Why Do Republicans Hate Americans So Much?

Isn't it about time that we stopped calling the party that has one purpose in mind, and that is to do everything within their power to see that President Obama's stimulus package fails. These conservative Republican ideologues, as they like to call themselves; as if they answer to a higher calling than mere Democrats and moderates, are nothing more than traditional, late 1920s styled Hoover Republicans.

Just like the 'good old days' when the Hoover Republicans were joined at the hip to the interests of business leaders, today's conservative ideologues are engaged in two interrelated processes to keep labor disorganized and deny universal health care -- the two greatest threats to the future of the GOP as it is constituted today.

That is why what's going on in "poverty-ridden states like Louisiana and Mississippi where Republican governors are threatening to turn away federal aid rather than expand access to unemployment insurance programs in ways that many other states did a long time ago," is so abhorrent to a nation as rich as the United States. The GOP is playing politics with the lives of the poorest of the poor.

"What Americans need is new employment on a massive scale, Bob Herbert argues, "and one of the most effective ways to get that started is to invest extraordinary amounts in the nation’s infrastructure, to rebuild America in a way that creates a world-class platform for a sustainable 21st-century economy."

"What makes these bad decisions worse," The New York Times Editorial Board adds, "is that they are little more than political posturing by rising Republican stars, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. This behavior reinforces the disturbing conclusion that the Republican Party seems more interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies that get the country back on track.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund explains: "The essence of what labor unions do—give workers a stronger voice so that they can get a fair share of the economic growth they help create—is and has always been important to making the economy work for all Americans. And unions only become more important as the economy worsens.

"What is sustainable is an economy where workers are adequately rewarded and have the income they need to purchase goods. This is where unions come in.

"Unions paved the way to the middle class for millions of American workers and pioneered benefits such as paid health care and pensions along the way. Even today, union workers earn significantly more on average than their non-union counterparts, and union employers are more likely to provide benefits. And non-union workers—particularly in highly unionized industries—receive financial benefits from employers who increase wages to match what unions would win in order to avoid unionization.

"If American workers were rewarded for 100 percent of their increases in labor productivity

between 1980 and 2008—as they were during the middle part of the 20th century—average wages would be $28.53 per hour—42.7 percent higher than the average real wage in 2008.

"Slow wage growth has squeezed the middle class and contributed to rising inequality. But increasing union coverage rates could likely reverse these trends as more Americans would benefit from the union wage premium and receive higher wages. If unionization rates were the same now as they were in 1983 and the current union wage premium remained constant, new union workers would earn an estimated $49.0 billion more in wages and salaries per year. If union coverage rates increased by just 5 percentage points over current levels, newly unionized workers would earn an estimated $25.5 billion more in wages and salaries per year. Non-union workers would also benefit as employers would likely raise wages to match what unions would win in order to avoid unionization.

"Nearly three out of five survey respondents from a Peter Hart Research Associates poll report that they would join a union if they could, but workers attempting to unionize currently face a hostile legal environment and are commonly intimidated by aggressive anti union employers. The Employee Free Choice Act would help workers who want to join a union do so by ensuring fairness in the union selection process with three main provisions: workers would have a fair and direct path to join unions through a simple majority sign-up; employers who break the rules governing the unionization process would face stiffer penalties; and a first contract mediation and arbitration process would be introduced to thwart bad-faith bargaining.

"Passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it harder for management to threaten workers seeking to unionize would be good for American workers. It would help boost workers’ wages and benefits. And putting more money in workers’ pockets would provide a needed boost for the U.S. economy. Increasing unionization is a good way to get out of our current economic troubles."

"The U.S. economy cannot work if ordinary men and women cannot find work." Herbert reminds us. "Let’s forget for a moment all the ritualized lingo about tax cuts, all the easy but uninformed talk about entitlement reform and all the empty rhetoric about balancing budgets that will never be truly balanced in our lifetimes."

