Wall Street Bonuses are the metaphor for what’s wrong with our current society. But sometimes they’re the literal thing that’s wrong.

Bonuses for wrongdoers! Bonuses for thieves!

Bonuses for con men!

The money’s going the wrong way.

I have often thought that the difference between liberal and conservative is one of humanity. Conservative politics in these latter years are aimed at avoiding giving money to the poor or middle class.

It’s a class war, now, that we’re living in. I do wish the Tea Partiers would wake up and see it. They’re acting against their own interests, because I think the vast majority of them are not wealthy but very upset, middle-class people. They aren’t my enemy; the politicians, ultra-wealthy, lobbyists and former politicians (like Dick Armey) actively pushing this class war are.

Among Republicans running for office we have some beasts like Sharron Angle, running for Senate hoping to displace Harry Reid: Michele Rollins, running for a House seat representing Delaware; and Tom Corbett, running for governor of Pennsylvania. From OpenLeft Blog and other blogs collecting quotes I know there are many more of like mind, so what follows seems to be a Republican platform position.

Here are quotes from each about the unemployed. They are not sound bites coming out of context. Each candidate has uttered these sentiments in other words repeatedly to the media.

They don’t feel merely that unemployment benefits should be limited; they see benefits as a problem, and the unemployed as lazy and opportunistic. Corbett obviously believes the unemployed are scamming the government.

Angle: … “the unemployed are spoiled.”

Rollins: Jobless benefits make people “continue to do nothing.”

Corbett: “One of the issues, and I hear it repeatedly – one of the individuals said, ‘I can’t get workers. People don’t want to come back to work while they still have unemployment.’’ He said.  “They’re literally telling him, ‘I’ll come back to work when unemployment runs out.’ That’s becoming a problem.”
Corbett added, “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are going to sit there and – I’ve literally had construction companies tell me, I can’t get people to come back to work until…they say, I’ll come back to work when unemployment runs out.”

As Freud would ask, How does this make you feel?
Are you perfectly safe in your employment? Are you well-off, or have a huge savings to fall back on?

Or are you like most of the country, just working and hoping your work does not disappear, to leave you on nothing but unemployment? After about 3 years of this financial recession mess, we have learned who is really to blame for it, and it isn’t us. It’s Wall Street and the financial wizards whose black webs extend through Wall Street and most of our banks, our mortgage companies, our pensions, our savings instruments, our what-have-you. We know this, from several years’ worth of reporting by the media, and investigation by the media and the government, and from outright admissions by mortgage companies and banks.

Meanwhile, the Republican song is all about leaving alone all these huge corporations which raped the environment and destroyed the livelihoods of the people who lived off the shoreline or fishing the waters, etc. Leave them alone. And the Wall Street thugs who ruined the economy (but not their own personal economies) then reaped riches because they shorted the right markets in time — leave them alone too. Leave Lloyd Blankfein, Hank Greenberg, Richard Fuld, little Fabrice Tourre alone. Leave them to heaven.

Because apparently what the Republican Party admires is their bald theft, gutsy self-aggrandizement, greed, gumption, aggression, egotism, and blind thrusting aside of the populace to make room for themselves. There has been no cleverness, no genius in the things created by the financial sector that have led to this recession/depression; there were only fraud, greed, and aggression. They destroyed institutions and our financial system.

And now that so many are unemployed as a result, well, that’s the unemployed person’s own stupid fault. And the taxes they paid into the system should be denied them in the form of unemployment benefits, because it would be better to save the money for, oh, maybe another bank bailout.

This is the Republican Way. What a lot we have to look forward to if they win certain of these elections.