Week of 09/12/2011

“Busy Ness” and Her Games
– by David Matthews 2

Once upon a time there was an “exotic” dancer named Ness who danced her nights away at the Free Market Gentlemen’s Club. Folks called her “Busy Ness” because that was what she claimed she always was, busy, busy, busy.

Ness was the most popular of the dancers in the club, and for good reason. It’s not because of her figure, which wasn’t as “small” and petit as she continually said it was; rather it was because she knew how to work a room to get every customer there to give her money. It didn’t matter if they were there alone or in a group, if they were celebrating or trying to forget the day’s troubles, “Busy Ness” made sure that they each gave her some attention by the end of the night… and some money, of course. It was always about the money.

Of course the men in the club would say that the attention she gave them was worth it. She made them feel special. She made them feel important. No matter how they felt when they came in, Ness would make them feel great by the time they left for the night. And of course they tipped her well for it, and the more attention she gave them, the more money they gave her. It was, after all, always about the money.

As with all other dancers in the club, Ness had her collection of favorites. These would be regulars that she could rely on to be there every week, or even every night, to spend money on her, and often on nobody but her. She knew them only by her personal nicknames, like “Brit” or “Frenchy” or “Little Italy”.

But there was one regular that she didn’t need to invent a nickname for… and that was Sam.

The other dancers referred to Sam as Ness’s “Sugar Uncle”. He appeared to be older than Ness, although Ness would say that appearances were deceiving. He was there almost since the first day the club was opened, and everyone in the club knew who he was.

Sam was a simple customer. He had simple tastes in drinks, and the bartender would have his beer ready for him by the time he walked in and he took his usual seat at the end of the bar. The bouncers knew that Sam was a pretty calm customer. Sometimes he’d get a little rowdy, but never to the point where he’d cause trouble. When Ness was busy with other customers, Sam would play pool, or he’d watch the movies on the little TV on the other side of the bar. He was always patient, knowing that Ness would always be back to see him before closing.

But there was something else about Ness that stood out above all the other dancers in the club… unlike all the other dancers, Ness would never “reveal” everything. She would always show “just enough”, and she would talk about showing even more, but no matter how much money she got, even in the private VIP room, she would always show “just enough” and nothing more.

Everyone thought that if Ness would show “everything” to anyone in the club, it would be to Sam. After all, he had been there the longest and he stayed with her almost since day one. He was always there when she needed him, supporting her through thick and thin. She had his cellphone number on speed-dial, and he always answered when she called. When she would get in trouble with the bills, he’d bail her out without any kind of conditions. He’d shower her with gifts on her birthday or on special occasions. He’d get her lunch and dinner when she was tired of the club’s food. They’d talk about going out on dates and even on vacation together. Sadly, though, it was just talk. But the rumor persisted that if there was anyone that would see “everything” of Ness in the VIP rooms, it would be for Sam before it would be for anyone else.

Ness would tell Sam everything about her problems. There was always a new bill coming up, some new expense that needed to be covered. And Sam would be generous with his monetary gifts to her, no matter how much it would hurt him personally. No matter if he was late on a few of his own bills or if he had to cut back on things like food, he would always made sure there was money for Ness.

Like the other dancers, Busy Ness would say that she was in a relationship once upon a time, but that she didn’t have the time to be seeing anyone outside of the club anymore. That was why she said she could only see Sam in the club. But every so often she’d call him at home to make sure he would be going to the club to see her. Sometimes she’d call him up in the middle of the day to ask him to change his normal days that he’d visit, which he would do eagerly because he believed that it would mean more time with her, but no matter how close she supposedly was to his home, she’d never pay him a visit. It was always in the club, and no-place else.

Dancers came and went in Free Market, as was the nature of the gentleman’s club. The only constants seemed to be Busy Ness and her “Sugar Uncle” Sam, but even their interactions had their ups and downs. Every so often their relationship entered what Sam best called a “dry spell”, which would be when Ness would say that she needed to work even harder with some of the other customers instead of spending all of her time with him. That often meant that Sam would be spending most of his time in the club by himself. Even though Ness would offer to have other dancers spend time with him, Sam always said he would wait patiently for her.

It was during one of these long dry spells that the club hired a new dancer named Penny Foyer. Penny was a fresh face and eager to build a following in the club. She was given a rundown of the rules, including the unofficial ones from the other dancers. The really big one was to stay away from “Busy Ness’s boys”, especially Sam. Be polite, she was told, even be friendly, but never try to take regulars away from “Busy Ness”.

