The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

The Republicans in control of the WV legislature overrode the governor veto doing away with prevailing wage law that had been in effect for 81 years about the same time there had been a democratically controlled legislature in WV. A simple majority was all that was necessary to override Governor Tomblin veto of the right to work law, which statistic show is the right to work for less, much less. A two thirds majority is needed to override a Presidential veto and two thirds majority should be required to override a veto in WV.

The Republican continue their war on the middle class. The republican party has always been the party of the rich and if you are a millionaire they will do everything in their power to make you richer as long as you continue to pay political bribes, called campaign contributions. The Republican party has long considered unions as public enemy number one because labor unions traditionally make campaign contributions to the opposition party. If the Republicans lock up the contribution of the rich for service rendered and any dry up opposition party source or campaign funding they can make America a one party political system. Once the unions are legislated out of existence by the Republican Party the democrats will have to turn to the rich for campaign contributions and both parties will be beholding to the rich, a extremely tiny percentage of the population and any psychology study will show that they will do the bidding of the rich. It is human nature when you accept gifts you pay them back.

The right to work law is a lie to begin with. Mankind since the beginning of time and all societies has had to deal with "free riders" those who would show up in the fields with our ancestors and do no work but expect to share in the rewards. I have been a union member for 42 years, I have held most union offices including vice president and president. There are literally thousands of hours put into negotiation a contract. For many years we did not have a closed shop but we were still required to represent the all employees in the bargaining unit. If a non member was fired we would have to represent him spending thousands of dollars on an arbitration. If we didn't do a good enough job representing the dead beat we were subject to law suit. A legal defense is expensive these days so let's say the employees at Joe's Machine Shop pool their money and pays it to a lawyer each month so if any in the group needs legal services the lawyer will take care of it for what he was being paid each month. A new employee takes a job with Joe's Machine Shop but decides he won't pay for legal services. He is arrested for DUI and goes to lawyer who says he will need $6,000 to represent him. The deadbeat says no you have a contract to provide legal service to employees of Joe's Machine Shop. I am an employee of Joe's Machine Shop and by contract you must provide me with legal services and I do not have to pay a dime, you have a contract. If you don't provide me legal service I will sue you and win because your contract say you will represent all the employees. If the republican lawyers in the state legislature who passed the right to work law were required by law to represent people for free and use their own money to pay for the deadbeat defense you would never see such outraged lawyers in your life. But they have no problem mandating that a union do exactly that. They would be belly aching about how unfair it is. Do you know of any other situation where an organization is required to spend thousands of dollars to defend someone who is not a member?

Right to work is the right to freeload. It took 45 years to come up with the wage and benefit package at the city. That required tens of thousands of hours to negotiate but the incoming deadbeat believes he is entitled to all that for free. The Right to work for less law will have the effect that the republicans are trying for. It will lower wages and benefits for union members but it will also lower the standard of living for all West Virginians. This bill should be called the "Free Rider Bill."

Eliminating the prevailing wage, the Republicans other accomplishment, will further lower the standard of living in WV. The prevailing wage law stipulated that a "living wage" not a minimum wage be paid on government funded projects of over $500,000. I spent a lot of time on construction sites because that is the set of laws I enforced. In just a couple of decades the construction industry went from providing skilled middle class jobs to providing minimum wage job for Mexican emigrants. In the 90s a large wing for a local retirement home was bid out. The low bid was $6 million locally. It was rebid in Columbus, Ohio and the bid with Mexican labor was $4 million. Of course the Mexican labor won the contract. The Mexicans we encountered typically work for minimum wage and kicked back much of that to their foreman for giving them a job. When they were in town on one large construction site they killed and ate pigeons so they could send the money they earned back to families in Mexico. At this point about 50% of the construction jobs in WV are now done by Mexicans. Many of the large construction companies in town now employee a Mexican crew to do roofing.

The Republicans are right they will save money on the initial construction bid but the money will go to out of state companies with a lot going back to Mexico. The construction money typically turns over ten times in the community. The Mexican labor will pay no taxes to build schools and the former construction workers will have to move to a state with prevailing wage or work for Wal-Mart. The workers lose and the community looses far more. I will have to say the Republicans are for more, more poverty, more crime and more drugs.

Only in America is the middle class the target of a major political party. In real dollars the middle class wages in America have not had a meaningful increase in over thirty years. This did not happen in other countries like Canada and England where the middle class in those countries continued continue to share in the increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Why did only the American middle class lose out? Unions set gold standard for both wage rates and benefits in community and positively influence all others. My mom was in management when the other local hospital went union. In effort to keep the union out the hospital she worked decided that they would not only match whatever raises were negotiated by the other hospitals but would pay more. The union in effect was negotiating for the employees at both hospitals. If the wages at mom's hospital didn't go up the employees could form their own union or leave for jobs at the other hospital and management spent big bucks to keep the union out.

The rich fully understood that the reason that unions were the prime reason wages and benefits went up. Unions look at the company books and when profits go up the workers expect a share for their increased productivity. Unions can hire professional accountants to go over the books to see if the company is making more money. In the 80s the Republicans declared war on the unions and shifted the paradigm in America. They wanted the middle class to believe that it was labor unions that were their enemy. The republican waged legislative war that is still going on in Washington and every statehouse in America, WV was just the latest state to fall. But this only took place in America. The war against unions did not take place in Canada, England or other countries where the middle class continue to progress, the war against unions is very much an American phenomenon.

Because of self-interest a balance of power is always necessary in any political system. If one side gets all the power they will destroy not only the other side but themselves in the process. There are other reason besides just wages and benefits, a case in point:

When I was a child we would often visit a local point of interest called Hawks Nest it was on a look out point on large mountain overlooking the New River. I had no idea there was a tunnel through the mountain or that so many died building the tunnel. I ran across the "accident" reading a book when I was 50. The hawks Nest disaster had been purged from WV history and the memories of West Virginians.

