And So This is Christmas

     President Obama is decisively ensconced in his second term. With a slight few more Progressives, Democrats retain control of the Senate. The House remains in the hands of the loyal opposition, but, thankfully, with a few less reactionaries. So this is Christmas 2012. And we are standing in shit rear-end deep to a tall giraffe.

     I'm going easy here. This is an excessively tall giraffe.

     We have serious problems and we need serious people from both sides of the aisle to solve them. Yet with every passing news cast we are entertained by herds of psycho-pathetic lemmings blindly charging toward the fiscal cliff. Barring the intervention of, say, a particularly vicious large dog that just plain doesn't care for stupid beasts governed by herdspeak that will stand at the edge and bark back the fury tide, the carnage will be considerable. One could argue that we would all be better off if we just let the idiots go over. Problem is they're dragging my economic well being behind them and for the life of me I can't figure out a way to cut the rope.

     To say the working people are getting screwed over is an understatement. As I write this, around 10k of my brothers and sisters are gathering at the Michigan capital to protest the governor's signing the Republican right to work for less pay law. And this in an age when executive pay has risen by 275% to the workers measly 18%. Heads have rolled for less than this.

     But it's not just the workers. 22% of children live below the poverty line. That works out to around 15.1 million kids. We were always fortunate enough to put something under the Christmas tree for our girls. I can't imagine being a parent, out of a job for a year or more through no fault of his or her own, trying to figure out how to explain to a six year old why they didn't get that $200 video game. So the next time you get a chance, toss a little something into the Toys for Tots bin or write a check to a local organization that's going to help out these families. And as my grandfather was fond of reminding me, "Never pass by a Salvation Army kettle son. Folks need our help."

     8.2 million of us are involuntarily part-time workers. We'd like full-time work but, say the bosses, business isn't good enough, despite record profits in some sectors, like the home improvement company I work for--part-time.

     There are more systemic concerns. Our highways are plagued with potholes large enough to swallow a Volkswagen. It's not a bad idea to increase your speed when heading for a bridge; if it starts to crumble beneath you the extra speed may help you make it over, EvilKneval style. And this tidbit just in:  our electrical grid ranks 32 in the world, just behind Slovenia, for reliability.  Stock up on batteries and candles. Air out your sleeping bag and make sure the air mattress doesn't leak. You next camping trip could be to your family room.

     Evidence is mounting that all those ads from the natural gas people telling us fracking is safe are outright lies. Check out Elizabeth Royte's feature article in the December 17 edition of "The Nation." In "What the Frack is in Our Food?" she recounts incidents of dead cows, deformed calves, befouled drinking water, and contaminated soil were chemicals used in the process to extract natural gas could well make their way into our food chain. And the FDA as yet is not monitoring any of this. Bon apetite!

     So this is Christmas, 2012. Traditionally a time of hope and expectations of something better. But neither hope nor solutions fall from heavenly skies. If there is hope it will come from within the rank and file of workers who are mad as hell and who just plain aren't going to put up with shoveling shit for the top 2% or the fascist corporations who tried to buy every politician in sight. It's time to turn this around.

     Signs are good that a turn around just might be coming. It's been a long, long time since this many people have taken to the streets to make their voices heard. And to the voting booth. Despite, thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision that allowed democracy to go to the highest bidder; the people fought back with good old fashioned grass roots organization. And we beat the bosses at the polling places. As James Carville said of the billionaires in a recent "Rolling Stone" interview; "never have so many paid so much to get so little."

     There are other promising signs. A fledgling movement to amend the constitution to abolish all corporate money in politics. Maybe we should call it "the people's amendment." For the first time a majority of House Democrats will be made up from women and minorities. The states of Washington and Colorado have taken the first steps in getting rid of our ignorant, always doomed to fail, antiquated drug policies by legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Stopping it is impossible. So why not treat it like booze? Regulate it. Tax it. And toss the extra cash into the public coffers. Uncle Sam could use a bit extra.

