to the selfish and animalistic nature that allowed them to enslave and brutalize millions of Black people and commit genocide against 10 generations of Native Americans. So the gullible and/or self-serving Black people who either collude with these people, or just sit back and refuse to vote, are literally suffering from a mental illness at worst, or gross stupidity at best.

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And poor White conservatives are no better, because the people who lead the conservative movement don’t care any more about them than they do non-Whites. Poor Whites are simply manipulated as “useful idiots” whose anger, fear, and votes are being used to promote the rich and powerful, or the conservative agenda.
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When conservatives first arrived on these shores, they brought with them the European notion of class distinction. They have always suffered from the distinctly undemocratic attitude that the only inherent value of the average American is as servants to cater to the whims of the upper class.

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Alexander Hamilton, one of this nation’s conservative founding fathers, believed that the rich and "wellborn" should be given a permanent share in government. He said:
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“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
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Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President (after being selected by congress, instead of the people). Can you just imagine that, Donald Trump FOR LIFE!!!?  But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
.
Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they became the conservative coalition, and lowered their profile as blatant aristocrats, and continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various other strategies to divide the people to achieve their agenda, and that’s what we see today.  That accounts for why conservatives tend to be specialists in obstructionism and division, and why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.

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The Great Depression
.
In 1921 -- eight years before the great depression -- Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than any other -- scandal. It was during Harding's presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States -- until Nixon's (Watergate), then Reagan's (Iran\Contra), and finally Bush's (Iraqi War).
.
Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge's policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to follow.
.
In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
.
During Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.

.
The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
.

In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.

They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 and no paid vacation. In addition, since there were no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
.
As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So, in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come-up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. At this very moment the Republican Party is attacking Social Security, Medicare, Education and many other programs to force the poor and middle class to pay for the huge deficit created by their $1.8 trillion tax cut for the rich.

THE NEW DEAL
.
But finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the "Brain Trust." After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a" New Deal" for the working- class people of this country.
.
The New Deal had two components - one, to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to ensure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected worker’s rights and set a minimum wage for workers, and all of these programs are under brutal attack by the Republican Party as we speak.
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With his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this "bleeding heart liberal", not only led this country out of the worst, Republican-generated, crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained era of prosperity that the world has ever known.
.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes seemed to transcend all logic. Thus, from the moment the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics", which led directly to the Great Recession of 2008 under George W. Bush. Then Barack Obama came along just in time to prevent the world from going into a second Great Depression. So like everything else Donald Trump likes to brag about, he actually inherited his “great economy” from President Obama.
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Thus, the economy is doing great in spite of Donald Trump, not because of him – and as we speak, the GOP is attacking Medicare, Social Security, and other safety net programs put in place in order to help to protect the average American so they can pay down the tremendous national debt created by their $1.8 trillion tax cut they gave to the rich. So in essence, we're currently living on a credit card, just like during the Reagan era - a credit card with a bill that's going to be sent to the average American. So once again, Trump and the GOP are taking from the poor to feed the rich.  

Our grandparent’s generation - the generation that experienced the Great Depression, fought WWII, and who we refer to as "The Greatest Generation" - wouldn't let a Republican anywhere near the White House.  During their era, Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to office four times, and finally died in office on April 12, 1945. The Republicans had to promote the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution limiting the president to two terms in office just to have even a remote chance of getting into office.
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But finally in 1953 they managed to elect the hero of WWII, Republican, Dwight Eisenhower to office, but even he was a Republican in name only - in 1957 he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate a segregated school after Gov. Orval Faubus tried to prevent Black students from entering, and as his final act in office he warned America about the Military-Industrial Complex, the very people that Donald Trump and the Republican Party represent today.

