U.S. Economy's Worst Kept Secret

I just learned that America is no longer a democracy, but an oligarchy, wherein the country is controlled by a few.  Well, you could have blown me over with a feather.  In fact, Paul Krugman warns us of this very thing.  What is amazing is that he warned us of this in 2011.  So why are we surprised?

Not only that, we've become a plutocracy, which is government by the wealthy.  I know, this is another shocker.

Day after day, as the rich get richer and even more of a controlling interest in the United States of America, we continued to be astonished that this could happen -- in a democracy!

I'm looking at this as a kind of a snowball in hell:  the more wealth and power, the greater the wealthy and powerful become.  And the greater they become the faster they become more wealthy and powerful.

Unlike the rest of us, the wealthy and powerful know how to form a union and then they know how to strategize to get what they want (more wealth and power).  They don't really care whether or not you get an abortion just as long as the folks they elect to office keep us distracted by fighting about it while also, that's right, legislating greater wealth and power for the wealthy and powerful.  And as long as they can keep us fighting amongst each other over whether to feed the hungry they figure we aren't going to much notice that they are growing the national debt by:  giving more to the wealthy and powerful.

I'm not much into history; after all, I am an American.  But of late I am learning an awful lot about the Gilded Age, wherein the cruelty and excesses of the wealthy and powerful actually led to the great reforms of the Progressive Era.

And I am being told that we are in the midst of a new gilded age.  One of the things that concerns me though is that we seem to be unable to move ourselves into the new progressive era that, according to history, should follow.  Are we that much better off?  Are perhaps not enough poor children dying?  Will Obamacare and food stamps cause us to survive just enough to keep those billionaires going while not giving us the strength to fight for more?  Are we like the frog who is put in a pot of water at room temperature and then the heat is turned up so we die so gradually we don't even notice?

I'm  not suggesting that things should get worse so that we can decide we need to fight to make it better.  But it seems that that is the way it's going.  The gains are too small, too few, too far apart.  By the time we get an increase in the minimum wage, it will already have been shrunk by the increases in the cost of living.  Hail Obamacare, but the insurance industry has made sure that it's the middle class and the government that are getting gouged with rate increases, and the poor will still have to struggle with co-pays, deductibles, and all those other economic creations that have made health care in the U.S. unattainable by so many.  The insurance industry will continue to be, that's right, wealthy and powerful.

My father was a tool-and-die maker.  I never really knew what that was, but he earned a living.  He had job security.  And the rise of the unions was recent enough that he understood their importance.  That generation would have gone on strike, picketed, and risked imprisonment or worse if there was a threat to their livelihoods, because they were close enough to know what it would be like if they did not.

But my generation lacked that knowledge.  We had always known job security, a living wage, benefits, overtime, health care coverage, sick pay, retirement benefits.  We grumbled about having to pay dues.  And I believe this is why, when the economy hit that big rough patch in the 70's and the big businesses began to ask unions for concessions, they began to concede.  And it hasn't stopped yet.  We first caved because we thought if we were reasonable, our employers would as they promised, make the concessions temporary.  Blue skies ahead.  Then we caved because we could lose our jobs.  Then we caved because some of us had already lost their jobs.  Then our employers screwed us anyway.

And like a bully who is angry that nobody likes him, capitalists continue to have tantrums because their great profits are not great enough, that they are expected to contribute to the society without which they would not have that wealth.  And they are angry because anger works.  We are intimidated.  Afraid of losing what little we have.  And those of us who are still making it are terrified of the time when they might join those long-term unemployed, the uninsured, the homeless.  And terror has made us powerless to fight the bullies, so we fight those with even less than us.

Unions?  We gave ours up while corporate America was growing theirs.  They have PhRMA making sure drug prices stay high while government regulation shrinks.  Then there is the agricultural lobby, that this year assured that big farms would continue to receive subsidies (although they are apparently calling it crop insurance now) while cutting food stamps for the poor.  The oil industry has been strangling us with increased gas prices, and the environment with its careless drilling practices.  And then there are the "pan-unions," like American Legislative Exchange Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, and Americans for Prosperity.  The latter is owned and operated by those uber-plutocrats, Charles and David Koch, whose father was one of the original members of the John Birch Society, and whose oily hands are into every aspect of our lives.

And all the while all these big fat capitalists who rise in fury at the thought of a mandated living wage are spending fortunes in advertising and in political campaign funding to convince us that all those things that are good for the country will take food out of our own mouths.  That the price hikes since Obamacare are not just more of the same profit game but are caused by those deadbeats who don't pay for insurance.