     So this is Christmas; and there is hope. So I'm hoping to head for D.C. on Inauguration Day with a few friends. Sure, it's an historical day. The second inauguration of the country's first Black president, itself a sign that something dramatic has changed. The face of the people's government is no longer all white or even all male or all Christian or Jewish or whatever have you. A good sign that we are finally beginning to live up to the inclusiveness we profess to believe in.

     But I'm not going to endure massive crowds, long walks, and god only knows what kind of port-a-potty lines to support the regime I voted for. I'm going to say, with voice and presence, I, and we, are here not merely to support, though that is important. We are here to push, to raise some hell along with some expectations. It's time to turn words and ideas into policies and concrete actions. Get the corporate brigands' cash out of politics. Provide jobs. Make sure those down on their luck aren't sleeping in the street and that our children have a roof over their heads and can at least set down to a plate of beans and wennies a couple times a day. Fill in the potholes and fix the damn bridges. Make sure when I flip my switch the lamp comes on.

     November 6th, the people gave their stamp of approval to much of the Progressive agenda. But we are not stopping here. We're going to bring the full-court press. Get it done. Ignore us at your peril.

The Jawbone.

    


     

    

    

    

     

Remember Gordon Gekko? He's Running for President!

     Remember Gordon Gekko, that character from the Charlie Sheen/Michael Douglass movie, "Wall Street?" The guy who, according to Charlie's buddy at the brokerage firm, "had an ethical bypass at birth?" As we count down to election day, Mitt and Gordon are starting to resemble one another. Both are Ayn Rand types in that each firmly believes in completely unrestricted, no holds barred, winner-take-all, "let the people eat cake," capitalism. This disturbs me. And here's what bothers me the most.

     In her book, "The Fountainhead," Rand writes of her main character, Howard Roark, "Howard Roark saw no one. For him, the streets were empty... it was only that he made people feel as if they did not exist." Neither Mitt Romney or his fictional counterpart, Gordon Gekko, really see people. And the ability to see people, I mean really to see them as real flesh and blood with real flesh and blood struggles and sufferings and joys and loves and concerns; that, to me, is one of the fundamental principles of ethics. When I hear Gov. Romney set forth his positions, I get the feeling he doesn't see me, my mother, my kids, whole groups of people but most especially those caught between the rock and the hard place. He makes me feel as if I don't really exist.

     By one estimate, Gov. Romney's plan to turn Medicaid into a block grant program administered by the states, would, within a decade's time, deny health care to thirty-million kids. Does Gov. Romeny really see our children?

     Under the Ryan budget, which Gov. Romney supports, a single mother of two earning minimum wage would pay $1500 more in taxes since he proposes to drastically slash the child tax credit. Does Gov. Romney see the that single mother?

     What about the unemployed, the under employed? The Romney/Ryan plan, according to the Economic Policy Institute, would destroy 4.1 million jobs. Do either of these candidates really see the unemployed? Hell, have either one of these guys ever experienced, even for a week, what it's like not to have a job when you really want one and will pretty much take anything you can get even if it's flipping burgers to keep a roof over your kids' heads and a box of mac-and-cheese on the table?

     Speaking of the poor, David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, points out that the Romney/Ryan plan would end up cutting as much as 3 trillion (yea, the "t" is correct) from programs for the poor. "It's ideology run amok," says Stockman. The ideology of Ayn Rand. The ideology of an economic war of all against all where the participants never truly see those less fortunate than themselves where the rich get tax cuts and the poor are left destitute.

     Tim Dickinson, writing in "Rolling Stone" a couple of weeks back, summed up this mess pretty well. The Romney/Ryan plan "would roll back clean-air protection, gut both medicare and medicaid, lavish trillions in tax cuts for billionaires while raising taxes on the poor, and slash everything from college aid to veteran's benefits." Do the Republican candidates really see any of these people? Or are we merely abstractions, statistics on a balance sheet?

