If It Worked for ACORN...

Have you heard the scandal about the surfer on Food Stamps?  If you haven't you aren't paying attention.  Crime fighters at Fox News are all over it.  They found a guy who is proud of the fact that he is cheating the government.

And James O'Keefe played a pimp in order to kill ACORN.

We have become a country far too easily duped.  This is the place where Wall Street Banks break the law and figure by the time they get caught they will have made millions (or billions).  This is the land of corporate welfare, where the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, and Wal-Mart write the rules so that they can legally pillage and plunder.  And create a nation where the numbers of poor and hungry grow each year.

Ronald Reagan invented the welfare queen, and the tall tale worked so well for him that the republican party -- funded by corporate America -- has fed off it ever since.

Because of Reagan's dream, shared by corporate America and the right wing, hard working Americans have been seeing their dreams dashed.  Less likely these days to wish for wealth than health care, insecure Americans prove an easy target for the myth of the welfare queen.

Just as with the other battles we are fighting for what should be our rights as Americans -- the right to vote, the right to a living wage, the right to medical privacy -- as long as we are struggling just to keep from losing those battles, we are unable to focus on the real financial criminals in our society.

As long as Fox News and Markwayne Mullin can get us riled up about the Food Stamp recipient that eats steak, we won't even notice that our children's future is being stolen by the wealthy and powerful.

So we need to keep reminding people of where the real corruption lies.  Maybe surfer Jason Greenslate really exists, or maybe he's another wannabe James O'Keefe.  What he is not, is the person who is draining our economy and living high off our tax dollars.  You will need to look to our Congress and folks like Wal-Mart's Waltons to find the real guilty parties.

Let's help focus on the real problems, and get the American people back on track.

A Nation of Whiners

Isn't it pathetic to see John Boehner trying to look fierce saying, "You got your tax increase.  No more."

Because the couple of percent that those who make over $400,000 a year are having to pay was waaay too much of a sacrifice, and their lives will never be the same as a result.  

And if we then tax estates of a million dollars or more, those poor youngsters who inherit just might have to stand in line for food stamps with the Wal-Mart workers.

And if you've invested a couple of million dollars and have made umpty-million more through that investment, why shouldn't you get to keep every cent of those not-so-hard-earned dollars?

We who have the nerve to fight for a wage that allows us a decent roof, health care, high quality education, and maybe the right to a vacation with our family are really tired of the real whiners.  It's the Mitt Romneys and Paul Ryans, the Rand Pauls and Eric Cantors who are doing the whining.  Why should their money be used to fund public schools that their kids don't use?  Or pay for roads and bridges that are crumbling?  Or pay for health care that...

You know what?  Each of those whiners gets quality health care paid for by us, the taxpayers.  Yet they fight heartily to cut back Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for seniors, and Obamacare for all those of us who have been used and abused by the insurance industry.

They are neither courageous, nor are they patriots.  They are the whiners.

We Have Met the Enemy...

Supercapitalism, by Robert Reich, is not the book you want to read if you want to get angry at somebody.  We all know the problems -- growing poverty, joblessness, pollution, corporate control of Congress.  But Reich makes a compelling and disquieting argument that the blame is not to be laid at the door of the corporation.  The conflict is not between us and them.  The conflict is between we the consumers/investors and we the citizens.

Look around and see the conflict everywhere.  The parking lot at Wal-Mart is full of people who have chosen to support the low-wage anti-union corporate philosophies of Wal-Mart.  SUV's are votes for big oil.  Less obvious is the fact that the stocks in which our pension funds invest are those that guarantee through cost cutting the highest returns; cost cutting means the cheapest material and labor.

And so, as we have made these consumer and investor choices over the decades, we have found ourselves with fewer dollars because our wages continue to shrink.  We vote for lower taxes and find ourselves with bad schools, bad roads, higher unemployment because the government employees that we need for needed government services are being cut.

Here we are, in this vicious circle, where, because we chose to shop at Wal-Mart, we now must shop at Wal-Mart.  We allow CEO's to be paid criminally high salaries and bonuses because we insist on the highest stock market returns, and we demand that they cut costs in order to be competitive, so we can reap even higher returns, until we lose our jobs or health and have to raid our IRA's to survive.

Still, we feed the beast.  We refuse to support the regulation that could cost us a few more pennies in the short run while empowering us to live better, healthier lives in the long run.  We vote for politicians that promise to cut taxes and allow industry the freedom to, well, continue to do what they have been doing, make the most money they can.


Stuff gets cheaper, but corporations get more expensive.  They cost us our health, our livelihoods, time with our families, our children's futures.


You could get a good deal on an SUV right now, but I guarantee, you won't be able to afford the gasoline.  In many more ways than the sticker price for a gallon.