Angry Bear:
http://angrybearblog.com/2013/09/the-lone-star-strategy-or-the-house-that-conservatives-built.html#more-18416
and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/the-lone-star-strategy
itemize some of the features of the Texas Republican Party platform 2012:
http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/20...pdf?docID=3201
“1. An orderly transition to individual private retirement accounts and the elimination of Social Security.
2. Privatization of Veterans health care.
3. Abolish all federal agencies who’s activities are not enumerated in the constitution including the department of education and the department of energy.
4. Oppose mandatory kindergarten
5. Abolish the EPA
6. Abolish the 16th amendment and thus get rid of the IRS to be replaced with a national, state collected
sales tax.
7. Abolish the capital gains tax and estate tax.
8. Repeal the minimum wage.”
_______________
Each of these points will transfer wealth and income upward,
even the elimination of mandatory kindergarten. Indeed, what will remain after the implementation of these policies is a rump federal
government, incapable of securing even the meanest rights for its poorer
citizens. And this will be most of its citizens. Each agency is an empowerment of the people, a securing of rights they
would not otherwise have. The federal government will not be
capable of securing the interests of its citizens even within the borders of the country, much less beyond them.
The EPA was established by necessity, unregulated industry
having made such a mess of things that rivers burned, and people died from
breathing the polluted air.
Privatizing Social Security and Veterans health care is sure
to make a few rich, at the expense of many.
Item 6 is obviously regressive, since poor and middle class
consume a larger portion of their income, and thus will end up paying a higher percentage of their income as tax
than the wealthy.
Item 7 will result
in the establishment of a moneyed aristocracy, something which is an anathema to a
democracy.
Repealing the minimum wage will create downward pressure on all
wages, making the poor poorer, and impoverishing even those who now get by. It shows the Texas Republicans to be
parochial and shortsighted in their thinking, even with regards to their own
fortunes.
They make the fallacy of composition. They imagine that if they cut the expenses of their businesses, which, in one way or another are compensation to the people, they will make greater profit, and be richer.
But by cutting these expenses, they impoverish the people, and they destroy the market for the
production of their own farms and factories, and render idle the foundation of
their own fortunes. With the Texas
strategy, they seek to impoverish everybody, themselves included.
