Showing posts with label working class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label working class. Show all posts
Thursday, June 7, 2012
CITIZEN KANE
About how the people love you like you own them. If it was today he'd just buy a station and influence everyone. It's much better to pull the strings behind the scene. "You talk as though you love them."
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
How can occupy's fifteen minutes be up when none of the problems have been fixed?
It's amazing how many people don't realize that government is such an integral part of the problem, whether it is Republican or Democrat. It's is also interesting how many people don't realize how important big business is in destroying the things that they have taken for granted. To get something truly this awful takes a marriage between government and business, and this marriage is sealed through the vows of campaign contributions. As railroad man and financier Jay Gould said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."
Not enough people realize that the drive to destroy state unions is not just an attack on state workers but an attack on all workers. The state workers are just the primary target. Once the primary target is destroyed you can rest assure they'll work their way down to destroying the secondary targets too: driving down the wages of everyone around them? Therefore the state workers fight are really every working person's fight. Were those, who actually ran this country into the ground, satisfied with destroying the spending power of those they crippled with NAFTA, as we're learning today: no. It is called divide and conquer. The American workers have been under attack for over thirty years. Recently good news was presented that there was an uptick in the unemployment rate. Barely anyone mentioned, that it came along with increased productivity and less income.
More workers are beginning to figure out this bait and switch. This is why you've had such great backlashes in Wisconsin and Ohio etc. etc.. The question still remains if there are enough committed Americans, in these infected states, to counteract the very wealthy's disinformation campaign and not allow them to buy state government from a public that too often doesn't have a clue what it's voting for.
Some people, who have watched the Republican debates, wonder why they hear nothing but vague economic statements that every problem seems to hinge on cutting every one's taxes to zero. Instead they're treated to discussions about contraception, gays in the military, the death penalty, hatred of the poor, and whether people without health care should be allowed to die. Anyone who isn't specific about their economic plan perhaps doesn't really have one. They talk about how Obama has ruined the economy. They use vague concepts to describe what they'd do to fix it. Many of these people who now ask to put in charge of fixing the problem (that means you Santorum, Gingrich and Paul) are the ones who cast votes between the administrations of Reagan to Baby Bush which created it. You could either vote for one of them or Mitt Romney who the majority of the GOP lawmakers, who cast budget destroying votes, now support.
There are also local politicians who have done just fine economically and who don't seem so concerned with improving the health and the well being of the communities they supposedly serve. They instead call the occupiers ... "dirty, unclean, hippies" ... which makes you think that they already had a great plan to go after the people who destroyed the economy if they just didn't have to watch the occupiers. They instead clear out the encampments and what follows is silence on what to do next. They don't attempt to fix the problem themselves, they're not working to improve upon the occupiers' message so that it is more meaningful, instead they appear to just be happy being the richest and most powerful man or woman atop of the sinking dung heap.
Many mayors are busy enriching their friends with education dollars. Their school systems are run by totally unelected school boards filled with their friends and "turnaround schools" that kills unionized teachers, with good pay, and instead enriches people who they have had close business ties in the past. When it comes time to approve of the closing of schools, it easily passes the school board, like it was all pre-determined, even when the parents of the kids who are there howl.
It's like the message they send to these parents "is that we're having to do this to help your kids."
When the parents keep objecting as they always do, "It's like we know better than you do what to do about your kids. Or we care more about you're children then you do. Or we'll do anything we damn well feel like."
P.S. I hear that our Senator Scott Brown has Chris Christie here tonight to help him raise money, which of course is the only thing that matters in politics. I am vastly disappointed by this. Why do we get a second rate governor here rather than the Koch Brothers themselves. Massachusetts deserves to have the ones calling the shots. It's a little like having to settle for the two Walmart greeters rather than a member of the Walton clan.
Jay Gould
Not enough people realize that the drive to destroy state unions is not just an attack on state workers but an attack on all workers. The state workers are just the primary target. Once the primary target is destroyed you can rest assure they'll work their way down to destroying the secondary targets too: driving down the wages of everyone around them? Therefore the state workers fight are really every working person's fight. Were those, who actually ran this country into the ground, satisfied with destroying the spending power of those they crippled with NAFTA, as we're learning today: no. It is called divide and conquer. The American workers have been under attack for over thirty years. Recently good news was presented that there was an uptick in the unemployment rate. Barely anyone mentioned, that it came along with increased productivity and less income.
More workers are beginning to figure out this bait and switch. This is why you've had such great backlashes in Wisconsin and Ohio etc. etc.. The question still remains if there are enough committed Americans, in these infected states, to counteract the very wealthy's disinformation campaign and not allow them to buy state government from a public that too often doesn't have a clue what it's voting for.
Some people, who have watched the Republican debates, wonder why they hear nothing but vague economic statements that every problem seems to hinge on cutting every one's taxes to zero. Instead they're treated to discussions about contraception, gays in the military, the death penalty, hatred of the poor, and whether people without health care should be allowed to die. Anyone who isn't specific about their economic plan perhaps doesn't really have one. They talk about how Obama has ruined the economy. They use vague concepts to describe what they'd do to fix it. Many of these people who now ask to put in charge of fixing the problem (that means you Santorum, Gingrich and Paul) are the ones who cast votes between the administrations of Reagan to Baby Bush which created it. You could either vote for one of them or Mitt Romney who the majority of the GOP lawmakers, who cast budget destroying votes, now support.