"President Obama’s stimulus package is just a first step in the government’s effort to stabilizing the hemorrhaging economy. It contains infrastructure spending, but nothing comparable to the vast amounts it will take to make the desperately needed improvements.

"Funds spent on those improvements, which will have to be made sooner or later, are also cracker-jack investments in putting people to work. The idea that the government is spending trillions on wars, bank bailouts, tax cuts, and so on, while still neglecting its infrastructure needs — and at a time when Americans are desperate for jobs — is mind-boggling."

People fail to realize the long and sustained history of federal funds providing revenues since the purchase of Louisiana, the building of the Erie Canal, the creation the land grant colleges, the interstate highway system, and the G.I. Bill are among the many huge investments made by the federal government in America.

And today we face a situation in which 75% of the nation's public schools are in serious need of repair and upgrading. Over 25% of America's bridges are beyond repair and need complete replacement or nearly at that point. Our drinking water filtration plants would need funding of approximately $11 billion every year to return them to safe facilities. 50% of all of the locks on our inland water systems that cover some 12,000 miles are obsolete and in need of replacement. As a nation, we have simply let too many aspects of our infrastructure go for so long that only a massive rebuilding program can bring our infrastructural needs back to par to where they should be.

"The current economic crisis is the perfect time to decide that we need to change some of the tired old ways of doing the people’s business." Herbert adds that: "Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut has offered a bill that would create an infrastructure bank. It would be a bipartisan entity that would streamline the process of reviewing and authorizing major projects. It would provide federal investment capital for approved projects and use that money to leverage private investment.

"President Obama," according to Herbert "supports the establishment of such a bank. When I asked him about it in an interview, he said, “The idea of an infrastructure bank, I think, makes sense.” But he suggested that there would be stiff resistance from lawmakers in both parties who are reluctant to give up their considerable influence over the selection and financing of lucrative infrastructure projects.

The president seemed optimistic," in Herbert's "estimation about the prospects of moving ahead with some additional infrastructure spending, and he said he “would like to see some long-term reforms” in the way transportation money is spent. He acknowledged that the nation’s infrastructure “needs are massive, and we can’t do everything.”

And yet the Republicans are consumed with their "attacks on the unemployment insurance portion of the stimulus package are a perfect example. States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation. This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified positive changes that have already taken place in at least half the states.

"Data from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group, show that 19 states qualify for some of the federal financing and that a dozen others would become eligible by making one or two policy changes. Unemployed workers are worst off in the Deep South, where relatively few people are eligible to receive payments. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas stand out.

Herbert concludes by explaining that: "The governors are blowing smoke when they suggest that the federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state taxes. No one knows what the economic climate will be when the federal aid has been used up several years from now. But by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus could help the states through the recession and into a time when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.

"But even if new taxes are required at some point, the new federal standards would protect more unemployed workers than ever before and bring states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas into the 21st century.

"Governors like Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to end this recession while helping constituents feed and house their families — not about finding ways to revive tired election-year arguments about big spending versus small government."

But the sad thing is that our nation has so much restructuring ahead of us. President Obama's plans for financing the building of "high-speed rail projects... could be a step toward the eventual establishment of an infrastructure bank." As a nation we have too much ground to make up and we are constantly falling behind; yet the Republicans applaud themselves for not voting for the Obama stimulus bill and threaten the three GOP senators who voted along the Democrats in the Senate to secure the final passage of the stimulus. The total lack of interest in what is best for the country at the expense of the Republican Party are clearly enunciated b the new RNC chairman, Michael Steele in the following interview conducted on Fox News.

"RNC Chairman Michael Steele told Neil Cavuto that he is open to cutting GOP funding for the 3 Senate traitors who voted for the largest spending bill in US history. Steele says he will wait and see what the state GOP parties decide about the traitors. Senators Specter, Snowe and Collins voted in favor of the trillion dollar pork-bloated bill.