In 1930 Union Carbide began building The Hawks Nest Tunnel on the New River. It was a hydroelectric project to provide electric for one of Union Carbides Plants. Of the 1,213 men who worked underground 764 died of silicosis within 5 years. Termed the second worst industrial "accident" in the world. The biggest was also caused by Union Carbide, at Bo Pol, India. What caused silicosis had been known for 2,500 years. Sixty percent of those who died worked less than two months in the tunnel. When the men became to sick to work the local Sherriff Deputies would beat them with clubs to make them go into the tunnel. The engineers and company executives wore mask to protect themselves from silicon dust that they knew would kill them if they breathed it. One woman lost three of her sons and her husband, Union Carbide paid $800 for each of her sons and $1,000 for her husband.

During the trial held in New York a foreman testified, "We knew we were going to kill those n***** we just didn't think the would die so soon. Of course most who died were white but there was a bright side if they happened to be black, Union Carbide paid only $400 for a son and $600 for a husband as opposed to $1,000 for a white death. It might have been cheaper to buy breathing apparatuses but this was a non union work site.

The power of words cannot be underestimated. The name of a movement will often determines its success. When the Republicans labeled the long standing and necessary inheritance tax, the death tax, it changed people perception. Almost everyone is against both death and taxes. It evoked the image that peopled were being taxed for dying which was not true once you die that account is closed forever. How your property will be divided among the living is another. It is the living that are being taxed not the dead. They are taxed based on what they inherit just as they are taxed on other income. Taxes are a fact of life. No one wants to pay taxes but they are necessary. Only a tiny fraction of the American people paid inheritance tax. Federal Inheritance taxes are only imposed on estate of over $5,450,000 in 2016. Of course if you have an income of $5 billion a year your heirs will likely have to pay. But it effected a tiny percentage only those that were rich beyond the imagination of most Americans. Why would the middle class be against a tax they would never have to pay? Because by the of terminology used by the Republicans the middle class believed death was being taxed.

What happens at the Federal level happens at the state level, when federal taxes were slashed by 60% the state taxes on the extremely wealthy were also cut. So it was with inheritance tax when the Feds did away with it most states cut it or did away with it also. Louisiana did away with the inheritance tax 1n 2008 but made it retroactive to anyone that died after 2004. You can bet there were a few billionaires that died in 2004 and that the politicians were going to take care of heirs. Very few laws are retroactive and 4 years retroactive is highly unusual. They were very specific about the date making it July 1, 2004 and you can bet there was a good reason.

The terminology is the same on Right to Work. Who would be against anyone right to work? But that is not what it is about, nobody has ever been denied the right to work. What they are being denied is the Right to Freeload. The bill should have been called "The Right to Freeload." We only had a closed shop for the last 6 years but in my experience those who did not join the union were more likely to complain and be in trouble because their free loading extended into their work habits where they expected others to do their work and they would collect the check. So in practice the free loaders cost the union more to defend and consumed more union resources than typical members who didn't have a freeloaders mentality.

We always called the Right to Works laws the Right to Work for Less laws. That is a true statement as Right to Freeload states make 6% to 8% less than closed shop states. Even when cost of living is factored in the difference is still 4% on everyone in the state wages. What the Republican legislature did was cut the wages of not just union members but everyone in WV. When all the working people in state make 4% less collectively that is quite a sum of money. Where do those billions in lost income go? Into the pockets of rich where the money will be used to buy more politicians and don't kid yourself political contributions do buy politicians. Every psychological study demonstrate gifts or gifts of money put one in psychological debt or obligate them to repay the favor somehow.

From Reagan first term in office the major shift of wealth created an ever more corrupt political system. The Republican Legislature dose not represent the middle class. They represent only the rich except for a few cases where they pander to the ignorant bigots. They will try to stop your neighbor from having an abortion but make sure the baby starves to death after they take the Welfare benefits if they test positive for drugs. The drug testing companies will make millions and you can bet the drug testing companies are making large political contributions. Who will we spend millions drug testing? Little old ladies who are getting 30 dollars of food stamps to supplement their social security. It is all good to the drug testing company. Did I mention the WV legislature just passed the drug test everyone on welfare bill. I can remember a time when no one was tested for drugs now almost everyone must go through a humiliating test on a regular bases. The drug test are waste of money and a joke because they check only for the presence of drug and not the level. The drug addicts get a prescription for their drug of choice and when they are tested they simply show that they have prescription but you will see them in the corner almost passed out with drool running down their face after they passed the drug test. They supplement their supply of drugs with street drugs of the same kind. Test that determine the level of drugs are too expensive. Government and employer mandated drug testing has created a whole industry that had no reason to exist before.

In any political confrontation there are always winners and losers. Make no doubt about our politics determines how the wealth of America is distributed, not redistributed. Reagan ran with the Hollywood millionaires and no matter how many millions they had Reagan felt sorry that they did not have even more. By the time Reagan was in office a trend had been established that the rich should pay a lower rate of taxes than the middle class. That trend continued and hedge fund manger who make $5 billion a year now are taxed under the "Carried Interest" loophole. This was the loophole used by the last Republican presidential candidate "magic under ware" Mitt Romney. A hedge fund manager gets 2% of your investment plus 20% of any earnings. A pension fund with a $100 million to invest would pay the hedge fund manager $2 million up front. The 2% up front is treated like ordinary income and taxed at 39.6% but if the investment made $5 million the hedge fund manger cut is $1 million and even though it was compensation for a service it taxed at a capital gain rate of only 20%. The capital gains rate is lower than the rate on middle class manual labor. The middle class will pay 25% on amounts of over $37,450 this year. But that is not all social security and Medicare must also be paid on that amount for another 7.65% for a total federal tax rate of 32.65%.

We all know who the winners were under Reagan but who were the losers? Politics is a closed system, money can not be spent twice and money given to rich in the form of 60% tax cuts must be taken from other places. But the most harmful part was to follow as statehouses across the country followed suit and taxes were cut on the rich. Who lost? The next generations. Colleges are expensive to operate and as tax funds dried up shifting the cost to the next generations was the obvious solution because most did not vote or had no interest in politics. A similar technique is used by management when negotiating a union contract. They will offer the union members a raise if they will let management cut the wages on future hires $5 an hour. Of course the bankers were more than happy to make student loans up to $300,000. This process didn't happen over night. Tuition didn't go from $121 a semester to $7,000 a semester in a year or two it took decades far to long for many to trace it to its proximate cause, Reagan and the right.

