Could Obama Fall Victim to a Lack of Change We Can Believe in? (Reprise)

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Could Obama Fall Victim to a Lack of Change We Can Believe in? (Reprise)

In light of what's currently going on in the country I thought this would be an appropriate time to reprise this article that was published on November 2, 2009.

At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents.

The biggest problem that Obama currently faces is becoming a victim of his own effectiveness. During the campaign he raised the nation's expectation so high that just being a good president won't do. He promised a change that we can believe in, which led many of us to believe that he intended to trash the way business is done in Washington, but that promise seems to be totally inconsistent with what seems to be his irrepressible desire to hold hands and sing Kum By Ya with the very Republican leaders from which we wanted a change.

This has fueled the growing suspicion by many that both parties are beholding to the same cabal of power, and only feign having differing philosophies toward governance. That suspicion lies very close to the surface for many Independents - after all, that's why they're Independents in the first place.

And President Obama hasn't helped himself in that regard. For a man who is ordinarily so politically astute, even before he became president he did a curious flip-flop on the FISA issue. According to Greenchange.org, on October 24, 2007, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign indicated, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But by June 20, 2008, Obama issued a statement reversing his position, indicating that our national security needs were more important than his objections.

That deeply disappointed many Independents, since a citizen's right to sue a telecommunications company for invading his or her privacy in violation of the law has nothing to do with national security. Those are the very constitutional rights that we're trying to keep secure. But while many Independents have kept that in mind, at least Obama had the integrity to take that stand prior to our making the decision on whether or not to vote for him.

But then once he was elected President, Obama made another curious statement with regard to the criminal activities and alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration. In spite of the fact that there are strong allegations and prima facie evidence of torture, and some of the most unconscionable violations of the Geneva Convention since the Nuremberg trials, President Obama stated that he wanted to move the nation forward, and not look back.

Many Independents have two problems with that. First of all, President Obama seems much too willing to move forward with regard to the fat cats, while lower-ranking personnel are rotting in prison. That's in direct conflict with the American ideal of equal justice under the law. And secondly, since most of these atrocities were committed against the citizens of other nations, it is the height of arrogance for us to be "the deciders" of whether or not those responsible should be held accountable. That also runs contrary to American ideals, and the concept of "a shining city on the hill."

And now we're talking about sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan. The question is, why? The nation has yet to be provided with a reasonable explanation of why we should be meddling, once again, in another country's internal affairs. One would think we would have learned something about the futility of that by now. It's a recipe for disaster.

There's only two legitimate reasons to have our troops in that part of the world. The first is obvious - to make damn sure the nuclear missiles in Pakistan don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. The second reason is to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. So why can't we simply pull out of Afghanistan and deploy enough troops in Pakistan to protect the missiles, then let the CIA and law enforcement deal with Osama? That way we save both treasure and lives, and we're not creating more enemies for the United States by killing innocent people.

But many Independents suspect that there's another agenda afoot. Actually, Cheney's giving it away. Independents recognize that Dick Cheney has absolutely no integrity, so when he gets passionate over an issue we know to follow either the money or power. Thus, many Independents suspect that what's actually behind Cheney's insistence that we go recklessly rushing into Afghanistan has much more to do with Halliburton's bottom line than it does America's best interest. And while Obama has shown himself to be an excellent president in many ways, his one shortcoming - and a shortcoming that may very well bring him down in the end - is his tendency to try to appease the stupidity and greed of the GOP.

The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.

I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan [and now Libya] that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The president should think about that possibility, since the machinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.

On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify.

And he'd look even better if he allowed Attorney General Holder to do his job with respect to the Bush administration's war crimes. First, he'd firm up his base by restoring their confidence that he stands for the rule of law, and he would also allay the fear that he might be a puppet, controlled by some powerful cabal.

Another upside to that is that once Holder begins his investigation into the Bush administration, there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to find criminality, cronyism, and corruption seeping so deep within the GOP that Republicans will be so busy snitching on one another, and covering their own asses, that they won't have the time to plot against either him, or the American people.

Now, THAT, would be a change that we could believe in.


Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Christian 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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RE: Why Black Americans Reject the Conservative Movement

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

RE: Why Black Americans Reject the Conservative Movement

Mr. Kuhner,

My name is Eric L. Wattree. I'm Black, and I’ve been a independent voter all of my voting life. I was recently referred to an article that appeared in your publication, written by Tracey L. Wells, entitled "Why black Americans reject the conservative movement."

After reading the article I was both insulted and appalled. Not only did I find the article to be a gross generalization of all Black people, as though we lack the ability to engage in independent thought, but the tone of the article was grossly condescending toward the Black community and totally lacking in any substantive facts to support her thesis. In fact, the article itself serves as a monument to why many Black voters reject the conservative mindset.

In addition, Ms. Wells states the following:

"Blacks are influenced by five major myths in their voting patterns. When black conservatives attempt to introduce fact and research into a political discussion with a black Democrat or liberal, we soon realize that getting our opponent to acknowledge these myths is like asking someone to give up their favorite sports team and root for the rival team. Simply put, an overwhelming majority of blacks continue to vote Democrat."

After reading the above assertion I was fully prepared to hear some of the "facts and research" she spoke of - after all, she had the floor, and since Ms. Wells is representing herself as a writer I assumed she understood that after making an assertion, she should start backing that assertion up with facts in the following sentence, or no later than the following paragraph. English 101.

