Inciting Strife for Political Gain
In response to previous columns, I have received numerous messages that go something like this:
I work at two jobs to make ends meet, pay almost half my take home pay for medical insurance and don’t even have a pension. Why should I have to then pay for my tax dollars for pampered government employees to receive cushy benefits?
I have great sympathy for these correspondents. As a parish pastor, I’ve encountered many people in just those circumstances, men and women who have worked hard, saved money, and, then, seen their retirement savings disappear because an injury or unexpected illness left them unable to work and forced them to pay thousands of dollars a month for the health insurance needed to keep them alive.
Rather then helping these people, what the governor has done is to goad them to anger against people who do have decent health and pension benefits. And one of the first things he did in office was to lend his support to efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s health insurance laws, which would have made insurance available and affordable to those not lucky enough to have high-benefit jobs.
So, they’re left with frustration, but not help.
And that was the plan from the start. Make people who are scraping by angry, not at the wealthy, but at the middle class, and so instead of trying to bring the poor up to the middle class, use the anger of the poor as a weapon to further decimate the middle class.
Destroying the unions will not bring one iota of relief to people working two jobs and paying exorbitant medical insurance bills. Quite the contrary, those people need unions themselves.
yup, these days it’s mainly only gov’t workers are in unions so they are an easy group to target, or so the Republicans thought.
Wisconsin is the state that just voted out Russ Feingold, so it is not that liberal or even sane I guess.
Standard practice from the plutocratic playbook: pit the have-littles against the have-nothings.
As George Bailey said, “we can get through this all right, but we’ve got to stick together.”
A recent FB post:
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party and a Big Corp CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, “Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.”
Haha, that’s brilliant, Roger! Where did you find that stuff?
Reminds me of another cartoon recently posted on this blog:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/2010/12/imbalance_of_payments.html
Indeed, the GOP is becoming increasingly blatant about pandering to their wealthiest constituents. It’s no longer hidden, but displayed proudly in the open. They can pit the two subclasses together until the two sides duke it out (without any mention of the elephant in the room). The GOP knows where their priorities lie.
I just wish the voters at large would wake up and follow the money trail.
The job you lost overseas didn’t just get up and walk away on its own. It was a tough, heart-wrenching executive decision between a luxurious private condo on the Riviera or your job; and your job came in second.
That’s the kind of irresponsible BS the GOP is out there fighting for–NOT you or me.
Ken,
Exactly. Jobs are not the concern of the wealthy… indeed, it’s always been a “good” thing for the ownership class to have some unemployed… all the better to keep wages down and workers compliant (afraid). …and yes, I totally agree that the GOP/Conservatives are getting rather blatant about the whole class-warfare thing. As to the quote – I’m not sure of its original source – but it appears to be making the rounds a bit via email and FaceBook postings.