But as Penny watched Sam spend long hours by himself at the bar or at the pool tables, she wondered what kind of hold Busy Ness had over Sam to allow him to be neglected like that. She checked with the other dancers and found out that Sam would always be there with at least three hundred dollars on him, which he would spend mostly on Ness. Even if they never went to the VIP room, he’d still give Ness the money, sometimes for no reason other than because he intended to spend it on her anyway.

Penny Foyer thought someone should speak to Sam about that, because it just seemed wrong. She waited until Sam went to the pool tables to approach him. She offered to play a friendly game with him while he waited for Busy Ness. He was a fair player; not really skilled, but certainly not a novice. She let him win a game and then talked him into a second one. While he racked up the balls, she let him in on “the secret”.

“Did you know Ness is living with Cash?” she asked him.

Cash Profit was the club’s dee-jay. He played the songs that the dancers moved to, and of all of the club’s employees, he was the one person that Sam could never interact with.

“She’s been living with him for years,” Penny told Sam. “Seriously, the only reason why she’s giving you the cold shoulder now is because they had an argument the other week about still stringing you along.”

Sam really didn’t respond to the news. They finished the game, which he lost, and he thanked Penny for her honesty before returning to his favorite stool at the bar.

Later that night, as the club was closing, Penny returned to the dressing room to find Ness waiting.

“You told him, didn’t you?” Ness asked Penny. “You told Sam about me and Cash.”

“He deserved to know he was wasting his time,” Penny said.

Ness had to restrain herself from doing something violent, especially in front of others.

“You know he’s in love with you,” Penny continued.

“Why do you think he keeps coming back year after year?” Busy Ness blurted out. “Of course Sam loves me! My little ‘Sugar Uncle’ has been in love with me ever since he first came here. They all fall in love with me at some point. Britt, Frenchy, Little Italy, Chin A, Indy, Russkie, they all fall in love with me. They all do what they do to woo me and get me to give them attention. That’s the name of the game in this club! It’s about teasing them to get what we want! But let’s get brutally honest here… I’m in love with Cash Profit. I’ve always been in love with Cash Profit, and at the end of the day, the only person that I will go home to and the only person who will see everything about me is Cash Profit.”

“Then why not tell them the truth?” Penny asked. “Why don’t you at least tell Sam the truth about you and Cash?”

Busy Ness was taken back by the bluntness of the question. “Why don’t I...? Because Sam gives me money! Every week he shows up with money just for me. Money that I use to pay the bills and buy new clothes. Money that we put away for the day when I won’t be able to tease the others. And as long as Sam thinks there’s a chance that I’ll share with him something I won’t give anyone else, he’ll come back here every week with that money. And now… thanks to you… I’ll have to sweet-talk him even more just so he’ll come back.”

The bluntness of Busy Ness’s answer shocked Penny Foyer. She never realized just how cruel and calculated Ness really was until then.

But what shocked Penny even more was the following week, Sam was right back at the club, sitting at his favorite stool, talking with Busy Ness like the previous week never happened.

Penny tried to make sense of it all as she watched Ness take Sam by the hand towards the VIP room. Even if Sam never knew that Busy Ness and Cash Profit were married, even if he only knew that Ness and Cash were just living together, Penny couldn’t figure out why Sam would be willing to keep coming back week after week, throwing his hard-earned money into a dream that really was nothing more than that.

It was business as usual for the Free Market Gentlemen’s Club as the night moved by one song at a time, one unfulfilled fantasy at a time.

Week of 09/05/2011

Honor Workers With A Real Jobs Program
– by David Matthews 2

Have you ever looked up the origins of the American holiday known as Labor Day?

It’s not a happy story. There’s actually a lot of guilt involved.

Labor Day was created as a federal holiday in 1894 following a bloody massacre committed by US Marshalls and members of the US Army under orders from President Grover Cleveland. The victims were all members of the American Railway Union, which back in 1893 was engaged in a very caustic workers strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago. 13 strikers were murdered, 34 wounded, and damages were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (In today’s dollars that a few million.) To compensate for his role in the carnage that took place, Cleveland and the Congress made the first Monday in September into a federal holiday to honor the trade and labor organizations.

