Courtesy of MoveOn.org:
Connect the dots between policies that keep many of our fellow Americans desperate, and you’ll see they add up to a war on the poor and working families.
I bet you thought my headline was hyperbole didn't you?
Sadly, it is not.
It is time for the Democrats to start fighting as if they are fighting for their very lives.
Because they are.
I so agree, IM! Americans that are paying attention to all of this Republican crap, need to be talking to their friends and family members that might not be. And, then the next thing to do is get out the vote in the upcoming elections.
ReplyDeleteMr. Reich called it like it is: "The Republican War on America." And it's a short-sighted, greedy and -- over time -- self-destructive ambition that will not end well for anyone, not even those who currently believe they stand to benefit greatly.
ReplyDeleteWhen heads begin to roll, wealth does not necessarily grant immunity.
Wealth and "standing" actually drew trouble and not immunity during the French revolution.
DeleteI certainly admire Robert Reich, and everything he says is true. He’s a man I trust.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I was appalled to see otherwise sensible women having child after child with men who were mean and/or stupid. The kids were supported by low skill manufacturing jobs and welfare. It didn’t take a genius to know that situation would be terminated by the wealthy. I suppose those women were hoping for the one little jewel who would justify the whole family, but that often didn’t happen.
Now those kids have turned to petty theft, prostitution, pimping and drugs to feed themselves. They don’t have the ability to do anything better. And I feel sorry for all of them.
Birth control, plain and simple birth control. Women should not have children until they can afford them. That is life in America in 2014.
DeleteHere's some promising news...
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton would beat any Republican challenger in Florida in 2016, poll shows
By Anthony Man, Sun Sentinel
2:37 p.m. EST, February 8, 2014
Florida favorite sons Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, beware.
Recent polling shows Hillary Clinton would defeat any of the potential Republican presidential candidates, including former Gov. Bush and U.S. Sen. Rubio.
The latest Quinnipiac University Poll shows Clinton has support among almost all voting blocs in Florida, regardless of age, income or race. Six in 10 Florida voters think she'd make a good president and seven in 10 believe she has strong leadership qualities.
"There are other candidates who are kind of jostling around," said Lee Rubin, who's organizing in South Florida on behalf of the Ready for Hillary political action committee. "She is kind of right in the sweet spot for getting the [Democratic] nomination and, more importantly, winning the general election."
The Quinnipiac Poll, released Jan. 31, shows Bush, Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan would all lose the state — and its swing state prize of 29 electoral votes — to Clinton.
Oops! Mr. Christie is goin' down in flames...
ReplyDeleteChris Christie endorsement is regrettable
...Yes, we knew Christie was a bully. But we didn’t know his crew was crazy enough to put people’s lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn’t know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn’t know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.
Even before this scandal train got rolling, this endorsement was a close call and a split vote among the editorial board. We regard Christie as the most overrated politician in the country, at least until now, a man who is better at talking than governing. We criticized him for trashing the working poor, for his tea party approach to the environment, for his opposition to gay marriage and a livable minimum wage. And so on.
But there is more to it.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2014/02/chris_christie_endorsement_is.html#incart_m-rpt-1
It’s a thoroughly stupid, weirdly inelegant way to exist, isn’t it? Contrary to nature and time, insulting to the very dignity of the soul?
ReplyDeleteYet here it is, the single-most toxic, fossilized, hammered-down maxim our culture – along with most of the barely civilized world – lives by, pounded into our fundamental ethos since birth.
Nope, it’s not organized religion. It’s not a sad misunderstanding of love. It’s not wisdom, loneliness or even rampant tribalism, nationalism, unhealthy worship of technology or celebrity. Oh, it’s far worse than that.
Do you know this toxic law? I bet you do: Companies will do anything to accomplish it, cities obsess over it like a dark religion, populations are viciously addicted to it – and of course, capitalism has it tattooed onto its very heart, a blood-soaked dragon of relentless, nearly unendurable pressure, sneering and cruel, only fully satiated when it’s burned everything to the ground.
