HASTERT LETS THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG: REPUBLICANS HAVE NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT FOR AMERICAN WORKING PEOPLE

Like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina brought a sense of unity to most Americans, the feeling that we were all in this together and that we desperately needed to pull together and help solve the unfathomable problems facing our compatriots in a city we all love and in a region as American as any other in our union. The very first voice to shatter that sense of community came from the porcine Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, who suggested that instead of the difficult and, in his mind, too costly job of rebuilding New Orleans, we just level it. “It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” opined a man who looks like he's always demanded far more than his share. (In fact, when it came to screwing over the Armenian-American community, Hastert took half a million dollars in bribes from the government of Turkey-- in small unreported cash donations-- in return for using his position as Speaker to derail legislation involving recognition of the Armenian genocide.)

Anyway, yesterday, Hastert managed to stick his hoof in his mouth between regularly scheduled feedings. Right on the floor of the House, showing his disdain for typical Americans who do not buy him $200 lunches at fancy restaurants, Hastert declared "Well, folks, if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two children, you don’t pay any taxes. So you probably, if you don't pay any taxes, you are not going to get a very big tax cut." Of course, under the Republican tax proposals he was defending, all the tax cuts go to the very wealthy people who do pay for the gluttonous Speaker's notoriously gargantuan meals-- and line his pockets with kickbacks and bribes.

Hastert, like so many of our "representatives," has been well taken care of by the lobbyists and the corporations whose bidding he routinely carries out. Once a humble high school teacher, he has somehow morphed into a millionaire. What all his ill-gotten wealth hasn't brought him is either a brain or a sense of compassion for people who don't get giant bribes and kickbacks and have to make do with meager salaries in the grotesque Republican economy that Bush and Hastert's rubber-stamp Congress have brought us. Hastert discounts entirely that "the little people" who make $40,000 pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc.

House Democrats boo-ed Hastert's outrageous and repulsive remarks, his denigration of working men and women. Jim Clyburn, Chairman of the Democratic Caucus, seemed pissed off but still eloquent. "To this point, I have been baffled by Republican budget and tax priorities that value millionaires and billionaires above working families, and sink this nation's budget deeper in debt every year. But Speaker Hastert crystallized GOP budget philosophy— working families don't pay taxes and don't deserve a tax cut. No statement has been more telling, arrogant and out of touch. Today's narrow passage signals the need for change, because the Republican majority will stop at nothing to advance a fiscally reckless and immoral budget."