CONTROL OF CORPORATE GREED

As a liberal, I have a tendency to say Republican strategy is stupid and that is a big mistake on my part. The strategy may seem stupid but it works; therefore, it is illogical to say that it is stupid. It looks like the Koch brothers have bought enough of your votes to control a large majority of the state governments but also the U. S. Senate, House of Representatives and the White House in 2016. Let me explain.

I listened to Senator Portman on Meet the Press this morning during his colloquy he vomited, really re-vomited, all Republican talking points. Of course, his main theme was that you couldn’t have any government program unless you pay for it, which sounds logical, reasonable, and all that good stuff especially to Republicans who seem obsessed with a balanced budget. In addition, Portman added the same old trope that Republicans offered up a solution but the Democrats blocked it—“They refused to compromise”. This is well a honed approach and works to swings large numbers of votes to the GOP.

At its center is this simple core, what the Republicans offer is to cut programs that help the poor and the middle class; minimum wage, immigration, healthcare, social security, etc but refuse to raise taxes to pay for past programs or expansion of new programs. The government cannot buy something if you do not have any money. Simple, you cut government income by cut taxes on corporations balanced by cuts in social programs for the middle class—it has been going on since Reagan. Democrats refuse to “compromise”—you get everything and I get nothing; we ccut your taxes but you give nothing back.

It works. Democrats come off looking somehow guilty because they do not want to compromise. Republicans come off looking good because they do not want to raise taxes, which appeals to our innate greed. The result is the American people end up voting against them selves—what’s the matter with Kansas?

We live in a rich country. We should not have people working for slave wages, starving in the streets, or going bankrupt over health care costs because of some runaway greedy corporation that is making gobs of money. Corporate executives refuse to “ compromise” by paying their fair share of  taxes by making the common people believe it is them, the guy who can least afford it, who will have to pay the taxes. Why should the rich care about social programs? For examples, if a person who takes home $20 million a year breaks a leg, does he have to worry about having insurance? Do they have to worry about retirement?  

#The Koch Brothers have bought our #Supreme Court, our political parties, and our congress. They have also bought you if you vote GOP. Republicans believe they belong to the “fiscally responsible party” but they don’t; they actually belong to a greedy corrupt party run by individuals who are not at all concerned about fairness, democracy, and all the other good things our constitution promises us.

It is about time that Democrats show them that we too can be greedy; not for us as individual s but for the entire working class. We want nice things for “all of the people”. We are willing to wait for money to trickle down from the top because it never will. That leaves the question; “How do we fight corporate excesses?” The answer is the “true” fourth estate, which means the media that is still free of the grips of greed. I do not mean broadcasters like Fox news, which is a lost cause. Nor do I mean #Channel 11 (#Raleigh), which except for radical Republican supporters like #Larry Stogner, has some balanced reporting. I mean the rare media outlets that have the finances to support investigative reporters who can dig into and carefully document the corrupt practices of big corporation and document and reveal their improprieties in an honest way. As reporter, I would start with the #Koch industries at the United States level and the multiple businesses run by #Art Pope at the level of North Carolina. The bottom line; the “free” media is all we have left and what is most scary is that even that might fail.

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