Comments about Unemployed Reveal GOP's Contempt for the Poor

One of the things that has always baffled me about American politics is the blue-collar/middle class Republican. These are people who are a few paychecks away from the breadline, yet the still support GOP policies that lambaste the poor.

This is a classic case of bait and switch, because while the GOP needs the votes of working class Americans (and by that I mean anyone who works for a salary,) it's policies of tax cuts to the mega rich and kissing up to corporations end up hurting Average Joes.

To get working people to support the polices of the upper class, the GOP has a powerful array of weapons in it's arsenal, homophobia, race, religion and when those doesn't work you can always throw in the red scare (communism.) In addition, the GOP now has a whole network, FOX News, and talk radio dedicated to spreading it's propaganda.

But now the country is struggling to get out of the worst Depression since World War II. Millions of Americans are suffering from long-term unemployment. Before if you were laid off it would take three t0 six months to find employment, now we are looking at a year or more. It is not unusual to find Americans who have been out of work for up to two years.

And how does the GOP choose to respond to this economic crisis? By bashing the poor of course. According to GOP propaganda Americans are unemployed, because they're lazy, too choosy or just spoiled. Republicans seem to thinking the whopping amounts of money unemployed people make (about $200 per week) is enough for people to live high on the hog and quit searching for work. The GOP has stonewalled on a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. All of a sudden they are concerned about deficits, even though the Republican controlled Congress voted for Bush's wars and tax cuts, which inflated the deficit.

Now let's say an American worker made about $50,000 a year, which is an average mid-level salary, that works out to be about $4,000 per month. An unemployment check of $200 per weeks, works out to about $800 per month, less than a quarter of what that person would be making if they worked.

But GOP firebrands like Nevada senatorial candidate Sharron Angle are convinced that Americans prefer couch surfing, instead of making real money. Angle implies that extending unemployment makes Americans comfortable, in an interview with a Nevada political show she said, "I would have voted no, because the truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does. And what we really need to do is put people back to work."

If Angle would actually talk to people on Planet Earth she might realize that finding a job is anything but easy. Statistics show there are about five applicants for every job. And even if workers are willing to drop their pay demands, they face resistance from employers. Age discrimination and degree discrimination are rife. (Many workers over the age of 50 have opted to take early retirement because they know that few employers want to hire an employee who is close to retirement.)

As someone who was unemployed for more than a year, I saw personal evidence of this. I sent out about 5,000 resumes and also applied for entry-level jobs. The problem is department stores at the mall are not going to hire a 40-something professional worker for a minimum-wage job, where his supervisor is going to be half his age.

Plus many of those companies would rather hire wet-behind-the-ear high school or college kids who will be happy to work for next to nothing, and won't have the balls to complain about labour abuse.

For those working class people who still cling to Conservative principles, I ask what more will it take to come to your senses? The GOP despises you. They use wedge issues to garner your votes, but side with corporations who are always looking for the bottom line, even if it means exporting American jobs to China, where they can pay less than a quarter of American wages.

Working class Republicans are like an abused wife who keeps going back to a husband who keeps giving her black eyes. But as Albert Einstein, the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The Democrats are not perfect, but at least they seem to be trying to do something about the situation, and they are not openly contemptuous of the poor.

Palin's a MILF, Who Cares If She's an Airhead?

Conservatives Love Dumb Women -- As Long as They're Cute

If you ever wondered why a shallow, hypocritical, media-whore like Sarah Palin ever became a national political figure, Bill Maher breaks it down. On Friday's "Real Time," Maher and his panel of guests, which included blogger Andrew Sullivan and director Judd Apatow, discussed the Sarah Palin phenomenon.

Maher says it all boils down to sex appeal. Yeah, Palin is a dim, wingnut who can barely string together an intelligent sentence, but she looks good. Basically, Conservative men still want to have sex with her, and for that they are willing to overlook her flaws. And that makes a lot of sense. If you consider that the Republican party is largely made of old, white men, it explains why they would idolize a pretty woman who speaks their language of God, guns and xenophobia.

Most of the female anchors on Fox News look like they came off a beauty queen assembly line. (Former FOX News commentator Angela McClowan is a former paegent contestant.) They are all pretty, mostly blonde and wear tight, form-fitting clothes. There have been memos showing that the female anchors were told to wear short skirts and show plenty of leg. The web site Right Wing News recently published a list of the top 15 Hottest Conservative Women in the New Media.

Conservatives seem to be under the impression that all left-wing women are hairy, hippies who don't wear deodorant. And because of that they are willing to tolerate the drivel spouted by Neocon bimbos like Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter.

Conservatives think the left hates Sarah Palin because she is attractive and has a big family. But as Jon Stewart said, the left just sees through her BS. They see her for what she is, a mannequin who makes a living parroting right-wing cliches.

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Corporations Want to Be Left Alone to Kill Workers

One of the mantras that conservatives like Sarah Palin love to repeat is that business does better without the intervention of government. Neocons would have us believe that government simply slows down enterprise and make things more complicated. Of course who needs little things like safety regulations or anti-fraud laws?

But these recent stories should make all Americans have second thoughts. Over the past year we have seen:

• Twenty nine workers killed in the worst mine accident in U.S. history
• Billions of dollars evaporated because of high-risk financial ventures on Wall Street
• Eleven workers killed in the British Petroleum oil rig explosion.
• Apple has outsourced manufacturing of the iPhone to a plant in China that has seen nine worker suicides this year.

