The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a reality-based world or avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies.
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For Americans who make it their business to follow politics, it is a
recurring theme that every time a Democrat is elected president, fiction
writer Ayn Rand’s novels become all the rage in conservative circles.
When teabaggers took control of the House in 2011, Rand devotee Paul
Ryan made waves when he decried the “takers” draining assets from the
beleaguered richest one percent he referred to as “makers,” and although
Ryan’s characterization of the poor is despicable, he is correct that
Americans are being raped by “takers.” However, the takers are not
Americans ravaged by the Bush-Republicans economic malfeasance that
destroyed millions of jobs and increased the number of Americans living
in poverty, but Republicans in Congress and state legislatures who have
spent the past two-and-a-half years taking any and everything from the
American people they can lay their dirty hands on. In fact, it is an
exercise in futility to cite anything Republicans have not attempted to
take from Americans and with the debt and deficit falling at a record
pace, it appears their cuts are anything other than retribution for
electing an African American President.
Last year it was revealed that America ranked second
to Romania as the nation with the highest rate of children living in
poverty (23.1%) and hunger, and this week House Republicans celebrated
their proposal to cut $21 billion from SNAP (food stamps) that will
take food stamps away from 2 million people, as well as ensuring that 210,000 hungry kids
are no longer able to get free school lunches.
It is the ultimate
expression of evil to take food out of the mouths of any hungry human
being, but it takes a special kind of monster to deliberately withhold
food from hungry children. Conservatives prevented a farm bill from
passing last year because they opposed the Senate’s bill as not harsh
enough and forced them to start anew in this session of Congress.
The Senate is working on its second farm bill in less than a year that cuts $4 billion
from the SNAP over ten years to garner support from selfish
Republicans. Democrats attempted to eliminate cuts to food stamps, but
Republicans refused to vote for any measure that fails to take food away
from the poor; especially hungry children. It is just what they enjoy
doing. Last year the Senate passed a similar farm bill but conservatives
in the House balked because the Senate bill did not take enough food
from hungry seniors, children, and working-poor Americans. As it stands
now, food stamp recipients receive on average about $133.42
per month that poverty experts say is barely enough to cover two weeks
in groceries, and when temporary provisions from the stimulus package
expire, SNAP recipients will have even less to spend on food, regardless
if the House farm bill passes or not. However, hungry Americans and
their children should not feel singled out because Republicans have left
no group unaffected from their agenda of taking from Americans who are
not in the richest one percent of income earners.
Over the past two years, in their drive to take everything from the
people, Republicans have left few Americans untouched whether it is
senior citizens’ Social Security and Medicare, low-income Americans’
Medicaid, students, seniors and minorities’ voting rights, the
Affordable Care Act, meals on wheels, and even disaster relief. The dust
barely settled from the devastating tornado in Oklahoma two days ago
before Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn promised he will insist
that before giving disaster relief to victims in his home state, the
cost will have to be paid for by taking something away from other
Americans in the form of spending cuts. Officials had not yet estimated
the cost of the damage, or the number of lives that were lost, and
Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid
that Congress provides that has been the practice of Republicans since
President Obama has been in office. Republicans have typically balked at
providing disaster-relief funds when there’s a devastating storm unless
they can take from other Americans, but they change their minds when
their constituents are affected, but Coburn is callous enough to ransom
his own constituents to take something from other Americans. The depth
of Republicans’ heartless taking is not confined to spending, and it
informs the true nature of their evil tendencies.
They are taking representative government in states like Michigan
where the Republican governor disbanded local governments and appointed
dictators in the form of an “emergency managers.” In states with
Republican legislatures they have taken away a woman’s right to choose
their own reproductive health and put it in the hands of religious
extremists, and are taking the right to vote from students, seniors, and
minorities because they do not vote for Republicans. Republicans have
also taken away American workers’ right to organize and bargain
collectively for decent wages, and as a canard to cut budgets have
regularly taken public sector workers’ pensions and delivered the
proceeds to corporations in the form of tax cuts. In Congress,
Republicans are actively pursuing taking away the minimum wage as well
as overtime pay that prevents most working people from falling into
poverty, and they have intimated they will take away child labor laws
that have been in effect for over 70 years. In an alarming number of
states, Republicans are taking away women’s 14th Amendment
rights to conform to religious maniacs’ demand that single-celled
organisms are living breathing “persons” worthy of the Constitutional
protections, and all Americans are losing their right to clean air and
water as Republicans are fighting to take away environmental protections
at the behest of the Koch brothers and energy industry contributors.
There is really no end to what Republicans are going to take away
from the American people, and they cannot claim it is because the nation
is drowning in debt. Taking away women’s rights, voting rights,
environmental protections, minimum wage, overtime pay, or religious
freedoms have nothing whatsoever to do with debt and deficit and
everything to do with callous disregard for the people they are elected
to serve. One might hope that Republicans would be aghast that the
richest nation on Earth has nearly a quarter of its children living in
poverty and going hungry, or that the nation’s infrastructure ranks
below every developed and several undeveloped countries, but they are
unfazed and seek out more to take from the people. What is stunning,
really, is their apparent anger that they are prevented from taking even
more despite the harsh Draconian cuts they have imposed on the poorest
Americans.
Conservatives hate change, but something changed since the people
elected an African American as President and it is not Democrats and it
is not the majority of the American people. It is Republicans and their
vile teabag supporters who have taken what were typically universally
supported policies of caring for the people and made it a carnal sin to
help Americans whether they are disabled, elderly, hungry, sick, or
jobless, and they seem to take the greatest pleasure in taking what
little the great majority of Americans have left. Paul Ryan is right;
there is an epidemic of takers in America, but they are wicked
conservatives who are not taking out of selfishness or greed, but
because it feeds their vapid soulless egos.
Republicans Use Budget Cuts as Retribution for Re-electing Barack Obama was written by Rmuse for PoliticusUSA.
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