It's All Obama's Fault Blah blah blah and blah...

All we ever hear from Republican pundits, conservative talking heads, and the legions of sycophants and apologists - most notably the “tea baggers” - who slavishly follow and greedily consume this drivel in 24 hour new [read that: propaganda] cycles fueled primarily by FOX is that all our current social and economic woes can be attributed to the skinny black guy in the white house. It’s all President Obama's fault. It was this kind of simplistic, silly even, mindset that brought us 8 years of a disastrous Bush presidency; one where deregulation started in the Carter administration, ramped up by both Regan, Bush 41, and Clinton, took steroids in Dubya's administration. The stated rationale for deregulation is often that fewer and simpler regulations will lead to a raised level of competitiveness, therefore higher productivity, more efficiency and lower prices overall. Opposition usually involves apprehension regarding environmental pollution, quality standards (such as the removal of regulations on hazardous materials), financial uncertainty, and constraining monopolies. Deregulation gained momentum in the 1970s, influenced by research at the University of Chicago and the theories of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and Milton Friedman, among others. Two leading conservative 'think tanks' in Washington, the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, were actively holding seminars and publishing highly partisan, skewed studies advocating deregulatory initiatives throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Alfred E. Kahn played an unusual role in both publishing as an academic while actively participating in the Carter administration's efforts to deregulate transportation, which resulted in a wholesale loss of high paying union jobs in the trucking industry; a critical one for the American economy that transports virtually every good imported, produced or manufactured in the US across its crucial supply chain, which fast forward 30 years, has still not rebounded and, in fact, continues to lose ground. It was during this time that rich American manufacturers raced to off shore the types of jobs that traditionally made a prosperous but now dwindling middle class, which enabled poor black and white folks to achieve upward mobility. Republican leadership wants to disingenuously lay all the blame at Obama's feet for what was essentially a flawed business model driven strictly by greed. The few cents in cost savings per man hour these manufacturers gained through off shoring did not justify this business model in an objective cost benefit analysis. In a scathing piece published by Businessweek in June 2007, staff writer Michael Mandel wrote, “new evidence suggests that shifting production overseas has inflicted worse damage on the U.S. economy than the numbers show. BusinessWeek has learned of a gaping flaw in the way statistics treat offshoring, with serious economic and political implications. Top government statisticians now acknowledge that the problem exists, and say it could prove to be significant.” What really sealed our collective fate were folks voting against their own interest - recent 2010 Mid-term results electing obstructive “tea bag” freshman to the Congress persuasively illustrates this fact - naively believing that because they share the same hue and aspirations, these ultra-wealthy business people would rush to embrace 'em as equals no less. The overarching strategy of rich people in this country has always been divide and conquer, though: they disdain poor and middle class whites just as much every other social class that does not share their station... In common parlance, the term "social class," is usually synonymous with "socio-economic class," defined as: "people having the same social, economic, or educational status," e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class." And until poor and middle class whites begin to understand this simple truth, we will continue to lose ground and, concomitantly, our once enviable standard of living while rich folk like Mitt “Daddy Warbucks” Romney laugh all the way to the bank.