When you hear Republicans talk about fixing the economy they always talk about creating jobs and tax cuts for the American people. Then when in power, they forget about the jobs and focus on cutting taxes for the top 2 percent of the country. The top 2 percent that consists of Wall Street fat cats, big bankers, oil tycoons and multinational corporations or, as President Bush referred to them, their base. This is the typical behavior of the GOP when they come to power. They take care of their donors first. But this tax-cutting strategy is part of the same failed economic theory that has been used by the GOP for the last 30 years and has resulted in our economy and our deficit being in the dreadful states that there in now.
The idea that if you give money to the rich, and eventually that money will trickle down to the rest of us, has failed repeatedly since the 1980s. But as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun, the GOP at the local, state, and federal levels, are running this same failed shell game. And as the last 30 years have shown us, the money stays at the top. So much so that there has never been a greater concentration of wealth at the top of the American population in our history as there is today. Nor has that concentration of wealth been a greater threat to our democracy. For example, those at the very top, like the Koch brothers, have used that wealth to buy elections and create so-called "grassroots" rightwing organizations.
Now no one likes paying taxes. But governments, like many other organizations, need revenue to perform some basic functions. That revenue is needed to pay policemen, firemen and teachers. It needs that revenue to fix and maintain the infrastructure that allows for people to go to work and for manufacturers to get their goods to market. The government also needs that revenue to pay for goods and services, which in turn keeps people employed. So when the government is strapped for cash and unemployment is high, you would think that cutting off revenue streams and threatening the employed with layoffs would be the last thing on the agenda.
And now American workers, who have had enough of being the scapegoat for failed GOP economic policies, are now protesting at state capitols. And how do GOP politicians respond to American workers exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to protest? Well, Indiana Republican deputy attorney general Jeff Cox recommended "use live ammunition" when referring to how law enforcement should respond to protesters in Wisconsin. Where's the outrage?
It's remarkable how quickly some members of the so-called pro-democracy GOP abandon democracy and threaten violence when their positions are challenged. They first refused to vocally support democracy in Egypt. Now they are willing to kill democracy here and establish a plutocracy in America like the ones that the people of the Middle East are trying to remove.
