Class warfare is alive and well in the United States of America, now that a sufficient number in the dominant cultural group are feeling the pinch!
Actually, I am amused but not surprised by Phil Gramm’s comments with respect to Americans having become a nation of whiners. Phil is simply another Washington caricature who has stayed in Washington far too long, without having any idea of what is going on with the people who he is supposed to be there to represent and neither does he care about the people!
In the past that kind of remark, in this representative democracy of ours, was reserved exclusively for black Americans (the minority group that has been disproportionately represented on the lower rungs of the American capitalist enterprise system). It would appear that the chickens have come home to roost given that many white Americans who used to look down their noses at their black counterparts are feeling the economic pinch and finding out what it means to be sold out.
White Americans, how does it feel to be referred to as a whiner, black Americans have experienced that kind of labeling for decades it would seem? The government and corporations that white Americans have staunchly praised and stood by for so many years (in deference to what black laborers experienced), are letting them down now, and as a result white Americans are speaking out just as their non-white counterparts have been doing!
Phil Gramm, if I owned or sat on the board of a corporation that paid me four hundred times the average salary of one of my rank and file wage earners, perhaps I would be like you in asking, why are they so jealous and what are they complaining about? But thank God Phil Gramm, I am not like you or your cohort group!
White Americans who work everyday, the ones who can still find jobs, are feeling the economic pinch more and as a result they are beginning to complain just as blacks did to no avail to their representatives in Washington DC. Phil forgot that he and others in Washington DC are there to represent the interests of the people and not to chastise the people.
And something had better get done for unlike black Americans, when the government isn’t working to the satisfaction of whites they will get their guns or drive tractors into the Reflecting Pool on the Capitol Mall claiming that they have a bomb or some other incendiary device aboard to blow up Washington DC. And the Supreme Court's recent politically motivated misinterpretation of The Constitution only bolsters your right to get your guns.
Perhaps Senator Obama wasn’t so wrong after all when he recently referred to America’s religious gun-toting marginalized, even though he wants black fathers to support their kids given the economic conditions in this country where these fathers cannot find jobs to support themselves!
The fact is, and I reiterate it, that white Americans won’t just sit by and complain decade after decade in the manner that black Americans have done, simply ask King George the third about that. And white Americans won’t march on Washington and simply sing songs like, We Shall Overcome.
The fact is that American wage earners are earning exceedingly more than that they did just two decades ago. However, even with increased earnings - the value of a dollar is clearly far less than it was twenty years ago when you control for inflation and greed. The average American does not need an economic adviser to tell them that something is wrong and that they are sinking while watching others get richer.
Middle-Class Americans have not forgotten a time when one age earner could work in an unskilled or even in a semi-skilled trade and earn enough money to support a family of five or ten, while one partner remained at home to manage the home front. What happened? I will tell you, greed, government collusion with a wealthy elite happened and the mistake of American sin the past who were willing to look the other way!
White Americans, who once looked the other way, are experiencing what black Americans have experienced for years, given the egregious misuse of the American worker by the greedy corporate elites who are being taken care of by policy wonks in Washington DC. Yes, it is our fault for outsourcing, depending upon and entrusting our futures to the government and to American corporations.
Just think about Phil Gramm for a moment, and who pays his salary or for he and his family's health benefits and retirement? Answer, it is the American taxpayer who takes care of Phil's family? If he or his family members need to go to the hospital or if they acquire medications, all they have to do is go to the hospital or get the drugs that they require thanks to the American taxpayer.
I suspect that it is time for American corporate leaders as well as for our government leaders, who have colluded with corporate America, to make some financial concessions! Let's cut their salaries and place some limits on their earning potential, then we will witness just how quickly things change around here! Yes, we need to place restrictions on what our leaders and corporate leaders can earn; they are getting paid too much. And how about these guys and gals, when they run short of money what do they do? Answer, they raise your rent, the cost of home ownerships, insurance rates...!
Phil Gramm and his family are secure, just like all other Americans in the upper percentile are thanks to the policies of George H. Bush over these past 7.5 years, and because we take care of him, his colleagues and the Bushes! And how Phil say thank you to the American, by whining himself and accusing those Americans that he and his family owe their existence to of being whiners?
The fact of the matter is that the corporations and corporate lobbyists that Phil Gramm and his senatorial and Congressional cohorts take care of, and the rest of the wealthy are not whining at all thanks to George Bush. And neither are those individuals who reside in the upper third of income earners in this nation - they are not whining because they all received tax breaks from George Bush.
America's corporations are being well taken care of and if they get in trouble the government will immediately come to their rescue. Black Americans and others who are perennially at the lower end of the economic scale can take some comfort in knowing that when other Americans feel the pinch, they will speak up just as they have been doing - we didn't do anything wrong. Speaking up is what you do in a Representative Democracy, it should not be considered whining.
The average American is not a whiner - it's worse than that! The average American is stupid for having permitted this gross indiscretion to have gone on as long as it has gone on, while some Americans benefited at the expense of other Americans. The solution may not be to simply change the policy in Washington, we may have to change the system altogether because the Phil Gramm’s of the world, who have made a living in Washington off of American taxpayers, have learned to manipulate the system so that it will inure to the benefit of the minority, themselves - they no longer represent the people if they ever did.
And with respect to Phil's contention that by definition the country is not in a recession because there have not been two quarters..., there are many Americans Phil that have been in a recession for decades. Just get in your vehicle sometimes Phil and instead of proceeding down the Whitehurst Freeway to Georgetown or out to Great Falls, take a 5-mile drive down East Capitol, or up North Capitol where less than a mile from the Capitol you will see Americans who have thrived under recessional conditions for decades, while you and your ilk on Capitol Hill did nothing about it.
Phil is an insensitive bum who like most of his cohorts needs to get in the real world and thanks to the American taxpayers, their lives are recession proof, no matter what the real conditions happen to be for the majority of Americans!
And I approve this message!
Peace & Grace
Rev. C. Solomon
Addenda: I am voting Third Party this year, and let the chips fall where they may!
And I heard a saying once that goes like this: When a majority suffers, a minority is in trouble! The Czars from the old Russian empire, if they could speak, could tell what happens when the majority suffers!
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