So here we are 243 years later and the conservatives are still at it - attacking our educational system to keep Americans dumbed down, trying their best to destabilize or destroy any program that prevent the average American from being totally reliant on them, and stirring up hatred, fear, and animosity among the people to keep them divided and from thinking clearly.
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Nevertheless, the average brainwashed Republican will say, "But we’re the party of Lincoln. It was the Democrats who created the KKK and engaged in lynchings during the Jim Crow era". But that’s a gross manipulation of the facts. In order for the facts to be made clear it’s important to replace party affiliation with political philosophy. While it is true that the old Democratic Party was filled with racist conservative “Dixiecrats”, during the Civil Rights movement under moderate Republican Ike Eisenhower, and later, Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party came out for civil rights. As result, the conservative Dixiecrats migrated to the Republican Party, and Republican liberals moved to the Democratic Party. Thus, the two major parties completely changed their previous political polarities. Therefore, if the Civil War was being fought today, the Republicans would be the Confederacy.
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So the facts are clear – conservatives have always been this nation’s bigots, both racial, and class bigots - regardless to what party they were in.



.
THINK ABOUT IT

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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Wednesday, June 05, 2019

CONSERVATIVES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE ENEMY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

Contrary to popular belief, Black people don’t have a moral obligation to be stupid.
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CONSERVATIVES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE ENEMY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
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Conservatives have always been known for walking around with flag pins in their lapels and spewing their "bone-spur" brand of patriotism. Going all the way back to the very founding of this nation they’ve always used false patriotism and deception as weapons to promote a self-serving agenda to undermine the interests of the average American.  As a result of that attitude, they have always been the most insidious enemies of American democracy. That’s why when our founding documents speak of American enemies it uses the phrase, “Both foreign and domestic.”
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When conservatives first arrived on these shores, they brought with them the European notion of class distinction. They have always suffered from the distinctly undemocratic attitude that the only inherent value of the average American is as servants to cater to the whims of the upper class.
.
Alexander Hamilton, one of this nation’s conservative founding fathers, believed that the rich and "wellborn" should be given a permanent share in government. He said:
.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
.
Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President (after being selected by congress, instead of the people). Can you just imagine that, Donald Trump FOR LIFE!!!?  But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
.
Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they became the conservative coalition, and lowered their profile as blatant aristocrats, and continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various other strategies to divide the people to achieve their agenda, and that’s what we see today.  That accounts for why conservatives tend to be specialists in obstructionism and division, and why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.
.
The Great Depression

In 1921 -- eight years before the great depression -- Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than any other -- scandal. It was during Harding's presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States -- until Nixon's (Watergate), then Reagan's (Iran\Contra), and finally Bush's (Iraqi War).
.
Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge's policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to follow.
.
In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
.
During Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
.
In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
.
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 and no paid vacation. In addition, since there were no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
.
As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So, in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids,
  ragged
they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. At this very moment the Republican Party is attacking Social Security, Medicare, Education and many other programs to force the poor and middle class to pay for the huge deficit created by their $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich.

THE NEW DEAL
.
But finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the "Brain Trust." After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a" New Deal" for the working- class people of this country.
.
The New Deal had two components -- one, to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people, and to ensure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected worker’s rights and set a minimum wage for workers, and all of these programs are under brutal attack by the Republican Party as we speak.
.
With his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this "bleeding heart liberal", not only led this country out of the worst, Republican generated crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained era of prosperity that the world has ever known.
.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes seems to supersede all logic. Thus, from the moment the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" -- and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.

.
Our grandparent’s generation, the generation that experienced the Great
Depression, fought WWII, and who we refer to as "The Greatest Generation", wouldn't let a Republican anywhere near the White House. 
During their era, Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to office four times, and finally died in office on April 12, 1945. The Republicans had to promote the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution limiting the president to two terms in office just to have even a remote chance of getting into office. But finally in 1953 they managed to elect the hero of WWII, Republican, Ike Eisenhower to office, but even he was a Republican in name only - in 1957 he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to integrate a segregated school after Gov. Orval Faubus tried to prevent Black students from entering, and as his final act in office he warned America about the Military-Industrial Complex, the very people that Donald Trump and the Republican Party represent today.