It easier to link other loser to the cause of their lose. Income tax comes down and social security taxes were raised are raised 5 times during Reagan term in office to cover the revenue lost to tax cuts. Reagan gave a few a tax cuts but 200,000,000 got a 19% social tax increases. Reagan also increased the Medicare tax by 10.3%. Everyone lost when Reagan tripled the National Debt during peacetime. Reagan would be like a nightmare wife who took your credits to town and put you $60,000 in debt for no reason.

What money is spent on one thing can't be spent on other things. America colleges can no longer provide enough engineers and we rely on engineers educated in third world countries, like India, to provide enough engineers for even our limited needs. Even poor countries like India can provide affordable college educations. This year the WV state legislature is $300 million short and you can bet the college students will be made to make up most of this in increased college tuition costs. When you start with the political premise that those with million just don't have enough and the purpose of the country is to make the rich richer you are courting disaster.

Ayn Rand vision that America would be nothing without the rich has been countermanded by history. In every hyper power throughout history it is the middle class that provided the strength of the country. There is always class warfare but it is the rich who make war on the middle class. They don't use gun and tanks they use something far more sophisticated, the political system.The middle class wants no more than a decent living and has to fight just to hold on to even their meager living. Historically when the rich succeed in destroying the middle class a hyper power collapses. But it always collapses because of the destruction of middle class. The rich are the first to jump ship, most have vacation homes in other countries, taking the majority of the country's wealth with them. It is never the lack of the rich that leads destruction of a world hyper power. The rich are driven, they want it all, even when they have billions, they want more. When you contrast that with middle class many will turn down overtime to spend time with their family. The rich have a sickness that can't be cured and if it just destroyed them it would be fine but their, sickness, called greed, has destroyed many countries throughout history. America is currently in stage III of this disease and the chances of recovery are slim.

During the State of the City Address yesterday the mayor told the audience that medical insurance is likely to increase by 40% next year. Meanwhile in the capitol the Republicans are hard at work to solve the problem. Their solution is to end the state oversight of hospital cost. The current state laws requires that hospitals must justify rate increases to the WV Health Care Authority. In the 50s Huntington had 5 hospitals. Now only two remain and the one hospital is going to buy the other. The Federal Trade Commission has blocked the sale do to anti-trust regulations. In order to have an absolute monopoly the oversight board must be eliminated. Of course we can count on the monopoly to only charge a fair price, right? History will provide us with that answer, any time there is monopoly on a required service the price goes through the roof.

Since monopolies are not subject to free market pressures some other force must be used to keep the monopoly from taking advantage of the consumer. Traditionally monopolies have to be regulated to protect the public from being price gouged for a needed service. Utilities companies must justify the cost of rate increases in front of the Public Service Commission. The process takes months while the facts and figures are checked. Creating a medical monopoly while at the same time doing away with any oversight is a tragic mistake. If the merger goes through the Mayor might have to revise his 40% insurance increase to a 140% increase.

The Republicans presidential candidates like to think of themselves as strict constitutionalists but as soon as judge Scalia died they were all for ignoring the very constitution they pretend to uphold. The constitution is very clear as to what happens when a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court. It does not say that you wait for the next election to happen, after all we are just past or approaching the next election. It does not say the vacancy should be filled by the next president. The Republican presidential candidates were busy trying to figure out how to circumvent the constitution before Scalia body was cold.

The average time taken to fill a supreme court vacancy is a 125 days and some vacancy have taken only 25 days to fill. President Obama has 342 days remaining in his term in office and could conceivable have time to fill other court vacancies if they occur. This attitude that we might get elected in the future so you should not be able exercise your constitutionally mandated duty is just an effort to circumvent the constitution.

Donald Trump lead in the national polls has all but evaporated. In fact a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll had Cruz at 28% and Trump at 26%. In the previous NBC/Wall Street Journal had Trump at 33% and Cruz at 20%. In a head to head match between Trump and Cruz the poll shows Cruz would win 56% to 40%. I always believed that Trump, an obvious narcissist, would eventually self destruct but it seems his attack on the republican myth is hurting him. When Trump says that baby Bush did not keep us safe, which is obviously true, it contradicts a popular republican myth. Rule number one: is it does not have to be true for someone to believe it is true and if they believe it is true they will act as if it is true. The legend of baby Bush war hero was very carefully manufactured by professionals. Baby Bush was in fact a class A coward who signed the "cowards pledge" that he would not go over seas to defend his country. Bush's daddy money got him into a National Guard unit set aside to keep the son's of the rich from going to Vietnam. Baby Bush was trained as a pilot but signed the "coward pledge" so he would not have to go to Vietnam. When Baby Bush was asked why he signed the "coward pledge" he said someone told him to sign it. I wonder if all of those who severed in the National Guard were given the option of signing the "cowards pledge" or was it just offered to the the units made up to take care of the children of the rich. I will bet such an option is no longer offered. Bush, a former cheerleader was not hero material.

The Bush Whitehouse had been advised that an attack from Al Qaeda was imminent in 2001. Baby Bush went on vacation in fact he spent most of that summer on vacation. Baby refused to even meet with head of national terrorism nine months until after 9/11. Baby Bush shows up in New York long after the attack to stand on the rubble of the World Trade Center and a legend is born. Neither Germany or Japan was able to attack the continental United States during WWII. Daffy Duck could have been President when the attack took place and been a hero. Baby Bush keep no one safe. Baby Bush and the right started trying to figure out how to con the public into going war with Iraq from the first national meeting they held, 9/11 gave them the method. They convinced the public that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 when in fact they knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

Instead of being held up as hero for standing on rubble of the World Trade Center baby Bush should been held responsible for making absolutely no attempt to stop an attack he knew was coming. He might not have known where but he knew it was coming. In a climate of fear it is easy to create heroes even out of cowards.

Trump will have to learn not to criticize Republican Saints. Baby Bush has been canonized. For those who believe, facts only succeed in making them uncomfortable and defensive. They do not want to be bothered by the truth. Heroes are created from legends not facts.

Religion and political parties are very similar, both have large groups of people willing to believe in something that is very obviously not true. They both have large groups of loyal followers who are easily led. They are always looking for a hero to lead them and if one is not available they will dress any available coward up in hero's garb and christen him a hero. It is always easier to believe what you already want to believe in the first place.

