The fine print

While I make it a point to point out the weaknesses and ills of our country, I'd like to point out that in actuality, I am a patriot. I wholeheartedly believe in the United States, in its potential to promote justice, freedom, hard work and the pursuit of dreams and happiness, not only to its own people but to the rest of the world.
I just don't think we do any of that. Like I say to many people, I love the idea of my country, I hate what it's turned into.
And I know many people out there feel the same way. We cling to good news, the glimmers of our advancement through economic trenches, the lights at the end of the tortured war-mongering tunnels. So of course many of us were very excited last week to hear that in February, the Labor Department happily announced that the US had added 192,000 jobs, the most in more than a year.
You're probably thinking - fuck, she's not gonna rain on that too? - yes, yes I am.
The fine print:
Private Sector jobs added: 220,000
State and Local government jobs added: -30,000
But, but - yes.
The public sector lost 30,000 jobs in the month of February while corporate America surged ahead adding over 200,000.
So what? Jobs are jobs right?
Wrong.
Put simply, this is bad news.
As many of you have noticed, what's right for corporate America is rarely right for the 95% of us who don't enjoy multi-billion dollar salaries. Someone asked me the other day, what's the difference between politicians paid off by unions and politicians paid off by corporations?
Well, think about it. Unions, although they can be a royal pain in the ass, are there to protect the rights of the worker, the public sector worker, the middle class (if we still had one). Corporations are built on the concept of protecting their bottom line - it even says so in the definition for fucks sake!
That's the difference, and just by looking at the facts, you can see it in action.
Have you noticed the rising food prices? Oil prices? The continuous failing of our infrastructure, our schools, government jobs and public services? Police may not be able to get to you in time - but I bet if you had the phone number to a private security firm rent-a-cop, he'd get there quicker than you can pull money out of an ATM.
Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. What Naomi Klein named "Corporate Shock Treatment" is actually a tried and true method, tested back in the 70s and 80s in places like Argentina, Chile, China and Poland. The CIA backed coups and corporate run revolutions to secure funds that democratically elected leaders in those countries didn't feel like coughing up. The IMF is effectively a global corporate loan shark, something John Maynard Keynes would start a war over if he was here to see it.
And now, these lab tested theories are coming to work at home. What better way of making money than reaping from your very own crop? With total control over a still-considered superpower, corporate America, without rules and regulations is free to continue pillaging without worry from government interventions. Why did the Supreme Court rule that corporations are people? Why would Obama lift even more regulations from corporate rulings? Put simply, government is corporate. The US government is not a free enterprise run by the people, for the people and of the people. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it is frighteningly true.
Government regulations on corporate actions help keep people safe, and a country functioning properly. A free market economy, a la the Chicago School and Milton Friedman does not fucking work. Friedman is a greedy hawk, not interested in how the free market will regulate itself but in the corporations he can make rich by giving them the reigns to regulate it themselves. Markets don't regulate themselves, they're not artificially intelligent beings that can dictate how to effectively price bread and oil. Humans made the market system ergo they need to regulate. Period.
The attack on the unions is yet another step in breaking down the public workings of a state and then rebuilding it with corporate agendas. Just like you would electro-shock a patient suffering from anxiety and then attempt to rebuild with pills and therapy.
The blank slate idea doesn't work for humans and it doesn't work for governments. It breaks them down and causes mass poverty and hysteria.
Sorry to say folks but that's where we're headed.
I urge you to look into the happenings in Chile, September 11, 1973 (ironic...), Argentina, March 24th 1976, China, June 5th 1989. Check into the shadowy caverns of the Internet and find our involvement - it's there, the arrogant pricks don't even try to hide it. Read up on it and then compare it to what's going on now.
If you see, as I did, the eerie similarities and the fucking terrifying foreboding of events to come, let me know. Leave a comment, an idea and let's start this revolution.
We can still fight for the rights we have and steal back the ones that have been taken. But, we, the people, have to Do Something.

Labor pains

No matter how this ends, it's gonna be a damn ugly baby.
Wisconsin broke the water and now it seems that all over the country, state unions are reluctantly entertaining the idea of giving up wages, benefits and work rules in order to keep their most basic bargaining rights.
Collective bargaining is the corner stone of unions. Without that, there's really no point to even having them. And that is the point of of this war.
I agree that Unions can be a royal pain in the ass - but not having them would prove to be a bigger pain in the ass.
Of course, not for the thick walleted law makers barreling through our rights like a fat kid through cake. According to Republicans, these public sector unions are sucking funds out of the states unnecessarily. Furthermore, their popularity in those states has greatly declined since many private sector workers find the job protection, health benefits and pension plans of public workers unfair...
Um...how is that a fucking argument?
Daddy, the big corporations aren't being nice to me so I don't think you should be nice to...um...the people who work for you! That makes total sense! Meanwhile, Obama is further letting up on corporations so they won't have to spend their hard earned money on protecting their workers. His plan to allow the Health Care Bill to be more of a suggestion than actual law makes for yet another avenue for corporations to skirt their responsibility and pocket a few extra dollars on the back end.
The Bahamas are lovely this time of year I hear...
What the fuck?! Really?!
Once again, these incredibly far removed pompous ticks in suits carrying a wall street journal are on their way to rape and rob the average American.
I'd like to blame it all on the newcomer Republicans, pumping their chests after a win in November. But unfortunately, both sides, as usual are to blame.
Governors on the left and the right have made the case against unions, stating that public workers are overpaid and have far too generous health and pension plans.
So, what do their constituents have to say?
A full 71% of those polled said that they were against weakening the collective bargaining rights of public unions. In fact, a recent poll suggests that while the majority of Americans don't love public employee unions, they are not in support of weakening or all-together stripping them of their collective bargaining rights.
It gets better - you know how these flag waving jack-offs are always promising not to raise taxes? In the same recent poll, Americans said that they actually prefer raising taxes to cutting benefits and pay to public workers - dirty fucking socialists...oh wait, that's us.
You mean, we the people, want to help, we the people...? That's just too fucking weird.
Underneath these clouds of apathy, underneath the veils of nonchalant, laissez-faire arrogance, there is a group of Americans who don't want to see corporate America steal our last breaths of freedom and the pursuit of happiness?
Damn...well, if that's true, then couldn't we, possibly, just maybe...Do Something...?