December 22, 2007

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE CLASS WARFARE ADMINISTRATION

The eyes of right-wingers bulge out and their faces turn puffy in fury if you talk about making the very rich pay their fair share of taxes. Class warfare! they howl. But they have absolutely no problem with top down class warfare the way we've seen in the Bush administration. Whether it's the failure to pass real minimum wage reform, or gutting environmental regulations, or eviscerating consumer safety laws, Bush has done everything he can to enrich the already rich and shaft the rest of us. This article by Peter Dreier is at www.commondreams.org:

Virtually every week since he took office, the Bush administration has made or proposed changes in our laws designed to help the rich and powerful while harming the most vulnerable people in society and putting the middle class at greater economic risk. The list of horrors can be so numbing that one can lose sight of the cumulative impact of these actions. Taken together, they add up to the most direct assault on working people, the environment and the poor that the country has seen since the presidency of William McKinley over a century ago.

Bush has been a persistent practitioner of top-down class warfare , but the media rarely characterize his actions that way. In contrast, when progressive activists, unions, environmental groups, community organizations and politicians support legislation and rules to redress the balance of power and wealth, they are inevitably described as engaging in class warfare . Top-down class warfare seems to be OK, but bottom-up class warfare is apparently a no-no.

The class warfare rap is now being used against John Edwards, when he talks about challenging the power of the insurance and drug corporations. In a recent speech, Edwards said that his campaign was about challenging "the powerful, the well-connected and the very wealthy." But wary of being criticized for fueling class resentments, even Edwards felt it necessary to say "This is not class warfare. This is the truth."

LAND OF THE POOR

While we read about huge bonuses going to Wall Street moguls we learn that millions of Americans are having a hard time getting even necessities like food and shelter. Many of those Americans are children. Let's hear about "family values" and the other drivel we get from right-wingers. We're a country that spends and wastes billions of dollars on military expenditures. We're a country that cuts taxes for the already obscenely wealthy, but we can't even provide adequate food and shelter for our citizens. This article is at www.cbpp.org/12-20-07pov.htm:

During the holidays, many Americans make a special effort to help the less fortunate. Sadly, there is no shortage of families in need.[i] According to the latest government figures:

36.5 million Americans — roughly one in eight — live in poverty.[ii] Despite relatively strong economic growth since 2001, poverty has remained stubbornly high, and today’s poverty rate is higher than it was during the last recession. That the poverty rate is still above its recession level is especially distressing given that poverty usually declines during recoveries and rises during recessions. If the economy goes into a slowdown or recession in 2008, poverty likely will only increase further.

15.4 million Americans live in extreme poverty. In other words, their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or less than about $10,000 a year for a family of four.