How insulting, then, to find out that on the same week that we honor workers, the President of the United States had to haggle over when he could address the nation and Congress over his latest plan to “deal with” the millions of workers that have been maliciously and callously forsaken by this nation.

It has become painfully clear – at least to those not in Washington – that the key to our economic recovery rests with putting the millions of Americans that have lost their jobs back to work. The GOP, the willing whores of Big Corporate, intentionally wrote off those millions of Americans so their friends in Wall Street could reap record profits. Meanwhile, the Democrats, being the perpetual fail machines that they are, have so far skated around the issue of putting those millions of Forsaken Americans back to work. They coddled and catered to the “Too Big To Fail” banks and the insurance companies and the same Wall Street Masters of the Universe that have been pillaging America like barbarian hoards for their own profit margins, hoping against hope that the pillagers would somehow do what’s right on their own accord sooner rather than later.

While Corporate America has been busy shaking down this nation for every penny it can steal, millions of Americans have been intentionally abandoned. Millions that are eager and willing to work, eager and willing to get the economy started again, eager and willing to get their lives back. Millions that have been far more deserving of their attention and government assistance than any member of Wall Street could ever be, and yet they’ve been ignored at best and maliciously slandered at worst. Millions that have become the Forsaken Americans.

These Forsaken Americans are the very people that the economy needs to be working again. It is their productivity that would provide the payroll taxes needed to offset the budget deficit. It is their incomes that would buy the houses that have been stolen by the banks and left to rot. It is their incomes that would purchase the furniture that would fill those homes, and buy and maintain those cars that would be parked in the driveways. Their money would pay for the clothes purchased at the stores and pay for the food consumed at the restaurants. Their money that would keep the local banks solvent so they wouldn’t have to rely on criminal tricks. Their money that would pay for local taxes so cities and towns could pay for the police and pay for the firefighters and keep the roads paved.

And all it would take is for the business world to hire those millions of Forsaken Americans.

There is no legitimate excuse for Big Corporate to not do that. After all, they were the ones that promised they’d do that if Congress and the White House sustained the Bush Tax Cuts. They were the ones that sent out the GOP talking point memos that said that sustaining those cuts would result in job creation. Instead of making good on their promise, they took the money and kept posting profits and then complained like their own spoiled children that it “wasn’t enough”.

So now President Obama has finally decided to supposedly “do something” to deal with the “problem” of the Forsaken Americans. It is a “problem” that he has been talking about and talking about and talking about ever since he took office but he hasn’t really tried to resolve. While he’s been talking, more and more Americans have joined the ranks of the Forsaken Americans, and the economy has slowly been sliding from abysmal to even bleaker still, and all of the political spinning can neither change nor dilute that assessment anymore.

And yet, if history combined with rumors of what this “new program” will contain are true, then the millions upon millions of Forsaken Americans will be forsaken by Obama yet again.

Let’s break it down…

Infrastructure funding: Roads and bridges… the eternal sacred cow for the Obama Fail. Yes, they are all coming apart, but that’s because there aren’t enough taxpaying Americans to fund those programs. Throwing tax money at infrastructure programs is nothing more than the economic equivalent of treading water. It solves absolutely nothing in the long-term, and it fuels the neo-con talking point about “rewarding unions”, which means the GOP would love to do nothing more than to slash this idea into little pieces. If Obama put more emphasis into bitch-slapping Corporate America into hiring those millions of Forsaken Americans, then eventually you’d see the tax money needed to fix the roads and bridges.

Greater emphasis on education: An eternal sacred cow of the White House, regardless of who is in there. Everyone wants to be the “education president” and every single one of them has championed programs that have ultimately failed the American people. We’ve gone from “Johnny can’t read” to “Waiting for Superman” to the Atlanta School System’s rampant cheating scandal. When you realize that the bulk of the Forsaken Americans are college-educated, including people with Masters and doctorates, then you realize that this is yet another treading water program, not to mention another one that feeds the neo-con talking point about “rewarding unions”.

