A lot of people in the Baby Boomer generation have long had a sense that a significant part of the cohort was either very unbalanced, or, at least, very selfish. This generation of voters 'sat' by while collectively the US squandered all the goodwill earned in the global community from America's support in two world wars. In addition, th…
A lot of people in the Baby Boomer generation have long had a sense that a significant part of the cohort was either very unbalanced, or, at least, very selfish. This generation of voters 'sat' by while collectively the US squandered all the goodwill earned in the global community from America's support in two world wars. In addition, they stayed focused on their own well-being while corporations and media owners quietly herded everyone into a constant state of distractions with an endless state of wars to keep voters from examining the Game-at-Home.
During the 2023-24 extreme politicians will try to cut the only healthcare and pension system that many Americans have left, and ignore the pleas by 200 millionaires in Davos to tax the Rich before it's too late https://www.commondreams.org/news/tax-the-rich-davos. The BIG Question, of course, is whether the talkers have the will and the skills to actually go to work for America's future, with a passion equal to the task. The GOP challenge of the national debt limit of 33 Trillion dollars is not about money -as Mr. Hartman's analysis points out.
Let's see if the generations Post-the-Baby-Boomers has the skills, will and common sense to work for enough commonsense to attract enough voters from all parts of America - and shelve for the time being some of the more radical convictions espoused by the urban democrats. If not, the losses will be remarkable, for America and the world. Perhaps President Kennedy's call-to-duty says it best:
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
The middle class was out of control by the late 1960s, they believed, and something had to be done. There was too much democracy, and it was tearing America apart.
Looking back at the “solutions” England used around the time of the American Revolution (and for 1000 years before) and advocated by Edmund Burke and other conservative thinkers throughout history, Republicans saw a remedy to the crisis. As a bonus, it had the side effect of helping their biggest donors and thus boosting their political war-chests.
If working people, women, minorities, and students were a bit more desperate about their economic situations, these conservative thinkers asserted, then they’d be less likely to organize, protest, strike, or even vote. The unevenness, the instability, the turbulence of democracy in the 1960s would be calmed.
— To accomplish this, Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times.
— He put a tax on Social Security income and unemployment benefits and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by working-class people.
— He ended the deductibility of credit-card, car-loan and student-debt interest, overwhelmingly claimed by working-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for millionaires and multimillionaires from 74% to 27%. (There were no billionaires in America then, in large part because of FDR’s previous tax policies; the modern explosion of billionaires followed Reagan’s massive tax cuts for the rich.)
— He declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American non-government workforce when he came into office to around 10% today.
— He brought a young lawyer named John Roberts into the White House to work out ways to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision. His VP brought in his son, George W., to build bridges between the GOP and the most fanatical branches of evangelical Christianity, who opposed both women’s rights and the Civil Rights movement.
— He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and NAFTA, which opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while cutting corporate donor’s labor costs and union membership.
Darlin', I read your stuff just to see where you stick the stiletto in: "...and shelve for the time being some of the more radical convictions espoused by the urban democrats." I'm the ultimate farm/horse-doodoo/ backwoods tree-farmer/urban amalgamation there is, and it's clear to me that those "urban democrats" have some real good ideas for all of us! You betcha!
A lot of people in the Baby Boomer generation have long had a sense that a significant part of the cohort was either very unbalanced, or, at least, very selfish. This generation of voters 'sat' by while collectively the US squandered all the goodwill earned in the global community from America's support in two world wars. In addition, they stayed focused on their own well-being while corporations and media owners quietly herded everyone into a constant state of distractions with an endless state of wars to keep voters from examining the Game-at-Home.
Fortunately, the 80-year memory limitation https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210623-generational-amnesia-the-memory-loss-that-harms-the-planet is kicking in and the next generation has an excellent chance at 'walking' their political and philosophical convictions by voting regularly and donating regularly to candidates and non-profits that have their interests at heart.
During the 2023-24 extreme politicians will try to cut the only healthcare and pension system that many Americans have left, and ignore the pleas by 200 millionaires in Davos to tax the Rich before it's too late https://www.commondreams.org/news/tax-the-rich-davos. The BIG Question, of course, is whether the talkers have the will and the skills to actually go to work for America's future, with a passion equal to the task. The GOP challenge of the national debt limit of 33 Trillion dollars is not about money -as Mr. Hartman's analysis points out.
Let's see if the generations Post-the-Baby-Boomers has the skills, will and common sense to work for enough commonsense to attract enough voters from all parts of America - and shelve for the time being some of the more radical convictions espoused by the urban democrats. If not, the losses will be remarkable, for America and the world. Perhaps President Kennedy's call-to-duty says it best:
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
― John F. Kennedy
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/53-ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you-ask
Mr. Hartman's citations:
The middle class was out of control by the late 1960s, they believed, and something had to be done. There was too much democracy, and it was tearing America apart.
Looking back at the “solutions” England used around the time of the American Revolution (and for 1000 years before) and advocated by Edmund Burke and other conservative thinkers throughout history, Republicans saw a remedy to the crisis. As a bonus, it had the side effect of helping their biggest donors and thus boosting their political war-chests.
If working people, women, minorities, and students were a bit more desperate about their economic situations, these conservative thinkers asserted, then they’d be less likely to organize, protest, strike, or even vote. The unevenness, the instability, the turbulence of democracy in the 1960s would be calmed.
— To accomplish this, Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times.
— He put a tax on Social Security income and unemployment benefits and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by working-class people.
— He ended the deductibility of credit-card, car-loan and student-debt interest, overwhelmingly claimed by working-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for millionaires and multimillionaires from 74% to 27%. (There were no billionaires in America then, in large part because of FDR’s previous tax policies; the modern explosion of billionaires followed Reagan’s massive tax cuts for the rich.)
— He declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American non-government workforce when he came into office to around 10% today.
— He brought a young lawyer named John Roberts into the White House to work out ways to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision. His VP brought in his son, George W., to build bridges between the GOP and the most fanatical branches of evangelical Christianity, who opposed both women’s rights and the Civil Rights movement.
— He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and NAFTA, which opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while cutting corporate donor’s labor costs and union membership.
And, sure enough, it worked.
Darlin', I read your stuff just to see where you stick the stiletto in: "...and shelve for the time being some of the more radical convictions espoused by the urban democrats." I'm the ultimate farm/horse-doodoo/ backwoods tree-farmer/urban amalgamation there is, and it's clear to me that those "urban democrats" have some real good ideas for all of us! You betcha!