Maybe Republicans should start considering the undeniable fact that unemployment and poverty are a growing concern in America. Because every time a Republican becomes President, poverty and unemployment have increased.
On February 2, 2015, Joe Conason writes on Nation Of Change:
The latest fad among would-be Republican presidential contenders is to proclaim their deep commitment to fighting poverty and inequality — which sounds as plausible as a promise by McDonald’s to abolish greasy food.
Decades of abuse of the nation’s poor and working families, which reached a crescendo in Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” campaign in 2012, hasn’t left much space for Republicans to follow the public morality of Pope Francis. Yet for the moment at least, they seem to think that they must.
They also seem to believe that reminiscing about bread-bag overshoes, like Senator Joni Ernst, or jeering the wealth of the Clintons, like RNC chair Reince Priebus, will somehow transform them into Franciscan populists. But such delusional ploys only make them look ridiculous.
So in the gracious spirit of the pontiff, who told us that even atheists can be saved, let’s help our Republican brothers and sisters.
Actually, there is a very easy way for people like Romney — who just announced he won’t run this time — as well as his former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, Gov. Chris Christie, Senator Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, and every kindred right-wing politician to start reforming themselves. First, they just have to stop doing almost everything they’ve done for the past 10 or 20 years.
Just stop.
Stop smooching the behind of every predatory billionaire who shows up with an open checkbook and a loud opinion, from the Koch brothers and Paul Singer to Jerry Jones and Sheldon Adelson.
Stop pretending that the best way to reduce inequality — or poverty — is to lavish more trillions of tax breaks on those very same billionaires, as the infamously plutocratic Ryan budget would. Do they really think every blustering donor at the very top of the income scale needs another million dollars? Stop defending capital gains loopholes, offshore accounts and all the other scams that rig the game for the likes of Romney.
Stop snatching bread from the mouths of small children and their mothers, with gratuitous cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance and WIC programs, as if that would appreciably reduce the federal deficit — or be worth the moral cost even if it did.
The Ryan budget proposes to reduce food stamps by 20 percent or more, which would mean either terminating benefits for millions or reducing benefits below their already meager level. (It would be interesting to see how the Wisconsin Republican and bodybuilder got by on $1.40 per meal.)
Stop ripping up unemployment checks for families whose lack of remunerative work Republicans have blamed on Barack Obama. Unemployment insurance kept at least 2.5 million Americans, including hundreds of thousands of kids, above the poverty line in recent years. If joblessness truly isn’t the workers’ fault, why decimate them and their children?
Stop rejecting Medicaid, the literal lifeline for poor Americans who have no other health coverage. And stop “repealing” the Affordable Care Act, whose actual repeal would cruelly end coverage for tens of millions of Americans — and in some cases, end their lives.
Stop undermining Medicare and Social Security, the two most successful anti-poverty programs in the nation’s history, which have vastly reduced the impoverishment and early mortality of elderly Americans. And stop telling voters that the endless attempts to cut, privatize, block grant, and otherwise diminish those programs is how you intend to “save” them.
Stop legislating cutbacks in Pell Grants, federal student loans, and other assistance to young people from modest backgrounds — whose educational advancement lifts them toward greater financial security and independence. Anyone who honestly cares about reducing inequality supports aid for higher education.
And please stop mouthing so much meaningless, self-flattering rhetoric on this vital issue — as Romney did when he assured the Republican National Committee that “Republican principles” will “break the cycle of poverty.”
Sorry, but that hasn’t been true under any Republican administration for the past hundred years. Instead of blustering, Republicans should consider the unpleasant but undeniable fact that unemployment and poverty have increased every time a president of their party occupied the White House.
Then, by all means, they should get back us to with those “conservative” plans to end poverty. Someone might even believe it.
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/02/end-poverty-reduce-inequality-republicans-must-first/
While Joe Conason provides a list of taxpayer-funded and debt expedient policies and programs that ease the financial pain of a huge and growing swath of the American citizenry, he fails to get to the core of the problem: a lack of sufficient income.
It all comes down to income and how income is produced. As well, it comes down to how our nation sees its objectives as it relates to the welfare of the citizenry. Empowering EVERY citizen to be productive should be the foundation from which every policy decision is made. Being productive takes two forms: through labor input and through one’s capital assets (tools, machines and other non-human things used to produce products and services needed and wanted by society). The non-human factor relates to technological invention and innovation.
The problem we face is that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are and will continue to destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor as the non-human factor of production efficiency replaces the need for mass labor input. This reality is true no matter whether a Republican or Democrat holds political power.
The other problem resides with the structure of the system, which as presently structured empowers those with significant “past savings” (represented by capital asset accumulations, inheritance, etc.) to constantly enrich their capital ownership positions, while the majority of Americans with no significant savings, are shut out of the financial system to acquire capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy. Thus, the already wealthy ownership class (the rich), constantly get more wealthy due to their constant acquisition and growth of their wealth-creating, income-producing capital stock portfolios. The political challenge is to reform the system and provide financial mechanisms which will benefit the vast majority of citizens by empowering them to acquire future capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy on the basis that the investments will pay for themselves. Critical aspects of these financial mechanisms will be forms of insured, interest-free capital credit loans, repayable out of the earnings of the investments. The focus must be on growth, without taking anything away from those who already own. Using such self-liquidating capital loan mechanism will result over time in the vast majority of Americans becoming new capitalists, fully supporting sustainable, environmentally sensitive, technological invention and innovation, which they will benefit from as an individual share owner, and become productive through their capital assets and contribute to the building of a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man and put us on the path to inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
If you do not believe that the Republican and Democrat political parties, or other alternative political parties, can transform to the party of “let’s make universal capital ownership a reality, whereby EVERY citizen is an owner,” then you may want to consider the political platform of the Unite America Party. This platform is open to ALL political parties and activists to adopt. The platform was published by the Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 as well on other national news sites.
I write about these issues and the solutions on my blog site at www.foreconomicjustice.org and on Nation Of Change.
