Painting of the Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960
The violence against black citizens by police is the
culmination of a planned restructure of
American society by billionaire think tanks.
When five partisan Republican Supreme Court Justices
overturned the American presidential election in 2000 a new wave of racially
hate filled policies and laws were instituted by the George W. Bush
Administration. The gains made during
the Civil Rights movement were systematically dismantled and replaced with white rights legislation by members of
the GOP. Bush is a staunch worshiper of
Ronald Reagan, an extreme racist whose dog whistle campaign was launched in
1980.
Limited government power and unlimited corporate power
Reagan chose the Neshoba County Fair to give his speech on
“state’s rights” a place that was located about 7 miles from Philadelphia,
Mississippi, a town associated with the 1964 murders of civil rights workers. In his speech Reagan said “I believe in
states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at
the community level and at the private level.”
Reagan promised a restoration of power to states and local
governments appealing to Southern white voters much like Nixon’s divide and
conquer Southern strategy. Today’s GOP
is funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers who demand limited government
power and unlimited corporate power. In
the 1970s RAND Corporation released a study that concluded, when services such
as police and fire protection were withdrawn, the numbers of people in the
neglected areas will decrease.
Bush’s $6.6 trillion tax cuts and “planned shrinkage”
The Bush tax cuts and No Child Left behind were designed to
achieve “planned shrinkage” by slashing city
services such as police patrols, garbage removal, street repairs, public
education and fire protection, from neighborhoods cause urban decay, crime, and
poverty. According to Pulitzer
prize-winning reporter David Kaye Johnston the Bush tax cuts cost American
families $6.6 trillion from 2001 through 2012, one-third of the country’s GDP.
According to Johnston, "We're not investing in the
future of America, because we have less revenue, we are not putting the same
money we used to put into research, infrastructure or education.” "The empirical evidence that tax cuts
produce jobs just doesn't exist." When
Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993 the GOP, unable to override a veto, shut down
the government. Those taxes funded 20
million good paying jobs.
Classroom to prison pipeline
Barack Obama, also a Reagan devotee not only embraced Bush’s
No Child Left Behind but expanded it with Race to the Top creating a classroom
to prison pipeline wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into
the juvenile and criminal justice systems. According to the ACLU, “For most
students, the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools.
Overcrowded classrooms, a lack of qualified teachers, and insufficient funding
for "extras" such as counselors, special education services, and even
textbooks, lock students into second-rate educational environments.”
In Republican run States like Wisconsin and Michigan the
“planned shrinkage” model has the Detroit public schools facing bankruptcy and
in Milwaukee the GOP repealed the 1938 residency requirement for police and
firefighters removing them from the communities they serve. The neoconservative and neoliberal policy
must be abandoned. Until the Bush tax
cut are repealed and investments are made in America’s greatest resource, our
people, the violence we see on our streets not only continue but it will
escalate.
By Patricia Baeten
|
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Violence caused by the Neoconservative and Neoliberal Destruction of American Society
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