Incase you have not noticed the United States has been in a downward economic slide for the past 30 years. Thanks to a mainstream media in cahoots and colluding with big business and the US government, Americans, that is the vast majority of what is called "the general public," has become like conditioned cattle mooing to the latest spin from an entrenched oligarchy.
In this carefully planned "brain washing" program, Republicans have elevated deceased President Ronald Reagan to near sainthood levels painting one of America's most imperialistic and reactionary presidents of the 20th century as a benign pillar of reform and progress. We have forgotten that it was he who set the United States on a path that culminated in the nastiest recession since the 1920s Great Depression.
It was Ronald Reagan who destroyed the American middle class and completely annihilated the working class by his anti-union, anti-labor pogroms even as his policies fueled corporate greed. Today the end result is that corporate America has relocated most of its business overseas where child labor, starvation wages and no respect for the environment is the norm.
Even the larger than life Apple Company and its revered, now dead, founder Steve Jobs, could not kick the greed habit. Here's a nice tidbit that CNN, Fox 5 et all deliberately left out in their glowing obituary of Jobs ad infinitum:
The Daily Telegraph, February 2, 2010.
"Apple has admitted that child labor was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones.
At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories that supply Apple.
The company did not name the offending factories, or list where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.
"Apple has been repeatedly criticized for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou."
And Jobs is just one member of the top 1% of Americans who own and control the majority of the nation's wealth. Today, the top 1% of households now holds 25% of the total income, the largest income inequality since 1929, right before the stock market crashed causing the Great Depression. In fact, the top 400 richest Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans combined. Some radicals on the right complain that the wealthiest members pay most of the taxes and that can't be debated. It's true that the richest pay the most, but that's because they have the most. You can even bring down the percentage a bit and still see the inequality. The top 20% of Americans own over 85% of the country's wealth.
And that bottom 80% must just shut up. It must continue to wallow in poverty while members of this select clique of oligarchs just rob it blind. If ever there was a clear and unmistakable demonstration as to where corporate America and national politics come together then just listen to the hypocritical braying of people who berated President Obama for bailing out there friends on Wall Street and are now howling at the disenfranchised, unemployed and underemployed masses protesting the rapacious behavior of the 1 percenters.
The Occupy Wall Street protests were first completely ignored by the mainstream media. Then an NYPD officer was caught pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators -- the same kind of behavior the United States senators and Congress members are condemning in Syria and elsewhere. But not one called for the officer's firing. Who do they blame? You guessed it -- the protesters. And unable to justify their cowardly and slavish obedience to their corporate masters who are sitting on over $15 trillion and refuse to create jobs Republicans are blaming President Obama for "campaigning," not leading and taking too many vacation days.
The hypocrisy inherent in this position is that Republicans and their minions in the media are rankled by the measly 61 days that President Obama has taken as vacation but was muted and silent about George Bush who took 196 vacation days at the same point in his presidency. Talk about hypocrites!
This hypocrisy born out of an out-of-touch arrogance would be laughable were it not serious as a heart attack. Republicans chastised President Obama as "a socialist" president for rescuing 1.5 million General Motors and Chrysler jobs while at the same time carping that he's doing nothing to put people back to work. Under Republican presidents the GOP thought it was perfectly normal that every president in history had an unrestricted right to raise the debt ceiling when warranted, but when President Obama asked the Republican held Congress to do it, they thought it only natural that it be tied to cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Republicans consistently accuse President Obama of raising taxes to the highest point in American history, even though taxes are lower today than at any time since 1950.They believe the wealthiest Americans are "job creators," and they are. But it doesn't bother House Republicans that all the workers in those positions are in India, China or Malaysia, and they're doing the jobs that ordinary Americans once did.
Those hypocrites and their willing, supine mouth pieces had absolutely no problem when President George W. Bush first blew away the Clinton surplus in a spendthrift binge and then took the national debt from $5 trillion to $11 trillion. He called it "deficit spending" and Republicans thought that it was all right and was necessary for him to do so to keep America safe. But when President Obama added to it by trying to rescue the country from a second Great Depression, Republicans said that he was deliberately trying to destroy America.
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