Well…I really do have to thank Manny Lopez of the Detroit News today for his column that excoriates the “Occupy” protesters as people just looking for a handout and wanting to do nothing for it. He seems to think that people who have lost their jobs or homes or who are so heaped with student loans should just shut up and go home. He seems to think that people like me (and there are a lot of us) who have done everything right…gotten an education, worked hard,l paid our bills and taxes, and now find ourselves shut out of a feeble economy because what the banks and corporations have done should just stay home and go slowly broke while executive compensation rises 28% in one year.
Not gonna happen, Manny. You’ve got this thing so wrong, again, that I still can’t understand why you still have a job. This movement is about and for the people who no longer have a shot at the American dream, who no longer can compete with the overwhelming voice of corporate money in politics, and out of desperation have begun to use the only tool left to them…peaceful resistance. And, let’s be perfectly clear…the protesters don’t want anything for free, they just want good jobs and the chance to raise families in a world that is more fair than it is now. Is that too much to ask? to Manny and his repub cronies, it is…geez…
Well…if there was any doubt that the repubs have been cynically using the tea party to consolidate their traditional power, the punch in the face on the trade bills should put that doubt to rest. In the last couple of days, the repub controlled house and the senate repubs all voted against the wishes of the tea party and approved trade agreements with Columbia, South Korea, and others that was one of the key reasons for the tea party’s existence. How do you feel now tea party? It’s what I have said here many times that these folks in the tea party were just being used by the billionaires and business to get a compliant congress that would give them whatever they want…no matter that these agreement will cost many, many, jobs here and most of them will be from people that make up the tea party. With these agreements, the real power behind the tea party has been exposed for what it is…just the rich, powerful and business stealing more and more from the rest of us…geez…
Well…as more and more comes out on the results of the 2004 tax repatriation nonsense, I just had to write more about about it…hope your not bored but someone has to keep pointing out what the country will look like if you elect a repub president. The neat little tidbit that come out today was the fact that the repubs took out any reporting requirement for what was done with the money that was returned. They just listened to the businesses when they said “trust us” we’ll be good boys and girls and hire hundreds of thousands of workers. But, what really happened? Hundreds of thousands of jobs were cut and the pay of the ceo’s and other high ranking officers of those companies skyrocketed…basically rewarding themselves for stealing more, and more and more. This faith based economics is what is wrong with the country and will be many, many, times worse if we vote these idiots in in 2012. Geez….
Well…this is going to be a short one about one of the topics that is near and dear to my heart…the lack of jobs or anyone doing anything to grow them….I will admit that Obama and his administration have been trying to do something, but where is the repub controlled congress? They have controlled the house for almost a year and have not put forth one new proposal that will get the economy going again and create jobs…they have just trotted out the same old tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, that have never created one job…not in all of the cuts by the Bushies, or any of the cuts that have been done by Obama. So, that is the question we should be asking whenever a politician opens his or her mouth…what are you doing to create jobs? And remember that in the 2012 election…the repubs started leaning on Obama and blaming him for the lack of jobs about two weeks into his administration…now we should do the same to them…they’ve had a year in power filled with nothing but nonsense…geez…
Well….I just had to laugh when I read this quote from ole Eric: “I am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs at the protests”…okay, I’m laughing again just writing this….and this is coming from a self-avowed “protector” of the Constitution who probably has never read the thing…if he had, he would have noticed the little thing called the first amendment that ensures the right of the people to “peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances”…..what about that Eric? What about your precious tea party who were anything but peacable…with the guns, slogans, and chants proposing violent attacks on the government?
As I said yesterday, these guys should be afraid of any movement that wants to restore the fairness to this country…that wants to make sure that the political system can’t be hijacked by a few rich people or corporations anymore….maybe we can make ole Eric go away…
Well….it seems that the story line in the country has started to change…away from the nonsense of modern conservatism and it’s fealty to Grover Norquist and business, and back to the real ills of this society…the concentration of money and power in the top 1% and the lack of good, middle class jobs. The country is finally waking up and saying enough…enough of having 400 people owning more than the poorest 150 million…enough of the drumbeat of deregulation that crashed the economy and made the distortion of the rewards of the economy even worse…enough of having corporations write the laws and buy elections that silences the rest of us. In the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and the newfound backbone of president Obama, there is finally hope that even an overeducated old guy will be able to find meaningful work….and to contribute to society again. I am still optimistic about this country changing by a real, old fashioned revolt of the center and left….if you want to read a really inspiring statement of purpose, go out to the occupy site and take a look at the one that was issued yesterday…it succinctly details what is wrong and how to fix it…and it has so irritated the right that they have brought out the “communist manifesto” label to try to belittle it….I guess they must be running scared…and they should be….
