"George Bush doesn't care about black people"

I always took a little issue with this Kanye West quote said in the heat of the catastrophe of Katrina. I honestly do not believe that George Bush is racist.

But I do believe that George Bush is classist. I believe that he sees himself as a success based on his own skills and blames the economically less fortunate for some flaw in their character which has left them to their fate. (I will leave aside the issue of Bush's perception of success on his own merit for now.)

It is a recurring theme among Republican propaganda which really gained a broad acceptance during the Reagan presidency, that people are poor because they are lazy, probably best typified by the myth of the "cadillac driving welfare queens." The Reagan presidency really was the turning point in organized labor and class identification in this country, putting to rest the working class acting as a self interested political force.

The Right has won the class war. The wealthiest percent gets huge tax cuts, while the majority of Americans have their healthcare taken away to pay for it.

Millions of low-income people would have to pay more for health care under a bill worked out by Congress, and some of them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because of the higher co-payments and premiums, the Congressional Budget Office says in a new report.....

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Bush plans to recommend a variety of steps to help people obtain health insurance and cope with rising health costs. But the bill, the Deficit Reduction Act, written by Congress over the last year with support from the White House, could reduce coverage and increase the number of uninsured, the budget office said.

Over all, the bill is estimated to save $38.8 billion in the next five years and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015, with cuts in student loans, crop subsidies and many other programs, the budget office said. Medicaid and Medicare account for half of the savings, 27 percent and 23 percent over 10 years......

This provision would delay Medicaid eligibility for 120,000 people, or about 15 percent of the new recipients of Medicaid nursing home benefits each year, the budget office said.

(By the way, the projected deficit this year is $337 billion according to the CBO, and this measure will save $8 billion a year. This legislation which will harm so many, is about the ideology of the right, not reducing the deficit.)