Thursday, February 2, 2012

Willard's Words of Wisdom

Harken all ye hereto unto the words of Willard the Wannabe President:-



So Willard isn't overly concerned about the poor. Does that surprise me? Not in the least. I didn't expect him to be; after all, he's a very wealthy man, from a wealthy and privileged background. He's a Republican. I certainly never expected anyone of his obvious ilk to pay more than lip service to the poor and the working poor. What does surprise me is his obvious disingenuity in admitting as much. If he intended to do so, his honesty (in this instance) is to his credit. If he didn't, the Democrats shouldn't hesitate to take advantage of what should be his blatant stupidity.

Besides, as much as they've gathered up the flotsam and jetsam left in the wake of changes to the Democratic party in the past forty years, we all know that the Republican Party, in its 20th Century reincarnation, was never about the poor people. Why, they've been trying to undo Franklin Roosevelt's social legislation since its implementation and even achieved this in the wake of Roosevelt's death, after the 1946 Midterms resulted in a Republican majority. If you think this "Do-Nothing" Congress is bad, it was the original one, the 80th Congress, who managed to begin the slow undermining of the unions with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act.

As much as Willard's latest wordfart worries me, I'm even more worried about the Democrats and their attitude towards these people Willard disdains. Do the Democrats speak for the poor? I was always raised to believe, by my Democratic parents, that the Democrats were for the working class people. Now all the talk is about the middle class, as if a con artist has decided to paper over the lie of stagnant social mobility which has existed for the past thirty years, and just replace the phrase "working class" with "middle class" and everyone would feel better - just like in the 80s and 90s everyone felt richer because of the plastic cards in their wallets and the loans they took out with their homes as collateral, in order to experience a taste of the good life.

When a leading writer for The Daily Kos, interviewing Dan Pfeiffer at 2011's Netroots Nation, smugly informs him that Progressives were bored with hearing about Lilly Ledbetter, then something's rotten in the Democratic Party. When the reaction of the President's compromise to extend the Bush Tax Cuts for 2 years in exchange for a number of economic agreements that would benefit the working class and working poor, results in a Democratic Congressman from the Pacific Northwest shouting, "Fuck the President," then it's blatantly obvious that the poor in this country have no voice.

The Professional Left boasts Katrina vanden Heuvel and Arianna Huffington as spokespeople for the middle class, who mouth platitudes about "the poor," you just know that "the poor" is simply a generic which exists in their high society minds, pictures of raggedy, little match girls begging on foggy Victorian streets which might evoke the odd tear to cause their mascara to run, only to be compartmentalised for the day as their having paid their sympathetic dues to "the poor."

"The poor" live in rundown urban areas, but they also live in rundown rural areas too - black, white and Latino. They work in the warehouses of the big box stores on strip malls outside dying towns for minimum wage and no kind of health or pension benefits. They eat cheap, processed, fatty foods and, more often as not, are morbidly obese. Rickets, anorexia and tuberculosis were the plagues of a 20th Century Depression. Heart failure, respiratory distress and Type 2 diabetes plague the new generation of "the poor."

But Willard reckons that "the poor" will always have a social safety net which will cushion and coddle them. Even that statement is rich (pun intended) coming from the man who's bought into the Paul Ryan Budget plan which will, effectively, end whatever social safety net is left existing for these people, "the poor." No, Willard's concerned only about the middle class, the (in his words) ninety to ninety-five percent of the people who are struggling in the country today - all of whom, in his estimation, are part and parcel of the middle class.

To recognise any of these souls as "the poor" just might give Willard cooties.

And just to cement his commitment to helping the vast middle class who are suffering, he and his campaign are making subtle overtures to Ron Paul and his toadies. Ne'mind, that Paul's working hard for the Republican nomination also, the truth is Ron Paul knows he won't get this; but he can wedge his foot in the Republican door and find a place at Willard's policy table if, when he eventually throws in the towel, Willard buys into some of Paul's pet policies.

You can bet your bottom dollar that whatever Willard borrows from Paul's agenda won't include the Progressive Paulbots' favourites of legalised weed and the troops being brought home. What it will include is the dismantling of the social safety net. If President Romney doesn't scare the piss out of you, try imagining Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr Ron Paul, telling you that if you're sick and uninsured, because "Obamacare's" been repealed, find a kindly neighbour or depend on the charity of your church.

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