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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jesse Jackson
Raise taxes on the rich? "Class warfare" rail the Republicans. Any discussion of inequality, says Mitt Romney, should be held privately "in quiet rooms."
Yet the Romney agenda for the country opens a new offensive in class warfare -- only on the side of the few, not the many. America's inequality has already reached extremes not seen since 1929 before the Great Depression. In 2010, the richest 1 percent captured an obscene 93 percent of the nation's income growth. The top 1 percent now has as much wealth as 90 percent of Americans.
As Warren Buffett, one of America's richest men, told
Romney and Republicans demand extension of the extra Bush tax cuts that go to those earning over
He promises to pay for these tax cuts by closing "loopholes," but refuses to identify them. But even with the most generous assumptions, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center -- a joint venture of the
On spending, Romney claims that he can cut federal spending, while increasing spending on the military and putting off his (poisonous) plans for
Add to this the Romney "Bain Capital" economic policy. Romney criticizes Obama for not signing more corporate trade treaties, despite the fact that our current trade policies not only ship jobs abroad but rack up more than
Romney also wants to repeal even the modest reforms of Wall Street that Obama got through
Increasingly a Southern-based "whites only" dominated party, Republicans wrap their class warfare into scorn for "those people": poor people of color. Can they consolidate support among white blue-collar workers, even as their policies attack those very workers? Divide and conquer is an ancient strategy in warfare and in politics. Will it work for Mitt Romney, so clearly a man of, by and for the 1 percent?
We'll know in November.
AMERICAN POLITICS
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