I don't know what it will take for us to look out and see who the real bad guys are.  I don't know if I will see a new Progressive Era in my lifetime.  I do know that things change, they have before and they can change again.  Against all odds.  Because we have done it before.    

Pomp and Chauvinism

Okay, I admit that I got teary watching the Inauguration.  And the Battle Hymn is one hell of a song and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir gave me the chills.

Now allow me to revert back to my true nature.

I was more aware than ever today of how our country drips in the words of Christianity.  Which leaves me, a non-Christian, unimpressed with the rhetoric that pretends to include the rest of us.

I do not take the Pledge of Allegiance.  Have not done so for I don't know how many decades.  I do not take pledges.

I am proud of the fact that I live in a country where, despite what some think, we are not forced to pledge allegiance to the flag.

Our greatest goods and our greatest evils come from the kind of chauvinism that occurs when people pledge to God and country.  We need to unite to perform the greatest good,  but these days, some of the groups that are most united do so in the name of power and greed for the purpose of coercion.

The National Rifle Association will have us all armed presumably to protect ourselves and our property, but in reality to increase profits and corporate power.

Anti-abortion groups have taken the great feminist Susan B. Anthony and sullied her name by forcing their cause on her. Where irony knows no bounds, the narcissistic Paul Ryan who has again co-sponsored the ever-so-ironic "sanctity of human life act" will be keynote speaker for the anti-abortion group which I just learned is called the "Susan B. Anthony List."

In the name of corporate freedom, governors and legislators from states like ours are joining forces with groups like ALEC to make certain that our workers will always work cheap, our taxes will be too low to provide good education and health care to its citizens, and the wealthy will continue to be in charge.

And every one of the people who are responsible for the damage done by their work takes the Pledge of Allegiance, proudly, publicly, and as often as the cameras will allow.

It's good that today we are inaugurating a president who fights for the people of this country.  I am cynical (of course) about just how strong his allegiances are to the 98 percent vs. Wall Street and PhRMA, ExxonMobil, and the others of great wealth and privilege.  I wonder if he has further entrenched the spy and war machines into our lives in the name of security rather than take the riskier path of fighting for our individual freedoms while working to keep us safe.

And yet he has fought for equal rights and equal opportunity in a way we had not seen for eight years.  So for that, when he was sworn in today, I was proud and yes, even shed a tear at the pomp and pageantry, though not the chauvinism.

Distractions

Our legislature here in South Carolina can't get those personhood bills out fast enough.  They don't much give a damn what happens when a baby gets born, but they stay up nights wondering how they can make a woman keep that fetus under their control for as long as it takes.  And then once that woman has an actual baby, they won't have to worry about keeping her under their control.  All they have to do is make sure she is totally, 100% on her own.

I wish these "personhood" schemes were actually funny.  But they come from unbalanced minds that believe that the word "freedom" means they get to control others, and the word "religion" means theirs.  As with the gun "debate," there really is no debate.  The people who believe in life at conception to the point where they obsess over making laws about it are not willing to share ideas.  Nor are they ever going to share a penny to be sure that a pregnant woman has health care and a healthy diet.

Take, for example, Liston Barfield, who proudly sponsored H 3323, companion to the Senate bill S 83.  To look at his background, you would not come away thinking the man had a whole lot of understanding of biology, but he does know his own religion and he does know how to network.  In fact, he happens to be Secretary on the Board of Directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

If you are wondering where you have heard of ALEC, this is the powerful corporate lobbying group that has its dirty fingerprints not only all over state and federal bills, but all over our politicians.  ALEC works for folks like the Koch brothers, ExxonMobile, and PhRMA, to make sure  that bills get written just the way they like them.

If this sounds like a strange alliance for someone who is concerned with "personhood," it all comes under the heading of power and hypocrisy.

I'd like to be able to at least leave you with a chuckle.  The "word" "preborn" should crack me up the way I used to enjoy the invented word "preowned" when car dealers started substituting it for "used."  Except that "preowned" became an actual part of the vocabulary, and damned if I know what people think it means.  I fear that "preborn" is just about to become another one of those invented words that scare and confuse people.

As distasteful as this whole thing is, though, I believe we need to know about all the corrupt legislators that keep our minds off our pocketbooks by keeping them focused on a woman's vagina.  So maybe I started with "personhood" and ended up with ALEC.  The fact that the whole way our government works is so convoluted is why it doesn't work for us at all.