Extending unemployment benefits: If Obama brings this idea to Congress then it will be Dead-On-Arrival. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It is dead, and the GOP has no qualms whatsoever telling the Forsaken Americans to “drop dead” alongside it. Half the Congress has been spending the past two years maliciously slandering the Forsaken Americans for having the “audacity” of losing their jobs and not finding new ones immediately, and they have repeatedly allowed those benefits to expire with absolutely no care whatsoever about those millions of Americans. Plus the recent budget and debt ceiling “compromises” have already gutted those benefits to the new members of the Forsaken Americans. Do you really think that the malicious narcissists in control of the Congress are willing to see those political victories overturned just because Obama makes a speech? Even if they were willing to “extend” already-existing benefits, they sure as hell will not sign on to any program that gives a further extension to those that have already exhausted their benefits. In other words, it’s still “Drop Dead” for the 99-ers.

Job assistance to veterans: This actually could stand a chance at passing given how conservatives and neo-conservatives have a raging war fetish. Helping out the veterans newly-returned from Iraq and Afghanistan get new jobs? Oh they’d jump at the chance! Unfortunately this does very little to help the rest of the Forsaken Americans out there. You know, the ones that were working and “supporting the troops”. It’s a good idea, but it’s still a drop in the overall bucket that is our problem.

Payroll tax holiday for hiring the long-term jobless: Remember when the GOP promised that they would never support a tax hike for anyone? Well apparently there is an exception to that promise. There is already a payroll tax holiday that was set up from the Bush years that is set to expire on January 1^st. Obama wants this extended, but apparently some in the GOP, for some strange reason, think that it should expire. Maybe it’s because it’s one of those tax breaks that doesn’t benefit the wealthy. The problem with this program is that the tax holiday in and of itself is apparently too small for businesses to want to take advantage of it.

So what do we have so far? We have programs that fail to gain traction against the rampant problem of unemployment, programs that do absolutely nothing to help those Forsaken Americans that truly need help, and programs that probably will never see the light of day because of the rampant narcissism of the GOP.

Let’s get brutally honest here… the American people need a jobs program that actually works! Our whole economic recovery rests with getting those millions of Forsaken Americans back to work. And they need to get back to work today, not six or seven months later after spending money they don’t have on education programs that don’t guarantee employment. The Forsaken Americans have no more time or money to waste waiting around, and every day that they are doing just that spirals the rest of the nation further and further down the economic drain.

If President Obama wants to go through all of that political wrangling to get a public address to Congress, then his proposed “jobs program” better do far more than offer up the wasted ideas already proposed and done with minimal effect. He needs to deliver nothing short of a Roosevelt-style jobs program from the 1930’s, not to mention a verbal castigation on the mindsets of those that have maliciously slandered those millions of Forsaken Americans that are desperately needed for our recovery to actually begin. He needs to abandon the Orwellian redefining of “job creation” as being a job “created or saved”, since it has done nothing but waste our time and erode what little confidence the American people have left in him to actually do his own job. He also needs to get rid of his so-called “advisors” that have so far done nothing but convince him to let this nation continue to rot.

Labor Day became a national holiday because of a needless massacre waged by the federal government. Today a much different massacre is being committed on millions of American people and their families. It is a massacre of spirit and a slow and painful death of our economy. And if the President fails to address that with a Roosevelt-style response, then he will be treated less like FDR and more like Herbert Hoover, and the next layoff will be his own.

Week of 08/29/2011

How To Destroy A Person
– by David Matthews 2

This is going to sound very depressing, and I apologize in advance for making it so, but there are things that need to be said and they need to be said now and not later when most people would be asking. There are things going on right now that follow a certain pattern. That pattern needs to be recognized now so that others can try to do whatever they can to prevent it from running its full course.

And bear in mind this is really not meant to be a “how to”. Rather, this article serves as a warning to the actions going on in the here-and-now. These are not hypothetical situations. These are real, and some of the practices have been employed by some of our most well-known institutions.

Human beings are known for many things that no other animal on Earth could ever do. Some are great things. Some are really great and miraculous. We can invent some truly wonderful things. But some things we do are absolutely diabolical; an evil that would be far more lasting than any cardinal sin committed.

For instance we can destroy a fellow human being.

Now when I say “destroy”, I don’t mean kill, murder, or otherwise extinguish the actual life of another human being. No, that’s actually far easier to do. We don’t even have to do it intentionally.

But to actually destroy a human being… oh, that takes conscious thought. That takes intentional, malicious, and cognitive consideration.

When you destroy a human being, you don’t really kill that person. Not immediately anyway.

In fact, for the full effect of the destruction to be appreciated, you have to have that human being alive for as long as possible so you can relish in your handiwork and you can point others to it as well. Being able to gloat about it is part of the reason why some people cherish in destroying others. Yes, that person will eventually die, but they will do so with the knowledge that you actually destroyed them first.

