Democracy or Plutocracy?

I remember when my dad worked at Western Electric and made $75 bucks a week. My mom did not have to work and stayed home with the kids. We had a decent car. We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood. My father was able to pay all his bills and still bank enough money every week so that 50 years later he is still supporting my mom from the grave.  As a realtor I have young families come to me where both the husband and wife work full time and they can’t afford the going rate for a decent rental.

What the heck happened to this country? In my opinion what is wrong with this country is a real life reversal of Robin Hood.  The rich stole from the poor. The rich control 85% of the wealth in this country while 95% of Americans share the remaining 15%. The wealthiest Americans stole all our retirement money by cooking the books, insider trading and all other sorts of illegal activity on Wall Street, by shipping all of our jobs overseas, by de-unionizing thousands of jobs and stripping us of our rights, by creating tax loopholes and other types of corporate welfare that saved the wealthiest Americans more money annually than the rest of us earn in total income.  And now they have the audacity to be mad at these same people because they need food stamps, medical and rental assistance.  We are hating the wrong class of people here. The ultra rich want us to hate the poor so it takes the spotlight off what they have and are doing to us. They want us to focus on the welfare money the government is spending on the bottom 47% rather than know how much money they are spending on corporate welfare given to benefit the top 5%. In my opinion this new Republican Party is bought and paid for by the ultra rich as Republicans refuse to even discuss ending tax cuts and other corporate welfare.  If this keeps us we will no longer have a democracy and instead we will have a Plutocracy. I don’t care if you like Obama or not, it's not about him, it’s about protecting and preserving the middle class.

I was a staunch republican for most of my adult life, but I can no longer look at what they are doing to the poor and the middle class and be OK with it. I cannot stand with a party that throws the sick, the elderly and the poor under the bus while protecting the wealthiest people in America. I cannot stand with a party who refuses to make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes while the middle class struggle to pay their taxes.  I did not leave the Republican Party, they left me.