Studies with MRIs of people who have strong political beliefs have even shown what part of the brain is involved in rationalizing their beliefs. People on both sides of the political equation were read statements that were highly contrary to their political beliefs. When the subject had found a way to rationalize the statement and make it somehow consistent with their belief system that area of the brain lit up. When the statement was read it put the subject in a state of cognitive dissonance. One way to resolve the cognitive dissonance would be to change one's belief system in view of the new information but that is not what happened the subjects found a way to rationalize the statement without changing their belief system. That can be as simple as saying that statement is not true to much more complex and convoluted rationalizations. A statement read that baby Bush was a drug addict and alcoholic could be rationalized that lots of people used drugs and alcohol but stopped. A statement that Bill Clinton help changed regulations on Wall Street that were enacted after the Great Depression to stop a depression from reoccurring could be rationalized by saying times have changed, that was then and this is now.

Religion and politics are so similar because they are both philosophies and are structured alike. Religion is really a philosophy about religion and even most of the religious will freely admit that most other religions are utter nonsense. They were just fortunate to have found the one true religion. And just as fortunately their dad had just happened to have discovered the one true religion in the world and raised his son in that religion. What were the odds? Both religion and political philosophies are for the most part bequeathed from generation to generation.

This morning after Rubio second place finish he referenced his voters as the children of Reagan revolution and he may have a point. The Children of the Reagan Revolution are already hard at work in America. The governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, gave a huge tax cuts to ultra rich last year and has demanding that the budget for higher education in Illinois be cut by a full 31%. After all if a college student is already borrowing $300,000 to pay for their education what wrong with them borrowing another $200,000 or so. Besides GOP Gov Rauner banker friends could use the business. The democratic legislature has proposed much smaller cut of 3%. The two are deadlocked and 11 colleges have not received any funding since last July 1. They say the standoff could go on for five years completely destroying the public higher education system in the state of Illinois. This is Rush Limbaugh dream agenda no publicly funded education. The state of Illinois currently funds higher education at 30% level. Rauner cut state income taxes by 25% and now wants to cut that 30% by another 30%. This would leave state funding only$1 out of every $5 for a public higher education. Illinois also has $7 billion in unpaid bills when you cut income by 25% you must cut spending. You can always rely on the Reagan miracle cut taxes and taxes magically increase like the fishes and loafs of bread.

When Reagan cut the taxes on the rich by 60% to make up for it he raised social security taxes 5 times and raised the retirement age. He simply used the social security to pay for the tax cut for the rich and tripled the national debt to pay for it. Illinois Governor Rauner doesn't have the option of cutting taxes on the rich and raising social security taxes on 200 million people to replace it. He cannot triple the national debt to fund massive tax cuts for the rich. Rubio's children of the Reagan revolution are more like the children of the corn. We now have to rely on third world countries to supply us with engineers and other professionals because a college educations are no longer affordable in America. Now the governor of Illinois may eliminate the public higher education system or will fund it at such at such a low level that it would be token funding at best. The Reagan revolution did more to destroy America then the Russian army could have.

One of the main things about the conservative mindset that has always bothered me is that it is totally self focused and devoid of any basic morality. Sure they may plant thousands of little flags on their church lawn to prevent abortions but even this is an attempt to take something away from someone else (the freedom of being able to control one's own body). Having observed the way a number of rich in town who routinely swindle others, who have less economic power or access to legal remedies. It should have been no surprise that this same attitude pervaded the conservative mind set. One of the businessmen in town who owned several large commercial buildings downtown ran in to a contractor and told him he had a job for him. The contractor pointed out that the businessman had not paid for the last four jobs he had done for him. The businessman told him that he would pay him 20 cents on the dollar for those jobs and they would not have to go to court and the businessman pointed out that he would not need an attorney since the businessman was an attorney. Swindling people is much more profitable than earning money as taxes must be paid on money that is earned. My dad and a few partners owned a small concrete plant. An attorney building a large house ordered $68,831 (todays dollars)worth of concrete. The attorney bankrupted and kept his mansion and the concrete for free. I saw that pattern repeated again and again throughout my life but as conservatives took political power you saw the pattern repeated on a massive scale. Instead of swindling one person at time thousands would be swindled at the stroke of the pen.

A rich businessman that swindles someone who lacks the economic resources to fight back is extremely proud of his accomplishment. it is a craft, a skill. The attorney studied the bankruptcy laws very carefully to determine how to come out ahead. The private sector of this generation for the most part were completely swindled out of their pensions. One local manufacturer paid several generation good pensions. The company was bought by a much smaller company using the assets of the companies pension system for collateral. Once they acquired the company they wrote themselves a check for the balance of the pension fund and called it a "management fee." The court declared the "management fee" legal. The pension fund was bankrupted and turned over to the government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The retirees lost their health insurance and got less than a third of the pension they earned. The company's CEO stuffed million into his pocket and the conservative judge say take it, it is yours.

Back Illinois, the conservative republican not only wants to eliminate publicly subsidy to higher education they want to eliminate the Illinois public employee pension system. In the conservative mindset the Illinois public employee were offered a pension as part of their compensation package but now that it is time to collect their pension the conservatives want to give the money that funds the pensions to the ungodly greedy in the form of 25% tax cuts. The conservatives will say it is the employees fault they should have known all along that the rich were going to swindle them out of their pensions. In the immortal words of Grover Norquist, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." There is no honor among conservatives. I made a bargain and I will keep that bargain never occurs to a conservative mind set. The conservative mindset is that you should have known I was going to swindle you and never bargained with me in the first place. The golden rule in the mind of a conservative is not "do un to others as you would have them do un to you" it is "do un to others before they can do un to you."

Robert Ringer said there were only three types of people in the world.

1) "I really didn't mean to cut your hands off at the wrist, but I had no choice when you reached for your chips."

2) "I really meant to cut your hands off at the wrist, and before you reached for your chips you should have remembered my warning."

3) "I really meant to cut off your hands at the wrist when you reached for your chips, even though I assured you that was not my intention."