Yes, to destroy a human being, you do so from the inside-out. You do so with their soul, with their spirit, with their will, with everything that makes them who and what they are.

You start with the little things. Find something they like. Something that they enjoy. Something that could define them. Take that away from them. Make them partake in the things that they would rather not do, and convince them that this would make for a good substitution.

Think for a minute about all of the things that a doctor or a special interest group suddenly told you was “dangerous” for your own good. “That morning coffee and Danish is bad for you! It’s clogging your arteries! Stop having it! Start eating these kinds of foods instead, and don’t add any extra seasoning to it. They taste bland, but at least you’ll live an extra year or two.”

It’s no coincidence that religious leaders are fixated on eliminating all physical and psychological pleasures in one’s life. It has nothing to do with spiritual rewards or living a “moral life”, and everything to do with being able to control their followers. Work harder with less, they say, and take pleasure in it. In fact, take pleasure in any kind of misery one is going through.

The next step is for you to take away who they are. Take away everything that defines them as individuals, as human beings. Reduce them to a number or a nickname. Don’t acknowledge dates that are important to them. Don’t value things that they consider important.

Put them on YOUR schedule, and refuse to acknowledge anything resembling a schedule for them. You need to DEMAND they be at your beck-and-call 24/7. Call them at all random hours. Eating dinner? Too bad. Doctor’s appointment? Reschedule it. Sleep? Tell them they’ll get enough when they’re dead.

Think of all of the dehumanization that goes on today. Think of the number of times you’re reduced to being an account number or your Social Security Number. Talk to a human being? Are you kidding? No, you need to go to a website or call an automated 800 number.

Personal information and privacy mean nothing to the almighty banking institutions. They whore our information out to telemarketers, who then feel perfectly fine to call us at all times of the day or night. Oh, but their own operations are classified.

Now this is the point when most people and most institutions stop. In fact, the elimination of things we like and also of who we are as individuals are two things done both in prison and in military training, and they’re done rather quickly, whereas everyone else does this gradually. And in those other instances, it’s done with a reason. The military does this to then build that person up into a soldier. And traditionally the penal institutions did this also so they could supposedly help rehabilitate the prisoners. Take away their names and all forms of identification in order to then build them up and make them better people. (Okay, it’s not how it’s used today, but that was how it was when the system was first thought up by the Quakers.)

But you’re not interested in building someone up, are you? No, you’re interested in destroying that person completely. So you don’t want to build them up after you’ve torn them down; you just need to keep that person torn down. And to do that, you need to take away the last thing that would keep them going… hope.

Let’s get brutally honest here… people can endure a lot if they believe that what they are going through is temporary. As long as people believe that help is coming, that salvation is at hand, that things will get better, that the torment they are going through is coming to an end, they will do anything they can to survive.

So what you do is you offer “hope”… and then take it away from them.

Dangle something they want, something that would make their suffering worth it. Offer help. Offer salvation. Offer the joy or love or pleasure that they’ve been deprived of all this time. Promise that promotion. Promise that “night of bliss”. Promise to recognize their actions or achievements. Then take it away. Claim that you never really “promised” these things. Forget you even made the “offer” in the first place. It’s business-as-usual.

It also helps if you can game the system to your advantage. Cheat. Rig the rules so that no matter what happens, you always win, and you always get away with everything. This is important, because if your intended victim believes that “the system” will help them, then that builds up hope for them, and that needs to be taken away as well.

Any of this look or sound familiar?

The banking systems get away with everything. Nobody goes to prison for screwing over America. The people that orchestrated our recession sit comfortably in positions of power and authority, immune from any kind of accountability. Political parties play this highly-orchestrated game of pretending to offer “change”, only to then quietly side with the status quo. They promise reforms that end up fixing nothing. Don’t like it? Too bad; it’s either this or “the other guy”, who is just the same and will play the same games.

Of course the hard part with this portion is that you have to do this constantly. You can’t really give them something to hope for. Once they’re down, you have to keep kicking them. They can’t be allowed to put their trust in anything except for more and more misery.

It takes time to implement, and obviously you can’t afford to let up for very long, lest those you’ve been tormenting decide to do something rather “tragic”, but after a while, you too can take pride in the fact that you’ve destroyed a human being.

