Soylent Green is Made of Naiveté
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.comI am angry with myself; I’ve failed so miserably. I have been trying to express a simple point and I can’t seem to make it clear enough and understandable enough to you, my readers, and for that I apologize.
President Obama made a speech Tuesday evening, and many progressives were just gushing with praise. Inside the rhetoric, though, were two clear points; the banks would be bailed out, no matter what the cost to the Treasury, and you would not be. We have a financial system with a gaping hole in it. The President promises to keep the system full of money, but what is causing the hole?
The hole is in the housing market and the President promises up to $2,000 in mortgage assistance for struggling homeowners. With homes that have been dropping in value, each foreclosure lowers the value of the other homes on the same street by 9%. Home prices have already fallen by 18% nationwide, and the cause is the glut of homes on the market. Would you buy a house for 200K that might only be worth 150K next year? Would a banker give you a loan for a house that might lose 25% of its value? No, of course not, they would take the federal bail out money and buy Chinese treasury bonds and then jack up the interest rates on your credit cards. February home sales were the lowest on record and 45% of those sales were distressed property sales.
The new President and his administration are locked arm-in-arm, jauntily prancing down the yellow brick road, certain that the corporate wizards are going to fix the problem. He has a new job for you, scarecrow, and new outsourced parts for you, tin man, and for you, lion, courage because you are going to be foreclosed on.
The last day of February was another milestone; this was the worst February on Wall Street ever. It surpassed even the February of 1933. California was the first state to announce unemployment over 10%. Less than twenty-four months ago General Motors was the largest car company in the world. Today its market capitalization is less than a billion dollars. General Electric, for decades, has been a Tiffany diamond of investing, but yesterday GE cut their dividend for the first time since 1940. Less than a year ago GE stock was trading for almost $40.00 per share; Friday it closed at a fifty-two week low of $8.40.
Our economy has become toxic; our industries are trying to save themselves by shedding workers. Bailing out banks might keep them open but it does nothing to solve the problem. The stimulus offers the money for the states to extend unemployment, but the maximum here in Georgia is $330 dollars a week. Obama is trying to save the economy from the top down rather than from the bottom up.
It is as if the President is channeling Neville Chamberlain, as he waves his new budget with no new money in it to investigate Wall Street white-collar crime. He promises the banks unfettered access to the Sudetenland and all of Czechoslovakia that they can eat, and the crowd cheers! “Three cheers for Mr. Chamberlain!”
The political right calls the President a socialist, but what else can they do besides name call. To paraphrase Lloyd Benson, “I am a socialist and you, sir, are no socialist!” Case in point, everyone knows and few, even among the right wing nutballs will argue, that America’s healthcare insurance providers are nothing but a bloated, profit-driven Ponzi scheme. A scheme designed to glean ever-larger profits by denying services and pillaging America's workers and employers through ever-higher premiums and ever-lower levels of service.
These corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising round the clock on television, radio and magazines. They fund political campaigns and the largesse of lobbyists. They are among the most profitable corporations in America, and what is the President's solution to control rising healthcare costs? To make you sign up with these corporations. Once again the President’s answer is to keep filling the bucket and not fixing the hole. Now, as a socialist, let me ask you a question. If the government were to offer universal coverage to every man, woman and child in America, what do you need the health insurance companies for?
There is the bulk of your waste, fraud, and abuse, the multimillion-dollar salaries and the gigantic paperwork-kiting schemes that the insurance companies use to defraud the public, the providers and the sick themselves. The abuses of the sick and elderly, the denial of preventive care, all while the executives smile and call the American healthcare industry a free market. In all honesty, do you really think that working with the companies that stand to profit from it is the correct answer?
This crisis, these multiple crises have been created by unfettered capitalism, hubris and a sense of entitlement. Already these groups are marshalling their troops to fight any regulation that will restrict their profits or raise their taxes. They will resurrect Harry and Louise with new TV commercials to convince the dullards and dimwits that the system is all right. These groups of huge corporations and super rich are already funding media campaigns against the card check bill and the stimulus package. They will not go quietly into the good, good night.
The President offers conciliation and mediation to those with no other motive than the ultimate political destruction of his administration and the negating of any of his policies which they might find distasteful. George W. Bush was the head of this machine, but he was not the machine. Removing Bush did not alter the goals of the machine one iota. This fascist, right wing oligarchy believes in no taxes for the wealthy, zero, none, not one penny. They believe America should achieve a global military dominance by spending 4% of GDP on the military, and that your children should go fight for that dominance, and that hasn’t changed one iota.
They want to see the privatization, if not the complete elimination, of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Their ultimate goal is nothing less than a worldwide feudal system where you have a little or no access to the courts. Little or no voice on the environment, as these are the same groups that fund the global warming naysayers now. Their aim is for an overruling class controlling the media, and a poor, working underclass to be dealt with like Poncas whenever they see fit.
This crisis, these crisises have brought us to a nexus; from here there is only one path, and there will be only one winner. It was Franklin Roosevelt who said, “I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” Just as Warren Buffet said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." Roosevelt took seriously his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He wasn’t about to open peace negotiations or make accommodations for them.
"We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for two countries and for Europe.
"My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time." (Neville Chamberlain)
Please understand that when the President said in his speech Tuesday that your money in the banks is safe, he wasn’t talking about the $800 in your checking account. He was trying to reassure the very same people that they were trying to reassure when they raised the FDIC insurance limits from $100,000 to $250,000. The administration is making nice and talking sweetly because otherwise that other class of depositor might take their wealth and send it overseas, just like they did with your manufacturing jobs. They don’t give a damn about you or about this country. They do what’s best for them, and if that means turning you into a lampshade, I’m sure you’ll make a nice one.
Soylent Green is made of naiveté.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(854 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