There are also local politicians who have done just fine economically and who don't seem so concerned with improving the health and the well being of the communities they supposedly serve. They instead call the occupiers ... "dirty, unclean, hippies" ... which makes you think that they already had a great plan to go after the people who destroyed the economy if they just didn't have to watch the occupiers. They instead clear out the encampments and what follows is silence on what to do next. They don't attempt to fix the problem themselves, they're not working to improve upon the occupiers' message so that it is more meaningful, instead they appear to just be happy being the richest and most powerful man or woman atop of the sinking dung heap.
Many mayors are busy enriching their friends with education dollars. Their school systems are run by totally unelected school boards filled with their friends and "turnaround schools" that kills unionized teachers, with good pay, and instead enriches people who they have had close business ties in the past. When it comes time to approve of the closing of schools, it easily passes the school board, like it was all pre-determined, even when the parents of the kids who are there howl.
It's like the message they send to these parents "is that we're having to do this to help your kids."
When the parents keep objecting as they always do, "It's like we know better than you do what to do about your kids. Or we care more about you're children then you do. Or we'll do anything we damn well feel like."
P.S. I hear that our Senator Scott Brown has Chris Christie here tonight to help him raise money, which of course is the only thing that matters in politics. I am vastly disappointed by this. Why do we get a second rate governor here rather than the Koch Brothers themselves. Massachusetts deserves to have the ones calling the shots. It's a little like having to settle for the two Walmart greeters rather than a member of the Walton clan.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
From Buzzflash. A good piece
The GOP to the Working Class is Like Colonel Sanders Promising a Good Life to Chickens
STEPHEN PIZZO FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
I was there when it happened, but I'm still not entirely clear why it happened. I am speaking of the late 1970s when working Americans became Reagan Democrats... Democrats who voted for Republican Ronald Reagan, and have since largely voted for GOP candidates.
I suspect a big cause was because establishment progressives... you know, the Ivy League bunch who'd never done a lick of physical labor in their entire lives -- lost touch with the real lives of real working Americans. Instead of tending their working-class base, these guys and gals spun off onto one highfalutin tangent or another, until the policies they poured their energies into had little to nothing in to do with the lives and struggles of average Americans.
That's not to say that Republicans stepped up to lend working Americans a hand. But, like hyenas they knew an easy kill when they saw one. They wasted no time poaching that lonesome working class flock. Democrats, the GOP told Americans struggling with Carter-era stagflation, have failed you. They've become arrogant snobs who think they are smarter and know better than working stiffs. And, unlike most of the nonsense that now pours from the GOP, there was truth in that claim.
And so this new voting block emerged; Reagan Democrats, the oxymoron of all times. Since that hijacking, Republicans have kept these wayward voters in their grasp by convincing them that the rich are really their true friends, because the rich are "the job creators." And, they are warned and warned again, that the last thing they should want are taxes because taxes supposedly prevent the creation of jobs.
But wait, there's more. Republicans promised more than just jobs in return for low taxes - They also claimed that some of the tax money that was saved by the rich would "trickle down" into the pockets of working Americans.
And they bit. And they continue biting.
What the Republicans did is akin to convincing a flock of chickens that Col. Sanders has nothing but their best interests at heart. The Tea Party today is the latest incarnation of the Reagan Democrat - working class folks held captive to an ideology that's ultimate goal is to reduce workers to indentured serfs. Think of it as the political equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome.
You'd think that after more than a quarter century of getting their lunch eaten by this gang of GOP thugs, Democrats would have gotten a clue. Forget about it. Look no further than to those who received a trillion dollar bailout while working Americans stood in unemployment lines. A flat learning curve if ever there was one.
I was there when it happened, but I'm still not entirely clear why it happened. I am speaking of the late 1970s when working Americans became Reagan Democrats... Democrats who voted for Republican Ronald Reagan, and have since largely voted for GOP candidates.
I suspect a big cause was because establishment progressives... you know, the Ivy League bunch who'd never done a lick of physical labor in their entire lives -- lost touch with the real lives of real working Americans. Instead of tending their working-class base, these guys and gals spun off onto one highfalutin tangent or another, until the policies they poured their energies into had little to nothing in to do with the lives and struggles of average Americans.
That's not to say that Republicans stepped up to lend working Americans a hand. But, like hyenas they knew an easy kill when they saw one. They wasted no time poaching that lonesome working class flock. Democrats, the GOP told Americans struggling with Carter-era stagflation, have failed you. They've become arrogant snobs who think they are smarter and know better than working stiffs. And, unlike most of the nonsense that now pours from the GOP, there was truth in that claim.
And so this new voting block emerged; Reagan Democrats, the oxymoron of all times. Since that hijacking, Republicans have kept these wayward voters in their grasp by convincing them that the rich are really their true friends, because the rich are "the job creators." And, they are warned and warned again, that the last thing they should want are taxes because taxes supposedly prevent the creation of jobs.
But wait, there's more. Republicans promised more than just jobs in return for low taxes - They also claimed that some of the tax money that was saved by the rich would "trickle down" into the pockets of working Americans.
And they bit. And they continue biting.
What the Republicans did is akin to convincing a flock of chickens that Col. Sanders has nothing but their best interests at heart. The Tea Party today is the latest incarnation of the Reagan Democrat - working class folks held captive to an ideology that's ultimate goal is to reduce workers to indentured serfs. Think of it as the political equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome.
You'd think that after more than a quarter century of getting their lunch eaten by this gang of GOP thugs, Democrats would have gotten a clue. Forget about it. Look no further than to those who received a trillion dollar bailout while working Americans stood in unemployment lines. A flat learning curve if ever there was one.
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