But instead, she began to spue Republican talking points, indicating that Black voters were simply following the influence of others, as though Black voters are simply being led like mindless cattle - which, by the way, is an assertion that she can't possibly substantiate, that is, unless she's also a mind reader. Thus, I found her assessment in this regard to be not only less than insightful, but again, condescending and insulting.

Therefore, I'd like to offer two of my own articles, linked below, in rebuttal to Ms. Wells. As a realist, however, I have no reason to believe that you’re going to publish either of the two articles. They are, after all, inconsistent with your agenda. But I offer them nevertheless, if for no other reason than for your own education. But I will take this opportunity to sum them up.

Black people reject the conservative movement because we’re not stupid:

“A Challenge to GOP Revisionism”

“The GOP: A One Hundred History of Swindling the American People”

Finally, please see to it that Ms. Wells receives a copy of this response just in case she may want to respond. I'd love to hear from her. Perhaps we could collaborate on a piece debating the issue.

Personally I take the position that it’s not the Black community that is out of touch, but Ms. Wells. Granted, we have many problems in the Black community, but thank God, being idiotic enough to vote Republican is not among them.

****

Actually, what’s both curious, and insulting, is why conservatives can’t understand the reason that most Black people see the GOP in exactly the same light as the GOP sees Al Qaeda. After all, the people who lynched Black people in the South may have called themselves Dixiecrats, but the bottom line is, they were radical conservatives, and they eventually migrated to the Republican party. So why should Black people hate radical conservatives any less than the GOP hates Al Qaeda - they killed many more Blacks, and for a much longer period of time? The only logical reason that conservatives can’t seem to grasp this very simple concept is that they obviously believe that the lives they took were not of equal value to the lives taken on 9/11.

At this point conservatives would start to argue semantics. They’d say, “It wasn’t Republicans who were lynching Black people in the South, it was Democrats.” But the fact is, during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats.

Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. Black people have no problem with this faction of the Republican party. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots. It is these two groups in which Black people have a problem, and will never support.

Contrary to popular belief, Blacks have a much better grasp of the English language than we’re often given credit for. The term “conservative” indicates that the GOP has a vested interest in preserving the American values of the past. While most Americans have a laundered view of what those values represent, Black people are under no illusions. Call it cultural intelligence, but Black people understand that “preserving traditional American values” is conservative politispeak for dragging America back to a racist, sexist, and genocidal dark age. In fact, even worse, because now the corporatist also want to oppress poor and middle-class White people as well - this time they’re not going to leave any “bleeding hearts” around to go to war over the issue.

But Black people have an intimate understanding of the conservative mindset. We have a cultural memory of Southern bigots running out of church with picnic baskets to watch Black men being lynched. We can also see that the conservative predisposition has not changed. If they can condone invading an innocent nation and killing nearly a million people, then condemn an entire religion as “Islamofascists” for the actions of a handful of zealots, they’re undoubtedly still Judeo-Christian fascist themselves.

That’s the actual reason that Black people reject the conservative movement, because we see them as brutal, self-serving, and un-American. And very soon many more Americans are going to join us, because the true nature of radical conservatism is now coming out in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, and literally all over the country. It has become clear that the actions of the GOP are neither pragmatic nor spontaneous. It is also becoming increasingly clear that radical conservatives are now engaged in a conspiracy to enslave all poor and middle-class Americans, regardless of race.


Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Christian 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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An Indictment against the Mainstream Media (Reprise)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

An Indictment against the Mainstream Media (Reprise)

On September 15, 2002 - six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion - I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center (no one else would publish it at the time) that said the following:

Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought - in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.

Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls - and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.

It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed - Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.

While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was - thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.

But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, he simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly - or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.

What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.

So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.

1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself reelected.
2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.

The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.

These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.***

So what I'd like to know is this - if a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on, why couldn't the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the other media networks; why couldn't Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning; and why couldn't the nation's so called "think tanks," all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out?

The answer is, they had, but they simply turned their backs and allowed young patriotic Americans to march off to their deaths. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died. 

Now, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, etc., the corporate media, with notable exceptions, is turning a blind eye and allowing the same thing to happen again, but this time, to America as a whole.

God help us.


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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Has the GOP Become a Threat to America?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Has the GOP Become a Threat to America?

The current leadership of the GOP is the most dangerous threat to America in the history of this country. Hyperbole? I wish it were. But the evidence clearly demonstrates that the GOP has mounted a concerted effort to circumvent the American people and install a modern-day feudalism that effectively abolishes the will of the people and their elected officials to allow our cities and states to be run by corporate-like CEOs - and there’s no telling where it will go from there.

In spite of the GOP claim that they believe in limited government, The Michigan Messenger has reported that newly elected Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is poised to sign an emergency management bill that will hand total control of local governments over to "emergency managers" appointed by the government.

The Messenger reports:

"In a party line vote, and despite impassioned speeches of protest by the body’s Democratic minority, the Michigan Senate approved legislation that threatens to take over and even dissolve local governments that refuse to balance their budgets by breaking labor contracts.

"According to the law, which has already been approved in the House, the governor will be able to declare "financial emergency" in towns or school districts and appoint someone to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services."

According to the Messenger, in a last ditch effort to protect the rights of the citizens, Democrats tried to add an amendment that would require "Emergency Managers" to hold monthly public accountability meetings to inform the citizens of how they are governing, but the amendment was voted down by the Republican senate.

Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan state AFL-CIO is quoted as saying,

"It takes every decision in a city or school district and puts it in the hands of the manager, from when the streets get plowed to who plows them and how much they are paid. In schools, the manager would decide academics or if you have athletics. This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen."

Thus, the GOP, this party of "limited government," intends to completely take over the local governments under their jurisdiction, rescind the will of the voting public, and thumb their noses at any amendment that will require public accountability. And this power-grab is also taking place in other Republican-led states around the country.

This action and what’s going on in Wisconsin and other Republican-led states clearly demonstrates that the leaders of the modern GOP are without limits. To put it bluntly, these people are un-American. They are fundamentally opposed to our way of life, and greatly prefer a dictatorial form of government. George W. Bush let the cat out of the bag by admitting it when he said, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier…just as long as I'm the dictator."

Americans need to wake up and connect the dots. The GOP now claims that they are so concerned about the deficit that they must suspend the United States Constitution, yet they weren’t concerned enough about it to suspend giving the top 2% of the population a tax cut that will add $4 Trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. Neither were they concerned enough about the deficit to discontinue taxpayer subsidies to Exxon, one of the riches corporations in the world, nor prevent the political class in congress from giving themselves an extra $93,000 in "petty cash."

And while they claim to love our troops, they rushed them into battle in Iraq without the necessary gear to protect their lives, and they awarded Dick Cheney’s former corporation, Halliburton (KBR), a no-bid contract to provide the troops with contaminated water and do such shoddy contracting work that at least 18 of our troops were electrocuted while in the shower. The Department of the Army classified their deaths as "negligent homicide." Then, if that weren't enough, the GOP fought tooth and nail against giving the troops any additional benefits when they left the service - inspite of the fact that our troops in Iraq were forced into extended tours of duty and spend more tours of duty in a battle zone than any other troops in American history.

The GOP has demonstrated over the past forty years that they are conniving, lack limits, self-serving, and have little or no respect for the rule of law. Richard Nixon was forced to resign after being involved in the plot to burglarize the DNC in theWatergate Scandal, and there’s evidence that strongly suggests that Ronald Reagan was in collusion with the Iranians to hold American hostages until after he won the presidential election (The hostages were released immediately after he took the oath of office). Reagan also traded arms with his newfound friends during the Iran/Contra scandal. In addition, he flooded American inner cities with drugs to support his illegal war in Nicaragua, then suggested that inner city children "just say no."

Republican, George W. Bush then went on to lie us into the war with Iraq, costing more than a million lives, including the killing and maiming of thousands of Americans troops. His administration also spied on American citizens, Cheney committed treason by outing a CIA agent, they committed war crimes that included torturing prisoners, and they purposely ravaged the national treasury. Now they’re using the excuse of a depleted treasury to claim "a national emergency" in order to mount yet another assault on the Constitution. And in the meantime, Republicans in congress are demonizing an entire religion as "Islamofascists" to spread hatred and fear and to distract our attention from their horrific agenda.

Doesn’t that feel just the least bit like deja vu?  If it doesn't it's probably because you're a victim of the GOP assault on our educational system. They have a vested interest in keeping you uninformed, because they don't want you to realize that while you may be on their side, they're not on yours.  They think of the American people as stupid, and they want to keep us that way.

"Fascism: A radical, authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy." - Wikipedia

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The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People

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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The GOP Doesn’t Want to Govern - They Want to Rule

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

The GOP Doesn’t Want to Govern - They Want to Rule

Just in case anyone missed the title of this piece, allow me to repeat it. “The GOP doesn’t want to govern - they want to rule,” and anyone with an objective mind should be able to see that. But unfortunately, politics is much like religion - no matter how much evidence is brought to bear that a person’s preacher is a hypocrite, a crook, and a pedophile, many of the people in the church will refuse to believe their lying eyes, because it’s not what they want to see.

In such a case, all the preacher would have to say is, “The Lord came to me in a dream and commanded me to lay down with that 14-year-old girl. At first I couldn’t understand it. So I asked, ‘But Lord, how can you ask me to commit such a horrid offense? I have a family and a loving wife of 22 years, and this young girl is but a mere child!’ But the Lord said, ‘Let my will be done, my son. It is better for this child to learn the error of her ungodly ways under your gentle hand, than through the brutality of the street.’ So as a servant of God, I had no choice but to do his will.”

By the time the preacher is done, half the people in the church would be saying, “Amen! You a servant of God - you gotta do his will.”

Sound ridiculous? Of course it does, but no more ridiculous than the GOP telling us that we must sacrifice the well being of our own families to subsidize international corporations and the top 2% of the wealthiest people in this country, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. The GOP has convinced a sizable number of Americans that the desire to protect their own families from corporate abuse is due to the socialist influences in society.

Many of us are buying into that nonsense hook-line-and-sinker, in spite of the fact that the facts scream that the GOP could care less about the well being of poor and middle-class Americans. In fact, it is their intention to destroy the middle class, because a vibrant and educated middle class is an obstacle in the way of total corporate control of America. But just like the members of the church mentioned above, we’re refusing to believe our lying eyes.

In the 50's, 60's, and 70's, big business and labor had a symbiotic relationship. American corporations would hire the poor and middle class and provide them with a good job with a living wage and good benefits for life. In return the working class had the money to purchase the products that the corporations produced. They also had the money to spread throughout the economy by going on vacations, and buying homes, cars, and appliances, etc. Thus, business and labor had forged a perfect relationship, and America thrived.

