By David Glenn Cox

We have reached a point in our lives, where from the summit of a high hill we can look back at the road which has delivered us here. Tis a tale of woe in a fairyland dream, sugar-coated pabulum, televised non-sense and unrealized dreams. It is hard to look back, almost painful, as yesterday weighs heavy in your pockets, so you try not to bring it along.

I have come full circle in this new reality, this new duality. This new America, where if we say we can’t see you, then you’re not there. Behind the façade you can see the shadows of agenda, a war on the post office, a war on public employees and educators. It is a complete and total deconstruction of society and of the world, which we once knew. As a young man, I’d wondered what it must have been like to have lived in the third Reich. Trapped as just some plain Joe, watching madness coming into season, what would your consciousness say when there was real money on the line?

Five years ago, I was of the middle class; today I’m of the missing class. There are fewer Americans working today than there were in December. During the same time period, the civilian labor force has fallen by over half a million workers. The official numbers of those unemployed also fell. But strangely, the numbers of persons in the Civilian Non-institutional Population rose by almost 600,000 since December. Do you see it; do you understand what it really means?

Not in Labor Force

Mar. 2012 – 88,288,000
Feb. 2013 – 90,100,000
Mar. 2013 – 90,483,000

The number of men 20 years and over, not in the labor force has grown by almost one million. One million American men, not just unemployed or discouraged workers, but men no longer counted as in the labor force in a single year. Rather than fix the economy, they just said they fixed the economy and the media aped along.

The average number of hours worked from March 2012 to March 2013 is virtually unchanged; there is no improvement anywhere to be seen. Retail trade employment lost 24,000 jobs in 31 days of March; clothing accessories stores lost 500 employees per day in March. Building materials and garden supply stores lost 10,000 people or 322 workers per day, for everyday of the month. It would seem reasonable to assume that if there were any and I do emphasize, any growth, to be seen in this economy, it would be reflected in garden supply store sales in the spring.

Appliance stores lost 6,000 employees last month, I guess we’re all buying our washers, driers and refrigerators on the Internet these days, but more likely, it’s Craigslist. But employment also fell in mining, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation, warehousing, information and financial services. Employment fell from the mine to the check-out line, in this all mighty consumer economy of ours. At a time when legitimate government would be trying to bolster the economy, this government terminated 3,000 Postal employees per week in March.

The unemployed are pushed through the sausage factory, where you don’t ask where it came from unless you want to go there yourself. Through the steam pipes, through the valves and dials, finally poured down the drain pipe of untreated effluent, the waste product of a collapsing economy, deposited into the invisible sea of the missing class.

Through years of electric propaganda Americans have reached a point where it is now patriotic to hate Americans. This is not to say we haven’t hated each other before, but in the past they were at least selective about it. In times past, we hated groups by race or creed, based on grandpa’s hatreds. Clownish playschool Neo-Nazis or robed Klansman, scary only in the way an unchained pit bull is scary. Today our enemies are school teachers, municipal workers, postal workers, Union workers or the poor. All to be disparaged in the press round the clock by the Corporate News Networks.

The city of Detroit is now in the hands of an unelected Overseer, appointed by the governor to institute policies the electorate find unpalatable. Who is to blame for this American city’s descent into ruins? Who is to blame for this catastrophe? According to the blogosphere, it was caused by unions, blacks and decades of democratic politicians. Collective amnesia, plug and play racism, as the paid horde shouts for Barabbas.

It is a strange psychosis where a people profess a love for their country and its Democratic processes, while despising its citizens. Call it cardboard cut-out patriotism or flag waving from behind the bars.

Consumer Price Index

Food at Home – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 1.2 % (Not seasonally adjusted)
Motor Fuels – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 3.3%
Electricity – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up .8%
Apparel – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 2.4%
Shelter – Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 2.3%
Medical Care– Feb 2012 to February 2013, up 3.9%

Official Consumer Price Index rate of inflation – 2.07%

Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory employees on non-farm payrolls

March 2012- $ 19.68
March 2013- $ 20.03

The average wage increase was .35 cents an hour, that’s average, now for retail workers it was .14 cents an hour and with an average work week of 33 hours their wages grew just $ 4.62 before taxes and maybe $2.50 after. There is no wage growth in this economy for anyone, regardless of what you do or who you are.

