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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 9/12/10

The Clueless and the Shoeless

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I was interested in getting some information about the march on Washington in October the other day. I went to their website and after reading the usual rhetoric I found the information that I was looking for. How I could get there and where I could stay once I got there? This is what I found: "Many local hotels have reservations available." It's a funny coincidence about being unemployed that sometimes you don't have any money to spend.

There is no homeless express card and you can't leave home without it because you don't have a home. In a larger sense this explains our political disconnect in America. It's the clueless verses the shoeless, that last time I had my hands on $100 I bought three $5 shirts, laundry detergent, soap, toothpaste and dental floss, all the things you can't buy with food stamps. So when Obama says the recovery is slow and uneven the day after he promotes $42 billion more in tax give aways to business, the banks and industry I want to scream STFU!

"Are you saying you want the Republicans to win?" No, I'm saying Obama has had almost two years and everything the administration's proposed to this point has a corporate taint to it. For working and non-working people his answer the same, just hang on. But in truth it's the big lie, the jobs aren't coming back and prosperity isn't just around the corner. As long as the government of the United States allows industry to offshore without punishment there is no future in this country for working people.

I fully understand that to those of you who still drive cars and still draw paychecks that I'm speaking heresy. My words hurt your ears, "What's he so mad about?" You want me to come out and vote for Democrats even though as I'm in the worst economic situation of my life and the administration's only answer is tax cuts. That a year and a half after losing my home the prospects for finding a job are worse now than they were then.

Paul Craig Roberts correctly identifies the problem in his article "Death by Globalism" that there are two economic camps. One is the Keynesians who want a larger stimulus to spur economic growth. The other side is led by academics who argue instead that the answer is in cutting deficits and government spending. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was firmly in the Keynesian camp while Herbert Hoover would agree wholeheartedly with the academics. Guess, which camp Barack Obama is leaning towards?

Obama's stimulus package was too small, at roughly twice the size of the German stimulus, in a population more than three times its size. Germans have a more generous unemployment and social programs to begin with. Obama's stimulus offered tax breaks for investors who held on to their stocks for five years and anyone who has ever fought a fire knows that too much water now is better than too little and then wait and see.

Collapsing state budgets swallowed much of Obama's stimulus. That is why you often hear the refrain that the stimulus saved 2.5 million jobs and that's great! But that's not a stimulus, that's a bulwark against disaster. It's the difference between adding a garage on to your house and putting out a two-alarm kitchen fire. Many of the infrastructure projects depended on highway motor fuel tax revenues, which fell drastically because the unemployed don't have anywhere to drive.

In California, Kindergarten teachers became alarmed by the numbers of students that just disappeared from class. Administrators investigated and found boarded up homes. Millions have lost their homes and millions more have lost their future. They sell their belongings to pay the rent or to get gas to move on like the migrants in the "Grapes of Wrath" or stay with relatives while looking for work. One breakdown away from being destitute but Obama's got a plan for them, hang on!

In Obama's GM-Chrysler bailout thousands of middle managers lost their pensions, gone, fin! Thousands more retirees had their benefits moved to the government's pension benefits guaranty corporation. Their benefits were cut in some cases by forty percent; imagine being retired and absorbing that kind of hit. So we are talking now about a national trauma that extends from the youngest to the oldest but Obama has a plan, hang on.

When I recently wrote about empty shopping centers I received answers of, "you should see my home town." I wrote about a town in New England with a population of 3,500 where the local food bank served over 800 and expended their full week's supply of food in four hours. And you wonder at my anger? Imagine the Titanic striking that iceberg and the Captain announcing, "Free margaritas and party hats on the promenade deck for the first class passengers!"

"But sir," a young ensign asks, "What about all the other passengers?"

The Captain's answers brusquely, "You mean the f*cking retards? They'll just have to hang on and hope for the best. After all I'm doing all that I can!"

No matter how you slice it and dice it you can put it in your Vegamatic again and again but it always comes out the same. We are being abandoned to the icy cold economic waters to sink or swim but the Democrats still want us to come vote for them in November. But you don't understand they protest, if you don't come out and vote for the Democrats the Republicans will win and it will be worse!

How does that affect me? Will I lose my retirement again? Will I lose my home again? Will the Republicans cut my Social Security more than the Democrats plan to? Will the wars continue? Will the corporate giveaways continue? You see, I'm drifting out here with millions of other Americans in these dark icy seas trying to keep my head above water and you can't scare me anymore. I have nothing left for them to take.

"Hello, Hyatt? Yes, I'd like to make a reservation for October the second. Just one night, sure, make it a suite, the march will only last four hours." Then after having shaken our fists with pent up rage we will drive back to the motel and hang out at the bar or maybe do some sight-seeing.

I resented George Bush's fly over after Hurricane Katrina in Airforce one. I was horrified to see the thousands of Americans trapped on their rooftops. Then to see Bush again using a Coast Guard helicopter as backdrop for a photo op. So how do think I feel now? No fly over, no roof, few prospects for the future because the jobs aren't coming back. There is no reason on Earth to bring jobs back when you can hire people to do the work for $5 a day.

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I who am I? Born at the pinnacle of American prosperity to parents raised during the last great depression. I was the youngest child of the youngest children born almost between the generations and that in fact clouds and obscures who it is that (more...)
 

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