The conservative mind set is a number three. they see the world where everyone is out to swindle them so this justifies, in their mind, a swindle them first attitude. The conservative mind set is never focused beyond the next dollar they can stick in their pocket. America future depends on affordable higher education. Enrolment in colleges has to follow the supply and demand curve, when price goes up enrollment goes down. This year America will be short 1 million needed college graduates. Third world college graduates will be used to fill those vacancy, that is a national disgrace caused by the conservative mind set.

Rubio calls his backers (the ones writing his million dollar checks)the "Children of the Reagan Revolution" those who parents got a 658% increase in their income. Who would make a hero out of a senile old B movie actor who tripled the National Debt in peacetime? In Huntington several years ago we had a construction company named "Great Expectations" operating. The city had a loan program that was paying for one of the companies projects. The customer was complaining about the work and stated the contractor had threatened her. The customer had connections in the courthouse and had secured the contractor criminal record. The contractor had previously served time for fraud and the judge recommended he serve the full sentence. The city's loan administrator had full confidence in contractor and said so. In fact she resented the fact that he was being investigated. When I talked to contractor he openly admitted that he did have a criminal record. He seemed to exude confidence and seemed likable enough. Shortly there after the contractor took out an add in the newspaper offering a "free roof" for the first 100 customers. There was no question he was a conman. The question was how did he ever get a contractor license? While he was in prison they held classes on contracting and helped him secure a contractor license. Giving a contractor license to a known conman was like helping child molesters secure a license to operate a day care center. As the investigation proceeded we found out he was ripping off his suppliers, customers and employees. He didn't just go to jail he went back to prison.

In the contractor mind set he saw nothing wrong with ripping off his customers, suppliers, and employees. He saw nothing but a world of victims waiting for him to take advantage of them. The contractor had previously been an employee of big company in town and collected for the same job on many different occasions. The woman was old and senile and continued to pay him. He continued to collect again and again from the woman even after he was on trial for the same offence. The point of the above story is this is the conservatives mind set, is they robbed the older generation by taking their pensions (laws were changed to allow companies to loot pension plans and replace them with saving plans) and they robbed the future generations by taking affordable college educations so they could get bigger tax cuts for themselves.

The conservatives are at it again offering huge tax cuts. The conservatives always sing the same song, the conman's song. The myth of Reagan was that after he cut taxes that collections went up instead of down. If tax collection went up why did Reagan triple the National Debt? They ignore the fact that Reagan raised social security five times and Medicare taxes three times.

When the total tax picture, federal, payroll, state, and local are taken into account, Reagan did not cut taxes so much he shifted tax burden from the rich to the middle class. When Reagan cut the Federal revenue sharing program the city of Huntington lost $2 million. This program returned a percentage of federal income tax to the cities. Once Reagan did away with it the money that had been collected by progressive tax system was replaced with money collected by regressive taxes. Cities don't have progressive tax systems. When a city income tax was passed in Huntington they instantly made it regressive by taxing only the first $100,000 in income which would exempt most of the income of the rich. It was appealed to court and the court sat on the tax until the state banned cities from having an income tax. The tax was replaced by a user fee of $5 a week whether you make $100,000 or $4, probably one of the most regressive tax in America. This also happened with the state taxes as they received federal revenue sharing. The Reagan tax shift was so severe that the middle class earnings were frozen for over three decades and now the Republicans have promised us more of the same.

Conservatism, like any other political belief system, has its priorities and the future is not one of them. California now spends more on both their prison system and rehabilitation then it does on higher education. Just as the conservatives shifted the tax burden from the rich to the middle class when all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account. Any time you can replace a progressive tax with a regressive tax you are shifting the tax burden. The sales tax is a regressive tax the poor and middle class pay a much higher percentage of their income since the rich need spend only a small percentage of their income on living expenses. Sales taxes instead of taxing income taxes consumption. WV was the first state to pass a sales tax it was implemented July 1, 1921. Conservatives are pushing a "flat tax."a sales tax is a flat tax and it has been around for a long time. If you like sales taxes you are going to love a flat tax.

In 1913 America levied a tax on "excess wealth," it was christened the "income tax," in reality it was a tax on "excess wealth." The initial income tax was levied on incomes over $4,000 ($96,764 in todays dollars). The power of words would have major implications later. Had the tax been correctly labeled as a "tax on excess wealth" it would have been much harder to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. In 1913 no working man paid the tax on excess wealth and that was clearly the intent of the law. The conservatives have reversed the intent of the law and the multi-billionaire hedge fund managers pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes. In 1913 only the richest 4% of Americans paid the tax on excess wealth. Every time I hear some conservative crying about the "poor" rich having to pay income tax, I tell them the income tax should only be a tax on "excess wealth."

Putting people in prison for as long as possible has long been a conservative priority and the way America spends it tax dollars is reflected in the way tax dollars are spent. California spends six times more on prison inmates then college students. California spends $50,000 per prison inmate but only $8,667 per college student. By 2014, 48 states had cut the funding to higher education from pre recession levels. West Virginia, Louisiana, Wisconsin, and North Carolina had cut funding to higher education by a full 20%. The $200,000 students loans are also a shift of taxes. Generations of college students are still paying for the Reagan tax cuts and those that were modeled after them that followed in the states. Conservatives will gladly trade the future of America for a dollar in tax today, it is the nature of the beast.

On the radio the other day there was a commercial for a conservative candidate for political office using the typical conservative cliché "Tax and spend liberal." Conservatives are always targeting those on welfare for being "free riders" but conservatives themselves are "free riders." Conservatives want something for nothing just as those on welfare do. The patron saint of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, did just that. He gave them something for nothing, he gave the rich 60% tax cuts and tripled the national debt. Once Reagan demonstrated that you could rob future generations to pay for tax cuts for the rich today, the race was on to discover other ways to rob future generations to fund big tax cuts for the rich on the state level. To the generation that elected Reagan an affordable college education was considered a right not a privilege. Anyone that wanted to go college could easily pay for it with a part time job. The Republicans have been looting the money that funded the state higher education systems for 30 years now.

If the republican governor of Illinois prevails in the 8 month standoff with the legislature and cuts another 31.5% out of funding for state colleges the state would only make a token contributions to public higher education system. Given the choice the conservatives and Republican Governor of Illinois would eliminate public higher education in Illinois and tell the parents to send their children out of state to college. Just free ride in another state that still funds higher education.