So here we are 243 years later and the conservatives are still at it - attacking our educational system, trying their best to destabilize or destroy any program that prevent the average American from being totally reliant on them, and stirring up hatred, fear, and animosity among the people to keep divided and from thinking clearly.
.
REPUBLICANS LYING TO COVERUP RUSSIAN 
ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
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Rep. Goetz, you're lying. Trump was not exonerated, and you know it. Read the Mueller report. Mueller said he couldn't “ESTABLISH” evidence of a Russian conspiracy due to witnesses lying and the destruction of evidence. But he did prove over 140 Trump campaign contacts with the Russians and at least 10 cases of Obstruction of Justice.

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REPUBLICAN DECEPTION




THINK ABOUT IT.


Eric L. Wattree

Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 


Sphere: Related Content

Sunday, December 02, 2018

AMERICA NEEDS TO BECOME INFORMED OF THE GOP'S TRUE AGENDA

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

AMERICA NEEDS TO BECOME INFORMED OF THE GOP'S TRUE AGENDA
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One of the biggest problems that we have in the country today is that far too many Americans are less than informed about the Republican Party’s true agenda. Conservatives aren’t simply out to modify public policy, they’re out to completely change our form of government, and that has ALWAYS been the case since the days of our founding fathers. One angry liberal told me the following:
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Comment by Dorian:
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“The problems are not being caused by the GOP only, Democrats have also helped them strip you of your rights.”
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Response:
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Dorian, you're talking politics -You don't like neo-liberalism, and neither do I - but what I'm talking about is a historic philosophy that goes far beyond the intra-Democratic fight between the neo-liberal and Social Democratic factions within the Democratic Party. What I'm talking about is the fact that conservatives have ALWAYS been the domestic enemy of working class Americans. It goes all the way back to our founding fathers. So what the Democrats are squabbling over is insignificant compared to the GOP. The GOP is not simply out to change public policy, conservatives don't believe in democracy as a philosophical concept at all (except among the ruling class), so they’re out to change our fundamental  way of life. The leaders of the conservative movement believe that an aristocratic class should control the nation, and that working-class Americans were only put here to attend to their comfort and needs, and they ALWAYS have. Working class conservatives have just been duped. That's why they're primarily made up of the undereducated.
.
Alexander Hamilton, one of this nation’s leading conservative thinkers among our founding fathers believed that the rich and "wellborn" should be given a permanent share in government. He said:
.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people…. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”
.
Hamilton supported a lifetime appointment of the President after being selected by congress (or "the rich and wellborn"), instead of the people as a whole - can you just imagine that, Donald Trump FOR LIFE!!!? But America dodged that bullet during the Federalist Convention that took place between May 14 and September 17, 1787.
.
Since most of the founding fathers came to America to escape the aristocratic class system in Europe, Hamilton’s desire to preserve the class system was resoundingly defeated in favor of an unfettered democracy, but that didn’t mean that people of Hamilton’s point of view would quietly go away. Instead, they lowered their profile and continued to pursue their agenda by using their wealth, power, and various strategies to divide the people to achieve their goal, and that’s what we see today. That accounts for why conservatives tend to specialize in obstruction, greed, anger, and division, and that's also why the American people ALWAYS suffer under conservative governance.

CHILD LABOR
So make no mistake about it, there's a huge difference between the Democrats and Republicans. At least Democrats have to PRETEND to believe in equality, but conservatives have NEVER bought into true democracy. That's why they have absolutely no problem with voter suppression, giving themselves a $1.5 trillion tax cut and making the working class pay for it by taking away their Social Security and Medicare, and many other grossly undemocratic policies. Again, they're out to create an aristocratic class and turn the average American into part of a proletariat with the primary function of attending to their needs. Any American who wants to see a perfect model of the conservative vision in action need only look back to the Great Depression, or within the class system of our current corporations.
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This is just a snapshot view of the GOP for those who have short attention spans. For an expanded version of what conservatives represent, click on the link below - and it's not based on an ideological opinion, but the historic record. This writer is neither a Democrat, nor a Republican:
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ATTENTION AMERICA! STANDUP AGAINST THE CONSERVATIVE THREAT
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http://wattree.blogspot.com/2018/07/attention-america.html

