America faces a crisis.. it is not just a crisis of elections. It is not just a crisis of a pandemic. It is an economic and ideological crisis.. free speech is under attack.. it is not under attack by a fascist tyrannical dictator. It is not under attack by an uncontrollable government agency ignoring the constitution. No. The founding fathers did a great job of restricting what the government could do so it wouldn’t be able to take your rights away.. no. Free speech is under attack by the people that Republicans worship: corporations..
And while Republicans might scream and cry about how bad it is at the end of the day it's a problem of their own doing.. they created the crisis. They created it by spending decades fighting to deregulate Big corporations. Fighting to limit and defund oversight agencies from the government. they fought for decades to promote an ideology of corporations doing whatever they want.. and they would call you a communist if you said otherwise..
Facebookanswering free speech is not a government issue.. it's not unconstitutional. It's not violating any law.. but it still should not be allowed. In the late 1800s when Teddy Roosevelt saw that big oil and big sugar were abusing their Monopoly and using their massive wealth to limit competition and harm America he took the power of the government and he broke them up. He painted regulations across them. Teddy Roosevelt was no communist.. but he was more than willing and able to stop big corporations from doing things that harmed his country.. Republicans on the other hand are unwilling to do the same. They try to compare themselves to the likes of Lincoln and Roosevelt and George Washington but they are nothing like any of them.. none of those great men would have counted to the interests of the elite. They would not have fought for the interests of the rich against the interests of the American people..
Republicans are simply too corrupt. They created a phony ideology sent it around the idea that corporations should never be told what to do. And that's false. They should absolutely be told what to do.. just like every other American should. Nobody is allowed to do “whatever they want”. That would be terrible..
There's laws on everything. there's plenty of things you're not allowed to do. You're not allowed to steal you're not allowed to murder you're not allowed to fish or hunt endangered species. You're not allowed to drill for oil in National parks. You’re not allowed to build your factory in the habitat of endangered species.. you’re not allowed to poach endangered turtle eggs. You’re not allowed to spray pesticides on the food made of agent orange.. those are just some of the things but there's tons of things you're not allowed to do. There’s laws for a reason..
Republicans.. Republicans don’t believe in laws.. at least not laws for the rich.. they will champion things like mandatory minimum sentencing for the poor. They will champion as many restrictions on the working class as they can find. But when it comes to the rich suddenly they change their tune.. the problem facing America can only be solved to government regulation.. you cannot solve it by repealing section 230. there are countless articles on the internet explaining exactly why it wouldn't work and why the courts would be able to overturn it.l
YouI saw that was loopholes and jumping through hoops all to avoid the obvious solution of regulation.. no. Regulation is the quick and easy way. Regulation is nothing more than a law that rich people have to follow. And that is exactly why Republicans hate it..
Republicans crafted an ideology centered around the idea that the rich and powerful shouldn't have to follow rules.. centered around the idea that corporations should be as corrupt as possible. The Republican party is the party of corruption as bad as Democrats might be..
For decades now the GOP has been lying to middle class American by pretending to be their champion while attempting to paint Democrats as the REAL party of the elite. That is a lie and anyone who promotes it should be called out.
To demonstrate the gulf that exists between the two parties on these issues conservative economist Peter Morici appeared on Fox and Friends Monday morning to discuss Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax. As a reminder here is how Matthew Yglesias describes her plan.
The basic plan is to levy a 2 percent tax on fortunes worth more than $50 million and a 3 percent tax on fortunes worth more than $1 billion. According to the post Saez estimates this tax would hit approximately 75 000 families and raise $2.75 trillion over a 10-year period.
Here is the discussion between Steve Doocy and Morici.
It is important to note that under Warren’s proposal the 2 percent wealth tax doesn’t kick in until after $50 million. But Morici says that $50 million is “not as big as you think it is.”
I would suggest that just the opposite is true. Most of us have a hard time grasping how big it is. Someone on twitter helped us with that by providing this example: “Imagine being given $5k per day every day for more than …27 YEARS!” Another twitter user pointed out that if the $50 million were invested with a return rate of 4 percent it would provide “$2 million in income per year without ever touching the principle while allowing it to keep getting bigger.”
Getting back to the description from Yglesias there are 75 000 Americans whose wealth is actually higher than $50 million. We now know that thanks to Republican policies the wealthiest among that group pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us.
For the first time on record the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal state and local taxes — than any other income group according to newly released data.
That’s a sharp change from the 1950s and 1960s when the wealthy paid vastly higher tax rates than the middle class or poor.
Since then taxes that hit the wealthiest the hardest — like the estate tax and corporate tax — have plummeted while tax avoidance has become more common.
Republicans fought for decades against regulation. They fought for decades against the idea that the rich or corporations should have to do anything in the interest of the American people. It was the Republican party that fought for citizens united. It was the Republican party that fought to repeal glass-steagall. It was the Republican party that fought against every major regulation and history..
That's a sharp change from what it used to be. Once upon a Time the Republican party was actually a reasonable party. Crafting a balance between the interests of the rich and the interests of the americans.. it was Richard Nixon who created the epa.. an agency that later Republicans like Ted Cruz vowed to repeal. It was Republicans who championed things like the Civil Rights act.. and act that Republican Ron Paul believed should be repealed..
Republicans created the mess. And now they’re crying being somebody to fix it
Butyou know whoever fixes it won't be a republican.. they can't be a republican.. in order to fix the problem you would have to go against all of Republican ideology. you would have to actually crack down on a big corporation and restrict what it could do. And that is against Republican orthodoxy
When it comes to the cumulative effect of Republican policies we’ve seen this play before. The next act will feature warnings about the ballooning federal deficit with demands that services be cut for every group of Americans except the military. They will decry facebook censorship and go on wvery nees program talking about it. Meanwhile they will insist that we can’t contemplate raising taxes on the people who are worth more than $50 million dollars because that’s not as much as we think. And that we cant regulate a big corporation Because that’s “communism” (it isnt))
The proposal to make Facebook a public utility is just one proposal that would make our country better while providing funds for the kinds of programs and services that help working Americans. Talking about it has already brought at least one conservative out from behind the curtain to defend the uber wealthy. More of that please.