In order to fund even bigger and better tax cuts you need not only rob the present but also the future and the past. Rush Limbaugh says no one should ever be paid for not working. If you expect to eat you need to work. Limbaugh believes that all pension systems should be abolished along with public education system. Rush's philosophy is that if you can cheat someone in transaction you should cheat them. Every wave of conservatives bought more tax cuts both at the state and federal level. In business if you cut income you must cut expenses. In government if you cut taxes you must also cut expenses. In most businesses when income is cut, the cut in expenses must follow quickly or the business is bankrupt. But government is a different kind of beast it is ideologically driven. Government can access funds from both the future and past obligations. Someone takes a government job and starts paying 10% of their income into a pension plan, Thirty years later the conservatives come along and say we're sorry but the current tax rate will not allows us pay your pension and we will not raise taxes to pay your pension in fact we are going to cut taxes further. We will give you 50 cents on a dollar of your pension and your damn lucky to get that. These arguments are taking place now in both Illinois and Pennsylvania. With literally 10's of billions of future obligations at stake the conservatives politicians and Rush Limbaugh can't wait to swindle the retirees out of their pensions. The conservative political candidates are already promising another round of tax cuts. Free riding conservatives can always find a reason why they should not have to pay for what they receive.

The greatest robbery ever staged was done in Iraq just before the Iraq war began. Saddam Husain sent his son Qusay to the Iraq Central Bank with a hand written note. It took Qusay five hours to load a billion dollars in hundred bills into a truck. Later $650 million was found in a wall in one of Saddam’s palaces. Though $350 million was never recovered and is considered lost. But that was not the biggest robbery ever attempted. In April of 2005 baby Bush and the rich attempted the biggest robbery ever imagined. This was to be the first trillion dollars robbery in history, in fact in broad daylight they planned to make $1.7 trillion dollars disappear. Bush held a photo opportunity at West Virginia Parkersburg campus. He pointed to a four draw filling cabinet and said that the $1.7 trillion is in a similar filling cabinet and it is just worthless IOUs. People actually began to believe baby Bush. Nobody bothered to ask how many of those IOUs had Reagan signature on them. Of course the socials security trust fund held not even one IOU, that was just a conservative lie meant to swindle the American workingman.

The $1.7 trillion in the social trust fund is held in US Treasury Bonds, considered the safest investment in the world. You can bet Donald Trump doesn’t refer to US Treasury Bonds as worthless IOUS. Bush intent was not to dishonor all U S Treasury bonds only those held by working Americans. The official conservative position is that the US Treasury bonds are worthless and they fully will to swindle the workingman out of that $1.7 trillion. It never occurs to the conservative mind set that when you give someone an IOU that you should repay it. So and IOU from a conservative is just as Bush says it is worthless paper but many people when they give you an IOU it is better than any gold on earth.

Social security has been a cash cow for 35 years now providing $1.7 trillion for tax cuts for the wealthy. The accounting method used for the federal budget factored in social security as just another stream of income like income tax. This allowed Reagan to hide must deeper deficits as a $200 million social security surplus would offset a $200 million of a deficit. These surpluses continued up until 2010. In order to pay current social security payments the interest on the trust fund must be used. Soon the actual trust fund will be needed to help make social security payments. We will elect a conservative who will dishonor the $1.7 trillion trust fund or we will elect someone who will honor all the social security taxes paid by this generation. Donald Trump might even give the American workingman 5 cents on the dollar so they won’t feel cheated. It is not personal it is just good business.

The conservatives fully intended to swindle the American people. Just like Robert Ringer type II “The conservatives fully intended to cut the American People’s hand off at the wrist when they reached for their social security even though they assured them it was not their intention. The conservative mindset is to swindle who ever you can when ever you can.

The big question this election year has been is Trump a “true conservative.” That question was answered Thursday night in the republican debate where Rubio showed that Trump was willing to swindle anyone, anywhere, at any time. This is the most important qualification for a conservative politician and it is especially important this election. In 2005 baby Bush made and unsuccessful attempt to convince the American working man that the $1.7 trillion dollar social security trust fund was just worthless IOUs. Social security was designed as a pay as you go system with those working paying the social security of those who were retired and it worked like that for half century. When the baby boomers entered the work force social security was in good shape many people were paying in and only a small percentage were retired. When I entered the work force you only paid social security tax on the first $7,800 dollars you earned ($53,688.45 in 2015 dollars) so most people got a nice increase in their take home pay in the last quarter of the year. In 2015 you must pay social security tax on the first $118,500. This more than doubled the amount of money subject to social security tax. Social Security actuaries realized that when the of baby boomers retired the number of people working would not be sufficient to pay the full amount of social security. If no changes were made benefits would have to radically cut. In effect the baby boomers paid for the past generation social security and would be the first generation to pay for their own social security benefits in advance. So the baby boomers paid their parents social security and created a $1.7 Trillion trust fund to help pay for theirs own benefits. The conservatives are going to do their very best to swindle the American workingman out of that $1.7 trillion and who better than Donald Trump? The art of the deal is more often than not the art of the swindle.

I just read and article from a right wing think tank about $1.7 trillion heist. According to the right the $1.7 trillion is already gone and you have been swindled, get over it. The conservatives say if you intend to get the $1.7 trillion back you can double, or triple tax your children. The article was entitled “The Myth of the Social Security Trust Fund: The Looted Trust Fund Myth is a Serious Barrier to Social Security Reform.” The radical right wing think tank is called “The Earhart Foundation” Among the foundations early successes was Fredrick Hyek. Hyek wrote “The Road to Serfdom” the radical right bible. There is no honor among thieves or on the right. The article was written by, John Attarian, a freelance writer with a PHD in economics. Even if we adopt his position that US Treasury bonds are IOUs, IOUs are legally enforceable. His first assumption is that all IOUs are worthless and unenforceable. What is an IOU but a contract that if you loan me money I will return it by date certain. An IOU is an enforceable contract that can be enforced in a court of law. I have dealt with many swindlers in a court of law and their contracts often hang them. Contracts are the bases of any civilization. If a government fails to honor its contracts with its citizens it is in trouble. At one time a man’s word was his bond. This is something Attarian and other conservatives will never understand.