 REPUBLICAN SENATE MAJORITY LEADER 
MITCH McCONNELL'S STATE
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Friday, January 29, 2016

THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES


Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

 THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES

For the past thirty-five years the Corporate-GOP Alliance has been engaged in a brutal assault on the American people. They've sent our jobs out of the country, while at the same time, the Republican congress has blocked any funding for the government to create jobs by repairing the nation's badly deteriorating infrastructure, which was a highly successful tactic used to rescue the nation from the Great Depression. These actions have subjected the American people to needless suffering while corporations are enjoying record profits.
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At the same time, they abolished the "Fairness Doctrine," which forced broadcasters to give equal time to opposing views, and then they completely took over the mainstream media, which allowed them to lie with impunity. Thereafter, they began to subject the American people to an intense campaign of corporate brainwashing and disinformation over the cause of their suffering, and they mounted a vicious attack on our educational system. Teachers are being demonized, elementary, middle, and senior high schools are being defunded, and the cost of college has been placed beyond the reach of the Average American without going deeply in debt. Then, to ensure these policies remained in place, the Republican led Supreme Court ruling on "Citizens United" gave a foreign CEO based in Singapore more control over the American political system than an American citizen.
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All of this wasn't done without reason, and that reason is clear. The corporate establishment in this country is trying to create a permanent underclass that will be completely dependent upon their every whim.  By the time they're done, the options of the average working-class American will be few - they can either work for slave wages, or they can go into the military and lay their lives on the line in an endless string of wars to pad the pockets of a growing number of war profiteers. So they are forcing the poor and middle class to pay for the wars, and then fight the wars - because the children of the rich are no longer even expected to die for this country; that's the job of the 'little people'. Thereafter, while the war profiteers are raking in all the profits from poor and middle-class death and misery, when the veterans come home wounded or completely disabled, they call them deadbeats and cut their benefits. Those are not the actions of American patriots.
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"In Congress, Republicans in both chambers have launched sweeping attacks on long-held centrist priorities and have renewed threats to block Obamacare. These attacks are seen in House bills slashing spending in almost every federal program except for the military [they didn't cut the military budget because that money is funneled back into the pocket of war profiteers] and domestic policing for the federal fiscal year starting October 1. Anti-poverty, education, human services, environmental protection, energy, labor, Wall St. oversight-all face cuts averaging 20 percent, although some areas face cuts by a third or more.
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"Rabid Republicans are also acting with renewed zeal to roll back voting rights in key Southern states. In
North Carolina and Texas, GOP-led legislatures are resurrecting a catalogue of Jim Crow-era barriers to minority voting, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning of the 1965 Voting Right Act's toughest enforcement provision. In North Carolina, the GOP wants to repeal 20 years of best practices that made North Carolina a model of fair and accessible elections. In Texas, the GOP wants to revise political districts to dilute minority representation and pass tougher voter ID laws."