If you take the numbers listed by the bureau of Labor Statistics for duration of unemployment and add the numbers up, currently they stand at 15.68 million. If you do the same with last years numbers they total 15.9 million:

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Playing Along?
By David Glenn Cox

Finally, today is the day, when billions upon billions of dollars culminate in drawing millions upon millions of American’s to stand in line and vote for the candidate of their choice. Only, they aren’t the candidates of our choice. We didn’t choose these candidates; they have no earthly connection to us.

They never really did have any connection to us, but now, in this new life; it is even more obviously so. In retrospect, the rise of Barack Obama looks trumped up and foisted upon us. The rise of an articulate political unknown young black man, versus a crotchety old white man after eight years of George W. Bush. It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled…

George W. Bush was never lawfully elected President of the United States. In 2000, the Supreme Court stopped the vote count, no differently than Manuel Noriega or Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The Constitution sets the operation of elections as the prerogative of the states, which means the intervention of the Federal court in a state election laws was not just wrong or misguided, but criminal. These well educated individuals pretending not to know the difference between legality and criminality.

In 2004, the vote in Ohio was tainted, manipulated and down right stolen. A criminal conspiracy run from the office of Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell. In every case of over vote and under vote the Republican candidate George W. Bush was the beneficiary. Statistically, that is impossible. Statistically, exit polls had always been accurate. So then came 2008, the United States of America had suffered two tainted elections in series, and there was every reason to believe that the election process had become nothing more than a show.

The country needed a clear winner, we needed flag waving and large cheering crowds to make the public go to sleep and forget about a series of stolen elections. Barack Obama is elected to the cheers of the throng, promising hope and change only, there is no change. Barack Obama has ruled as a right wing Republican. He has passed more tax cuts than Ronald Reagan. He allowed GM to write their own bankruptcy. He has launched more drone missile attacks than George W. Bush ever did and at more places.

Four years of hope and change finds no improvement in the foreclosure crisis, little improvement in the economic crisis and finds the too big to fail banks operating just as they have always operated in the past. The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness meets in the White House and the members of the council are appointed by the President. There is no Congressional approval needed, so the President can choose those individuals he feels will most assist him in moving the economy forward. Barack Obama chose Jeffery Immelt the CEO of G.E. and G.E. Capital to head the council.

Ursula Burns – Chairman and CEO Xerox

Steve Case – Co-founder CEO America on Line

Kenneth I. Chenault – Chairman and CEO American Express Corporation

John Doer – Partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Investment and hedge fund.

Roger W. Ferguson – President and CEO of TIAA-CREF a Fortune 100 financial services Company

Mark Gallogy – Cofounder and managing principal, Centerbridge Partners, investment banking

Joseph T. Hansen – International President UFCW one of two labor representative on the council

Lewis Hay – Chairman CEO Next era Energy, He is also a director and past chairman of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which encompasses all U.S. commercial nuclear operating organizations, and he is a director of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Gary Kelly – President & CEO of Southwest Airlines

Ellen Kullman – Chair & CEO of DuPont Corporation

Eric Lander – Director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Eric Lander is the President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a new kind of biomedical research institution focused on genomic medicine. Dr. Lander is also Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Lander was a principal leader of the international Human Genome Project (HGP), which completed mapping the human blueprint in 2003. A geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician, Dr. Lander’s biomedical research also has ranged over mammalian genomics; human population genetics; medical genetics – including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other genetic conditions; evolution; and computational biology.

Monica Lozano – CEO ImpreMedia the largest Hispanic newspaper in the country and Ms. Lozano is also serves on the boards of the Bank of America, the Walt Disney Company and the University of Southern California..

Jim McNerney – Chairman, President and CEO, The Boeing Corporation

Darlene Miller – President & CEO Permac Industries, from the Permac website, “A success story in an industry that has increasingly been affected by offshore manufacturing migration, Permac has achieved broad favor with customers by serving as a knowledgeable partner, by managing the entire parts lifecycle including inventory and shipping, and by helping set up offshore production for customers when it makes good business sense.”

Paul Otellini – President & CEO, Intel

Richard D. Parsons – Chairman, Citigroup, Inc. Prior to serving in that role, he was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner, Inc., the world’s largest media entertainment company, from 2002 to 2008. In its January 2005 report on America’s Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertainment industry.