Then under the Ronald Reagan era of reckless deregulation the corporatists became greedy and began to embrace a scheme hatched by U.S.C. Professor, Arthur Laffer.  The scheme was called supply-side Economics, or “trickle down,” if you will. The theory behind this scam, that came to be known as "Reaganomics," was ostensibly, if we cut taxes for businesses and people in the upper tax brackets, then deregulated businesses of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. As a result, business would prosper, and the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. In addition, the resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget.

When the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics." And Bush Sr was right. What actually happened was instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the company one piece at a time. This practice was a major contributor to destroying our industrial base, and it changed America from being a producer nation with plenty of jobs, to a consumer nation with very few.

In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years BEFORE the Great Depression (Isn’t it curious how these things always seem to happen under Republican presidents?).

Currently, our economy is no longer insular. We’re in a global economy. What’s left of what were formerly American corporations are now international, and spread out all over the world. That has brought about two major changes. First, corporations no longer have to depend on American workers to buy their goods. They now have markets all over the world, so they’re much less concerned about the economic health of poor and middle class Americans.  Our only value is as a piggy bank when they need to be bailed out, or to be squeezed - like now, by sending jobs overseas - when they want to manipulate our political system or want concessions from the government.

Secondly, since these corporations must now compete with countries where workers make less per week than many American workers spend on lunch per day, the standard of living of the American middle class has become a liability. Thus, the corporatists view this as a situation that must be corrected.  So they're putting all of their effort into lowering the standard of living of the American middle class, and the GOP is being subsidized to do just that.  The impact of that effort is what we're currently seeing in Wisconsin.

So what Gov. Walker of Wisconsin is engaged in has absolutely nothing to do with the budget or the deficit. The public employee unions in Wisconsin had already agreed to make the necessary concessions to cover budgetary shortfalls. Gov. Walker is engaged in union busting in order to cut the legs from under middle class workers. That would serve two useful purposes - it will both bring down the standard of living of the middle class, and it will also leave the poor and middle class without an organized front to oppose the GOP in coming elections.

I’ve been discussing this issue for quite some time now. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve been so fixated on the United States Postal Service. I’ve long since recognized that the theft of wages, employee abuse, and the general mistreatment of postal workers with impunity represents a fundamental change in the U.S. government’s attitude toward the nation’s poor and middle-class workers. I started predicting several years ago that the postal service is a microcosm of what is in store for the rest of the nation, but I’ve found that trying to warn the public of a pending threat is like spitting in the wind. But now, in Wisconsin, the chickens are coming home to roost.

THE GOP: A ONE HUNDRED YEAR RECORD OF SWINDLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

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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To JoAnn Snow on Women’s History Month

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

 

To JoAnn Snow on Women’s History Month

ODE TO A FRIEND

Casual friends will often tell you
they'll love you through thick and thin;
their love is without condition,
and they'll love you until the end.

But when times are good it's easy to love,
and proclaim devotion as friend;
it's when the champagne is gone, and the music ends,
that true friendship begins.

It's when times are gloomy
and the party is over,
when one truly needs a friend,
and at times like those
you can always depend
on my friendship kickin' in.

Friendship
represents the meeting of two souls,
entwined in a comfortable embrace;
Not merely sensual, but warm like family,
in this cruel and unfriendly place.

Friends
validate their own existence,
lending independence to the soul;
They slay their dragons from a warm cocoon,
with a kindred spirit to console.

Friendship,
like a poem,
is the sweet breath of God,
as he sings to a loved one's ear;
A love song scored by a master,
but not always
for the masses to hear.

So,
sincere of heart
I sing my song
to one so warm and dear;
Your smile is a treasured work of art,
and its essence
will always keep me near.

Eric

Thank you, baby, for constantly pushing me, checking on me when I fall off the radar, and always being there to nurse this Black man's wounds.  Yeah, I've noticed.

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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ONE FOR BOOMER

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

ONE FOR BOOMER

Receding hairline, failing vision,

hair now turning grey,

an aging boomer in final protest,

Father Time his foe this day.

Donning his headband, tie-dyed jeans,

and scorched draft card of protests past,

he set out for one last battle,

as in his youth that had quietly passed.

Ode to an aging Boomer,

a different kind of man;

colleagues all now in the wind,

as he makes his final stand.

But he found no placards or the sound of Trane,

no passionate speeches in the gentle rain,

no pretty girls wearing mini skirts,

and no solemn guards on pig alert.

All he found was a new America,

and more freedom across this land;

the fruit of his struggle

for women's equality,

and the rights of his fellow man.

He found Martin, Chavez, and Malcolm X,

all standing by his side;

He found Thomas Jefferson

and all his forefathers

beaming down with pride.

He found minority children across this land

whose reach now exceed their grasp;

He found Jim Crow angrily cursing him,

as he took his final gasp.

He found pride as an aging boomer,

more hero, than common man;

He found a quirky old fart embraced by history,

for having the courage to take a stand.

Alone, an aging Boomer,

fellow travelers now in the wind;

but one last time he limps to his trench,

to defend his fellow man.

.

.

Eric L. Wattree

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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I Bear Witness

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

I Bear Witness
.

I sit, I watch,
and I grow ever more obsolete
as I bear witness.