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/18636-six-ways-rabid-republicans-are-declaring-war-on-america
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Nevertheless, most Republicans tend to wrap themselves in the American flag and walk around with flag pins in their lapels, but their unconscionable assault on the American people is anything but patriotic. Their purposeful undermining and exploitation of the American people could only be perpetrated by a greedy, power-hungry, and self-serving domestic enemy of this nation. But due to the affects of corporate brainwashing, they have the American people divided and at one another's throat instead of seeing reality for what it is.
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Americans aren't suffering because of their fellow citizens; they’re suffering because they’re being robbed blind by the Corporate-Republican Alliance. Undocumented workers aren’t taking their jobs; their jobs are being sent out of the country in order to make the American middle class more accepting of a lower standard of living. And labor unions are not what’s destroying jobs; jobs are being outsourced to destroy labor unions. Yet, corporate conservatives have a shrinking middle class railing against the poor, Blacks against undocumented workers, and Christians against any, and everyone, who doesn't look, think, and act like themselves. Thus, the most lethal weapons against American democracy - hatred, suffering, ignorance, and division - is being used against us, and the Corporate-Republican Alliance are using those weapons quite effectively in reverting a previously thriving American democracy into what is beginning to look ominously close to a third-world nation.
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So it is essential that the American people open their eyes and take this threat to our democracy seriously, because this nation is sliding downhill, and very fast. Who would ever have thought that they would live to see a vice president of the United States outing an American CIA agent, or 47 American senators sending a treasonous letter to a foreign head of state in an attempt to undermine American diplomacy on behalf of a second foreign power. And who would have thought that we'd ever see in our lifetime a governor of a state knowingly exposing a city of 100,000 people to led poisoning, which will retard the intellectual growth of children and have a negative impact on their health for the rest of their lives? And considering the fact that the city is predominantly Black, and the minority of White people there are poor, it's Hitlerian in its ramifications. So Rick Snyder should not only be forced to resign, but he should be charged, at the very least, with criminal negligence, because every time we allow the Republicans to get away with something like this, they take it one step further. That's why the nation is sliding downhill so fast.
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And again, the assaults being perpetrated against America listed above would have been unheard of in the United States just a short time ago, and it's all being done by greedy and self-serving Republican politicians who are completely disinterested in the interest of the American people. Their interest lie in America remaining miserable, angry, and divided, and they're doing everything in their power to keep us that way.
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So these are not traditional American politicians that we're dealing with here. We're now in a class war, and these Republican politicians are the enemy's assault troops.  So regardless to your race, creed, or color, if you don't have a few million dollars stashed away somewhere, you're their enemy. These are the very "domestic enemies" of the United States that we were warned about in our founding documents.
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And these people didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They've been around as "sleeper cells" since the very founding of this nation; they've just had to keep a low profile to carry out their agenda. Because many fiscal conservatives are not just racist, they're also class bigots. One of the founding fathers of conservative thought was Alexander Hamilton. He was an aristocrat who advocated that poor and middle-class Americans should be relegated to second-class citizenship, and the GOP has fully embraced his agenda. Hamilton said the following:
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AND THESE ARE NOT JUST THE BENEFITS
OF MINORITIES OR
LIBERALS THEY'RE GOING AFTER
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
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While Hamilton’s position was resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of the founding fathers - whose primary reason for coming to America in the first place was to get away from the European class system - there were many of Hamilton’s ilk who chose not to recognize the American ideal that "All men [and women] are created equal." Then they were later joined by Southern Dixiecrats, or social bigots, who also rejected the ideal of human equality.
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But what social conservatives fail to realize is that the corporate conservative's rejection of human equality includes them. Corporate conservatives don't care any more about them than they do any minority.  They're just being used to keep America divided, but once the corporatists seize firm control over the government, and social bigots are no longer needed, they're going to be thrown onto a virtual plantation right along with everyone else. The attempt to hide that fact is what accounts for the corporate conservative's intense distaste for public education.
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Corporate conservatives want to restore control over the American worker that they had during the Great Depression, and if you take a close look at the Republican platform it is clear that they're on a single-minded mission to do just that.  During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work, they had no income so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents as well. So there was often three generations of a family in one household – and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and wife, lived with the family.
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As a result, in some cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery – the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