Of course once you’ve started with one human being, you could then move up to a whole group of people. After all, that kind of ability is addictive. It’s like popping bubble-wrap… you can’t just stop at destroying one of them. Maybe you would want to destroy even a whole segment of the populace, easily segregated by social, religious, or economic differences. Then, maybe you could even set your sights on a whole nation. But by then, you might end up meeting with a few more people that are already doing that on that kind of large scale.

Remember… the purpose of this article is not to serve as a “how-to”, but rather as a warning to the changes going on in the here-and-now. There is some truth to the late Kurt Cobain’s saying “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

Week of 08/22/2011

The Repeat That Isn’t
– by David Matthews 2

Imagine you’re on a boat with your friends in the middle of the ocean and suddenly you realize that the engine has stalled and the boat is starting to sink.

“We’ve sprung a leak!” someone exclaims.

So everyone stops what they’re doing and they see a hole at the bottom of the boat full of water and it has waterlogged the engine. Everyone gets out buckets and they start bailing out the water. They bail and they bail and they bail, and then someone manages to start up the engine again and take the boat back to shore, and everyone cheers because they think they’ve gotten past the crisis and they’re heading home.

But then they discover that more water is coming in and the boat is starting to sink.

“We’ve sprung another leak!” someone else says.

But is that really a second leak? Or did someone forget something really important?

The word going about in the media is… “Second Recession”.

Standard & Poors dropped our debt rating, blaming Washington’s aggravated political dysfunction for not having the confidence needed to pay their debts. Everyone is making a big deal out of this. Wall Street is in an absolute panic. Markets are going up and down, up and down, up and down. Go ahead and make a sexual joke about it, because we’re all getting screwed anyway. Gold goes up, gold goes down, futures are falling faster than the sky and we have a whole new batch of Chicken Littles running about screaming “Second Recession! Second Recession! The economy is falling! The economy is falling!”

There’s just one little problem with that assessment of doom and gloom…

It’s not true. Not all of it anyway.

Oh the decline in the economy is true. It is happening.

What is not true is the belief that this is a “Second Recession” or even the threat of a “Second Recession”. Either of those things implies that America somehow got out of the first recession, and that just did not happen, despite the lies being spewed from Washington.

Let’s go back to that leaking boat analogy. You’ve been bailing and bailing and bailing out the water from the boat, someone got the boat engine started so you can head back to shore, and everyone cheers because they falsely believe that “the worst” is over with. Then you discover that you’re taking on more water and the boat is sinking.

What did you forget?

You forgot to patch up the hole at the bottom of the boat.

Now is that a “second leak”? No. It’s still the same leak and it is still the same crisis. You just never finished what needed to be done.

The same principle applies to this economy.

Let’s get brutally honest here… you cannot claim that we are in or approaching a “Second Recession” if the factors behind the “First Recession” were never really resolved. Yes we “bailed” and we “bailed” and we “bailed” out the banks and Wall Street, and the profits started to “move” again. But that does not mean that we fixed all of the problems with the recession.

Unemployment is still a major problem in America. That never went away. The only thing that happened was that over eight million Americans that lost their jobs were forsaken upon by Washington. Abandoned by the liberals, slandered by the conservatives, their gradual removal from the “official” unemployment numbers as they exhausted their benefits gave the politicians the excuse to falsely claim that the “danger had passed”, when in fact it still remains to this day. These people have lost their savings, lost their homes, lost their futures, and lost any kind of hope that things will get better for them.

But that’s not all that went unresolved. Bank failures continue unabated. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are still destroying families and whole neighborhoods, and that’s not counting the malicious damage being caused by the banks through their robo-signing scams. Not only are these not being addressed, but in the cases of out-and-out criminal activity, the banks are going to be allowed to get away with their crimes with just a pittance of a fine. And once that is a done deal, the foreclosures and bankruptcies will escalate yet again. The state and local governments are already dreading that moment, even as they are finalizing those get-out-of-jail-forever deals with the banks.

Had these problems been addressed before declaring the Great Recession “over”, then the economists and politicians could rightly claim that what we’re facing is either an actual or potential “Second Recession” or even a “double-dip recession”, but really this is the same recession covered over in political whitewash and media spin. The politicians literally wrote off over eight million Americans just so they could fly their “Mission Accomplished” banner for the economy.

