Shit End of the Stick

Homeless Service Center - San Francisco

One of the things about America, and its culture of work your ass silly to receive minimum pay and benefits so that the rich can live like Little Lord Flauntleroys, is that the poor are perceived not so much as having problems and struggling to make it through life, as they are as just plain lazy, shiftless and no good. Yet their presence in some numbers is absolutely essential to the oligarchical class which wishes to point to them both to cast blame for anything they can think of, and second to serve as a negative example for the capitalists to point to as if to say, “See how lucky you are to have a job; those scum have nothing. So thank your lucky stars.”

Yeah, well, kiss my rosy red ass, you rat bastards! While the rich can easily afford their new BMWs, and Caribbean cruises, and A-Frames at Tahoe so as to enjoy their summer weekends or go skiing in the winter, the poor are meanwhile working (if at all) for minimum wages, and are being treated like crap at every turn. Theirs are always the first benefits to be cut, the first jobs to be laid off, the first ones to lose their pension benefits, and the ones who always, in blame and in reality, lose whatever little they have so that the wealthy can continue to squander the riches of America. Billions in corporate welfare is freely handed out, whilst the few mothers with young kids are told to get off their asses, leave their kids behind, and go slave away somewhere so some rich asshole can get even richer.

Dubya, a rather rich bastard and spokesperson himself, has squandered over $200 billion (and counting) in Iraq to make himself look like some sort of freaking savior, while his government hands out benefits to some totally concocted bullshit Medicare prescription drug program that has nothing whatsoever of value for the little guy, and maximum windfall profits for the pharmaceutical companies. Not only that, but the very fact they have given out payola to the pill makers, the government is now using as an excuse to cut little guys’ programs again. According, for instance, to the Associated Press:

Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House…The measure, which passed 250-151, contains $142.5 billion in spending under Congress' control for labor, health and education programs. That's essentially a freeze at current levels…But new demands, including $870 million to administer the new Medicare prescription drug program, have forced cuts in scores of programs…The cuts include the outright elimination of 48 programs whose current budgets total $1 billion. Among the programs to be eliminated is the Healthy Communities Access Program, currently funded at $83 million, which helps communities offer health care to the uninsured…Also eliminated is the $205 million budget for an Education Department grant program targeted at low-income and underachieving schools…that translates to an 84 percent cut — from $300 million down to $47 million — in training programs for doctors and nurses, and $806 million in cuts to Bush's No Child Left Behind education initiative, a more than 3 percent drop. Grants for local community-action agencies that help the poor would be cut in half, to $320 million…On Friday, the House also voted 219-185 to go on record against a Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation agreement with United Airlines letting United dump its employee-pension plans and their $9.8 billion shortfall on the PBGC, which could mean pension cuts of 25 percent to 50 percent for more than 120,000 United workers and retirees…United says the move is required to emerge from bankruptcy and supporters of the airline said that without the pension relief, 62,000 United employees could lose their jobs.

Just freaking great! Not only are we the only supposedly civilized nation on earth to not help our people with national health insurance, we are also among the very bottom when it comes to providing any kind of dignity to our poor, and to our troubled. Some “compassionate” democracy we are, huh? Our House of Representatives, which houses among the sleaziest members of any government anywhere, and the most heartless, and in particular the Republican contingent thereof, are nothing but power-crazed crooks and scoundrels, almost every last one of them psychologically certifiable. The United States must have the distinction of having the lowest caliber members of the lower parliament anywhere.

Our corporations, by the way, are little better. They regularly blackmail Congress and hence the American people by threatening either to lay people off, or raise prices if the government does such things as establish a livable wage, or requires them to live up to their pension guarantees. The above is simply another gross example of them having done so. Meanwhile the government has now cut veterans health care funding by another $1 billion.

So, hey, Homey, have a nice week!