Penny Pritzker – President & CEO Pritzker Realty Group, she’s also Chairman of the board of TransUnion, Chairman/CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, and Chairman and co-founder of Vi (formerly Classic Residence by Hyatt), The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners.

Brain Roberts – Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

Matthew Rose – Chairman and CEO, BNSF Railroad, he is a member of the Board of Directors of AMR Corporation (American Airlines), AT&T Inc., the Association of American Railroads, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sheryl Sandberg – Chief Operating Officer, Facebook

Richard L. Trumka – President AFL – CIO, “Trumka led the creation of the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Program in 1997 to promote the retirement security of America’s working families. AFL-CIO member unions sponsor pension and benefit plans with more than $400 billion in assets and are a major force in the global capital markets.”

Laura D’Andrea Tyson – S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, “Dr. Tyson serves as a member of the Boards of Directors of Eastman Kodak Company, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Silver Spring Networks, CB Richard Ellis, the Peter G. Peterson Institute of International Economics, and New America Foundation.”

Robert Wolf – Founder & CEO 32 Advisors, “Robert Wolf is Founder and CEO of 32 Advisors, a boutique consulting and advisory firm serving public and private companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, money managers, governments and other institutions. Wolf previously served as Chairman for UBS Americas and President for UBS Investment Bank. While at UBS, Robert held several senior positions including Group Regional CEO, COO of UBS Investment Bank, Global Head of Fixed Income and Chair of the firm’s Diversity and Community Affairs Committee. He joined UBS in 1994 after spending approximately 10 years at Salomon Brothers.”

Christopher Che – President and CEO of Hooven – Dayton Corporation, “Che is the president/CEO of the Che International Group, LLC (CIG), a multinational holding company that he founded in 2005 with the objective of creating subsidiary companies in diverse industries through strategic acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances. Under his visionary leadership, in 2007 the Che International Group successfully acquired Hooven-Dayton Corporation (HDC) as its first wholly owned subsidiary, which he is also leading as President/CEO.” He is an investment banker just like Willard (Mitt) Romney.

These are the people whom Barack Obama has chosen to ally himself with. These are the people who make the recommendations on upcoming legislation crossing the President’s desk, what would this august group think of the public option in health care? What would this august group of intelligentsia educated in America’s finest universities think about off shoring jobs?

Do you notice anyone missing in this council? Do you notice anyone strangely missing? There are no workers opinions here, no just plain Joe’s or Josephine’s only the massively rich and it is quite intentional, your opinions don’t matter here.

When Barack Obama campaigned four years ago, he promised to close the concentration camp at Guatonomo. As a candidate, he might have actually wanted to close the camp, but as President of the United States he was told no. The Commander and Chief over all armed forces can’t close a concentration camp. Instead, there will be close to a hundred million dollars spent to expand and modernize the camp facilities.

What does that mean, when the commander in chief has so little control over what is going on? Why does the US military seem to march to the beat of its own drummer regardless of who sits in the oval office? If Barack Obama is actually in charge of the Pentagon, ask yourself this, in the light of the operations he has approved, what sort operations could he have possibly said no? We are the most aggressive war-like country on the planet, our economy is quite literally coming apart at the seams and yet there is no talk in the administration of bringing peace.

In January, no matter who is selected as President, the Congress and the administration face automatic budget cuts of $600 billion dollars the first year. Thirty years of tax cuts for the rich are off the table, but mortgage interest deduction is on the table, especially now, since we have so many fewer home owners these days.

Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” He should know, he quite literally wrote the book on Fascism, where he said, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” These members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, are they lions or sheep? Whose interests do they serve? When the President orders a Navy Seal Team to go into another sovereign country and murder a suspect, is that really Americanism?

This is not the United States of America, this is a corporate Fascist regime which has been at war with the world for nearly twelve years. Your rights have been eviscerated and they aren’t coming back. Your jobs and your wealth have been shipped away as your standard of living has been stripped away. It is a nation which operates concentration camps and detains individuals for years at a time without ever bringing charges against them.

The candidates are merely corporate spokes models; they work for corporations and the wealthy elite, the proverbial two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Vote if you must, vote if you like, but come tomorrow, no matter who you vote for the same people will still be in charge. When you understand that and when you understand who these people are and what it is that they propose to do to you and your children, you can either play along or push back.