.
I bear witness

to a once vibrant people greedily gulping down society’s hemlock. Even as they claim to be “keeping it real,“ they continue to maim, kill, and despise their own in hot pursuit of the prime directive with the passion of a sheetless klan.
.
I bear witness
to Black fists in the air in false solidarity promoted by self-serving poverty pimps as the world looks on and giggle at crooked fingers pointed elsewhere.
.
I bear witness
to the superficial attempt to ban the “N-word” while the new "un-niggas" stand around watching children killing children and fathers drugging sons, as they celebrate, lionize, and enrich those who denigrate the very womb of their culture with impunity.
.
I bear witness
to a generation of lost knowledge, cut off from its roots by Ronnie’s “Just say no” generation of crack, greed, death, and political corruption; A generation where the new N-word is pronounced “Responsibility” and the keepers of the flame completely ignore the destructive power of bitch, slut, whore, and tramp.
.
I bear witness
to the reckless disregard of the words uneducated, irresponsible, and classless. Should we not ban these words as well, or should we ban banning words altogether as we celebrate their meaning?
.
Yes, I do bear witness.
I bear witness to a new world -
a world where gross ignorance comes disguised as enlightenment, and funky sneakers look down with disdain upon the sweet smell of Florsheim; a world where saggin’ pants and gaudy glitter enable country bumpkins to masquerade as elegant, and the exquisite surrender of eloquence is the very essence of what it means to be hip.
.
Where's Langston? Where's Baldwin? Where's Oscar Brown, Jr?
We need you stormin' this beach, because . . .
.
I now bear witness
to a world where motherhood stands alone, to be “dope” renders a smile, and posterity is forced to embrace the wind for paternal sustenance; A world where the walking dead strut about rapping the wisdom of idiocy, and we praise the illiteracy of vulgar nursery rhymes as profound; a world where the mother of salvation's final gasp is compared to the pigmentation of brown paper bags.
.
Malcolm, Martin, where are you?
I once stood with a crowd.
Now seemingly alone, I'm forced to bear witness -
horrific witness . . .
to the imminent demise of our people,
.

And my heart bleeds.

.

.

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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A Lesson in Republican Hypocrisy and Distortions

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Lesson in Republican Hypocrisy and Distortions

.

Is the modern Republican Party really “the party of Lincoln,” and responsible for freeing the slaves? I don’t think so. But the GOP regularly, routinely, and with a straight face makes that claim. One Black Republican recently told me the following:
.
"Black people weren't lynched in the South because they were Black, but because they refused to vote Democratic."
.
And yet another Republican told me:

.

"It was Republicans who beat Democrats in the Civil War, thus freeing the slaves. It was Democrats who started the KKK as its military wing to intimidate the (largely black) Republican party who were running the south after the war. Can a leopard change its spots?? Are the Democrats now the party FOR the black people after being against them for so long? So many of you are duped by the Devil's trickery. a few table scraps from massa's table and you run right back to his side. The Democrat is the racist."

The above assertion is a prime example of how many Republicans can take a kernel of truth and create a banquet of lies. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and so was Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King. But since the Civil War the Republican and Democratic parties have completely changed their relative political positions, so relative to their political philosophy, the modern Republican party bears absolutely no relationship to its predecessor.

Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party was made up of big business interests and Northern aristocrats, and the Democratic Party was made up of Dixiecratcs and Southern agrarian interests - farmers and slave owners. Thus, the Republicans were progressive liberals and the Democrats (or Dixiecrats) were Southern conservative slave owners.

But that began to change during the Great Depression when Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came out against the corporations and to the aid of the poor with his "New Deal for the American People." With the “New Deal,” Democrats ushered in workers’ rights. They created Social Security so the elderly wouldn't have to go to the "Poor House" or become a burden on their children when they became too old to work.

The Democrats also created unemployment insurance so people would have something to fall back on if they lost their jobs, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set rules of conduct for corporations that allowed workers to work with some semblance of dignity. The new law set a minium wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and many other regulations protecting workers.

Prior to the FLSA corporations could work employees for as many hours as they liked, and they often set wages so low that families had to send their children to work just to survive - and many of those children were maimed or killed because they had to work under the most horrific conditions, such as in coal mines and the like.

But after President Roosevelt brought relief to the people with these “big government, socialist programs,” the Democratic Party began to become associated with the common man, and the Republican party embarked upon a single-minded mission to reverse these "bleeding heart liberal" policies and return America to what had previously been the status quo.

Then during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats.

Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent - international business interests, and social bigots.

It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It's made up of wealthy and highly educated individuals with huge amounts of monetary resources, and thus, political influence - and they use every bit of that leverage to manipulate what has become their citizen army - the social bigots. These are the people who hate any and everybody who doesn’t look, think, and act like themselves.

The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting town hall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the “Joe the Plumbers” of the world who are being deluded by corporatist propaganda. Also among their ranks are the diehard racists who are still fighting to promote a segregationist agenda.

But the social bigots are merely the soldiers of the party. The corporatists, who control the GOP, have never lost sight of their seventy-year-old mission to undo the New Deal. But they've found that the safety-net that President Roosevelt provided for the people is much too popular to attack head on, so they had to devise a plan to chip away at it.

Then came 9/11, so they decided to used the war in Iraq to ravage the national treasury. They then gave themselves a $4 trillion taxcut to further deplete the treasury, and now they're telling the poor and middle class, "Sorry, but we no longer have the revenue to fund the programs that you've come to depend on for the past seventy years. And in the meantime, Gov. Scott Walker is hard at work in Wisconsin trying to dismantle the Fair Labor Standards Act.

