The War on Poor People

"Callin' out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer's here and the time is right for dancin' in the streets! They're dancin' in Wisconsin, Alabama, too. Can't you hear the music playin' down in Ohio, too?"

There is something seriously wrong with a universe in which poor people and the little money they take home to feed their kids is considered a problem. Think about it, one man on wall street takes home a paycheck in 2010 totaling 5-billion dollars. That is $1159.00 for every second of every day for the 365 days. This 5-billion dollar paycheck follows a 4-billion dollar check from a couple of years ago to the same man.

Yet, there was hardly a peep out of anyone, anywhere. The teabaggers in the House didn't blink, sitting quietly as he testified before a House subcommittee, defiantly justifying his take home pay. No outrage about the lopsidedness of the pay structure. No concern about the people at the other end of the ladder worrying about meeting their mortgages. No wonderment at how one company can pay one man so much, yet not be able to add more hourly workers in order to help the country get its unemployment under control. No talk that congress was kicking the can down the road and foisting the problem off on future generations.

The newly elected members of the House of Representatives, the governors of many states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida have decided that the problem is poor people and the money they make in order to live.  It's their money, in 40 and 50-thousand dollar yearly chunks that will bankrupt their kids down the road. The benefits they won through collective bargaining is bad. Collective bargaining is bad. They don't deserve to be able to talk back to their bosses who still get automatic pay raises and bonuses tallying in the millions and billions of dollars.

All this despite few if any pay raises to equal the cost of the living for the past several years or of having to live with wage freezes because their companies tell them there is no money to pay them, or to fund their pension plans.The workers are told they will have to work more and longer if they want to make enough money on which to live.  John Kasich of Ohio even thinks anyone bold enough to talk back, should be fired for insubordination. 

Kasich bragged about the pay raises he gave his  virtually all white male, minority-free staff before they took office, all the while refusing stimulus funds designed to tie Ohio into the projected high speed rail system and create jobs. He also is refusing education funds designed to improve Ohio schools and elevate the intellect of Ohio kids who rank right up there with a box of rocks.

These same legislators are leading the challenge against health care reform, against women in general,  against reform on wall street, against medicare and medicaid and social security. Pensions need to be cut because investment counselors like the good governor of Ohio used to be, fumbled the pass and dropped the ball, losing billions of dollars for the working class. Too many people are out of work and using the system to survive, so it needs to be brought under control and flushed out a little bit. Raise the age limits on social security so fewer people qualify or die before they qualify.  And don't forget to cut those taxes for rich people because they are so full of the christian spirit and always use the extra cash to create jobs for poor people.

As they take care of the rich, cut taxes and yank the safety net for women and children, these same legislators are rolling back the regulations designed to protect poor people in the future, allowing the pillaging of America to continue unabated. The financial gang rape of America  has never stopped amid this economic crisis and recession. The rich guys can still buy 100,000 dollar toilets to complement their designer desks in their little used offices located in the financial centers of the world. 

Greed is still good in America as we prepare to sell our stock exchanges to Germany and ship jobs over the ocean allowing consumers in the Far East to drive supply and demand, causing prices to sky rocket world wide.  Kasich has Ohio on the block. He's already costed out how much he can make by selling the Ohio turnpike. What's next, I-75 or 71? If he gets his way in Ohio, he will have a whole new pool of indentured servants to work the toll booths at $7.25 an hour, or less, if he thinks that's too much money for a booth clerk to make.

I guess I could stomach tightening my own belt even more if the pain were spread around equally. Equally, meaning Congress foregoes its own pay, automatic pay raises and health care while they wrestle with mine. Or, Congress takes measures to really force the banks and wall street to get off their golden piss pot and start funding the economic recovery of America. I mean these so called financial raiders had all the balls in the world when they were screwing people and laughing all the way to Aruba. Why are they suddenly so shy about making the one investment that would bring this country back. Wouldn't that be a win-win situation?

Don't you have to spend money to make money? Why are the banks being allowed to simply stockpile the money? What are they waiting for....all the poor people to die? It's certainly not for a "complexion change" on Capital Hill. The complexion paled visibly in this past election and the war on poor people got worse...literally broke out into the open.

Why won't Congress tell the boys in the backroom that it is time to give back and do their part? Don't they understand that by turning all of the world  into a  bankrupt ghetto it becomes a very dangerous place for rich guys with bling. People are marching on state capitals, now. Even Stevie Wonder can see the next target....the federal government and after that, the gated complexes of the rich but not necessarily famous. With all the cutbacks going on...there simply aren't enough police, security guards or mercenaries to go around to protect all the exclusive enclaves where rich boys hide.

The war on poor people has hit stride. Globalization of the job market is continuing unchecked...outsourcing of jobs is continuing unabated....wage freezes are spreading....health care costs are continuing to rise because the feds won't penalize the big insurance or pharmaceutical companies....what little regulation Obama tried to put in place is being rolled back...the corporate raiders and investments pirates are once again being unshackled....

Hell....we're going to have to start another war in order to recoup some of our losses. This one will be against Iran while riding shotgun for Israel and come with mandatory conscription otherwise known as the draft. After all, how else do you employe masses of poor people at a job that will routinely cull the herd, quietly, legally and in the name of patriotism.

Kill that deficit in no time at all....

Wisconsin-A Call to Revolution

Wisconsin is in turmoil because the GOP has finally thrown back the curtain and revealed its plan for America.  And don't laugh, Ohio. John Kasich is pursuing the same plan for the Buckeye State and so has Florida's Governor in Thief. Here, it is called JobsOhio...which has already passed...and House Bill 5..which is working its way through the statehouse as we speak.