The economic leak was never plugged on this ship-of-state. All the politicians did was waste their time and our money in bailing out the banks, bailing out Wall Street, and keeping things afloat just enough to stop sinking. But the leak continues, the water of misery continues to flow in, and now we’re sinking yet again. And it is the same leak, not a brand new one; so please stop insulting our intelligence and pretending that this is something that is either new or different, and just do what needed to be done in the first place to plug it.

Week of 08/15/2011

If They Gave A Dollar
– by David Matthews 2

“If I had a nickel…”

I was thinking about that little statement when the subject came up to the tired arguments being made by members of the GOP. If I had a nickel for every time someone said something over and over again… I could afford a latte at Starbucks.

Maybe it would be better if we updated that old saying. We gotta take inflation into account, after all. We use that excuse to justify high gas prices, so the opposite should also apply when it comes to that old saying that starts off with “If I had…”

So the thought occurred to me that maybe we’re taking the wrong approach when it comes to politicians and our economic morass. The politicians have pretty much been operating under the premise that they are immune from any kind of accountability for their actions, so they’ve been launching verbal mortar shells at anything and anyone they don’t suck up to them and their grand schemes. Maybe instead of criticizing the use of the verbal mortar shells, we should tax them on it.

There’s plenty of precedence behind this. The conservatives want the FCC to fine broadcasters for fleeting explicatives. The liberals want to force Americans to buy insurance whether they can afford to or not. So let’s give them both a taste of their own medicine and tax them for their overused and tired buzzwords and catchphrases and phony arguments.

The beauty of it all is that it doesn’t have to be THAT expensive. We’re not talking $250,000 or even $100,000 for a penalty. For their excessive use, it could be as small as a dollar.

If they each gave a dollar…

… for every time a member of the GOP accused President Obama of having “no plan” for any subject.

… for every time a member of the GOP complained about runaway spending when their own party contributed to the vast majority of it.

… for every time a member of the GOP shows up on the cable news channels and proclaims that tax cuts equals job creation without explaining how that has not worked in the past ten years.

… for every time a member of the GOP complained about President Obama getting “a blank check” after mindlessly authorizing one for Obama’s predecessor year after year after year.

… for every time a member of the GOP or a member of the talk radio/Fox News circuit throws around the words “socialism”, “Marxism”, “communism”, and “fascism” as though they are all interchangeable.

… for every time a member of the GOP complains about “war-mongering” from the White House while also accusing the White House of “sabotaging the War on Terror”.

… for every time a member of the GOP or a member of talk radio/Fox News circuit complains when Wall Street numbers go down after President Obama speaks but then says nothing when Wall Street numbers go up following another speech from Obama.

… for every time a member of the GOP complains about someone else’s “wasteful spending program” while at the same time bellying up to the same pork trough themselves.

… for every time the members of the “Tea Party” movement call themselves “independents” while still supporting GOP candidates.

… for every member of the GOP or a member of the talk radio/Fox News circuit that complains about the lack of jobs, but then feels that “wasteful spending” is far more important when the discussion turns to jobs.

You guys noticing a pattern here?

Oh, but wait… If they each gave a dollar…

… for every time a Democrat complains about filibuster rules but then tables any attempt to reform them.

… for every time President Obama talks about jobs without actually addressing the problem.

… for every day that President Obama goes on vacation.

… for every time some Department of Labor official or a member of the media refers to people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits as “given up looking for work”.

If they each gave a dollar for all of those things, then we’d probably have a booming economy and a balanced federal budget.

Now, there is no chance at all that we’d actually get even one red penny from any of the politicians or the blowhard egomaniacs in the talk radio/Fox News group, but let’s get brutally honest here… they certainly appear to make money every time they do these things. In a country that refuses to admit that we are still in a recession, the only real growth industry seems to be in obstruction and obfuscation.

And if it seems like I’m targeting the GOP (and their friends and buddies) a little bit more than anyone else, it’s only because they’ve been the most vocal of the groups in this growth industry of gab, and not without good reason. After all, they wouldn’t want the masses to remember just how they got into this situation, would they?

The problem here is relatively simple… we need to raise revenue. It’s not enough to just slash spending and expect the economy to just “reset” itself. If the politicians refuse to raise taxes and also refuse to coax their friends in Big Corporate to live up to their half of the “tax cuts equals job creation” argument, then the politicians and the media people themselves should be the next logical turnip to squeeze for that government lifeblood.