Reverse Robin Hood: The True Face of the Republican Party's Economic Policies.

By Michael P "Mike" Byron

The US Republican party is under the control of corporate 'oligarchs.'

By Mike Byron

The $1.35 trillion, 10 year phased-in Bush tax cut, taken in conjunction with other Republican fiscal and tax policies amounts to a blatant theft of vast amounts of hard-earned income from honest hard-working, mostly middle-class, Americans. These monies are then transferred to the plutocratic one-percent, or so, of Americans who own and control most of the nation's wealth--and the Republican Party, which exists to abet their plunder.

The Bush tax cuts are asymmetric in that most of the benefit goes to the wealthiest Americans. The poorer someone is, the less benefit that person receives. These benefits are not proportionate to income but are actually greater for higher income Americans than they are for lower income Americans. Under the Bush tax cut, the wealthiest 400 Americans with yearly incomes averaging $110 million save over $1 million yearly, while the poorest 20 million or so working Americans get nothing whatsoever. Taken in conjunction with capital gains tax cuts already passed by Republican Congresses in the Clinton era, (which added an average of $6.7 million to the yearly incomes of the richest 400 Americans), as well as further Bush administration proposed reductions in current, already low, capital gains taxes, these income tax cuts massively increase the wealth of the richest 1 percent of Americans.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. The countless billions which remain in the hands of our plutocracy due to Republican Party malfeasance are not available to pay down the national deficit. Consequently programs like Social Security and Medicare, which many tens of millions of hard-working Americans have paid into throughout their working lives, remain in jeopardy. As a result of these massive giveaways to the plutocracy, our national deficit is now set to increase again! Furthermore, most of this debt is owned by wealthy investors--our very same plutocrats! These people can invest the millions in yearly savings they have received from the Republican Party in 10 Year Treasury Bonds, which are sold by the Treasury to finance the debt. This means that they make money off of the debt and receive their investment capital from the Republican tax cuts! All at the expense of everyone else's Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits! Furthermore the Republican Party is a fervent believer in socialism--corporate socialism that is.

The Bush administration attempted to have the alternative minimum tax repealed. The repeal actually passed the House. Fortunately, it was defeated in the Democratic controlled Senate--for now. This tax repeal would have been retroactive to 1988! Could any middle-class taxpayer ever expect to receive a tax cut retroactive to 1988? Contrary to the administration's claim not to have attempted to provide Enron with any aid, this cut would have rebated about $254 million to "Kenny Boy's" corporate coffers! Countless billions would have been doled out to other fortune 500 companies. This would have occurred at a time when airline, hotel and other workers were facing massive layoffs after 9/11--and receiving equally massive indifference--from this same plutocratically oriented Bush administration.

Republican corporate socialism goes even further than these massive giveaways of our national wealth from the hard-working many to the idle few. Consider Wall Mart, now perhaps America's largest employer. Wall Mart sought an exemption from the federal minimum wage laws. Because of opposition from the Clinton White House this was not granted. Most Wall Mart employees nationwide are paid at or just above the minimum wage. Currently the national minimum wage is a pathetic $5.15 per hour. If a full time Wall Mart employee is paid at this rate this comes to $10,506.00 per year. Try living on this. If you are a single parent with say, two or three children, try supporting them on this wage! Many millions of hard-working people in this situation receive federal food stamps, and perhaps rental housing assistance. This financial assistance comes overwhelmingly from the equally hard-working middle-class, via income taxes. Thus the working poor are supported by the labors of the working middle-class. What this means, in effect, is that Wall Mart (and all other similar Republican-oriented corporations) get away with paying their workers less than subsistence--less than what they would have to provide to slaves--because they know that the rest of us will subsidize the cost of providing them with food, clothing, and shelter. In effect, such employers are picking our pockets for perhaps three to four dollars per employee per hour. Meanwhile, these employers are keeping ever-larger percentages of their excessive and immoral gains, which they obtain from the hard labors of their unfortunate workers. By the way, Wall Mart has just won a ruling in Federal Court, handed down by a Republican-nominated Federal Judge, which makes it nearly impossible for their workers to unionize.

Overall, the clear and consistent thrust of the Republican Party, in its role as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporate oligarchy, has been to socialize the risks and losses of capitalism (take "energy privatization" for example) while privatizing the gains. In tandem with this, the profits are increasingly untaxed for the plutocratic class, while the true costs of business are correspondingly subsidized by the hard-working middle class of America.

When we cut through all of the Republican Party's flag waving hoopla, what we find is a case of strategic misdirection. Magicians perform their "magic" not by supernatural means, but by misdirecting attention. While we are looking away they use sleight of hand to create their "magic." Similarly with the reverse Robin Hood Republican Party: While we are watching the flags wave and listening to the cynical bombast about "family values," much of the value of all of our families is being stolen from us.