by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The American Democratic party, the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, was a force to be reckoned with. Most often allied with labor, Democrats --not Republicans --presided over the hard-won triumph over the Great Depression. It was Democrats, not Republicans, who later presided over a thriving economy, an egalitarian economy in the late 40s and much of the 50s. It was the Democratic regimes of FDR and Harry Truman that were the most egalitarian in U.S. History.

This prosperity continued through the JFK years. Not even Nixon could undo the good that had been done. That job was left to Ronald Reagan whose infamous, inequitable tax cut of 1982 breached the wall. Only the upper quintile benefited from Reaganomics of which the infamous tax cut of 1982 was the centerpiece. Only the upper 1 percent have benefited.

Over the same period of time, American manufacturing --steel, automotive, appliances et al --declined. Labor was denied a base upon which to build a movement or even an effective opposition. Out of work and out of money, labor was neutered. As a result, steel is produced in Japan and imported. Appliances are increasingly made in China and imported, denying jobs to US workers. Once a center of world automobile production, downtown Detroit is but a shadow of its former glory. Various suburbs like Flint have deteriorated.

The antipathy shown labor by the American right wing has a long history. In 1911, L.A.Times owner/publisher Gen. Harrison Grey Otis exploited the bombing of the L.A. Times building to win a landmark propaganda war against labor. Two brothers, labor leaders, were accused of this act of 'domestic terrorism' around which Otis rallied opposition to labor despite the fact that the trial ended with a plea bargain. Arguably, the more lasting fallout was the subsequent trial of Clarence Darrow who was accused of bribing prospective jurors.

The GOP has not won the debate with its 'scorched earth' methods and politics. It has merely hollowed out the soul of a nation for the benefit of just 20 percent in the 80s and only 1 percent recently. The GOP did not defeat labor or its ideals. Rather, it exported their jobs and shut them up. It's the GOP way.

Not just labor, the nation as a whole has paid dearly for this cynical strategy. Confirmation and results can be found at the CIA's own World Fact Book where you will find the U.S. at the bottom of the list with the world's largest NEGATIVE CURRENT ACCT BALANCE; China, with whom GOP Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush cut sweetheart deals is on top. China prospers. America is near collapse and will be eventually reduced to third world status if it is not there already.

It was all by design. The GOP was willing to amputate a nation's leg and arm to save an increasingly stupid head, a ruling one percent who has done little or nothing to deserve is role as the nation's ruling plutocracy! In the meantime, the Democratic party is robbed of its traditional, labor base. Thus, was forced upon Bill Clinton the odious 'triangulation' of an increasingly moribund 'center', a strategy for which he was roundly criticized and rightly on principle. In fact, however, it was all that is left him in the wake of the GOP's scorched earth policy.

The U.S. is now a limping, one-legged man where everyone fancies himself an aristocrat but, in fact, everyone but the top one percent are getting poorer. It's a slow boil but coming to a head very quickly now. Interestingly, those benefiting from Reagan's policies were but about 20 percent of the total population. More recently, that segment is reduced to just one percent. At what point with the fabulously wealthy one percent become one-half of one percent and eventually, one half or one quarter of that amount. This can be plotted as a curve on a graph. A rate of decline can be pinpointed. All it takes is a bit of first semester calculus to plot the very rate at which the GOP have impoverished us all.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It's how the the 'pay-offs' are laundered. Clinton reversed the trend but briefly. That he dared get a blow job was much more important than saving a nation from a disastrous fate. In fact, it was all the GOP could pin on him, though he was under a sweeping investigation seemingly from the get go.

ýSomeone said that Satan's biggest 'trick' was convincing the world that he did not exist. The GOP's biggest trick is convincing the American people that they are a political party. They are, in fact, a crime syndicate with characteristics of a kooky cult. Stanford University studies have proven that GOP-types have more night terrors and horrible nightmares than do normal people. This is understandable when you understand that the GOP rank and file are insecure, in fact, frightened if not terrified. Nightmares are but dream manifestations of those fears an anxieties. Likewise, GOP policy. In short, we, the people have paid and continue to pay for GOP fears and neurotic hang ups. I would think that like me, you are fed up with doing so!

Edward R. Murrow: Wires and Lights in a Box

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by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy The GOP 'Scorched Earth' Policy, via The Existentialist Cowboy