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” – Mario Savio

“If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.” – Benito Mussolini

More Than Skin Deep
By David Glenn Cox

I watched Patrick and Sherri Brandon moving out from the home they’d purchased in 2000, for $96,500. They couldn’t pay the Mortgage and the bank foreclosed. The bank took their bad mortgage to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and thanks to Tim Geithner, was made whole. The Federal Home Lone Mortgage Corporation will take this property and bundle it with other distressed properties and then auction them off to(drum roll here)… the banks.

The banks will re- purchase these properties for .22 on the dollar and offer them again for sale at $78,000. See how this works? The Brandon’s were foreclosed on for $45,000 and the FMLMC repaid the bank in full; the government insurance policy recovers the .22 cents on the dollar or $12, 3700. The only ones out here are Patrick & Brandy and their children. Patrick and Brandy ran Spirit & Truth Design ware LLC. They are also Ministers in a local church, but that doesn’t matter much, does it? As common as sands on a beach, blown away by the corporate storm, a sale item on the discount rack of the Corporate – Government great super market of give away days.

If the bank sells the house and turns a profit, it kicks some money back to Uncle Money Bags. If, in three years the bank hasn’t turned a profit Uncle Money Bags will cut the bank a rebate check, sound fair enough for you? The bank forecloses on a family and throws them out into the street and your government goes into a partnership deal and guarantees a profit to the bank. It’s kind of the reverse mirror image of Mitt’s Romney’s forty seven percent, where the one percent are force fed, goodies and freebies and you and I pay their freight.

How do you love a country that won’t love you back? Robert Moses is ninety two years old, he’s a WW2 veteran with a heart condition and he too, is facing foreclosure. Who would have thunk it, a WW2 veteran trying to game the system by taking advantage of those poor unsuspecting bankers. Or maybe, Robert Moses is the worst house flipper in American history after having lived in his home for over four decades.

“Seniors have been set upon by these banks in a very, very vicious manner,” asserted Archbishop Franzo King of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who said he was himself a senior and lost his home to foreclosure recently. “We have to shake off that cloak of shame and put on our war clothes and fight these gangsters.”

I ride these streets of Cleveland and it is like a scene out of a post apocalyptic movie. Empty factories, empty buildings, just a mile from where I sit, there is a three story office building as long as a football field and as empty as a government promise, with its front door just swinging wide open. I joke that when I get rich, I’m gonna buy it and live there and it would be funny except, this isn’t an accident. This was a well orchestrated plan, to set us up, just to knock us back down.

It is a treason of the highest order regardless of the political party, but what can you expect, but to be sold out like a discount Jesus marked down to nineteen ninety five, silver on the barrel head. Yes indeed, Soylent Green is made of people. They would make food out of us if they could get away with it and put it together with the right marketing plan. Soylent Green! Now in Jalapeño Cheese Flavor!

This is a little convoluted, but I want you to understand how this all works in the Corporate Playhouse we call Washington, Patrick and Sherri Brandon and Robert Moses…out, because the government is leveraged against them. Mortgage rates are at 3.3 percent on a thirty year loan. The loan originator earns 1% of that amount and then the bank has to borrow the money from the Federal Reserve at 0.25% so the bank makes 2% less their paperwork and overhead. Take Patrick & Brandy’s house at $78,000 the bank would make less than 2% or around $1,560 on a thirty year mortgage. True, if the bank were making hundreds of these loans, I suppose they could make it up on the volume, but then they would have to hire more employees.
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It Sucks to be You!
By David Glenn Cox

It has been a strange weekend, fabulous, interesting, maudlin, magnificent and informative. Sometimes, even though you already know something you still need to have it explained to you. A tiger’s claw education, swift and remorseless and though we feel the blame, we cannot in good conscience blame the tiger.

In 1925, a new ore ship was added to the Cleveland – Cliffs Iron Company line plying the Great Lakes hauling, coal, iron ore or grain. She was six hundred and eighteen feet long and sixty two feet across. She carried the wealth of a nation and her nickname was “The ship that built Cleveland,” because of her frequent deliveries of iron ore to Cleveland steel mills.

Her keel was laid in Ecorse, Michigan. And as I walked her decks I read from her name plates. Johnson Winch Company, New York, New York her electrical power supplied by a Caterpillar Diesel Engine, Chicago, Illinois mated to a General Electric generator, Cleveland, Ohio. She had the first automated boiler system on the Great Lakes supplied by Bailey controls of Cleveland Ohio.

