| SELLING GUCCI BAGS IN A HOMELESS SHELTER (CONTINUED) |
| creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of those schemes, the leveraged buy out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. That practice destabilized our manufacturing base and cost the citizens of this country hundreds of thousands of jobs that we haven’t recovered from to this day. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression. And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined—but of course, now Bush makes Reagan look like a tightwad. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals in their Acontract with America@ was a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich. History is clear. The conservative Republicans don=t mind spending money, they just don=t want to spend it on those who need it -- us. Remember, they=re the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of this country=s founding fathers who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote. He also said: “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.” (Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17). So a good rule of thumb is not to believe a word that comes out of Bush’s mouth. If he assured me I was Black I’d go and take a DNA test. Eric L. Wattree wattree.com |