By Lorenzo A. Cañizares
To understand what is meant by “The Great Upheaval” is important to
provide some pertinent facts. We need to realize that there is a
dichotomy amongst the American people in how we experience the reality
around us. Regular common people that have been lucky enough not to have
had to deal with losing a job or being discriminated because of race,
gender, sexual preference or religion trying to understand what’s
happening in America today, can become difficult especially if they have
been mainly just paying attention to daily living.
As
we are seeing, most states are going through an attempt to change the
reality that Americans live in. Those with jobs, as teachers and state
workers that might have been oblivious to the pain being suffered by
those that have lost jobs and benefits in the private sector, are
getting to know now how it feels. The people doing the deciding are
ruthless in their disregard for the popular will or well-being. For
example, Charles M. Blow mentions in his NYT column of 2/12/11 that
Republicans in New Hampshire have filed bills to overturn the state’s
same-sex marriage law, even though, according to a recent WMUR Granite
State Poll, the state’s residents want to leave the law in place by a
majority of more than 2 to 1. Who cares about being concerned about what
constituents want?
The above example of
disregard for the popular will is assisted by the corporate stranglehold
that exists in our political life. The Supreme Court through their
decision in Citizens United has opened the floodgates to corporate money
overwhelming our democracy. Conservatives use a committed group of
cadres that through the pretext of social issues push for economic
policies that will benefit the Greedy Rich. The excuse of fiscal
responsibility is widely used a justification to attain the political
goals that the Greedy Rich are after. Notice, as in Wisconsin,
dismantling of labor unions is the goal under the banner of fiscal
responsibility while promoting tax cuts for the very wealthy, tax cuts
that will deepen the deficit even further. As the headlines of the
newspaper Roll Call said in its July 18 edition “Senate Republican
Leader Mitch McConnell blasts deficit spending, urges extension of tax
cuts.” The monies behind the Citizens United decision allow this utterly
ridiculous statement to acquire political legitimacy! To make it a
double dosage of hypocrisy, McConnell also considers defense spending to
be sacrosanct.
The Democratic Party could
have not been more compliant in the last Congress. We have seen
Democrats watering down legislation one after another trying to gain the
cooperation of Republicans. Take the Health Care bill as an example,
the Democrats through compromise watered down the bill, but even that
watered down bill that if implemented could have been a windfall for
health insurance corporations is being rejected because the goal is to
defeat Obama. Can anybody be so witless not to understand what
Republicans are trying to do? After such a barrage of verbiage regarding
jobs, jobs, jobs they are forcing the nation to revive the health care
wars, all with the intent of defeating Obama in 2012, as McConnell has
let us know to be the goal. Isn’t it coincidental that several
Republican Governors have refused government monies to deal with
infrastructure reforms that would have produced hundreds of thousands of
good paying jobs throughout the country?
A
major part of the “Great Upheaval” is what the lap-dogs of the Greedy
Rich have been able to come up with just to make sure that we understand
the power that they have over us. What’s more clear than what E.J.
Montini, a widely read Arizona Republic columnist, description of
Arizona’s Governor and Republican legislators as a “death panel” that
has originally condemned 98 Arizonans to death because it’s not cost
effective to provide them organ transplants. Two has already died.
Republicans do run effective death panels!
But,
nothing is a more clear indication of the “Great Upheaval” than what’s
going on in Wisconsin. Governor Walker intent is to destroy the unions,
to destroy what brought the American working class into the middle
class, and to destroy the societal cushion that was the base of
America’s prosperity. Governor Walker’s plan would limit collective
bargaining for most state and local government employees to wages,
leaving issues like benefits and work conditions to their respective
employer’s whims. It would require workers to contribute more to their
pensions and health care, limit wage increases to a cap based on the
Consumer Price Index (CPI), and limit contracts to one year. It would
require unions to take annual votes to maintain certification while also
permitting workers to stop paying union dues.
These
are just a few examples of what the Greedy Rich have done in their
attempt to maximize profits coming their way. Notice we have not talked
about wars, Wall Street, the Mortgage crisis, etc. But, we can be
certain now that we have arrived to the point that those who don’t see
it, is because they just don’t want to see it.
The “Great Upheaval” is about to unravel.
