[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]If anyone is left in America who can’t see that the Republican party is the enemy of the American middle class, they can look at who the GOP is putting forward to assume the highest office in this land.
One is Mitt Romney, a vulture capitalist who became a charter member of the top one percent club by purchasing perfectly sound companies, firing their employees and then selling off the company one piece at a time, for profit. Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was so corrupt and self-serving that in 1998 he was forced to resign from Congress by his own Republican colleagues.
These gentlemen and the self-serving activities of others of their ilk are the bookends who led directly to the 2008 collapse of the American economy, causing millions to lose their jobs, their homes, and their life savings. Mitt Romney represents the selfish capitalists who threw America under the bus for their own personal greed. Newt Gingrich personifies the corrupt former politician who uses his influence in Congress to lobby his former colleagues to water down the law, allowing the Romneys of the world to ply their trade.
Examining Their Plans
These “gentlemen” are asking America to trust them to repair an economic environment both helped to create. Both have a vested interest in maintaining. How do they intend to repair the economy?
Essentially, Mr. Romney says we should allow those who are in foreclosure to lose their homes, then start anew with a fresh group of suckers. Specifically, he said in a filmed interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.” He went on to say, “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let them turn around and come back up.”
Mr. Romney’s remarks make it clear his only concern is in what’s in the best interest of the investor class, no concern for the devastation and turmoil that losing a home would visit upon the lives of a family turned out into the street. We are not just talking about an unfortunate few here. Mitt Romney is casually writing off millions of Americans as collateral damage.
Newt Gingrich is of an identical mindset. He promises “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America.” During this time of record high unemployment, one proposal that Newt is floating is to fire the father from his union-protected job and put his children to work. He said, “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid.”
Her said that “most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they’d have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
He Is Unaware
This Republican frontrunner for President is oblivious to the straits of the average American family. His solution would make the situation worse. He’s not concerned with stabilizing the plight of poor and middle-class families. He’s only concerned with destroying organized labor by firing the father and replacing him with the cheaper, un-unionized labor of his children. The irony is, returning the American poor and middle class to Great Depression status has become such a fundamental part of the GOP mindset that average Republicans, who would be devastated by such a policy, are applauding. They’ve been conditioned to hate President Obama so passionately that they’ve bought into the position that “Obama is un-American – he’s engaged in a socialist plot.” It’s unbelievable how easily the human mind can be controlled.
What these average Republicans don’t understand is that they’re being manipulated. The corporate conservatives who run the Republican party don’t care any more about them than they do black people, gays, undocumented workers, or anyone else. The corporatists are simply manipulating their anger, prejudices, and uninformed minds to keep the poor and middle class divided. That way, we’re so busy fighting one another we fail to recognize they are cutting all of our throats.
I suggest black people look at that. The corporatists are depending on angry, reactionary white people inflaming a knee-jerk reaction of anger and hostility among blacks, which serves the same purpose, keeping the poor and middle classes divided. That is why they keep race on the front burner, using inflammatory buzz words and phrases like “the food stamp President.”
Corporatists desperately need to keep the race war raging. That way the poor and middle class of both races fail to recognize that we are knee-deep in a class war, and our side is losing badly.
Evidence can be seen in simply looking at the programs and institutions the GOP is attacking – Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, education, organized labor. None is race- specific. What they have in common is that they a serve to elevate the poor and middle class of every race.
It is time for America to wake up, particularly poor and middle class Republicans. Entrusting this nation and our economy to the GOP would be like turning over our children to convicted child molesters.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