So, can a leopard change its spots? Yes it can - and with regard to the Democratic and Republican parties, the leopard has changed in a very big way. But the modern GOP has never been prone to allowing the facts to distort a well-crafted lie. That's why they have such a fierce aversion to a well-educated electorate.

Thus, the facts dictate that the modern GOP’s claim to have any connection with President Lincoln whatsoever - other than the enemy of everything he stood for - is not only a gross misrepresentation of history, but a blatant lie. The fact is, if the Civil War was being fought today, the GOP would be the Confederacy.
.
So don't get it twisted. Conservatives have ALWAYS been this nation's bigots, regardless to what party they were in, and they currently populate the GOP in huge numbers.

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PORTRAIT OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE

.

.

. . . Don’t mention it, Abe. I got this.
.

Conservatives and Lower IQ

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Do Racism, Conservatism, and Low I.Q. Go Hand in Hand?

Lower cognitive abilities predict greater prejudice through right-wing ideology.

Published on April 22, 2013 by Goal Auzeen Saedi, Ph.D. in Millennial Media

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand

*

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | January 26, 2012 10:29am ET 

http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html

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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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A Retrospective Against GOP Revisionism

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Retrospective Against GOP Revisionism

I hate to base an entire article on an ad hominem, but the GOP is proving to be such an manipulative, disingenuous, and petulent bunch that it’s virtually impossible to discuss their machinations without using terms like plot, un-American, and collusion. Any attempt to describe their politics without doing so renders the writer disingenuous as well. A good rule of thumb when trying to understand GOP motives, therefore, is to always remember that whatever they accuse their opponent of, is more often than not, exactly what they’re engaged in.

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:

“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).

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.

These are the people who currently run the modern day GOP - corporatists and social bigots who tend to believe that America belongs to them, and the rest of us are simply tolerated due to their “good will and Christian charity.” This is the primary reason that the Republican party’s platform is fiercely hostile to education (‘elitistism’), labor unions, and ‘big government.’ That’s also why they’re such strong advocates of state’s rights.

The corporatists within the GOP are hostile to education because they don’t want the “lower-class” social bigots within in their ranks to realize that they’re being duped into working against their own interests - like healthcare reform, for example. They’re hostile to organized labor and big government because both institutions also tend to protect the rights of the poor and middle class. And they’re strong advocates of state’s rights because the social bigots within their ranks blame big government for usurping the rights of the Southern states by ushering in integration and civil rights.

Thus, the GOP is a party that’s made up of oil and water. The corporatist agenda of those who control the party is diametrically opposed to the interests of their lower-class soldiers who they depend on to stay in power.

The corporatists, for example, want to import as many undocumented workers into the country as possible in order to lower the wages of the American middle class, while many of their socially bigoted soldiers don’t even want legal Hispanics in the country, much less undocumented.

So for many years, in order for the corporatists to make their extremely unpopular agenda palatable to the American people they have had to constantly engage in campaigns of disinformation, conflation, the ‘isms’ (convincing the people that anything that doesn’t cater to the rich and ‘wellborn’ constitutes the un-American‘evil of socialism’), and other divisive tactics that keep the American people engaged in knee-jerk emotionalism instead of logical thought.

Their tactics are clearly transparent. Take the term ‘Obamacare’ for example. The term was coined to keep those who hate that we have a Black president focused on Obama rather than the merits of the program. And the same is true of the term ‘Islamofascists.’ The term was coined in order to promote endless war (and war profits) because it suggests that the war is not just about terrorists, but all Muslems.

If we carried that rationale to its logical conclusion, however, we would have to also condemn all Christians, since those who lynched Blacks in the South and committed genocide against Native Americans were of the Christian faith.

In my article, Ode to a Bleeding Heart , I point out how they used conflation to demonize liberalism:

“When you consider how methodically the conservatives went about mounting their assault on the liberal agenda you can't help but recognize that it was a stroke of genius. Ironically, the conservatives took the Democratic Party's strength and made it a political liability. First they took the party's penchant for being concern with the plight of the downtrodden and coined phrases such as ‘bleeding heart liberals’ and ‘tax and spend Democrats.’ They then played on the frustration of the middle class by tying civil rights legislation, welfare, and crime into one neat bundle as the source of middle class woes; then they attributed all of these problems to what they called the Democrat's tendency to be ‘bleeding heart liberals.’ Once the connection was made between minorities, welfare, crime, and the liberal agenda, it was just a matter of repeatedly hammering the message home.

“In addition, conservatives used such tactics as spitting out the word ‘liberal’ as though they were saying rapist. In that way they not only implanted a negative attitude toward liberalism in the mind of the voter, but it was said in such a way that the implication was made that it went without saying that all the negative stereotyping of liberalism was true. In other words, their attitude seemed to suggest, ‘I could substantiate what I'm saying about liberals, but I don't think it's necessary, since we all know what they're like.’ And in the election that spawned the ‘Republican revolution’ the voters said, yes, we do."

But now the GOP has come upon interesting times. Now, in order to finalize their ultimate objective - to transfer what’s left of the nation’s wealth to the rich, and lower the standard of living of the American middle class - they’re going to have to show their true colors, just like they’re currently doing in Wisconsin.

Injustice and hunger has a way of opening the people’s eyes, however.  So it won’t be long before the people begin to see that the GOP, in collusion with the corporatists, purposely drove America into a ditch by using the Iraq war to ravage the treasury. They then sent our jobs overseas to purposely create high unemployment to restore the GOP to power and depress incoming tax revenue to give themselves an excuse to attack the poor and middle-class safety net.

