WE WUZ ROBBED; END MILLIONAIRE TAX BREAKS

Rochester, N.Y.-- Change we can believe in is not the same thing as progress. In fact, change can be the exact opposite. It can be regressive, as we are now learning from the freshman dolts in Congress.

As we see it, a bevy of tea party-infused Republicans has certainly changed the political dynamic in the House, and exultant GOP leaders are now claiming that they are the voice of "The People." However, we at the Voice Reporter are pretty sure most people won't find themselves represented by this change, much less see it as progress. We are pretty sure some of our fellow moderate tax-paying, middle-class Republican friends from upstate New York wish they could get a 2010 vote do-over right about now.

This is because the newcomers in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, tend to live high up the economic ladder, way out of touch with the people they're representing. Indeed, 40 percent of newly elected house members are  wealthy millionaires, as are 60 percent of new senators.

While the great majority of every day Americans are struggling to make it on about $30,000 a year or less -- and having, at best, puny pensions and iffy health coverage -- these incoming lawmakers tend to be sitting pretty on hundreds of thousands of dollars each in accumulated tax breaks, wealth and investments.  While over half of all American families are living paycheck-to-paycheck, the financial reports of our freshman congressional delegation show them holding extensive personal investments in such outfits as Wall Street banks, oil giants and drug makers.

WHEN WILL THE GREED STOP?
Photo taken at One Nation Working
Together rally, National Mall, D.C.
on October 2, 2010.
photo:  Ove Overmyer

Their wealth and financial ties might help explain the rush by the new Republican House majority to coddle these very same corporate powers. From gutting EPA's anti-pollution restrictions on Big Oil to undoing the restraints on Wall Street greed, they're pushing for a return to the same laissez-fairyland ideology of the past 20 years that got our country where it is today.

At the same time, they're out to kill a green-jobs program, bust our unions, gut Social Security, defund Head Start and generally stomp on the fingers of working families trying to hold onto the middle class rungs of the economic ladder.

The change in Congress is taking America backward, not forward. The new majority that was created in the House is literally now the voice of just millionaires. That's not progress-- and that's not representation.

Workers in our country have been dramatically increasing their productivity since the highly ballyhooed economic recovery began about 20 months ago, generating billions of dollars in new wealth. Yet wages have stayed stagnant. Practically none of the increased wealth from worker productivity gains has gone to the workers.

Instead, 94 percent of the money has been siphoned off by the corporate powers for such things as fattening profits at a record pace and jacking up CEO pay to exorbitant levels. Also, nearly $2 trillion of the gains have simply been stashed in the corporate vaults, rather than using it for wage hikes or new job creation.  Could it be they are waiting for the coast to clear in 2012?

And even the little bit of job creation that is taking place is "bottom heavy." According to the Department of Labor, 40 percent of the jobs lost in the recent economic crash were higher-paying positions, but 49 percent of the new jobs are low-paying.

PEF members listen intently at "We Are One"
rally on March 2 at City Hall.
photo:  Ove Overmyer

So now, we see corporations and billionaires wallowing in fabulous new wealth, while productive workers fall out of the middle class. And, our newly elected representatives like Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R, NY-25) and Rep. Tom Reed (R, NY-29) are just fine with that.

They both are pushing a program of more tax breaks and subsidies for the corporate elite, while vehemently opposing efforts to create jobs and advance the middle class. The result is making the richest people even richer at the expense of your family.  In any event, this is not the recovery or change we were looking for-- it's plain ol' highway robbery.