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When my father returned from World War II, his good-paying union job was waiting for him at General Electric in Ft. Wayne, Indiana — as it should have been. For 42 years, he helped build electric motors.
When my wife’s father returned from the war in Korea he spent the rest of his life running the family farm in Rockford, Ohio, helping to feed a hungry nation.
Everyday, men and women of the working class provide for us in unglamorous, yet very important ways. They might drink a little beer in the evening and sing a little bit of those working man blues, but they don’t have the financial clout of CEOs, Wall Street bankers or others in the super-rich elite which now seem to hold sway over our Congress.
Warren Buffet has been telling us that our Congress needs to stop coddling this super-rich elite. If we are to pull the U. S. to firmer financial foundations, he tells us, the super-rich need to pay their fair share of taxes. This type of advice from economic heavyweights like Buffet may present a problem for the Republican Party, which recently managed to protect tax breaks for America’s wealthiest with the help of the newly-elected Tea Party candidates. Those lucrative advantages for the super-rich were strategically protected by threats to cause a default on U. S. debt obligations.
As the clouds of distressful debt ceiling arguments finally cleared, the sunlight exposed what many in our Congress really stand for — and it isn’t the working classes of America. But there seems to be little shame about all this as we now see Republican candidates for President openly wooing the Tea Party. And maybe it’s incorrect to view the Tea Party and the Republican Party as separate entities.
But how, one might ask, in the light of what has happened, can these right-wing elitists expect future victories? Of course, most of us understand that the answer to that question depends on “good” media management, controlled perception, image creation, the right photo opportunities, best sound bites, etc. All of which requires lots of money — not a problem for the right-wing elite. Ultimately, their success requires that they persuade enough members of the working class to go along with them. Their challenge is to get working stiffs who come home very tired every evening to believe that the right-wing elite knows what’s best for them — that the working poor are really better off if billionaires are better off.
That may seem like a tough sell, but it has been done for many years now and might still work with the right people pulling the right strings. Sarah Palm had the right approach. Like Michele Bachmann, Sarah doesn’t know much about our nation’s history, but pretty Sarah has populist appeal — and she’s smart enough to be seen riding around on motorcycles or four-wheelers, or dressed up in hunting gear and holding a shotgun. Evidently, that’s all some voters need to see.
So the right-wing elite, at least in certain regions of the country, will almost certainly employ the usual distractions, such as liberals wanting to take away guns, or don’t vote for so-and-so because so-and-so is of the wrong religion or is really an atheist, etc. In subtle and not so subtle ways they will tell us not to worry about those tax breaks for the wealthy; instead, we need to blame gays, labor unions, public school teachers or people of “the wrong color” or “the wrong culture” for our nation’s problems. Sadly, some will buy their hogwash.
*******
It might be tough for right-wingers to continue describing global warming as a “liberal hoax”. You may have noticed that climate science deniers have been very quiet lately. That’s understandable. Arctic ice continues to diminish. Every state in the U. S. has set new heat records. In many important farm regions, drought has destroyed crops. If food prices aren’t high enough for you now, expect them to go higher over the next several months.
When my father returned from World War II, his good-paying union job was waiting for him at General Electric in Ft. Wayne, Indiana — as it should have been. For 42 years, he helped build electric motors.
When my wife’s father returned from the war in Korea he spent the rest of his life running the family farm in Rockford, Ohio, helping to feed a hungry nation.
Everyday, men and women of the working class provide for us in unglamorous, yet very important ways. They might drink a little beer in the evening and sing a little bit of those working man blues, but they don’t have the financial clout of CEOs, Wall Street bankers or others in the super-rich elite which now seem to hold sway over our Congress.
Warren Buffet has been telling us that our Congress needs to stop coddling this super-rich elite. If we are to pull the U. S. to firmer financial foundations, he tells us, the super-rich need to pay their fair share of taxes. This type of advice from economic heavyweights like Buffet may present a problem for the Republican Party, which recently managed to protect tax breaks for America’s wealthiest with the help of the newly-elected Tea Party candidates. Those lucrative advantages for the super-rich were strategically protected by threats to cause a default on U. S. debt obligations.
As the clouds of distressful debt ceiling arguments finally cleared, the sunlight exposed what many in our Congress really stand for — and it isn’t the working classes of America. But there seems to be little shame about all this as we now see Republican candidates for President openly wooing the Tea Party. And maybe it’s incorrect to view the Tea Party and the Republican Party as separate entities.
But how, one might ask, in the light of what has happened, can these right-wing elitists expect future victories? Of course, most of us understand that the answer to that question depends on “good” media management, controlled perception, image creation, the right photo opportunities, best sound bites, etc. All of which requires lots of money — not a problem for the right-wing elite. Ultimately, their success requires that they persuade enough members of the working class to go along with them. Their challenge is to get working stiffs who come home very tired every evening to believe that the right-wing elite knows what’s best for them — that the working poor are really better off if billionaires are better off.
That may seem like a tough sell, but it has been done for many years now and might still work with the right people pulling the right strings. Sarah Palm had the right approach. Like Michele Bachmann, Sarah doesn’t know much about our nation’s history, but pretty Sarah has populist appeal — and she’s smart enough to be seen riding around on motorcycles or four-wheelers, or dressed up in hunting gear and holding a shotgun. Evidently, that’s all some voters need to see.
So the right-wing elite, at least in certain regions of the country, will almost certainly employ the usual distractions, such as liberals wanting to take away guns, or don’t vote for so-and-so because so-and-so is of the wrong religion or is really an atheist, etc. In subtle and not so subtle ways they will tell us not to worry about those tax breaks for the wealthy; instead, we need to blame gays, labor unions, public school teachers or people of “the wrong color” or “the wrong culture” for our nation’s problems. Sadly, some will buy their hogwash.
*******
It might be tough for right-wingers to continue describing global warming as a “liberal hoax”. You may have noticed that climate science deniers have been very quiet lately. That’s understandable. Arctic ice continues to diminish. Every state in the U. S. has set new heat records. In many important farm regions, drought has destroyed crops. If food prices aren’t high enough for you now, expect them to go higher over the next several months.
