Conning the Poor. The Republican National Convention begins tonite in very peculiar territory, arch-Democratic and Far Left New York City, which just barely qualifies as an American city and is in many ways, including demographically, very foreign. I know. I lived there for 35 years before moving to an American city, Newark, 13 miles away.
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The richest city in the world, the Capital of Capital, is also capital of the “Liberal Media” that the Republican Right so detests. So why on Earth are Republicans meeting there?
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Because, you see, New York was attacked by terrorists, so can be used to make Americans feel insecure. Never mind that New York was attacked ON GEORGE W. BUSH’S WATCH. We’re not to think about that, not to be worried that if he could allow something like this to happen once, he could allow it to happen twice, three times, a million times more. No, we are to put all our faith in the competence of a mental midget and the cabal of fools that pulls his strings.
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The Republican Party is the party of the arrogant rich, that is all. Every now and then it poses as the “Party of Lincoln”, but despite W’s unrepresentative cabinet with the prominent ‘black’ faces of Condoleeza Rice and the almost-white Colin Powell, the Republican Party is white. And rich. Did I mention that Republicans are rich — or want to be rich; or want to believe that they will someday be rich, even if they are nothing like rich now?
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The Republican Party’s entire program was best summarized in the eloquent phrase “trickle-down” that some unknown genius coined during the Reagan years that gave rise to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which carried off a Plutocratic Revolution that is hurting us to this day, ever widening the gap between rich and poor. The public rationale of the Plutocratic Revolution (tho of course it has never used that name for itself) is "just let the rich get ever richer and they'll take care of everybody else. Their wealth will trickle down to raise everyone up." Yeah, sure it will, when every penny the rich own is being held in a death grip!
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The Republican program is the ultimate con, the ultimate infomercial on getting rich quick. ‘Anybody can be rich in this country. All you have to do is want it bad enuf and buy this program. Then, within a few short weeks — or years at most — you too will be rich as Bill Gates! As Jon Lovitz’s habitual-liar character on Saturday Night Live would say, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
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“And if you were rich you wouldn’t want the Democrats taking all your money in taxes, would you? NO, of course not! So you’ve got to keep taxes on the rich low, so that you can become rich too!” Yeah, that is the ticket indeed.
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There are a lot of fools willing to delude themselves that their miserable today can be followed by a magnificent tomorrow. All they have to do is catch a break, or learn the tricks. But there IS NO TRICK to becoming rich. No formula works for everyone. There’s a lot of luck in who becomes rich and who doesn’t, who is BORN rich and who isn’t. If you’re 30 or older and aren’t rich, you can pretty well kiss that dream goodbye. If you’re 30 and are indeed in debt, you can probably look forward to being in debt the rest of your life, paying over huge amounts over time in interest that goes to — the RICH!
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A colleague in Durham, England alerted me to a pointed Internet commentary on the willingness of many poor and middle-class people to be manipulated by the rich: “The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe’s”.
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I pointed out to him that what is going on today, with the exploitation of the aspirations and frustrations of the poor by the rich, is like the astounding achievement in the Civil War era, of Southern plantation- and slave-owners getting poor whites to fight and even die in large numbers for an institution, slavery, that caused poor whites eminent harm, by drastically reducing the demand, and thus the price, for white labor and white-produced goods. Today, poor Southern whites are again being mercilessly abused by the Radical Right to promote the interests of the rich in ways that actually hurt the very people who are the chief backers of the right wing's Plutocratic Revolution. Will they never wake up to see that they are being used by people who hate them?
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Poor whites in the South and everywhere else need to realize that it is in their interest to soak the rich, not turn the country over to them. If the rich won't pay higher taxes, who is going to pay for government? Well, who's left? The poor and middle class will pay higher taxes to make up for what the rich aren't paying. Isn't that obvious? So why on Earth do poor whites back the war against them now being waged by the rich?
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If nothing I can say will snap poor people out of the temptation to vote Republican, maybe “The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe’s” can shake them awake.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:03 PM