Eventually the people are going to ask themselves a couple of questions. First, if the GOP is truly concerned about the national debt, why did they give a tax cut to the top 2% of the population that will add an additional $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years? And secondly, why didn’t we hear a peep about the debt, while we were losing our homes and jobs, and congress was voting themselves a $93,000 raise, over and above their salaries, in ‘petty cash?’



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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Is Our Competitive Spirit Helping or Hurting America?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Is Our Competitive Spirit Helping or Hurting America?

We accept a lot of so-called truisms simply because we've been told that they're true all of our lives. Take competition for example. From the day we start school most Americans are taught that our competitive spirit is what makes America great. But is that really true? Is competition really the most productive model for promoting human progress? I don't think so. While recently discussing this issue one gentleman said the following:

“Personally I don’t mind competition. It has brought us better roads, better cars, better airplanes, better vacations, better medicines, longer life spans, and in many cases, except for us damaged Vets, better health.. I don’t see honest competition as dysfunctional at all. Profiteering is okay also, as long as it is honest and based on productivity, job creation and boosting the human spirit. Why shouldn’t I be motivated by money, a bigger house, a nicer restaurant, to create the next Penicillin, the next Salk vaccine, the next aspirin, and all the jobs and opportunities these inventions have provided.”

I’ve heard this argument a million times, but we have absolutely no evidence that any of the things mentioned above are a result of competition. Neither do we have any evidence that suggests that competition is a more powerful motivator than the simple pursuit of excellence. The fact is, competition caters to the very worst in human nature - selfishness, hostility, and greed. Competition is only truly productive when we compete against our last best personal effort.

It's more likely, therefore, that human accomplishment has actually been stifled rather than enhanced by our childish need to be competitive. How much more might we have accomplished if instead of duplicating their efforts in pursuit of competitive greed, drug companies shared their knowledge in an effort to cure disease, or instead of the nations of the world spending trillions of dollars in global competition, that money was being used in a cooperative effort to enhance the plight of mankind?

The mere thought that man's primary imperative is in pursuit of conflict and greed - and that's essentially what competition is - is counterintuitive. The fact is, our tendency to be competitive rather than cooperative is man's primary dysfunction.

It would be interesting to see the results of an experiment where they took two footballs teams and trained one in the traditional way, and trained each member of the other team to focus on nothing but improving on their last best effort. I'm virtually certain that the latter team would prevail if all other things were equal.

And consider what life would be like if as a society we rewarded ourselves on character and intellect instead of how many “things” we could accumulate; if we rewarded our young people for creativity and scholarship instead of how often they could get a ball to go through a hoop; if teachers and scientists were the superstars in our society instead of self-absorbed dysfunctionals. Try to imagine the benefits to our society if young men aspired to getting into the best universities with the passion that they currently dream of getting into the NBA or NFL.

One of the immediate benefits of such a society would be a more informed citizenry. We would also neutralize the negative impact that money is having on our political system, because no matter how much money a corporation spent they wouldn't be able to pull the wool over our eyes by appealing to our emotions over our intellect. We would also have far less crime, since there would be no motive to obtain “things” to gain stature in society. And since character would be the coin of the realm, it would promote family values, because a father who abandoned his children would lose stature in the community. In such a society he would be looked upon with the kind of disdain that we currently look upon shiftless bums.

Another positive impact that such a philosophy would have on our politics would be, in a society that valued character over wealth a politician wouldn’t be assessed based on his longevity or on his ability to obstruct the opposing party. He or she would only be able to gain stature by what he was able to accomplish during his time in office. And the kind of destructive rhetoric that Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin engage in would be nonexistent. Instead of Democrats and Republicans arguing over what’s wrong with one another, each party would be engaged in showing how and why their respective positions would be more beneficial to the people. The fact is, with corporate profit removed from our politics, political differences would be far less pronounced.

Our need to compete is a misguided attempt to raise our personal feelings of self-worth by impressing others with superficial accomplishments, often in connection with some group or organization that we use as an extension of ourselves. That's why people like Dick Cheney, Limbaugh, and Beck are so fixated on the concept of American Exceptionalism, race, and "us against them." You can literally draw a profile of these kind of individuals. The lower their feelings of self-worth, the greater their need to feel a part of something "special" - a race, team, country, etc. They try to use it as an extension of themselves.

That's also why people of this ilk hate Barack Obama so intensely. Obama's character and natural intellect is a direct challenge to their delusions of grandeur, so they've dedicated their lives to trying to prove that he's just as flawed as they are.

Thus, in our misguided attempt to find personal self-esteem, we’ve collectively incorporated competition into our body politic, a flaw in our character that has become a direct threat to human survival. The only thing competition is good for is administering to our delusion of grandeur. And no matter how often we claim to be the best, or how loudly we proclaim American exceptionalism, both our collective and individual inner-selves will always know who we really are beneath our strutting veneer - just another group of flawed individuals, though, a little more arrogant than most.


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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The Corpo-Political Scamming of America

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Corpo-Political Scamming of America

Our political class is failing us miserably - both Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans are leaving no stone unturned to further enrich those who are already filthy rich, and the Democrats are throwing us crumbs while the middle-class standard of living is being aggressively chipped away to conform to the standards of the new global economy.

The GOP calls any program that helps the poor and middle-class socialist in nature and an intolerable waste of public funds. Yet when it comes to helping the rich and corporate class, no expenditure is too great. Now, I'm generally not one to buy into conspiracy theories, but there comes a time when if you fail to take council from your lying eyes you're simply a fool, and I think we've reached that point.