Attarian says that any belief that the government will fulfill its obligation is “blocking social security reform. Read social security reform the same as pension reform, just as Bush wanted to do put it in the stock market and let ride, when you lose double down. Attrain says if we want the $1.7 trillion we will have to take it from our children. I know who took it. There is a written record of social security being raised and massive conservatives tax cuts for the rich at the same time. As for me I will get it back from Donald Trump children and the rest of the rich when their taxes are raised back up the 60% they were cut under Reagan. The conservatives are always pushing for more tax cuts but expenses don’t go away.

On April 5th 2005 when baby Bush announced to the world that America’s social security trust fund was just “worthless IOUs. Bush said he had personally looked at the contents of the social security trust fund and it was just IOUs. Bush’s solution gamble the social security on Wall Street. The conservatives thought they had won a great victory and the rich were licking their lips. In Huntington all the stockbrokers went from small office to large building awaiting the influx of social security tax money. Small investors pay a far higher percentage of the fees out of their accounts and brokers would get rich beyond their imagination. What were the American people going to do the president of the United States had declared the social security system effectively bankrupt? Simple enough, baby Bush had the solution just gamble with what you pay into social security. Bush was like the CEO of Enron who assured all his employees they would be millionaires if their retirement was held in stocks. The Enron employees lost everything they watched as the Enron officers looted what was left of the company and left the employees penniless. Since baby Bush plan would divert most of the incoming social security tax into Wall Street and the government would still need to pay social security to those who were above fifty Bush planned to borrow $5 trillion dollars to pay existing social security obligations. A win, win for the rich who would not have to pay back the $1.7 social security trust fund that they took in 60% Reagan tax cuts and would buy up the $5 trillion in debt making nice interest rate on the US Treasury bonds issued to finance the debt. The stockbrokers would get rich off of 100 million new mandatory accounts. The stock swindlers would make billions bankrupting companies and setting up all kinds of frauds.

Everybody knows that if you don’t have enough money to pay your house payment that you go to the casino with your paycheck and gamble. The biggest casino on earth is Wall Street, stocks originally started out in France as a form of gambling. What baby Bush’s plan did was put all the social security money on the table where it could be easily stolen by the rich. The American people were not taken in and the conservatives couldn’t swindle the American people out of the $1.7 trillion owed to the social security trust fund. By 2007 the stock market crashed losing more money than it did during the Great Depression. Had the Bush plan been implemented and put all of the social security on the table it would have been lost. After the second Great Depression the conservatives knew they would have to wait until the American people forgot that Wall Street is not much better than a lottery ticket and at least the lottery is not crooked. Just one player on Wall Street, the president of NASTAQ, made off with $50 billion.


In WV a plan similar to the baby Bush was implemented for the teacher’s pension plan. Teachers were allowed to invest part of what they paid into stock with a fraction remaining in the traditional pension plan. The plan was optional so many school employees remained in the traditional plan. In only a few years most of those who opted out of traditional plan had lost most of their retirement money and were clamoring to get back into the traditional pension plan. They were allowed to buy their way back into the traditional plan. There were a few winners just like there is in any lottery but the vast majority lost their money. The reform system was an expensive failure for the vast majority.

The conservatives will say the $1.7 trillion social security trust fund was just squandered by congress but that is not what happened. At the same time Reagan was raising social security taxes five times to create the social security trust fund he was cutting income tax on the rich by 60%. As the increased social security tax came in one door it went out the other door in 60% tax cuts for the rich. There are two sides to the economic coin, income and spending. It is very easy to trace what went wrong with America, every President since WWII paid down the National Debt (war debt) until the conservative took control and tripled the National Debt. If Reagan had continued to pay down the debt at the same rate as the other Presidents had the debt would have been paid off completely in the early 90s.

If you went and bought a new car on credit but then decided you no longer wished to work full time. Obviously you could no longer afford to pay for the car because you reduced your income. How would you find the money to make the car payments? You could sell your neighbors a retirement plan. You could tell them if they participated in your retirement plan they would need to invest 7.2% of their income with you for 45 years. At that time you reached 65 he would provide them with an income for life. Of course he used the money to pay his car payments, take lavish vacations, buy four mansions and live the high life. When the neighbors got to be 65 and asked for the retirement payments, he said sorry I spent it but if your children will agree to join the plan I can give you a reduced payment. What would happen to this character? He would be arrested and taken to jail for fraud. This is what happened to social security the income was cut by giving 60% tax cuts to the rich when the country could not afford to. America could no more afford the tax cuts than somebody who buys a new car can afford to work part time.

The conservatives argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong with defrauding people, it is just a good business practices, let the buyer beware. The law on the other hand holds people who defraud people responsible and redress for damages can be addressed in civil courts. All the mansions the guy bought with his retirement scheme become the property of the people he defrauded. At one time in America the rich owned a mansion after the Reagan tax cuts the rich owned several mansions each. In 2008 when John McCain was asked how many mansions he owned. He replied that he was uncertain how many mansions he and his wife owned. What is wrong with this picture? A few decades after the massive Reagan tax cuts we have people who have so many mansions that they can no longer keep count of and at the same time the conservatives are trying to swindle the American workingman out of his social security. How many mansions are too many? The conservatives believe the sky should be the limit.

The social security problem is not so much a problem in economics as it is a problem of morality. Taxes can be raised on the rich, no one needs seven mansions. The rich could and should pay social security tax on every dollar of income like the poor do. Social security should not be just a tax levied on wages, social security should every dollar of income, rents, profits from the sale of stocks and bonds. Social security tax levied on the five hedge fund billionaires alone would make a huge difference. The inheritance tax should be raised back to historical levels and dedicated to social security. A government cannot make a contract with its people and then swindle them out of their end of the bargain saying sorry I gave your money to the rich so they could buy more mansions.

In this day and time, whether we realize it or not, we get our political opinions like our housing, prefabricated. Think tanks abound and it is their job to manufacture political opinions. For the most part people just select whatever prefabricated political opinion is being pushed by the think tanks at the time. Most people will learn the talking points which come included with the prefabricated political opinions. It is rare for anyone to investigate both sides of political question without bias. The thinks tanks make up the black opts portion of the political spectrum, they operate below the radar for the most part and pride themselves with having you in the body bag before you knew what hit you. The think tanks carpet bombs America each and every day with carefully manufactured, self-serving political position, on radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the internet.

