There are some financial experts who say that we are standing on the brink of a precipice. Nouriel Roubini, a New York University Economics professor, who predicted the current economic meltdown, says that “things are going to be awful for everyday people” in 2009. There are several other experts who agree with him. Mr. Roubini attributes the economic disaster to the bursting of a credit bubble – not a housing bubble. I would add that the continuation of the disaster is due to the abject failure of the Bush government to take effective action to prevent or mitigate the collapse of our, and the world’s, economy. The question we should ask is why? Why hasn’t the Bush government taken decisive action? One might say that perhaps George Bush is an indecisive man, but if we reflect only for a moment on his actions in Iraq we will quickly see that he can be very decisive. So why hasn’t there been any decisive action taken to prevent the collapse of our economy? Why is it that the only action taken by the Bush administration was to protect the investment banks?

Remember when Barack Obama and John McCain were campaigning against each other and John McCain stated that raising the tax rate to what it was under President Clinton for people who make more that $250,000 was class warfare? Today there is anger in Congress that the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds are not being used to combat the rising tide of mortgage foreclosures. Fed Chairman Bernanke predicts that 2.25 million homes will be foreclosed upon this year and the U.S. government is doing nothing to prevent it, even though the TARP was supposed to be used to alleviate the problem. My question is this: When a government that is run by the wealthy elite of America stands by and does nothing, refuses to help even when money has been made available to help the middle class and the poor, isn’t that class warfare?

It seems clearer than ever that our country is divided into two groups: the wealthy elite (the Elect?) who favor Hoover/Bush economics and the great mass of ordinary people who favor Roosevelt/Obama economics. The question is this: who will prevail? It seems that Mr. Roubini and many others believe the Hoover/Bush group will prevail because otherwise they would be more optimistic about the economy for the next several years. They might be right. Even as I write, legislation to provide a relatively puny bailout for the auto industry has been stalled by the House Republicans, the representatives of the wealthy elite, who are instead calling for the auto industry to file for bankruptcy. The fact that millions of ordinary Americans will promptly lose their jobs is apparently of no concern to them.

Here’s a question: is this just a difference of opinion on economic theory or is it something else? Could it be that it is really a difference of opinion about the purpose of government? Clearly this government acted urgently to save the wealthy elite owners of the banks, yet they drag their feet when it comes to saving the ordinary man. Does anyone else see the long shadow of John Calvin standing over our Congress? Save the wealthy Elect, but when it comes to Katrina or Detroit, Asians caught in a tsunami or an earthquake, or Africans dying of starvation – well, just let them die. After all, if God has already decided who shall be saved and who shall be damned why should these wealthy Senators and Congressmen feel guilty? It’s not their fault is it? The members of our Republican Theocracy has already saved themselves and their fortunes, and now they are about to strike against the poor once again.

My questions for the Republican Party is this: remember when that most famous Republican of all, Abraham Lincoln, said that America was a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? So what was that all about? Was he some kind of pinko socialist or communist or what? What sort of mental gymnastics do you do to somehow claim that you are the party of Lincoln when you are, in fact, the party of the wealthy elite (Elect) and you stand against everything Lincoln stood for? It is obvious that if he were alive today Abraham Lincoln would be a Democrat. Today’s Republican Party is nothing more than the failed party of Herbert Hoover and George Bush.