I don't want to alienate my Republican brothers and sisters, but c'mon, this is not the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt.
An elite group of right wing broadcasters, including Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly, who while counting themselves as members of the highest wage earners in the country( Limbaugh was paid $54M in 2009*), initiate attacks on unions, government workers, and recipients of entitlement programs. All the while expounding the need to extend the Bush tax cuts as necessary for future growth.( ie:maintain 0% estate taxes and lower tax rates for recipients of stock dividends, 92% of which go to institutions and wealthy individuals). Another bulwark of Republican lawmakers is the continuation of $30B in subsidies for oil companies.
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The GOP is so worried that the Government will bailout the financial industry should another meltdown occur, or intervene with more regulations, while at the same time wanting an unfettered industry, that can charge ahead at full speed using the full bag of tricks( modified 2011 versions), that got us into trouble in the first place.
Most of the major financial entities have already taken measures to circumvent capital requirements, by transacting business in foreign subsidiaries and by U.S. branches of foreign banks changing their legal classification.
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As troubling as these economic biases are, the personal and social biases that have crept into the mainstream media and right wing rhetoric are extremely worrisome. We are all familiar with a lot of the outrageous rhetoric made by members of the Tea Party, establishment Republicans and the Republican media. There has been a malicious racial and religious subtext to much of the Republican rhetoric aimed against President Obama.
Most recently, former Arkansas Governor and Presidential wannabe, Mike Huckabee said "if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather". Official records show that President Obama lived in Hawaii and for a short time in Indonesia, never Kenya.http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/03/huckabee-asserts-hes-not-a-bir.html
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Michele Bachmann, first term Congresswoman from Minnesota and Alan West, first term Congressman from Florida, have publicly addressed the possibility of their running for the Presidency in 2012. Bachmann saying that she hasn't decided yet and West after floating the rumour, held a press conference in which he didn't disavow such an idea. Are the credentials for being President so thin, or is it merely the conceit and arrogance of some of these newly minted demagogues that lead them to such lofty opinions of themselves.
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Hopefully the next time the President wants to pass health reform, he will make sure guidelines are in place to prevent insurance companies from preemptively raising premiums. My health insurance premiums went up 12% on Jan 1, 2011, and I know of other insurance companies that raised premiums by even larger amounts.
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"But it is the banks that matter most; and, in banking, it is remarkable how little has changed. Many banks are still “too big to fail” and the casino side of their activities remains mixed up with the mundane business of deposit-taking. Bankers are once more earning huge bonuses. How could this be?"–Excerpt from an article in the Sept. 16, 2010 edition of the Economisthttp://www.economist.com/node/17039091?story_id=17039091
"In this case, U.S. branches of foreign banks, frustrated by capital requirements that weigh on profitability, are not surprisingly changing their legal classifications in order to avoid more stringent lending rules set by the Dodd-Frank law. Had politicians and regulators done their homework, they could have foreseen this. Capital reserve requirements have been tried before, and they failed."
*http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/53/celebrity-09_Rush-Limbaugh_YNXQ.html