Demonize The Poor & Weak While Protecting The Rich & Powerful

[stopbush]

That's today's Republicanism in a nutshell.

Discuss

[Melodybe]

1. So true it hurts, literally.

As a friend of mine always says, "There's nothing wrong with a little class warfare."

[kaygore]

2. Yepper, that's the Republican way!

[Robbien]

3. The House is putting through a bill to protect Boeing

That says it all.

[EVDebs]

7. You mean to protect further outsourcing to China

Those CEOs and Wall St just gotta be bailed out with their 'golden parachutes' while the line personnel get pushed out with a handshake.

Someone find out how many jobs Boeing sent offshore...
When Planemakers Merge
http://eatthestate.org/02-28/WhenPlanemakersMerge.htm

"Boeing's enormous political clout--retaining over 70 of D.C.'s largest lobbying firms--has allowed it to nearly single-handedly shape to its own self-interest U.S. policies that tolerate and encourage human rights abuses in China and numerous other countries. As noted last week, Jim McDermott's current "Sub-Sahara Africa Trade Bill," like much of trade and defense policy advocated by McDermott and everyone else in the state's Congressional delegation, is a huge windfall for Boeing. Boeing also takes a more direct role, as in NATO expansion (the major purpose of which is to sell U.S. weapons to Eastern Europe). In Hungary's national referedum last fall on whether to join NATO, Boeing donated about U.S. $100,000 to the "yes" campaign, which won.

Boeing's interest in such countries isn't just in sales. As with many transnationals, Boeing relentlessly outsources its labor and suppliers-- busting unions, killing U.S. jobs, and contracting as much of its manufacturing as it can in countries with low wages, brutal anti-union regimes, and lax to non-existent environmental laws. Even in this country, Boeing's worker safety record is abysmal (e.g., its recent settlement of a lawsuit with chemically injured workers in Renton). Its environmental record, littered with Superfund toxic waste sites, is equally horrid."

That's called Free Market Populism. Someone call Thomas Frank, quick !

[jobycom]

4. I think that's too simplistic. There's that whole "Kill them if they ain't

white" thing going, too, and that seems to cross class boundaries.

Otherwise, you about summed it up.

[oscar111]

5. Cant call the poor "lazy" if you prove a job shortage

to refute the RW, use my sig below on the job shortage, which forces 14 million to be poor.

not laziness, but a job shortage to blame.

the feds document the shortage, but it seems no dem has noticed that. None speak about the shortage. Dummies, is all i can say. Dummies.

[ultraist]

excellent point!

Your title reminds me of an article I read today about Evangelicals and their punitive attitudes. The article notes that Evangelicals and fundies, who used to be primarily of the lower income classes, are now moving into higher income brackets. This is a big segment of Bush's base, of course.


Class Matters, NYT series http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html?8dpc

"On a Christian Mission to the Top"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/national/class/EVANGELICALS-FINAL.html

excerpts:

The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.

What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.

Evangelical Christians are now increasingly likely to be college graduates and in the top income brackets. Evangelical C.E.O.'s pray together on monthly conference calls, evangelical investment bankers study the Bible over lunch on Wall Street and deep-pocketed evangelical donors gather at golf courses for conferences restricted to those who give more than $200,000 annually to Christian causes.

Cool interactive graphs on Income/SES
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_03.html

[ultraist]

6. sorry dupe!

I'm getting used to my new laptop...sigh...the touchpad mouse is jumpy.