Do Not Blame Mexicans and Blacks: Misdirected American Class Warfare & The American Market Place!

When the majority suffers, a minority is in trouble! author unknown

I had the good fortune of sitting and rapping with a couple of American citizens yesterday at the San Jose Flea Market located in San Jose California. Having said that, I am a man, I don't shop; I simply wanted to take a commemorative walk down memory lane, ergo I spent most of my time there talking.

My purchases, at America's largest Flea Market, amounted to 2 white nectarines, 1 white peach and a half-pound of peanuts that cost me a dollar.

Now speaking of white, I said to the two gentlemen that I met who joined me at a picnic table, one of them who had just excoriated 'Mexicans' for taking 'our jobs' , that he was playing right into the man's hands. I reminded them that Texas and other parts of America belonged to Mexico, and that they were simply returning to America and reclaiming what had been stolen from them centuries ago. I also added that just as America walked into and took over Hawaii, and other nations up to and including Iraq, God permitted 14 million Mexicans to simply walk into America and take over in many of the border states.

One of the gentleman asked, what do you mean? I said that the wealthy would like nothing more than to have most Americans distracted, and to the extent that they are engaging in a kind of internal class warfare against each other, as opposed to addressing the real source of the problem. Brother I said, you want to fight over scraps with someone who is in the same socio-economic class that you are in, when the majority of the wealth of this nation is being hoarded by approximately 5% of its population.

Many Americans are doing the same thing when it comes to actual military warfare. Too many Americans are willing to go overseas, and destroy the lives of individuals who are in the same economic predicament that they are in, just to keep a group of wealthy Americans rich. And if you ask some of them, why did you join the military? Many will tell you that they could not find a job, so they joined the military.

They are too obtuse to realize that they have become mercenaries for a closed wealthy American elite group, who use them and pay them a mere military pittance, in order to destroy their enemies or to co-opt their oil or land.

John McCain, actually voted against a sizable increase that would have benefited military mercenaries who represent the same individuals that he is so willing to have occupy another nation (for 100 years if necessary), while he decides which one of his homes he will stay at home in and enjoy.

John and others in his group, from the President right down to the Vice President ..., won’t share their combined wealth $200M and more with the mercenaries who are being sent to kill other people like them. The ones that they are being sent to kill are a part of struggling families with bills to pay, just like them. And too boot, many of these folks haven’t done a thing to the USA.

The wealthy simply crave resources, like oil from other nations, in order to enrich themselves. And they use other people to murder the nationals in order nations, in order to require their resources and in order to control and exploit their markets, not for the reasons that the mercenaries have been given!

Today, I enjoyed rapping with a brother on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley who had an interesting way of explaining things, let’s call it ‘straight talk’. He said, I am telling everyone that I can to vote for Senator Obama, because ‘the man’ is going to try, using my own words, to steal the election again! I was proud of this brother, a son of a black Naval Officer, who resides at the Alameda Naval Base who was 3 years my senior.

He went on to explain that Obama has to win the [perfectoral...]. I couldn’t understand what he was articulating at that point, so I asked, are you referring to the Electoral College? And in brother style he answered, "yes, that is the 'motherf@**//', that I am talking about"! Now brother man had his own way of expressing things, however, brotha man understood that the internal class war must cease between individuals of like kind and class, and that the real war has to be levied against a system, and the ones who manipulate the system in order to retain the majority of America's wealth.

Back to the flea market, I explained to what turned out to be a sizable group of listeners who joined in to listen to our discussion, that Senator McCain said one thing that was true in last week's debate to Senator McCain. He rightfully explained to Senator Obama that America's major corporations are not creating any new jobs, and that it is small businesses that are creating jobs for Americans.

If you think about it, large corporations as McCain pointed out have been down-sizing their American labor force. Just a few weeks ago, Hewlett-Packard laid off 24,000 employees worldwide. Yahoo will follow suit next week, and these and other corporations have been streamlining their forces,taking advantage of a cheaper labor force overseas. Now at the same time they are demanding more productivity from their already streamlined labor force domestically and abroad! Why are they doing this?

They are doing this so that they can increase their bottom line, which means that there will increased dividends for their shareholders, and for the corporate executive elite group! Well, I asked then, when is enough enough? The idea of America corporate owners is that the reason for the corporation is to maximize profits. However, to the rest of us Americans who have caused these corporations to be larger than life (some with account receivables) that are larger than the GDP of more than one or two nations of of the world, we believe that these corporations have an abiding duty, or should have one to be good corporate citizens and to share the wealth!

