Stealing from Our Pockets and Communities

The current regime that controls our “democracy” has little concern for you if you are poor or middle class. We have seen commentators like Lou Dobbs discuss ad nausea the “war on the middle class”. We have watched family after family plunge into debt, not by flaunting an extravagant lifestyle, but simply for wanting a decent home to live in where their children can attend a good school.

The days of the one income household are over, despite cries from Christian Republicans and Dominionists that the American family is deteriorating. While they have tried to blame the destruction of the family unit on Mom’s feminist workplace ambitions, the truth is that the same group demonizing two income households are the ones who have consistently elected officials who refuse to give tax breaks to working parents, and have waged a class war on the American public.

The goal of the current regime and their backers is to roll back nearly 75 years of progress to a pre-New Deal status when there were two classes of society: the very rich minority and the vast majority of desperately poor. Manufacturing and other blue collar industries have been moved overseas, several positions that bordered between blue collar and white collar have gone to cheaper labor forces in Asia, as well, and even coveted white collar staples such as engineering and architecture have seen lower levels of work farmed out to firms in other countries. Jobs that college graduates used to perform to get their feet wet in an industry no longer exist. The blue collar jobs have been replaced by low-paying service industry positions which are often void of benefits and have little to no union representation.

Instead of protecting Americans who are willing to work, the government has increasingly punished the average citizen for not being rich. While they wage a war in Iraq paid for through taxes that take food away from our families, their war profiteering corporations continue to receive the tax breaks. In 2008, the wealthiest 20% of Americans will receive $143 billion in tax cuts. The top 5% of wealthiest Americans will receive 44% of the overall tax cuts.

How will the government afford to give its friends such generous tax breaks? By cutting domestic programs to bare bones levels. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this act alone should warrant charges of treason. $13 billion will be cut from non-security related programs, or programs that corporations like BlackWater and Halliburton can’t profit from. However, war spending will reach $647.2 billion by 2008. This year alone, Community Development grants will be cut by 35%, Head Start programs will be cut by half a million, Low-Income Energy Assistance programs will be cut by a whopping 42%, Special Education will be cut by over $600,000, and Child Care & Development Block Grants will be cut by 5%.

Americans are slaving for wages that barely make it possible to achieve a middle class lifestyle, so that we can pay for rich people to get richer and war contractors to make multi-millions on their bottom lines. Despite our hard work, the government has rewarded us by letting our communities suffer, cutting programs that positively effect children, including retarded children who are the most vulnerable in our society, and has cut deeply into a vital program to help the poor. I work hard to better my community and provide for my family, not to hand wealthy people more money and pay for the murder of thousands in the goal of privatizing oil fields. Neither should you!