A Bitter Cup of Economic Malfeasance

by Tony Chavira

I know that FourStory’s supposedly a “lefty” website, but I don’t consider myself especially left wing. I think that government (like business) should be finding ways to make itself a lot of money both through taxes and through innovation. But since the privatization of the major agencies that support technological achievement (i.e. the military and healthcare) has led to the privatization of anything our government’s ever developed for its people, we’re left with fewer and fewer methods of making money without raising taxes. To top it off, the same people who lobbied so hard to privatize these agencies are against raising taxes and, in fact, would rather lower them (with a special focus on lowering them for those who gain the most from buying government utilities out from under our noses).

Naturally, once wealthy people discovered that America would let them could buy our utilities while lowering their taxes, they decided to test that formula with everything: streets, bridges, water, power, national parks, federal buildings, museums ... you name it. Goldman Sachs calls investments like this infrastructure funds: literally, funds that buy American utilities. This way, wealthy jerks and businesses that are treated like wealthy jerks can gobble up what used to be free. This forces people to pay if they want to use their own country. And by “people” I mean the working poor.

This places a financial ceiling over the average low-income family. Every little fee, every tiny amount they spend on things that should be free is money they can’t spend on food, rent or transportation. Everyone should have access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but these wealthy people have stacked the American system so that it is not free in any sense of the word. Paying to use your city is not liberty.

Today, these people are called Republican establishment politicians. Not the practical-size government Eisenhower Republican I wish were still here and dominating the party. Not the control-your-spending Goldwater/Buckley conservatives we actually need right now. The guys I’m talking about want the government to stay out of their business, but are just fine losing all of our public services to multinational corporations. The guys I’m talking about want God to control America so that (POOF!) everything will instantly be better somehow. The guys I’m talking about are the GOP presidential candidates.

The GOP debate this past Monday, revealed (to no one’s surprise) that Mitt Romney is embarrassed that he tried to help the poor citizens of Massachusetts by providing state-mandated health insurance. Instead of letting them die poor and pathetic, that is. As it’s seen as common knowledge that Republicans cannot show any inclination to help the plight of the poor, Tim Pawlenty implied that Obamacare was an inherently evil institution, and has used the term “Obamneycare” to accuse Romney of wanting to help the people in his state. When Pawlenty was called out on this statement in Romney’s presence, he backed down, providing ample evidence that the lock-step Republican institutional structure matters more than having a backbone.

No candidate that night was shy about displaying their hatred of minority groups. It was like a convention of high school bullies, bent on appearing strong by picking on the weak.

• Herman Cain’s distrust of the extreme Muslim population was particularly ironic seeing that many would vehemently argue that the extreme Christian population is destroying America from within, but the casualness with which he called Muslims out was particularly heinous.
• Michelle Bachmann, who many pundits passively state “had a good night,” spent the night supporting a law to keep gays from getting married. She should’ve also mentioned how she and her husband think they can be cured. Or that she’d implement a constitutional amendment to keep them from getting married.
• An opportunistic troll named Newt Gingrich was totally cool with that amendment, or just leaving it up to the states. Whichever polls better. Anyway, as long as Newt got some camera time to plug that he passed the (hey-guess-what-unconstitutional) Defense of Marriage Act, he figured that his gay-dissing cred was solid.
• The worst of the worst had to be Rick Santorum: the guy who hates gay people so much that people mockingly redefined his last name as ... well, it’s googled here. Between “keeping marriage sacred” and his “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” stance, he’s the real anti-gay deal. Although they all weaseled their way around the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” question. And the audience applauded.

In a school yard, kids with money know who the poor kids are and pick on them. We all recognize it when we see it at schools or in movies; but not when Republican politicians mask it as “economic freedom means not paying taxes.” Not paying taxes even if that ends all social security programs, all government-owned utilities and all government safety programs. Not letting the wealthy pay their share even if it solidifies the barrier between where they are and where everyone else is. Even if it means an unending American aristocracy with access to everything while the vast, poor nation has access to nothing, taxes to maintain government must be eliminated.

Yet we still need to pay for a ColdWar size military to undertake oil-grabbing adventures in faraway nations, even if the people there hate us after we bomb their ancestral homes. That’s what it means to be Republican. If we need more oil, we’ll take out another loan to pay for a war to secure some. Then take loans from China to pay back our banks. Then default to China while our finance, oil and military industry moguls kick back and watch the world burn.

These candidates would be goddamned if they ever saw an increase in your taxes—and most especially if they ever had to say “tax increase” in front of a camera. Bachmann is mad because we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world ... but why should the working poor care about this? Santorum wants to cut the capital gains tax in half and Cain wants to eliminate it altogether ... but how do poor people benefit from that? Romney didn’t want a cent raised for healthcare, leading one to think that he’d either eliminate it or lower taxes until it eliminates itself ... but what poor person benefits from this? Ron Paul complains that businesses go abroad to get away from American taxes, as if eliminating those taxes would magically make the government money if the companies were here! Trickle down economics doesn’t work, so what the hell are these people thinking?

By far the most ridiculous offender is Tim Pawlenty, who said arguably the stupidest thing of the night: “We’re proposing to cut taxes, reduce regulation, speed up this pace of government, and to make sure that we have a pro-growth agenda.” A few weeks ago, Pawlenty, upon deciding that he was an economic genius, developed a plan that would provide four times as much in tax cuts to the wealthy as Bush did.

As everyone who analyzed the last five years will tell you, reduced regulation directly caused the economic collapse. But in the middle of the GOP debate, Pawlenty grew the balls to tell you that he’s got a plan based on two failed strategies, “speeding up government” (whatever that means) and “a pro-growth agenda.” But what can we expect from a former governor who accepted tons of money from the federal stimulus for Minnesota while vetoing essential state taxes, leaving the state with massive debt, and laying off a ton of state workers? This guy is simply a fraud and I cannot believe Americans are comfortable listening to him completely falsify his expertise on national television.

To top off this bitter cup of economic malfeasance, none of the candidates stood up to ending the ethanol tax credit (which would have zero economic impact except to add money to the federal budget). That’s how much these people care about the government they plan to ruin and the people they plan to screw. They don’t care if we going bankrupt, if the rich get richer, if the poor get poorer, or if we fight every country in the world to assert our dominance until the dollar is worth less than the equivalent amount of toilet paper. All they care about is being right and winning, and if it means their wealthy friends lose money, it’s instantly “the evils of socialism.”

These people are not interested in a practical-sized government and they’re not interested in controlling our spending. They want the government to stay out of business, and don’t mind it if this results in us losing all our public services to multinational corporations.

And maybe, after American aristocracy has gained control of everything in sight and the rest of us can’t afford to walk down the street to the grocery store, God will reach down from the heavens to seize control over America from them. And, poof, make everything better.

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