Article: In Plain Sight

It is there in plain sight for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear and once you see it and hear it, then it gets inside of you like a siren's song and you cannot look away from it, ever, ever again. In the wake of the worst economy since the Great Depression this government, your government proposes job cuts. Over 400,000 government workers have lost their jobs from last November to this current November.
From the outset of this crisis the government response has been reactive and not proactive. Look for example at the response to the banking crisis versus the American crisis. During the banking crisis there was no debate, there was only a dark urgency and somber necessity, we must, we must! Or else the whole world will melt away into oblivion. During the American crisis, tens of millions of families, men women and children have been forced from their homes. As many as ten percent of the population of the United States have been evicted or foreclosed upon by predators made fat with government loans.
An economic stimulus package was proposed, a stimulus which was 35 percent tax cuts and corporate giveaways. Wheedled and shot full of pork the final package amounted to one road project for every million Americans. Let's do the math, actual unemployment (U-6) is running around 16.5 percent or 165 per thousand with one road construction project per million could each road project be expected to provide 16,500 jobs? The slack economy especially in the construction industry meant almost zero new hiring. This was an infrastructure program disguised as a jobs program. The President's proposed cutting employment taxes which undercuts social security and unemployment insurance. I wonder sometimes, if the White House were to catch fire if Obama would run wildly down the halls shouting, "Fire, Fire someone cut taxes!"
Let's look at the ugly and unadulterated truth here, the average weekly wage for a Chinese industrial worker is twenty dollars per week. For the price of one American worker at minimum wage you can hire fourteen Chinese. Not only hire them but have no Social Security payments, no unemployment insurance, no unions and no environmental concerns, through free trade American workers have been made expendable. Chinese air and water quality have paid the price as coastal fishing has been decimated or poisoned by industrial run off.
It has created a Capitalist fairyland and a Capitalist wasteland; in this country, companies such as Wal-Mart earn billions importing products made by sweatshop labor. Low prices only cushion the blow as American workers are economically stripped of purchasing power. It doesn't matter how cheap the toaster or flat screen TV is if you don't have a job.
The corporation's and manufacturers profit off of low labor costs but that is offset by high trade deficits. Corporations don't worry about trade deficits, that is for the government to worry about. But now equilibrium is setting in, as high wage jobs disappear purchasing power erodes until people such as myself and many of you can't afford to purchase anything.
Corporate taxes have been cut and the President and Congress debate cutting more taxes and even work towards creating a tax holiday to allow the manufacturers and outsourcers a tax cut on their profits earned overseas. The Democratic Party as a party of the people or a party of the working man has ceased to exist. There isn't a dimes worth of difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, the only difference is in perception.
Barrack Obama went to Nellis Air force Base to dedicate the largest solar power facility on a US military base. He used this photo op to show his dedication to green energy to the rubes and weed benders. The solar plant was built with Chinese made solar cells and was funded by the Energy Department just as the stimulus also had funding for military construction. Meanwhile, American solar panel companies are going belly up. Meanwhile, Americans are losing their homes in record numbers; meanwhile American wages are falling as prices are rising.
In response to the foreclosure crisis Barrack Obama has come up with another great corporate idea. He has proposed taking 250,000 empty homes and allowing the government to purchase them and resell them to Real Estate Investment Trusts. Obama has proposed buying up these bad debts of the banks, then having them professionally remodeled at government expense and then selling them back to the banks as investment properties. Let's call it Pottersville! Take a quarter of a million private homes and turn them into rental properties!
The government of the United States no longer works in the interest of the people in fact; it is diametrically opposed to the best interest of its people. That by definition is a tyranny. The love of money and the need to own everything does not end at the waters edge and must include owning the people themselves.
Some of us sell ourselves into this servitude and I include myself in those ranks. I had a good job and thought myself immune from the crises of "those people." Though I still questioned from time to time and feared if it couldn't happen to me, that fear was a motivating tool, it made me show up early and stay late. It made me accept the things which I should not have accepted quietly. Man is a herd animal, he seeks the comfort of the herd for protection so while the banks and government warn, we must we must or else the whole world will melt into oblivion, we have no problem allowing millions to melt away into oblivion one by one.
I walk the streets of this cold city past trendy shops which sell foreign made goods for high prices. They carry designer labels and worthy of their cost just because, just because they've paid a professional athlete to say they are wonderful or hired an aging actress to say they are stylish. It is all about image and about style over substance and if you aren't with it then you are to be culled from the herd.
The off shoring and outsourcing of the American economy has changed the very dynamics of the economy. The US is expected to post a $44 billion dollar monthly trade deficit. Forty four billion dollars that have left our shores, left our economy and entered someone else's economy. Wall Street cheers at a rise in US consumer spending, except that it is what is fueling the growth in the trade deficit. Our economy is unsustainable, in an economy seventy percent based on consumer spending each unemployed worker becomes a non-consumer. Each underemployed or low paid Wal-Mart workers become non-consumers as well.
It is no different than hitting yourself in the head with a hammer to cure a headache, the cure causes the disease. Instead of solving the problem the government merely changes the numbers, makes excuses and pats itself on the back. This month the Bureau of Labor Statistics cooed that unemployment numbers had dropped four tenths of one percent. Last month the economy created ninety thousand jobs and that was considered a poor performance. This month the economy created one hundred and twenty thousand jobs but more than half of those jobs were holiday hires and this is cheered as good news.
The economy only created sixty thousand actual jobs this month while 456,000 Americans dropped out of the employment market. This has caused a drop in the participation rate and how do the Wall Street economists explain this? They are calling it a demographic shift, as baby boomers are opting for early retirement, I'll say it again, baby boomers are opting for early retirement. They explain that the economy doesn't need to create as many jobs anymore as more workers opt for early retirement.
The economist point with pride of a five percent unemployment rate among those with advanced degrees, yet even here there is trouble. Those unemployed with advanced degrees have specialized careers. A biomedical engineer can't just walk across the street and get hired by a competitor because they are up against the same pay wall. Such research can be done in India or China just as well. So the big lie, that education is the answer is just that, a big lie.
Our economy has become toxic; it can no longer support the aspirations of the American people. Those in charge of the economy are predators, bleeding and scraping the economy of every last nickel. This Federal government is criminal; they are co-conspirators in cahoots with the predators.
Your government is criminal, your elections are suspect, your candidates are hand picked by moneyed interests. Your economy is toxic and hemorrhaging and if left, as is, can never repair itself.
A Gestapo security apparatus has been put in place, your rights have been stripped away and your police force has been militarized. Peaceful protests are put down with rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray.
Your school budgets have been eviscerated, your social contract shredded and your future, and the future of your children has been put in serious doubt. There is no longer a question of if, but when, the only question left to decide is, which side are you on? Staying silent and acting as if nothing is going on is nothing more than silent complicity.
You were not born a slave or a peon, how long will you live as one?