The handwriting is on the wall. If all the good citizens of this country don’t get together and force our dysfunctional government to start acting in our interests, instead of the Oligarchy’s, we can kiss our collective asses good-bye.
Working people, especially organized labor, teachers, and government workers are under an unprecedented assault. Senior citizens, who haven’t seen an increase in Social Security in two years are facing cuts. The longest unemployed are starting to lose their benefits. States and cities faced with budget cuts are laying off workers. There are heartless cuts to Medicaid. Cuts to Medicare are coming down the line, as well as childrens services. States and cities, as well as private corporations are trying to screw employees out of their pensions.
In at least three states that I know of right now, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida, they are trying to take away public employees rights to bargain. That Great Hero of the Working Class, our “Democratic” President, Mubarack Obama has already ordered a two year freeze on federal employees salaries.
Their strategy has been brilliant so far. Demonize “lazy” public sector employees. Talk continually about how overpaid they are compared to the private sector (they’re not). Talk about the lottery jackpot they’ll get when they retire with all of those “cadillac healthcare plans”.
Turn charlatans and frauds like Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan loose to demonize teachers. Eliminate tenure. Privatize public education. Save us from those overpaid and incompetent teachers unions. That was just the prequel for the rest of the public sector.
In 2009, during a recess in the fraudulent healthcare debate, billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and Rick Scott funded tea party rallies all across the country. The idea was to get people scared and mobilized for the 2010 mid-terms, when turn out would be low, and it wouldn’t take much to swing a lot of elections. Couple that with the Citizens United decision and the crazy side of the two corporate parties won.
In Ohio, one of the first ideas to come out of the new Governors mouth was to lease the Ohio Turnpike to a sovereign wealth fund for 75 years. As was expected, when Indiana did it, tolls skyrocketed. With all of the profits going to the Saudi’s, Kuwaiti’s, and any other emirate with too much money on their hands. If that asswipe Kasich wasn’t already owned by Wall Street, maybe he could have raised tolls modestly and put the money into the states general fund. But, it’s not just Republicans. “Democrat” Ed Rendell proposed the same thing in Pa, but the legislature narrowly shot it down. There’s always next year.
Late last year, Dear Leader Obama, Hairy Reed, and the rest of the Democrats pre-emptively saved the country from smaller deficits by extending the “temporary” Bush tax cuts for the Kochs, the Scotts, the Trumps, the Gates, and the Paris Hiltons of world. And now, after a drunken New Years Eve, swilling Ayn Rand Kool-Aid, they’ve got out the machete’s to come after everything but the military. And Homeland Security, and oil subsidies, and coal, and ethanol.
It’s time to start over again. The Executive Branch is full of Wall Street con men, and various corporate whores. The only agencies that function are downright evil, such as the DEA. We can really believe gulf seafood is safe, says the EPA. After all they assured us that the air at ground zero was perfectly safe, didn’t they?
The House is full of absolute loons. I think most of them got turned loose back in the ‘80s when Reagan closed down the nut houses.
The Senate is so dysfunctional, I can’t think of an example ludicrous enough to do them justice. They remind me of a guy I knew back in the ‘70s, who liked to drink and play with guns. He shot himself in the leg, TWICE in two days. At my house! A place where all the cows in Montana (they don’t have as many people) have as much say so as all the people in California. It might have worked back in the late 1700’s. Not so much today.
The Supreme Court? ROTFLMAO. Clarence Thomas gets a lifetime appointment? And remember, Democrats had a majority when both he and Scalia were appointed.
Are we 50 separate states, or are we one country? Again, a relic of the 1700’s. And in this case a bunch of neo-Confederates in the south are blocking any move to the future. They’re winning this Civil War.
It’s time to start over.
We either start organizing as working people, or we turn into serfs and die.
I’ll be updating this blog a lot more in the future. I’m really fucking pissed.
I'm glad you've updated the blog with something worthy of breaking a long silence, full of fire and vitriol.
ReplyDeleteOnce this administration is fodder for the history books, I will lament two things: the numerous missed opportunities to do "the right thing" and the wholesale sellout to Bernanke, Geithner, Summers and their Wall Street cronies.