Our government has become malignant, that much is obvious. A corporate coup de' tat has taken place. When reactionary forces attempted to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt's administration their plan was to place a corporate minder in the cabinet. Roosevelt would have still held office but the corporate minder would have had the ultimate veto authority. The plan collapsed when it was exposed by General Smedly Butler, the administration said little about the affair. The perpetrators knew that they were on the hooks of treason charges and so the New Deal moved forward.
This time however the situation has changed but the principle is the same. Rather than subvert an administration reactionary forces have simply created one from whole cloth. In a cynical and orchestrated campaign the American populace was presented a choice between an elderly ne'er do well millionaire with a psychotic illiterate beauty queen running mate or a young vigorous young man with a beautiful wife and two small children. Understand? Sarah Palin was the poison pill; she was chosen to guarantee that moderates would flee from the Republican Party.
With sinister and bitterly astute planning the reactionary forces sneered, we'll give them their African American President. So joyous was the population over democracies victory over racism that it failed to notice a corporate cafeteria administration come to flesh. The Pentagon to be run by a Republican hold over from the CIA, the Treasury to be run by a Federal Reserve protà ©gà ©e, the Secretary of Health, a Democratic Governor whose running mate was the former chairman of the Kansas Republican party and who cut funding for health care while Governor.
The time is now to begin to understand in fullness the complexities of what we face. The events in Madison Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine and other states are no less than the forced subjugation of the American workforce. One leg of the triad along with corporate outsourcing and an on going program to lure Mexican workers across US the border for the express purpose of driving down wages. The public divides and screams invectives at each other, the illegal immigrants are hauled off in chains by the bus loads while the true criminals remain unmolested and are called sir in their corporate office suites.
Bernie Madoff is a celebrity in jail because he is one of a kind. A multi trillion dollar scandal and only one man goes to jail. That's amazing isn't it? Fourth quarter banking numbers (Bonus Time) and profits are way up! Print the checks, first quarter numbers way down with lots of losses. Gee, I wonder what happened?
Who is left in charge of mortgage rescue? The same criminals who robbed the bank in the first place. What was done to rescue the banks? They were given access to $14 trillion in immediate aid but what was done to rescue the people from economic collapse? An $868 billion stimulus package with 35 percent of that in the form of tax cuts. Over ten million homes foreclosed and as a percentage home prices have fallen further and longer than during the Great Depression of the 1930's. What does the corporate minder say? He says we will just have to wait and see; meanwhile interest's rates are kept artificially low to allow the pillage of the public coffers to continue.
With ten million homes foreclosed and an average of four people per household that means at a minimum, forty million Americans have been dispossessed. What does the corporate minder have to say about this crisis forty times larger than Hurricane Katrina? Nothing! What does he offer the American people in the way of help or assistance? Less than one fourteenth of the amount offered to help rescue Wall Street less 35 percent in tax cuts. The corporate minder is the king of tax cuts; he puts Ronald Reagan to shame. Obama has offered twenty five different tax cutting schemes not including his phony capitulation to the renewal of the Bush tax cuts.
Our foreign policy is an absolute disaster by any metric you might choose to measure it. I watched a discussion on Link TV recently about Libya from Saudi Arabia. The question was asked, "Why was the US response so tepid?" The Saudi analyst answered that it was due to the US failure to gain victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. That because of that failure the continued military operations were dragging down our economy making our economic recovery nearly impossible so we were unable to do much in Libya.
That's not a story you'll see in US media, no sir! The failure of US military operations? As one hundred thousand workers demonstrated in Madison Wisconsin and the New York Times ran a photo of the lead tractor in the tractor parade. Visible besides the driver were perhaps a dozen demonstrators. Imagine, a story about Woodstock with a picture showing a dozen people.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland"? A full decade of war for the conquest of the world's resources. So that those with much can have more and those with little can have less. To grind your bones to make their bread, to offshore your jobs and break your unions, to defund your schools and your social programs. These are not the things that must be; there has been no divine decree from heaven. These are the policies of filthy greedy creatures without souls or even a sense of common humanity. These monsters must be confronted even unto the end of the Earth, if not for yourself then for your children or perhaps your children will have no children otherwise.
It is easy to stand on Speakers Corner perhaps and to shout charges at the faceless reactionaries. So instead let us talk of another way, neither red nor blue but a third way. The first order of business is jobs, our country needs jobs. This is not a difficult problem to solve; it has been solved many times by many nations.
Public works jobs need to be funded and that isn't a difficult task either. Take for example the Bush/Obama tax cuts that assume $200,000 or five grand a week is a middle class income. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer imposed a 50 percent tax on banking bonuses, that's a good start. A twenty five cent per share stock transaction fee is another good start. Corporate America regularly dodges or avoids $60 billion in tax liabilities annually. The corporate minders plan gives corporate America a free pass on all federal liability for each worker they hire. Of course if you don't need workers it wouldn't matter if they offered them hookers and new cars.
The third way calls for a progressive income tax system with a top rate of 50 percent. A charge on incomes over $25 million dollars with tax deductions on profits earned by worker hires. The government will tell you the economy is improving but what would grocery store sales look like without the Food Stamp program? Banking profits don't cure an economy they deplete it. Concentrated wealth starves out growth, as AT&T tries to buy T-Mobile to create a cell phone monopoly with promises that they'll be nice and fair. (They Promise)The third way would break up monopolies and buy into these companies until we control them and then turn them into non-profits.
With a WPA/ TVA style alternative energy program we could put thousands of Americans back to work while creating new technologies and eliminating the need for fossil fuels. A ten year project Apollo program building an alternative energy grid of wind and solar and geothermal would rapidly make coal, gas and nuclear non competitive. Jobs, infrastructure and progress. It is not our inability that holds us back but special interests. In Norway all oil and natural gas are sold to private companies by a state concern. The profits are put in a sovereign wealth fund and the interest is used to fund government programs. We give our wealth away to those who would starve our children and pollute our world.
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