So Just Who's Entitled?

I've refrained from much political commentary as some of the half-dozen of you that read me semi-regularly might have noticed. I could cite several reasons, but really, are you all that interested in hearing them? I'm just sick to death of the whole damn presidential race. It's been going on literally for a couple of years and the sight of the media feeding frenzy that surrounds the election is enough to sicken the strongest stomach. I'm sure I'm the same as millions of Americans who simply cannot wait for this infernal sham to be over with. Let's face it, folks, we're going to continue to get corporate governance, war, and fraud in high places. It doesn't make any difference who we vote for. The fat cats are calling the tune in both parties.

So the campaign is just theater really. What the US needs is a new people's party. Neither of the current ones represent the ordinary people of the country. Both lie when they say they do. Only the Republicans are more brazen about it. Their lies are more bald-faced, their hypocrisy more flamboyant, their chutzpa more flagrant--exhibit A that little Wisconsin weasel Paul Ryan who would not know the truth if it slept in his bed with him, but who utters falsehood every time he opens his mouth.

I've already gone off on that clueless clown Mittens the other day (see here) for his remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes. What I didn't talk about was all the welfare corporate America reaps out of the hides of the rest of us.

Real entitlement programs are ones where beneficiaries do not contribute, like when we working taxpayers pay bankers hundreds of billions of dollars "interest" on their reserves, or pay for puffed-up and no-bid government contracts or farm and oil subsidies, or pay pharmaceutical companies full retail price instead of negotiating discounts, or "borrow" money from the Federal Reserve bankers instead of our U.S. Treasury, or start wars to benefit defense contractors, or bail-out bankers, and spend trillions of dollars buying gutted mortgage packages from banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies. We taxpayers are also paying hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, subsidies, and tax loopholes.

Twelve U.S. corporations that made a collective $171 billion in profit from 2008 to 2010 got tax refunds of $2.5 billion and received $62.4 billion in subsidies. . . . Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren stated, "Republicans say they don't believe in government.   Sure they do.  They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends."

Economic researcher, James S. Henry adds, "Indeed, if there is a class that is truly dependent on government subsidies, handouts and protection that it doesn't pay for, it is this new American aristocracy. So it is no accident that we may soon come very close to electing a president whose sole passion and preoccupation is to serve and defend the interests of this ruling, avaricious, tax-dodging class." (Source)