I have a friend and fellow vet in Texas who's a confirmed teabagger. The only thing we agree upon is that we like and respect each other, but other than that, we come from two different planets. Previously, I could simply write off Teabaggers as ignorant and insincere racists. But I happen to know for a fact that Tom is neither ignorant, insincere, nor a racist, so he represents a profound philosophical problem. What box am I supposed to drop him into? I haven't been able to find one. So since I have no box to conveniently dispose of his position, I have no choice but to seriously examine his concerns.

After agonizing over the dilemma for several months, I've come to the conclusion that both the left and the right - at least, the rank and file liberals and conservatives - are correct in their anger, because both are being manipulated by the political class system.

The answer is quite simple. The corporatists and their political cronies have us so busy hating one another that we're too distracted by that hatred to see what's being done to us all. And since liberals and conservatives have been led to believe that our respective miseries are a direct result of the other, it's become self-perpetuating. We've come to hate one another so much that we eagerly embrace anything negative placed in the mix by our manipulators.

So when Tom and I get into a debate, it rarely comes down to assessing the facts. It invaribly degenerates into who's worse, liberals or conservatives, and that what's going on across America.  But the fact is, this country is engaged in a struggle that has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism. We're engaged in a class war, the corporate class against the poor and the middle class. So while they have us busy fighting the last war - racism on the left, and communism on the right - the corporatists are busy cutting all of our throats.

And while we've been distracted, our politicians who are supposed to be protecting our interest, have become a class unto themselves. They've become the political class, which is an essential part of the corporate class, and I'll be further addressing below. When viewed from that perspective, there's no wonder the nation is so divided. The bottom line is, we're depending on those who are exploiting us to protect us from exploitation. So like Houdini, they have us looking at their left hand, each other, while we should be looking at their right hand, them.

Clear evidence of that is while both political parties agree that bringing down the deficit must be one of the nation's top priorities, they both also seem to agree that the only way to address the problem is by placing the burden of sacrifice on the backs of the poor and middle class, while they continue to live high on the hog.

In addtiton, in spite of the "dire effects" of our national deficit, neither party seems to be the least bit concerned about the two billion dollars a month that we're paying for the nonproductive wars that we're engaged in?  No expense is too great in that regard. The reason for that is because they're so profitable to the corporate class.  They're forcing the poor and middle class to both fight the wars, and pay for them. But of course, their families are not impacted. The rich are no longer expected to die for this country - that's the job of the "little people." Ask Dick Cheney.

Yet they claim that the deficit is so severe that they're "forced" to cut part of the safety net from under poor and middle-class Americans, programs like medicare and social security, while at the same time they insisted on giving the top 2% of the population a tax cut, which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is the least efficient use of the nation's revenue.

According to the Center for American Progress, "The Congressional Budget Office evaluated a variety policies earlier this year based on their ability to boost overall economic growth and employment. The number one thing Congress can do, according to the report, is to increase aid to the unemployed. Other efficient ways to give the economy a jolt include additional investments in infrastructure and more aid to states. The least efficient? Extending the tax cuts."

CAP goes on to point out, "In its January report, 'The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020,' the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] projects that a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, plus a permanent fix to the Alternative minimum tax, will cost $3.7 trillion over 10 years, not including debt service costs."

Thus, our political class has convinced us that if we give Gucci enough money we can get him to hire workers to produce Gucci bags that he's limited to selling in a homeless shelter. That's counterintuitive. Why would Gucci throw away perfectly good money to produce a product that he can't sell? He's only going to take that money overseas and produce his bags in a market where people have the money to purchase them. Thus, the only way to stimulate the economy is to put money in the pockets of the people in the homeless shelter. That's the only way we can provide Gucci with a market of people with the resources to purchase his goods.

Another glaring example of gross political hypocrisy took place just last year. While this nation was drowning in the second worst economic crisis in its history, and American citizens were losing their homes and jobs, congress voted themselves a $93,000 a year raise, each - and not a raise in salary, but in "petty cash," to spend anyway they see fit. And then, of course, there's Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.). He should go down in history as the quintessential example political hypocrisy. Rep. Harris is the newly elected, Tea Party supported congressman who ran on the abolishment of "Obamacare." But in spite of that, he began demanding his governmet run health care before he was even sworn into office.

So I'd like to address this to my good friend, Tom. Let's lay that socialist thing to rest. The entire socialist controversy is nothing but conflated politispeak designed to get you to work against your own interests. If we ever want to control our own destiny, it's incombent upon us not to allow ourselves to be manipulated through knee-jerk emotionalism. While you might say that rabid socialism is bad because it led to communism, I could just as easily argue that rabid capitalism is bad because it led to slavery. So we've got to learn to engage in nuanced thinking.

Social Security and Medicare are both socialist programs, yet I don't know of any average citizen - either Democrat or Republican - who want to give either ofthem up. So Tom, it's true. We do need to take our country back, but not from one another. We need to take our country back from those who are manipulating us both.

So I have a suggestion, instead of fighting one another, let's make a deal - you handle your hypocrites on the right, and I'll handle mine on the left. Then let's all come together and handle the corporatists who are pulling all of our strings. After all, these are not Americans - they're globalists, with a vested interest in making us hate one another.

We're bein' played by the oldest political ploy in the book - divide and conquer.

This is the one who's dangerous 

 

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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