As I explained to these gentleman in particular, the other problem with these corporations is that Americans have subsidized these corporations for years by giving them considerable tax breaks. And their way of repaying Americans is to refuse to hire Americans or to share the wealth? There is also double indemnity here, given the same corporations who pay far less to have their products produced elsewhere, import the products back to America and sell them to Americas, like sports wear for example, at an exorbitant price.

And where does all of the extra money that is earned as a result of using cheap labor go, I asked? Answer, it goes into the pockets of greedy shareholders and corporate executives.

I also added that McCain was right, even though he didn't mean to say what I am going to write.
1). Senator Obama ought to rethink his position, and give tax breaks to the smaller corporations, S-Type and others, who will produce jobs for Americans, and tax the larger corporation to the max.
2). Americans ought to boycott America's large corporations who will not provide jobs for Americans, particularly those that pay executives 148 times what they pay their average employees. What happened to the defacto social contract with American citizens?
3). Americans ought to contract with multi-national corporations outside of America, agreeing to purchase their products that will be manufactured in the USA, and built for example by an American labor force.

One gentleman added, and then the American Corporations would simply move overseas. I explained that they are already doing that. Often, some large American corporations are maintain their headquarters in America, however, many multi-national American Corporations have already moved production overseas.

Some in my listening audience of a dozen or more were perplexed, I scared them. They did not seem to understand that the corporate American political elite have been at war with the American proletariat (working class) for some time now.

It has been their plan going back to the founders to control the wealth of this nation, and to retain a lion's share of the wealth of this nation for themselves, and there plan had been working, as long as there was enough low-hanging fruit leftover to satisfy the masses.

However, the pickings are becoming slimmer and slimmer. When one individual can earn three and four-hundred million dollars per annum, while another person is working hard but cannot earn a sufficiency or living wage, something has gone wrong. And the someone who is hoarding the wealth is in trouble, including those government officials who serve the will of the corporate elites and 300,000 registered lobbyists (who represent these corporations) instead of American citizens.

The latest economic/ financial crisis in America should help to wake the majority of American citizens up from their sleep, if nothing else does! Last week, a gentleman wrote me saying that African-Americans were responsible for the current financial collapse in America. In fact he named the College that he currently attends, where in his economics class, this kind of nonsense had purportedly being taught. Now who is stirring up class warfare I ruminated

I remind him and all of my readers that this precedent has been in place, and we have just witnessed its residual effects which were apparent going back to the collapse at Enron, and in the telecommunications less than a decade ago. Pure and simple uncensored greed destroyed those organizations, not black people, and the same thing recently took place in America's financial market.

Venal and sophisticated profiteers who have been in league with elected and appoint government officials, have persistently exploited the working poor in order to garner their ill-gotten gain. Any questionable loans by any bank should have been turned down, regardless of race. And many were turned down by reputable financial organizations. Others approved of questionable loans, in order to increase their bottom line, not caring because they were going to pass the ultimate risk on to someone else!

Greed, derivatives and Americans politicians were and are to blame for the current financial collapse in America, that taxpayers had to ante up for in order to rescue the greed barons. I believe that it is time for class warfare in America, for enough is enough. I believe that it is time to turn America's economic system into a democratic economic system. Americans admire Japan and how democratic socialism operates in Japan and other democratic nations. So what is wrong with having democratic socialism to operate in America?

There have to be controls implemented here, of the kind that are not in place with collusion and complicity from government officials, put there to benefit the wealthy.

As I repeated before, when first President George H.W. Bush, Lee Iacocca, and other American automobile corporate executives visited Japan nearly two decades ago, the Japanese executives who were involved in the meetings said something very telling about the American executives. The Japanese executives described the American executives as gangsters. And they were right then, and they are right now!

Wealthy oil barons, not black Americans, nearly destroyed the California economy just about a decade ago, when greed trumped morality, and now by using similar strategies, other greedy barons in disparate industries and doing the same thing to America! The sad part about members of the 'get rich or die trying groups', is that they never have enough, and they continuously work on new strategies, hoping to figure out how to get more from the lower working market classes of American citizens!

Love, Peace & Grace
Rev. C. Solomon

Addenda: It is not axiomatic that the wealth of many of America's corporations is a result of earned wealth. The latter has more to do with government complicity, the manipulation of the laws on the books and lobbying, the use of the American military ... that provides many American corporations with the lions share of their undeserved wealth!

I spent part of my day again in People's Park in Berkeley California, among a mass group of America's homeless, trying to encourage them to hang on and to develop a system that works for them! The rest of us will have to devise a system within a system that works for us, as opposed to continuing to be exploited by a wealthy elite who view the rest of us as nothing more than 'the market'!