To the editor:
It is astounding that the very people who have been hurt the most by the excesses and extremism of what the Republican Party has become are now strongly considering handing control of our governance back to them so they can continue on their anti-middle class, ideological rampage.
It was Republican deficit spending, created by the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the war against terrorism, and by a massive tax cut, the chief beneficiaries of which were the wealthy, which took the national debt from $4 trillion to $10 trillion.
It was Republican-authored legislation in the year 2000 that exempted derivatives from the kind of financial regulation and oversight that had protected us so effectively from abuse by the greedy and the powerful after the Great Depression. This allowed Wall Street investment firms and banks to irresponsibly run wild, recklessly gambling with, and in some cases dishonestly stealing, a huge chunk of the life savings of the middle class.
It was Republican anti-regulatory fervor that facilitated an environment in which housing lenders stopped long-followed, careful lending practices, creating a housing bubble. The world-wide financial debacle, the loss of 25 percent of the middle class’s net worth, the ensuing recession, the loss of millions of jobs, the millions of home foreclosures, the need for bailouts to prevent a complete financial system collapse, and the resultant loss of tax revenues that has further ballooned the national debt to $13 trillion and trashed state and local governments were all caused by the Republican ideology that favors the rich and corporations over the average citizen.
After all this, the Republicans insult our intelligence and would have us believe this is somehow President Obama’s and the Democrats’ fault.
This is the whopper of all whoppers!
They are hoping your memory and understanding of the events that have occurred is lower than that of wharf slime, that you will “throw the rascals out,” put the Republicans back in, and allow them to continue implementing their ideology of deregulation and favoring the wealthy as if nothing bad had so recently resulted from their misguided, grossly unfair and downright un-American policies.
They want to proceed to repeal the financial regulation just passed and privatize Social Security so Wall Street can get their hands on and gamble with all that middle class money they didn’t get the first time around.
They want to do away with the minimum wage so that the poor will be even poorer and the rich even richer.
They want to kill Medicare, Medicaid and the recently passed healthcare reform so that insurance and healthcare industry profits can be even higher.
In effect, they want to take away all the protections for the middle class put in place over the last 75 years.
They want to at last defeat FDR and return us to control by the robber barons.
Despite all this, they have the audacity to insist they care about us, are on our side, and didn’t cause the financial mess from which we’re painfully and slowly trying to recover.
But we the American people are too smart to fall for this Karl Rovean whopper of all whoppers, aren’t we? We’re not really as dumb as wharf slime, are we?
We’re about to find out.
Bill Viertel
Coupeville
