Tag Archives: Gordon Gecko

It's people… it's always the people

There was an interesting comment in Paul Krugmans piece yesterday.

Unemployment benefits were not extended because the political elite does not depend on the well-being of masses any longer; political donations by the economic elite are sufficient to secure re-election and the well-being of those donors. This latest stunt out of Washington should be a wake-up call to demand campaign reform.

The Krugman piece was on unemployment and the heartless,clueless and confused who simply do not, or will not give understanding to the people on it. In an era where there is 10%+ unemployment  across the board some have actually decided that there really are jobs, it’s just that those lazy unemployment people don’t want them. I think this ‘blame the unemployed’ is just their coping mechanism because as long as they can ignore the poverty of their neighbors,friends,church mates they can sleep a night with never having to address just how badly the new version of the American Motto, coined by Gordon Gecko “Greed is Good”, really isn’t working out for 95% of this country. But hey, they may one day be in that 5%, so they don’t want anything changing before they get there.

I know what it’s like to try and live off of Florida unemployment for months at a a time. I’ve read where some states give $500+ a week compensation, here we get $275.. unless you chose to have taxes removed which most don’t for obvious reasons, but we did so they average compensation my husband received was about $212 a week. Sure, a man who has worked every day in the Florida sun since he was 14 would rather lounge around the house for a mighty $212 a week because everyone knows that when you lose your job the utility companies, stop asking for payment, mortgage companies give you automatic stays,gas and food are delivered each night by fairies on unicorns and clothes and shoes are made by those cute little cobbling leprechauns.

What people like  Krugmans ‘clueless’  forget is that unemployment benefits aren’t going to uneducated, welfare mom’s and immigrants… ya know ‘those’ people. It’s going to people who were employed! Who, through no fault of their own went to work one day and were told they didn’t have a job any longer. It’s not going to people who were fired for being incompetent or lazy, it’s going to roofers,painters,CPA’s, teachers,electricians,plumbers, people who worked their asses off every day of their life.  These are the people we want in society, the job-doers. These are not the shiftless and lazy and fuck you to those making them out to be!

Clueless is a good word for them and Krugman is correct to name them such. Just as he is correct that Republicans are heartless for their part in this never ending story.  Republicans know that if they can just get the economy to sink a little more,  if they can just hamper any recovery then maybe they can regain power. That is their goal right now, not to govern in cooperation with the majority who was elected by a country  based on the idea of majority wins, but to obstruct everything that might just enhance recovery and hopefully this stalemate  will turn the average Joe  against the current majority. They hope  the people will forget it was the Republicans and their deficit spending wars,tax cuts, de-regulation and social programs that got us here in the 1st place. Most of all they hope they can get back in power because those unpaid for tax-breaks for the richest of the rich expire soon and they want to re-up them. You can understand atleast the heartless, just remove your soul and care for nothing but yourself and you get them perfectly. But it’s the clueless that keep me going back to them. They are the ones I can’t understand even when I try. They are the ones on unemployment and using medicaid who rail against.. yep, Obama socialists agenda in paying people to stay out of work and giving them all health care at tax-payers expense. In them are the tea-party members who chant “Say No to Socialism” in one breath and “Don’t touch my medicare” in the other. I actually saw a crowd of signs the other day that made me laugh out, one woman was holding a sign that said “Stay out of our bedrooms” and the man she was holding hands with had a sign that read “Stop Abortion”, those kinds of ‘clueless’ are too far gone to even try and educate. They are mad and just can’t quit put a finger on the reason. (Well, personally I think they can put a finger on the reason but are too afraid to be called ‘racists’ for saying exactly what their problem with this administration is.)

While Krugman writes a great article it was the comment above that struck a chord in me because I don’t think a recent ruling of the supreme court has sunk in yet.

But it will.

When the supreme court ruled that corporations are really people and as people are entitled to donate to the official they’d like elected, that forever ended the ‘voice of the people’. Until that time candidates had to at least pretend to be on the side of the little guy in order to be able to fundraiser off him, but now? There isn’t a little guy around who can match donation funds with corporation giants. You only have to look at recent events to see just exactly how shitty things will get for the working, soon-to-be-serf class.

After the supreme court ruling, GOP leaders made a bee-line to wall street. They wanted the big bankers who crumbled the world’s economy to know that the Democrats were planning ‘reform’ and if they’d just come over to the GOP way, well that reform would die where is started..Last week’s Financial Reform Bill vote pretty much tells you how that offer was received.

In conjunction  with this,  was another shocking  revelation. Just after the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud the headlines  were “Obama to keep money Goldman donated to campaign” . TV heads could talk of nothing else, the audacity of this president keeping the donations from this company while his SEC was investigating them . The subtext of course was missed by these Mensa members , but that wasn’t so shocking, some of those people think sitting on a couch for a couple hours a day talking to their co-hosts is the same job as President of United States. No, what was shocking was that it rippled through the conservative world unchecked until it was repeated by talking head and ‘man on the street’ alike. Obama is thief and he is untrustworthy because he kept the donation while still allowing an investigation of the company.

Do you see where this is going yet? I’m sure some of you do, but unfortunately.. some (well a lot)  don’t. For those that don’t here goes what you seem to be advocating with extreme vigor. By saying the President had the audacity to charge Goldman for fraud after he used their donations, is akin to saying he should have taken the money and said nothing about their crime.  You’ve decided that the leader you want will take money from anyone, any corporation and if that donor breaks the law… he’ll ignore it and protect their right to break the law by dissolving any investigation into their misdeeds. If it is true that it is untrustworthy and unbecoming of an elected official to prosecute his own corporate donors when they break the law, then  it must also be true that the politician you value  is the one who is bought and paid for by the corporations who donate to them.The politician you want isn’t the one who can take a donation from a corporation in good faith and still not be beholden to them, but instead you want the one who takes the bribes and hides the crimes.

Well, fear not heartless,clueless, and confused.. you might just get the government of you chose. One that looks at 14% unemployment and blames the laziness of the workers.  The kind of government who will destroy what is left of the country for their own political gain. The government who will advocate for more power being taken from the citizens of the country and given to the corporations who elect them and finally the government who takes the donations from the massive corporations, and sit back, allowing them free-reign without fear of prosecution. In other words, the country you wish to live in is not one where the worker is cared for but where the corporation is deemed the more valuable entity, where the megacorporation is the more valuable voice and the one who no law should bind. To you I say, welcome to public servitude, welcome to corporatocracy, welcome to Soylent Green.

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