Of course you know it: It is the maxim of furious, nonstop growth at all costs. It is the vast, overarching demand that everything we humans create, produce and desire must keep growing and expanding, adding to and complexifying, without stop and without fail because to pause, to slow down, to contract, to calm the hell down even for a moment, means fiscal doom, cultural irrelevance, death.
Ergo, the ruthless mantra: More product! More stores! More bodies and more customers and a fatter bottom line, expanding the brand into 127 new countries in 2014 alone! New tract developments, new buildings, roads and sprawl, bigger families, bigger workforce, larger tax base, more drilling, fracking, sucking, ripping out the planet’s guts to satisfy our insatiable need for energy because we can’t stop now and we can’t imagine any other way, even though this way leads directly – and I mean directly – to our perfect demise.
more...
http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/02/04/the-devil-in-the-pie-chart/
Obama should have vetoed the farm bill, plain and simple. If the leadership in this country doesn't care then who will?
ReplyDeleteMaking laws so that everyone is the same does not eliminate greed and lust for power. That is why communism, Marxism, Nazi-ism(?), and socialism don't work.
ReplyDeleteAmerica used to be a powerhouse of industry but instead we've become a service society where those that serve live in poverty and those that have purchasing power barely keep the service industry afloat. It didn't used to be this way but as jobs and manufacturing have been outsourced overseas there is a class of people that, even though they work full time at low wage jobs, can't afford even basic necessities without government assistance (think Walmart employees relying on food stamps and even welfare to supplement their low wages).
DeleteAmerica is on the path of economic failure. Already we have realized social failure when a large segment of the population is either out of work or working for wages that require government supplementation just to live at the poverty level. We are on the cusp of being a second-world country.
Does the 1% want to starve out the poor dependent segment of society without ever offering a leg up? It sure seems that way. The rich will just import cheaper labor to provide for their every need without even thinking about the poor disenfranchised GOP voters, who live in poverty and scream about immigrants taking over our country. It's beginning to get real and the poorest working class Americans can easily be surplanted by willing immigrants that the 1% will only be too happy to see take the place of these whining poor Americans that don't seem to appreciate eating the crumbs from the pie that used to be the American Dream.
No one is trying to make 'everyone the same'. There will always be some who are rich and others who are poor, no matter what the laws or state of the economy may be.
DeleteHowever, during the most prosperous periods of this country, there was a MUCH smaller gulf between the top and the bottom. In the past few decades, that gulf has widened to historic measures, and the top 1% has accumulated so much of the wealth that it has nearly stopped the natural cycle of growth and prosperity in its tracks. They are not investing their wealth in businesses or in creating new products and technology, but are instead hoarding it or sending it to foreign countries.
That top 1% has become insatiable and their greed has reached a level of absurdity that spells doom for our nation unless other factors (read taxes and legislation) begin to adjust the economy to a more functional status. A country where an enormous percentage of people are barely (or not) managing to scrape by is one that is doomed to ultimately fail.
Unfortunately, those at the top have succeeded in buying control of the government and legislators who will continue to create laws that benefit only them and hurt the poor and middle class. And if this country does someday collapse under the system they have created with their greed, they will simply take their ill-gotten gains and move somewhere else, while the rest of us try and survive amid the destruction.
Very, very few people in this country are actually advocating Communism or even Socialism (except in certain areas like healthcare and education)
DeleteBut, I'm interested in what you suggest, 12:04, unregulated capitalism? Shall we continue to increase the wealth gap in this country until a large portion of our citizenry are literally starving in the streets while a small group of corporatists and their henchmen smoke expensive cigars in their beautiful heavily-guarded apartments?
Is Ayn Rand your fantasy girl friend?
*large portion...IS literally (damn editing on an iphone)
DeleteEXACTLY!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWe tried "trickle down economics", and Mr Reich shows exactly where that got us and who benefited the most.
ReplyDelete"Fired Up! Ready to Go!"