In all of these cases, the main problem was lack of government regulation. Massey Energy mines were infamous for their violations and owner Don Blakenship, had utter contempt for the federal government. Massey Energy racked up a total of 250 safety violations.

Wall Street created financial terms that were so risky and complicated that few people understood them. One of the monsters they cooked up were derivatives, where bankers took out insurance on people to default on loans they gave them.

And as for the BP explosion, under the Bush administration, the Mineral Management Service, was stocked with cronies who were trying to get jobs at the very companies they were supposed to be monitoring. And when they weren't lobbying for cushy government gigs, they were looking at porn or doing drugs.

So what can we learn from these debacles? One, corporations don't give a damn about their workers, and two, when the government lets corporations monitor themselves, workers die. Ideally, corporations would love to have slave labor, who they don't have to pay and who never complain. The closest we have got to that is illegal immigrants.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/why-were-bp-executives-hired-mms-fox

Greenspan, Neo Cons Favor Lowering Wages to Drive Up Profits

I am currently reading, Thom Hartmann''s "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class." Much of it is depressingly accurate, but it might explain the nation's current economic climate. The economy has affected all segments of society, but particularly the middle class. If you need any evidence of this, look at the huge numbers of home foreclosures (there are three in a row on my block), bankruptcies and repos.

Those were mainly blue-collar/middle-class people who were making a comfortable living until they were laid off. Unfortunately in this economy, $50,000 per year jobs are not out there anymore. And if they are, there is fierce competition for them. Wages have also been depressed. Since there are so many people out of work, many workers are willing to lower their wages, just so they can have some form of income.

In many cases, companies have eliminated middle-management jobs and are replacing those workers with inexperienced, recent grads, who are happy to land any job. Also a recent grad will gladly work for $30,000, while a mid-career professional would have a hard time accepting this salary. Hartmann argues this was done deliberately. He said that many conservatives believe that the country should be ruled by a super-rich elite, who make all the important decisions. Essentially, it is a return to feudalism and in modern-day America, which has a rapidly shrinking middle class, I can see how this could happen. The book argues that part of this policy is to keep the middle class so stressed from trying to making a living, they will not have the time to take an active interest in politics. This is also a theory reported by Noami Klein in "The Shock Doctrine," and this is happening. If you don't believe me, trying having a political conversation with a friend and see how far it goes before that person says, "I am too busy trying to survive, to worry about politics."

Hartmann also reports that former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan was in favor of weakening the middle class and thus driving down wages. (I googled the quote and the link is included below.) And that is pretty much what is happening now. Competition is so fierce, many workers have lowered their wage expectations. This benefits the share holders because that saved money is returned to them in dividends. So, according to the American business model, companies will pay their employees the lowest wage possible, work them to death and avoid offering them any benefits, if possible. And if all else fails, they simply fire employees and use the saved income to drive up stock dividends. That sounds awfully similar to working conditions in many American companies.

http://blog.noslaves.com/alan-greenspan-recommends-wiping-out-the-middle-class/

poll by twiigs.com

FOX News Gives Viewers What They Want To Hear-- Even if It's Not True

Some of the best analysis of the United States media, comes from foreign sources, because they are often able to look at American news objectively.

Russia Today is an English language station broadcast out of Russia. They do a lot of news on America politics and the American media. In this interview with writer Michael Wolff, he explains why the American news media is dying.

Wolff says in today's climate, in order for a news organization to thrive, it has to understand its audience, and give them what they want. This is the reason why FOX News has been so successful. They have figured out their demographic -- angry, uneducated, white men -- and tailored their news to them.

So that means lots of anti-Obama and anti-Black stories, lots of leggy, blonde "newsmodels" and lots of stories about the Tea Party, which is largely made up of angry, white people. Who cares if any of the news is accurate or objective? According to Wolff, FOX's main goal is to get ratings, so it can sell products.

He also points out that advertising rates on FOX are lower than CNN's, because the FOX demographic is supposed have less education, and therefore less buying power!

poll by twiigs.com

FOX's Brit Hume Asks Tiger to Come to Jesus

Brit Hume has hit the political chat show headlines for a comment he made on FOX News Sunday. I don't watch that junk, so I picked it up from other shows. Hume said that Tiger Woods, could redeem his image by converting to Christianity. According to Hume, Christianity has a clear path for cheating husbands to redeem their image. (Apparently Hume doesn't think that a weird religion like Buddhism, which Woods' practices, is good enough.)

Hume should know a lot about redemption, but he is not exactly a shining example of the virtues of Christianity. Like a lot of Conservatives, he is on his second marriage. (Karl Rove just divorced wife no. 2.) His son was gay, alcoholic and also committed suicide.

What is it with these Conservatives and gay children? Hume joins a long list of conservative, family values types who produce gay children. Apart from Hume, there is also Dick Cheney, Alan Keyes, Randall Terry (who also divorced his first wife for a younger woman,) and Phyllis Schlafly.

For years I have known that there was a secret gay Republican sub culture, however the Mark Foley and Larry Craig scandals blew the lid of it. Liberal writer Max Blumenthal documented the seamy underbelly of the Conservative movement in his book "Republican Gomorrah."

Apart from being just flat out over the line, Hume's response is also very offensive to Buddhists and people of other faiths. So after decades of colonialism and evangelism, and we still have old white men telling black people what religion to practice.

poll by twiigs.com