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In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of the grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them – and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family – sick grandparents and all – would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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Thus, corporate conservatives depend on a poorly educated public for their very survival, because even a rudimentary familiarity with history would reveal both their background, and agenda. They don't want you to know that the people who lived through the Great Depression and fought WWII, the people who we refer to as "The Greatest Generation," wouldn't let a Republican anywhere near the White House.
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Our grandparents elected Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt into office an unprecedented four terms, from 1932 until he died in office in 1945. Thereafter, Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, had to push for the Twenty-Second Amendment creating presidential term limits for a Republican to even get a whiff of the White House, and even then, a Republican wasn’t elected until Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 – and he was only elected because he was the allied commander credited with winning WWII, and he was a Republican in name only.  He signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and sent troops into Little Rock Arkansas to integrate the schools.
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In addition, as President Eisenhower’s very last act of office he warned the American people of the military/industrial complex, or people like Dick Cheney and the kind of Republicans we have in office today. He had no use for them. Ike would have summarily shot Dick Cheney had he been in office when Cheney allegedly outed CIA operative, Valarie Plame.
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So the “Greatest Generation” understood what we’re only now finding out the hard way about the Republican Party due to the GOP’s systematic dismantling of our information and educational systems – their pronounced greed and lust for power has rendered them prone to being reckless, irresponsible, without limits, and a danger to our democracy. That's why they Hate Donald Trump, because he's making all of their shortcomings and hidden agenda glaringly clear to the public.
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DONALD TRUMP IS A CAPITIALIST AND A BAD JOKE, BUT HE SERVES A USEFUL PURPOSE - HE REVEALS HOW CONSERVATIVES REALLY THINK.
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Donald Trump is an ignorant, mean-spirited, xenophobic, and self-serving racist who's willing to tell any lie he can conjure up to promote his own interest. That makes him the quintessential Republican, and that's exactly why he's leading in the Republican polls. But the Trump phenomenon says it all. While the GOP establishment is distancing themselves from Trump, it's not because they disagree with what he's saying, it's because he's either too dumb, or too self-serving to realize that he's not suppose to be saying what conservatives truly believe out loud.  While the Republican establishment has been saying the exact same things as Trump for years, they’ve been saying it in political code, and with a wink.
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So the Republican establishment is afraid that this Trump episode will openly reveal their unspoken assault on the American people for decades, and the facts are simple - while the Corporate-Republican Alliance are all wearing American flag pins in their lapels and constantly paying lip-service to wanting to bring prosperity to the average American, an unequivocal historic record clearly demonstrates that this has never been the case, and not only that, it has never even been a part of the GOP's agenda.
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So in the 2016 election the American people are going to be given a choice to come clean. Do they really want the kind of America that they're always bragging about and profess to believe in, or do they actually want a fascist nation that subjugates the working class, demonizes minorities, and supports a Gestapo-like police forces that kill innocent Black children on the street with impunity? For those rabid conservatives who feel like they could live with the latter, they should think long and hard, because as their current living conditions suggest, this time it's not about simply establishing an Aryan nation, it's about establishing a corporate feudalist oligarchy where poor and working-class White people and their families are just as meaningless as any minority. Think about it - did they only send Black jobs out of the country? I don't think so. Are they now, even as I write, trying to take away the Social Security and Veterans benefits of only minorities?  No they aren't. And did Gov. Rick Snyder only expose Black people to lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan? Not really. So the facts are clear.  If you’re a poor or middle-class White person who don't have millions of dollars stashed away in a foreign account somewhere, they intend to make you the new 'coon,' just like they did during the Great Depression.

A SOCIAL BIGOT
As a final comment to social bigots, while I would hate to see America come crashing down as a result of our own stupidity, if worse comes to worst, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I wouldn't get a certain measure of satisfaction out of watching bigots get just what they deserve. You see, Black people are accustomed to dealing with the kind of adversity that would befall this nation. During the Great Depression while White folks were jumping off buildings, Black people were partying through the Harlem Renaissance and enjoying one of the most productive and creative periods in our history. So the irony is, in many respects the Great Depression worked to the advantage of Black people, because it leveled the playing field. During the depression White people were force to live under the very same conditions that Black people have been forced to deal with all of their lives - both then, and now. But due to the affirmative action program that White folks have benefited from in this society over the years, they just aren't equipped to deal with adversity. If you're already out to sea, you don't even feel a tsunami beneath you, it is only those who are living warm and comfortable on land who experience the devastation of its impact. That explains why my grandfather never even mentioned the Great Depression to me, because for him, it was just business as usual.

A BLACK WOMAN 'STRUGGLING' THROUGH
THE GREAT DEPRESSION 
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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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