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Malcolm X by public domain
We all have different hopes and dreams, we are all different people from different backgrounds. We all live in an age of mass communication that rather than uniting us, divides us further still. We will never reach unanimity on many issues but our adherence to fringe issues weakens our ability to form an effective coalition.
It really doesn't matter if you are black or white, gay or straight if you can't find a job. It really doesn't matter if you are black or white, gay or straight if the bank is foreclosing on your house. Nor does it matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican when the company strips your benefits or guts your pension.
Some things are very easy to understand, If you have ten people and one job wages fall. If you have ten jobs and one person wages rise. If you base your economy on a fuel unavailable locally, you will pay for it in blood. If you deregulate Capitalism, Capitalism will destroy itself. If you allow Capitalism to run roughshod it will destroy society itself.
We are living in an age of a rapidly encroaching police state where your rights are meaningless. George W. Bush was correct about the constitution when he said, "its just a god damned piece of paper." You must be x-rayed or groped to get on an aircraft and travel. The government may deny you that right without due process. The week before thanksgiving the TSA arrested fourteen Americans for acting suspiciously in airports.
What exactly is the legal definition of acting suspiciously? What differentiates eccentric behavior from suspicious? Is walking on your hands in line suspicious or eccentric? Is complaining loudly about an encroaching police state suspicious? Only a trained TSA official can tell for sure. It is obvious that the rough and public groping by TSA officers is a compliance tactic. "You don't want any trouble, do you sir? So just walk through the machine like you're told or we will molest you. One more word out of you sir, might constitute suspicious behavior."
There is a line crossed when in search of criminals they treat everyone as suspected criminals. Many police forces have lost all pretense of public safety. They drive around in black cars with the windows blacked out, you can be stopped for any suspected infraction. If you refuse compliance to a search of your vehicle or questioning, you are acting suspiciously. If you become angry you will be arrested, in one case, a man was charged with nonviolent resisting arrest for covering his face as the police beat him. What we used to call resisting assault.
We can all agree that this type of behavior is wrong, not as liberals or conservatives but because this type of behavior is infectious. It breeds and manifests itself as it grows, suddenly kids skateboarding are being tasered. Pregnant women are tasered. In Los Angeles, police entered a backyard party because of a noise complaint. The homeowner complained when police opened and entered his property through the back gate without his permission. His wife was pushed to the ground and the homeowner was tasered by police. A video camera running at the time showed the event as a Sunday afternoon christening party for their two year old daughter. Freedom lost is not easily regained.
Malcolm X said, "Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power."
We are living in an era of defective government, of government that has lost even the basic semblance of care or concern for the well being of its people. If you earned more than a million dollars per year, since 1980 you have received a 42 percent federal tax cut. If you earned $15,000 per year you have received nothing! Nothing except, zero wage growth, rising state and local taxes and a blank darkened future.
Our political parties have lost all meaning, with Republicans and Neo-Republicans. A Democratic President who supports tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for industry and increased oil drilling in the Gulf, and even eighteen million dollars in his green initiative to help the world's richest corporations develop better oil drilling bits. A jobs program that gives tax cuts to employers and nothing to the unemployed. Passing the buck, "Say, if you guys do something about unemployment for me, we'll give you a tax cut!"
The federal government signed half a billion dollars in loan guarantees for an American solar cell company to build a state of the art factory. The company then closed their old factory and laid off the workers siting increased competition from Chinese solar cell manufacturers. The Chinese solar cell manufactures are underwritten by the state and will never be required to show a profit until they have captured the lion's share of the market.
This isn't about trade, this is about sanity, about a government's sovereign duty to it's people. It isn't left wing or right wing, it isn't gay or straight or white or black.
The defense budget has doubled six times in twenty years, the peace dividend has become the war deficit. All to defend ourselves from invisible, nameless terrorists. Do you know what they they called opponents during the French revolution? Terrorists. Do you know what Hitler called Churchill and Roosevelt? Terrorists! It is a term without definition, it is cloudy and murky and can mean whatever the state wants it to mean, just like suspicious behavior.
The US treasury estimates that sixty billion dollars in tax revenue is avoided by Corporate America each year. The President's response is to impanel a commission to see what can be done to cut entitlements.
Your government is declaring war upon you!
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