This is not…..!!!!!

This is not your momma’s Republican party!

This is not your daddy’s Republican party!

And, this is sure as Hell not your grandparents Republican party!

But, it sure as Hell may be the party that is trying to take the nation back to the times of a first time voters grandparents youth or their prime. Perhaps it might be well to take a good, long hard look at those times in some briefness just to see how good they really were.

As far as entitlements go, based on what we have seen from the corporate America and its moguls that were really behind the Romney campaign, they would like to go back past the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his introduction of Social Security as an underlayment for an America that could no longer depend on private savings or industry to care for its own. How do we know that? Just look at what America’s corporations have done to the private pension system built up mainly by the efforts of decades of concerted union bargaining. Now, we have 401k plans with an average of 14,000 dollars per worker across the nation with an average income by the best possible estimates of around 80 dollars a month. We hear more and more from middle aged and younger workers that they may not be able to retire until their eighties. This may be partially true because by that time you may have to be eighty to receive any social security benefits.

There was a time in the past that it was estimated that the average social security recipient only lived eighteen months past sixty five. And, the reason that they did not live much longer than that was because the life expectancy was not much longer than that. It has been noted by at least one commentator that we have read that the average life expectancy has not really expanded that much for the average working class person for the last thirty years. The real expansion of life expectancy is among the monied class--those who have over two million dollars of assets or more not counting their residence. It is also interesting to note that that thirty year figure coincides pretty much with the arrival of Ronald Wilson Reagan and the first wave of neocons on the scene with their trickle down economics.

And, that thirty year arrival leads us to medical advancements, and, to Medicare and Medicaid. In that regard, it is uncertain just how far the neocon Republicans would like to lead us back. Most certainly it would be at least to the mid 1960’s before Medicare was first enacted. Their reaction to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) of 2010 tells us that. The latest Republican standard bearer--Mitt Romney--told us during the just ended presidential campaign that he would like to see those who cannot afford anything else to go back to reporting to the emergency room when unmanageable medical problems come up. We are not sure really how the one percent intend to finance their expensive medical care that has been developed through the decades on the backs of many millions who have contributed to its development, but, it is apparent right now that they will use it to extend their own lives while, if they are allowed, depriving it to those who are not as fortunate or as lucky or blessed as themselves. A corollary issue to this is the fact that Obamacare has many features built into it that involve preventive care designed to drive down medical costs by finding things when they can still be handled without enormous and prohibitive expenditures. Of course, and speaking of Obamacare, it also has a feature that quits rewarding medical doctors for ordering many expensive tests for those who are beyond needing them any further and , instead, rewards team efforts that look out for the best and long term interest of the patient. This is particularly true in the last year of life when so much is spent to buy a few more days or months of questionable quality of life at sometimes enormous expense when the outcome is going to be the same no matter what is done or not done.

It has been said that some among the very old and rich would probably like to just go on ahead and pass away but their money and their relatives and those others who are really nothing more than hangers on often keep them here well beyond their time simply because they have the resources to do so.

When I was a child my father paid my brother after his marriage ninety dollars a week and that, for rural southern Illinois, was considered a rather good wage in 1956. Teachers were making five to six thousand dollars per year and thought that the fact that they got the summers off was a very good thing. We bring this up because it is questionable how far back the neocon Republicans would like to take us when it comes to the minimum wage. To be truthful, in their wilder thoughts, people like the Koch brothers would simply like to abolish it all together. So, how far back does that take us? When it came to the just ended election, when the right thought months ago that they might cast the left into a permanent minority, all of these things were on their laundry list. As we have been want to say here in the past, what the neoconservative right really wants is an America where they get all the benefits of what has been achieved in medicine and research and the like while casting the rest of this nation in the role of those who would work as long as possible for the least amount of money and benefits and then go quietly away and die when they are no longer useful. And, that is a time when really none of us who are currently living can really ever recall!

We used to be in this thing together and now we are not!

There are problems that this generation has had with ethics and morality when it comes to the medical issues in particular. We did not know how many abortions were done in the back ally, filthy little holes that some doctors inhabited before Roe v. Wade gave us statistics. But we do know that even though the neocon right would take us back to a time before stem cell research, they will gladly take any benefits unto themselves that come from it if it betters, saves and lengthens they and their loved ones lives.

When we look back at this just ended presidential campaign, one thing will stick in our minds for a very long time. It is what Mitt Romney said about the forty seven percent and how they were a dependency class that he could not reach. As they poured the wine and the water into their silver chalices as he spoke, all we could see was a class of people who had taken the very best that this nation could offer in the way of a good start through inheritance or a better education or better breeding, and were willing to give back in return as little as possible to the great mass of people on whose backs, across the decades and the years, their fortunes and their profits were built! And, this is YOUR Republican party!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.