Well…there is a little noticed but well-financed lobbying effort going on right now that is trying to get a free pass on taxes for companies that have stashed trillions of dollars of profits overseas to avoid paying federal taxes on them. These companies are pushing a reduction of tax rate from the normal 35% to only 5%…much less than any middle class individual pays on his earned income, to bring these profits back into the US. One of their big selling points for this tax cut is that they will use the money to create jobs; never mind that these companies are already sitting on over 2 trillion dollars in retained profits in the US that they are not spending to create jobs, so why would anyone expect them to spend any of this offshore profit? In fact, the last time a tax holiday was give to these same companies in 2004, they ended up cutting over 560,000 jobs but used the money to increase the pay of the top level managers of the companies while they were cutting these jobs. This is just another instance where corporations are manipulating the congress by buying votes and will end up lining their own pockets with this repatriated money….when does this nonsense stop?
Well…it is getting to be an exciting thing watching the protests against the unbridled greed of Wall Street spread across the country but I still have my doubts that it will have any effect on the nonsense that is going on on Wall Street and in boardrooms across the country. The first example of this cluelessness came from the statement that Michael Bloomberg made yesterday commenting on why the protesters were there…he seemed to think that the demonstrations were against the unions and the working folks that work on Wall Street other than the thieving bankers who are the sole purpose of the protests. I just shows that the repubs have tunnel vision and are still trying to play us working (or unemployed) folks against each other to distract us so we won’t see that the rich thieves have stolen almost all of the country over the last 20 years. This absolute contempt for working folks is again on display with what happened at HP over the last couple of weeks…the CEO was just dismissed after 10 months on the job which is generally considered to be a utter, dismal failure…but did he walk away with nothing for such lousy performance? Nope, this idiot walked away with over 13 million dollars in compensation…yep, 13 million for doing nothing for 10 months…and this moron truly feels he earned it…that is what is wrong with this country…the rich do nothing and make mountains of cash while they steal and steal and steal from the rest of us…how many people could have been kept working for that 13 mil? Geez…
Well….I have been trying and trying to get back on the political horse but it just hasn’t worked yet…I wonder if I’m just getting tired of the nonsense that passes for politics these days? Whatever it is…okay, maybe I’ll look in the paper right now and see if there is something….here’s something…just read a column by Jay Ambrose in the Detroit News that goes on and on about how bad the left is because they keep calling out the haters on the right…so, Jay, now when the left point outs the hate from the tea party or the others on the right it’s the moral equivalent of the constant hate speech from the right? Okay…this one is not going anywhere so I think I’ll stop here and think about it for a while…..or not…who knows?
Maybe I’ll just talk about other stuff, then….nope….that’s not working either so I’m going to go over to the couch for a few minutes and watch tv for a while….
Well…while I’m waiting for it to get a little warmer before I go out on the bike, I thought I’d comment on the $16 dollar muffins that the right is so hot about…if you haven’t heard, there was a conference a while back for some judges and other people that was paid for by the federal government whose billing appeared to contain muffins that cost $16 dollars apiece….and the right has taken this up as being a huge example of the wasteful spending that is rampant in Washington., But, it doesn’t matter to the right that it isn’t true…it is a quirk in how the billing was presented by the hotel where the conference was held. The reality is that the $16 dollars was for the entire days food for each of the attendees….and if you’ve ever been to any big city like DC, a cup of coffee goes for 5 bucks and a continental breakfast like the one that cost the taxpayers $16 at the conference can cost upwards of twenty bucks. But, does that matter to the right? Nope….this lie has been chosen to support the draconian cuts that the repubs are pushing and you even had the liar Bill O’Reilly on Jon Stewart’s show this week going on and on about it and I was surprised that Jon didn’t do his homework and cut ole Bill off at the knees….but I guess that falls to me today and I’m happy to do it to that blowhard….geez…..
Okay…going to throw out a second lyric for the day: “I can see you on the hill….comatose but walking still…”