The Oldest Con in the World

This talk from every Republican out there––this push to privatize everything. Privatize Social Security, Medicare, schools, roads, prisons, the military––it's all about taking the public's money and putting it into fewer pockets. Never mind whether the thing being privatized continues to function.

No.

It's about taking the money out. Profit rather than public service. If something is working it has funding; this privatization scheme, and it is a scheme, is all about taking that funding and putting it into fewer pockets, letting the machinery run without oil, without maintenance till it stops. Privatizing profit and socializing risk. Leaving the taxpayers and the beneficiaries high and dry. It's the oldest con in the world. Sucking value out and selling off the garbage that is left. Like in the film Glengarry Glen Ross.

America Isn't Broke, Just the Middle Class

AMERICA ISN'T BROKE. So there's no reason to kill Social Security or Medicare.

We CAN and should repair our infrastructure. It would put people to work, which would pay for groceries and clothes and rent and mortgages and healthcare and pay taxes.

Our middle class is dying because their incomes have been starved for the past thirty years, as all the productivity and increased profitability was funneled into the pockets of the people at the top.

Whether we allow the middle class to die, and the American economy with it, depends on choices we make. It's a perverse strategy to tax the people who are out of money and leave the rich alone.

Ask Americans and you won't find many who know this. You will find millions who feel strained, insecure, frightened, pessimistic about the future, but you won't find many who know why this is or what to do about it.

It is easy to get frightened people to do as they're told. First you make people less secure, then you drop the safety net. It brings a lot of people into line very quickly. Lies are essential.

Backed up by 24 hour talking heads repeating the old joke that tax cuts and endless pay raises to rich people will feed and clothe and house the rest of us. That strategy is what got us here. Ten years of tax cuts to the rich bankrupted the country.

Some are happy with the failed GOP strategy and Republicans in the House of Representatives are comfortably in the pocket of a rich minority who pay for their seats.

People need to start shouting back. Call the radio programs that push the falsehoods. Complain to the advertisers who sponsor the lies. Applaud the media sources that tell the truth. Write your congressperson. Give the Democrats some courage. And vote the GOP out.

Be clever. Surprise people. Talk back. Like this.