In America over half of the think tanks in existence today were founded after 1980, the conservative era. Think tanks are where the rich go to have self-serving political opinions manufactured. Think tanks are independently funded, think millionaires, and they are tax exempt. This allows the rich to get the maximum bang for their bucks. The rich assembled battalions of conservative think tanks to wound or destroy social security. For more than thirty years there has been an endless barrage from right wing think tanks against social security. The Republican party and the right bitterly opposed the creation of social security and they did everything in their power to repeal it for 20 years.

America stands at a moral crossroads, we can swindle this generation and the following generations out of their social security, or we can decide that we have an obligation to those who paid for the last generation social security and then were asked to pay in advance for their own social security. Our political system was designed to be driven by self-interest. In the 80s the right discovered that they could use think tanks to manipulate public opinion. It was effective, a large portion of Americans no longer voted their self-interest instead they voted in the interest of the rich. In fact they voted to raise their social security taxes by $1.7 trillion and give it to the rich in 60% tax cuts.

I can’t stress enough that the social security problem is a moral problem, not an economic problem. There are a number of viable economic paths to solve the social security problem including applying social security tax to all income. Most of middle class and the working poor already pay 7.2% social security tax on all of their income. A hedge manger making $5 billion, and they do, pays .0000017% of his income in social security tax. I am surprised that the conservative think tanks have not made a case for limiting income tax to only the first $118,000 in income like social security tax. The Reagan pattern of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class continues unabated to this day. The WV legislature yesterday proposed doing away with the coal severance tax, a tax placed by multi-billion out of state coal companies for depletion of WV’ natural resources. The oil and gas industry were quickly added to the bill also. Where would the money come from? No doubt higher education would be cut again. The Republican legislature would give the out of state billionaires a $55 million tax cut and those taxes would be shifted to middle class. The republicans tried to raise the sales tax one of the most regressive taxes in the world. There has been a pattern over the last 35 years cut the tax on the rich and raise it on the poor.

Most people are easily taken in by propaganda. Fear is the easiest emotion to manipulate simply because it engages the emotional mind and disengages the rational mind. When the conservative think tank began carpet bombing America they fully intended to use fear to destroy social security. The conservative think tanks succeeded in convincing the next generation there would be no social security when they retired so they should take their money out of the social security and gamble with it on the stock market where it would be stolen and taken for stockbroker fees. This is one area where the poor pay far more in fees than the rich, the customer who owns 1 share pays the same fee to the broker as the customer who has 10 million shares. In a conversation with my adult daughter she said that her generation would never get any social security. I told her that was a just lie spread by conservative think tanks to destroy social security. Social security has paid social security for 85 years and it was designed as a pay as you go system. When she retired, even if nothing was done to shore up social security she would still get 75% of he social security. Social security can’t go broke because it will always have an income. This is a clear example of the immoral tactics of the conservative think tanks, they don’t care how they win as long as they win.

But the most despicable thing the conservative think tanks did was pit one generation against another. By convincing the public that if the baby boomers took their social security their children would do without. Most parents would gladly do without social security to insure that their children got social security. The conservative think tanks are totally amoral, they have one objective and one objective only to shift more and more of America wealth into the pockets of the richest people in America. The baby boomer generation heard a whole lot about how much our social security was going to cost but we never heard one time about how much more the baby Boomers generation paid into to social security for 45 years. The conservatives think tanks will never point out how much social security the baby boomers paid for all their working years, they just say that’s money under the bridge. It is a question or morality not economics and how we answer this question will define this generation. If the conservatives prevail and we swindle the elderly we set an example for the nation’s young that if you want more rob the elderly.


The social security trust fund was established to take care of the baby boomer generation. There were 76 million births during the baby boomer generation and the next biggest generation was the Millennial generation with 61 million births. But because of deaths and immigration the Millennial generation will surpass the Baby Boomer generation this year as the as America biggest generation. One of the conservative think tank arguments was that because the generations that followed the baby boomers were smaller that they could not possibly pay the baby boomers social security. The millennial generations is now bigger and generation X will be bigger than the baby boomers generation by 2028. No one is a fortuneteller and it is easy to manufacture a dark foreboding future especially when $1.7 trillion is at stake.

The current projections from the social security administration for social security (they are adjusted for economics conditions yearly) project that even if no revenue adjustments are made that social security will be able to pay 100% of the benefits until 2032 after that they will have to be reduced to 77% of the full benefit. These projections are based on the government meeting its obligation and repaying the $1.7 trillion to social security trust fund. If the conservatives get control of the government the social security trust fund will not be repaid but yet there will be magically be another round of huge tax cuts for the rich. Without the trust fund being repaid the social security cuts would have to take place much sooner. The conservatives would tell you to take what’s left of your social security to Las Vegas or Wall Street and gamble.

Social security operated in a deficit in 11 different years, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1965, and 1975 thru 1981. During the years 1975 thru 1981 social security had to use up 47% of the social security trust fund at that time. During those years social security paid out $21,347,000 more than came in social security tax. “It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. The contrast is stark, it was a time before conservative got control of the government. There were no conservatives to say the social security trust fund didn’t exist. There was no question whatsoever as to whether it was real. No President Bush to say the social security trust fund was ‘just worthless IOUs.” The social security trust fund was not worthless IOUs then maybe the trust fund is only worthless when Republicans are in control of government. I was surprised to find that there were 11 years that social security operated at a deficit. That happened when I was in my late twenties and I don’t remember anyone running around saying the sky is falling and the retirement money should be gambled on Wall Street. The social security trust fund was held in trust it was a moral responsibility. When the conservatives arrived in Washington they made sure that no economic decision that benefited the rich would ever be hindered by simple morals. It was a tale of two different times, a time when a man’s word was a man’s bond and a time where government is just another swindler and every body is in it for a quick buck. Contrast the earth-shattering amount of publicity about social security going broke now against a six-year period when social security was clearly going broke. What accounted for the difference? The right wing think-tanks that are the voice of the ungodly greedy. They are the modern day gunslingers the guys in the black hats always hire to do their dirty work.