     Message to Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan:  Neither I, my parents, my neighbors, my children, nor any of the rest of us working stiffs are mere abstractions, and we will not be reduced to statistics. And we are not invisible. We will be seen.

     And come November 6th, we will also be heard.

The Jawbone

    

      

    

         

    

We Are the 47%

    
     Not since that snake-in-the-grass Richard Nixon have we seen a more loathsome political viper than Mitt Romney slither across our political landscape in an attempt to occupy that most powerful plot of real estate. Born of the worst breed of political creatures, he is among the most dangerous and most rightly to be feared. Should he and his Koch brothers' Tea Party backers be allowed to buy the nation's highest office, they will do more damage to the 47% than we can imagine in our most vulgar nightmares. Keep your feet up everybody. It will be snakes on a plane all over again.

     It's not his wealth that makes Mr. Romney so dangerous. Like Mitt, Jack, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy were also born with a golden horseshoe up their small intestines. Properly earned and responsibly managed for the larger good, wealth can be a blessing. Or it can be a curse. And it is a curse when it shields its possessors from the plight of the common folk.

     If success is determined by the bottom line, then no doubt Mitt has had a most successful business career. But the question must be asked as to how that career affected the larger community. Here is where moral failure masquerades as financial success.

     As a vulture capitalist, Mitt Romney was nothing more than a corporate raider, a robber baron of the first order. His tactic was to purchase companies in trouble, run them into bankruptcy as quickly as possible, close them down, then make off with whatever was left in the company safe, leaving the workers standing outside locked factory gates to wonder how someone could have so thoughtlessly destroyed their livelihood. This is public record, not hyperbole; capitalism unfettered to do its worst. This is business by the Golden Rule in reverse:  Do unto others before they do unto you.

     To be certain, none of the Kennedy boys were saints. Yet they seemed, because, and some times in spite of, their privileged upbringing to be on the right side of history. They were in touch with the everyday realities of those whom they were elected to serve. The working stiffs who know what it is to get up every morning, go to a job they probably don't like very much, for which they are mostly underpaid, so they can sit down at the kitchen table near the end of each month and figure out which bills will get paid and which will have to wait. 

     The Kennedy's were born to wealth, but Jack could identify with the black man in the South who couldn't vote or even set down for a burger and fries at an all-white lunch counter without getting the living shit beaten out of him. Bobby toured the poverty stricken ghettos and share croppers' shacks, sat at kitchen tables and talked with mothers whose children were forced by law to attend segregated schools. On his way back to the limo, he remarked to a reporter, "I'm going back to Washington and do something about this." Ted made health care for everyone the central focus of his legislative career.

     To be on the side of the outcast, the poor, the sick, the hungry, the jobless, of those whom the powerful choose to exclude from the political process by systematically denying them the right to vote; this is to be on the right side of history. This is where Mitt Romney is on the wrong side of history.

     We are the 47%, Mr. Romney. And very few of us are irresponsible loafers who choose not to take responsibility for our lives.We are the veterans who stand to lose 11 billion dollars from much needed assistance. We are the elderly having to choose between food and medicine and doctors visits if medicare is replaced with a voucher system. We are African-Americans who marched, demonstrated, and even died for the right to vote; a right Mr. Romney's Republican Party is hell bent to repress. We are women in need of the reproductive health care, the cancer screenings, birth control, and access to safe abortions to whom Mr. Romney would deny funding. We are the college students depending on Pell grants and low interest student loans that will provide us with economic opportunity. We are mothers on medicaid who would love to find more than a minimum wage job waiting tables so we could afford decent day care for our kids and go back to school part-time and get our degree. We are fathers who have stood long enough in the unemployment line. Mr. Romney, we are the 47%; and you right us off at your peril. 

     And, Mr. Romney, despite your Republican Party's desperate attempts to keep us out of the voting booth, we will show up, and we will vote. Because we are on the right side of history.

The Jawbone.