Firing union workers....stripping away collective bargaining rights....busting unions....Funny...I don't remember any republicans or teabaggers talking about this stuff while they were campaigning.

Sounds like something Lenin or Marx or Mussolini or Mao dreamed up back in the day when America stood alone against communism, socialism and fascism. America fought two world wars, several police actions and even today stands on the border between North and South Korea in order to keep this bad stuff...this bad form of governance away from America. But it has arrived anyway and its not coming from the alleged socialist-muslim-white race hating Black man in the oval office.

The plan is obviously what its been-provide cheap labor to American corporations through globalization of the labor pool by outsourcing jobs and production, and union busting to destroy the system that created the American middle class, forcing them into low paying service jobs, while the perpetual masters of the universe laugh all the way to the bank.

There is a reason why the GOP never tells you what they plan to do to the country, before they do it. For the past four years, the only plan the republican party has put forth is to destroy Obama at any cost. They attack the man and his programs designed to help the people regain their footing on this slippery economic slope that all of us have been inhabiting for the past few years, while telling us to wait...put them back in power and they will throw the bum out and return  us to their Norman Rockwell normalcy.

 Promises...promises!

They attack his family, his faith, his intellect, denigrating him at every opportunity, challenging his ability to lead, questioning his manhood, even lambasting him for programs such as the stimulus that was created by President Bush and approved by every GOP representative on Capital Hill before Obama embraced it and put it into action.

In his efforts to generate bipartisanship in governance, Obama has embraced much of what Bush created and was signed off on by the Republican Party, prior to Obama taking power. But you'd never know it. If you listen to the lock step talking points of the right, it's the Black man who is destroying America. It is the Black man who has turned to socialism and fascism. It is the Black man who has abandoned his own Black people and revealed a long simmering hatred of his mother's white race.

And amid all this talk, the masters of wall street, sit on the money, refusing to create jobs, or put it back into circulation, claiming distrust of government-read that Obama-policies. They still control the money, and as they say...money walks...bullshit talks...

Hell, he's not even an American, nor Christian to hear them tell it. Before he was elected, Obama was the wrong kind of Christian. Now he's been stripped of all beliefs.  Despite the evidence of truth, Obama is not one of them and never will be. He's a Black man who followed the fictional American dream and  decided he could lead this country out of the economic maelstrom in which it finds itself. Yet, it never occurred to even him, just how deeply embedded racism, bigotry and general lack of regard for anyone not white, is in this country. Bigoted talking points and lack of trust in the Black man and Black people in general, fueled the midterm change in 2010. The GOP backed up by its mini-me the Tea Party, successfully took control of the house and many governorships and legislatures.

And while the vote in 2010 was not a mandate. It was a power play from the right, manipulating their base like sheperds driving their sheep herd to slaughter. It was a cowardly reversal from many impatient progressives and it was a refusal of follow through to vote again, by many Blacks who voted in 2008 for change, but lack the courage of conviction that had previously powered all civil rights changes in America.

Maybe Earl Butts was right about American Blacks...give em some loose shoes, a comfortable place to sleep and a warm place to shit...and they'll be happy..won't vote nor care what the white man is doing. Must be true...Blacks stayed home in droves, once again failing to take control of their own destiny.

As for that protest going on in Wisconsin....I'd be willing to bet all the money in my pocket, that most of the protesters, who also voted in 2010, voted to put the GOP back in power this past election, never realizing that they aren't part of the GOP equation anymore than are minorities. Poor and middle class whites don't count either, but you'd never know it the way they continue to vote and trust the rich white guys of the GOP. They are now getting what they asked for again, as  will Ohio and New Jersey in the near future. Here, in Ohio Kasich has already promised to sign the legislation once it passes.

The union busting model comes from their mythic icon Ronald Reagan. The air traffic controllers have never recovered and America's flight system remains in shambles, much less safe to fly than it used to be. The real Ronald Reagan was a crook, who raised taxes, quadrupled the deficit and left America in very bad shape when he left office. The prosperity they remember actually came from a Democrat named Bill, not that the GOP will admit it. The blatant attacks on women and their rights, the refusal to rebuild American infrastructure, fund clean energy, stop climate change, or build high speed public transportation will be the death of America and the GOP doesn't care. There is no compassion for their fellow humans, no desire to share the pain or profit. There is only greed and greed is good. Yes, the actor showed em how to do it and like lemmings they are marching blindly toward the cliff.

The era of indentured servitude and slavery has  returned to America, thanks to a fully complicit electorate. I wish Americans cared as much as the people of Egypt, South Sudan, and the Middle East. We should be following their example and marching on our own state capitols. Democracy and freedom are the guiding lights behind everything going on in the Middle East and Africa. Peaceful change and revolution...not war, like what we've perpetrated on Iraq and Afghanistan. Not like what the NeoCons want to reign down on Iran. America created the dream that everyone else in the world wants to experience.  Yet we choose to ignore our  own creation letting it rot under the carnage of the past, the Patriot Act and the bigotry cloaking 9/11.

Time for a little Dancin' in the Streets...a song from Martha and the Vandellas that the bigots back in the day  banned from radio play claiming it was a call for Blacks to riot. Maybe not then, but it could be a clarion call for change today, if we listen hard enough.

As Tracy Chapman says..talkin' bout a revolution, ya'll...real Americans, patriots, compassionate, caring people of all creeds, colors religions and orientations are welcome to participate...