The Republican Party has made a great leap towards fairness and egalitarianism, and they are to be commended for it.
As Republicans themselves would likely acknowledge, the GOP has not really been one for sharing. Merely hearing the phrase, "Share the Wealth," makes most Republicans quiver. Sharing the nation's resources on welfare, Social Security and Medicare is against all conservative belief. And pooling Americans together to share the benefits of health care in a public option, well...that just gives Republicans the creeps. An American should stand or fall on his own. Unions share, and unions must be crushed and, God willing, Republicans will do their best to accomplish that.
Sharing just isn't good, despite what your mother taught you and what you learned in the schoolyard. Sharing is what the Commies do. Not Americans. At least not Republicans.
That's why it's come as a shock and pleasant surprise to see the Republican Party finally reach out and actually call for sharing.
"Share the pain."
In this Republican-created economic crisis, everyone should be asked to share the pain, Republicans say. Democrats say it, too, but they're bleeding-hearts liberals; they have to say it. But Republicans asking others to share the pain, now that's news.
Asking teachers to share the pain, to give up some of that cushy existence teachers luxuriate in. Asking union members to share the pain, since they're so used to sharing anyway. Asking Wisconsin public employees to share others' pain because it's time that janitors, bus drivers, sanitation workers, park rangers and nurses understand just a wee bit of discomfort in their lives.
The truth is that in a financial crisis, it does make sense to share the pain. And Republicans express this eloquently.
"We're all going to have to share the pain," said the Republican Majority Leader in Wisconsin's Assembly, Scott Suder.
"I think everyone will have to share the pain," explained Mike Milburn, the Republican House Speaker in Montana.
Sarah Palin herself has urged union members to throw off the shackles of their "union bosses who are not looking out for you," who are burdening members with collective bargaining rights, and nobly follow her instead to get "budgets that share the burden."
Even the business community has issued a rallying cry, like one of Wisconsin's leading manufacturers, Badger Meter. "For many years, the public unions in the state have won a lot of battles," bluntly noted its CEO, Rich Meeusen, who donated $5,000 to Gov. Scott Walker's election. "Clearly, the private sector has had to take pretty draconian measures. The public sector so far has not. It's time for them to share the pain." Mr. Meeusen well-understands the "draconian measures" his own company had to take: last August, Badger Meter was painfully forced to increase its quarterly stock dividend by 15%. One can only presume they were hoping for a 25% raise.
And on and on the new-found, sharing voice of the Republican Party grows. From Washington, and Wisconsin, from Indiana, Ohio, Florida and Montana. Share the pain.
Share it!
This inspiring sense of community spirit and sharing means so much to the nation. And it would mean oh-so-much more if the concept of "Share the pain," meant to Republicans that everyone should share it. After all, "Share the pain" takes on such a less-noble meaning when you are only asking teachers, nurses, janitors, bus drivers, the middle class -- y'know: workers -- to share it. And conveniently leave out corporations and the wealthy.
Republicans fought like angry badgers against President Obama to make sure that people who made over $200,000 a year got tax cuts. When Democrats were willing to increase this to a million dollars, it still couldn't get past Republicans in Congress.
While asking public workers to "share the pain," Wisconsin governor Scott Walker gave a $117 million tax cut to corporations.
In Florida, Republican governor Rick Scott wants to cut corporate taxes $1.5 billion over two years.
As profits of the Big Five oil companies neared a trillion dollars the past decade, Senate Republicans in February unanimously voted down eliminating the companies' incentive tax breaks.
Share the pain.
This is what "share the pain" is to Republicans. Telling others to suck it in, while they increase their stock dividend.
Now, it's a dead certainty that Republicans have a treasure chest of reasons why all these tax cuts are a good thing for corporations and the wealthy. But when you are asking everyone who has something worth sharing to "share the pain" -- then providing any exemption, whatever the reason, gives lie to your call for "sharing." That's not sharing. That's cutting a backroom deal with your pals.
We all know what sharing is. We learned it in the third grade. Well, some of us did.
At least Marie Antoinette told the poor people of France to eat cake. The Republican Party is telling you not to eat. While they pay themselves a bonus.
The next time you hear a Republican say we must "share the pain," step back a moment and ask yourself just one simple question:
What pain has the GOP yet asked corporations and the wealthy to share?
So would you if it meant robbing you to pay off some politician's debt to their supporters. Which is exactly what happens to the taxpayers' dollars. You need only look at the bailouts of 2008 to know this to see that Democrats and the GOP alike made sure their moneyed supporters did not lose their jobs, businesses and homes due to Congressionally sponsored recession.
I am not a wealthy person and I do not begrudge those with the discipline and talent to make themselves wealthy. I am a worker. I depend on that entrepreneurial spirit that creates products, services, wealth, and jobs, jobs jobs, that we need and that made this country great.
Using envy to influence average folks to vote for your party is low. And that is just what you are doing by promoting a class system that sucks the earned wealth and jobs of others to promote your own agenda.
Besides, creating classes of Americans by their earnings is un-American. The progressive tax system with its six classes (10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% & 35% tax brackets) is un-Constitutional as it treats people un-equally in contradiction to the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mr. President will have run up the tab from about $9 Trillion to to over $14 Trillion in three short years by growing government and nothing else.
The wealthiest 10% of American workers pay 70% of all the income taxes government collects and it is not enough for you.
Example: A $900 refrigerator should cost a rich man $90,000 cash... loaf of bread, $100.
I mean.. they should experience "sticker shock" just like us.
They create wars, economic crises, take advantage of natural disasters to privatize govt functions using fear, fear. While people are in shock, they swoop in, privatized all things not standing still.
Look what happened after 9/11. Fear was used to go into Iraq to loot, plunder that country's resources then privatize everything. We, tax payers paid and still paying for this. Look at 2008 economic crash, we tax payers paid, paid and still paying for this while the rich laugh all the way to the bank.
Now they tell us we got a big budget deficit. They got to bust public unions so those jobs can be privatized - it's not fair for govt workers to get paid more than private. We can't pay for health care for all - it's too expensive, insurance companies will die, it's govt takeover, it's too socialist. But it not socialist when tax payers pay for unnecessary wars, fill the bankers coffers with our dollars.
Conservatives speak lies, lies, lies. "Share the pain" is another big lie.