In 1941, the Mather led a flotilla of ships to Duluth Minnesota to break ice and return with a cargo of badly needed iron ore destined for America’s war plants. Her crew risked their lives in frozen dangerous waters because the country asked them to take the risk. Her crew of thirty had good jobs and a strong union to protect them.

The work was hard dirty and thankless, hot in the summer and frozen in the winter and the William G. Mather plied the Great Lakes for over fifty five years. Her cooks serving the crew sit down meals on china plates. Meals served with salads and with pie with ice cream for desert. As I walked her decks it occurred to me that two generations of American men had lived their lives her decks. These workmen who made the three AM deliveries in Detroit, Buffalo or Toledo.

She impressed me most with her Americanism, she was all American from stem to stern, American built, American owned and American sailed. She was stout and well constructed with a handmade sign scrawled on the door in the tool room with a magic marker. “Don’t mess up this tool room, OR ELSE.” I could see the grousing boiler chief writing this on the back of the door. Not a company bulletin or a TPS report but a message from an American to other Americans.

As I left the Mather, I was somewhat sad, because she was wonderful and welcoming. Just think, there was work for a six hundred foot ore freighter for fifty five years and now she was a museum, a relic for our children to try and understand an America which they would never, ever, ever, be able to fathom. Eight and a half tons of steel molded by American hands into a cargo ship. A ship built without a single foreign made part, every nut and bolt, every piece of her fabricated by American hands and installed with American workmanship.

We wandered past the plastic guitars outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame headed for the USS Codfish, a gato class WW2 submarine which is also a museum. This was a WW2 high tech weapon of war. She was the equivalent of today’s stealth bomber. She was loaded from stem to stern with high tech weaponry manufactured in places like Connecticut, New York and Philadelphia. She achieved what the German Kriegsmarine only dreamed of doing. She swept the seas of Japanese vessels.

As we followed the tour we entered the rear torpedo room and there sat a 90 year old veteran who had served as a motorman on the Codfish, and in his honor they cranked the ships engines. In less than five minutes and with just a few minor adjustments they started up the 70 year old Cleveland built General Motors diesel engines. The thought of spending 74 days on a standard patrol inside a tiny iron box would drive me right over the edge. Yet this man did it, he was depth charged and he lost ship mates but he did what was expected of him.

The crew was served the best food in the Navy, because they deserved it. His ship was air conditioned because his government thought it necessary. He served his time aboard her right in the enemy’s backyard, facing death each day but she was an American ship, every bolt and every weld American and the only foreign label you can find aboard her are the flags of the enemy vessels she sank.

At the war’s conclusion, her sailors left the service eligible for a full college education, gratis, from a grateful nation. But was it that simple? The G.I. bill was a jobs program. If all twelve million men under arms were to join the workforce at the same time we might have ended up back at 1932. Instead, government offered education delaying entry into the workforce by four years.

These soldiers, sailors and airmen became chemists, engineers and doctors. They earned higher salaries and paid higher taxes and they didn’t complain because government had kept its bargain with its people. Those without degrees, worked in the steel mills, or they loaded the ore boats and worked the docks. They were fishermen or office workers who earned a decent living.

I had a lunch date with a very nice lady and for a blind date she was definitely all that and a slice of pie. Only, it very quickly became apparent that we were from different worlds. She was from the world of new cars and twenty five dollar lunches and I was from the world of food stamps and the broke ass poor. Several times she referred to my “lifestyle” and both times I corrected her. “This isn’t a life style,” I explained, “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Do you keep a home in Atlanta?” I was torn, as no man wants to meet a nice lady and explain, “I’m broke ass poor.” Our meeting ended soon after, and I don’t blame her. She was looking for full stockings and presents under the tree not some rough character from the wrong side of the tracks. We were as different as race horses and humming birds. Strange isn’t it, I could listen to her problems and empathize, but my problems only horrified her.

But I am the SS William G. Mather, I am an American. I am the USS Codfish and I can do any job I’m offered. Yet I am tied off to the dock and laid up as a curiosity. This isn’t a lifestyle, it is a punishment, from a government which no longer keeps its promises, it is purgatory from which there is no escape.

There was a time three years ago when this purgatory began when I just wanted to just curl up and die. A time when I thought this was all about me. Then I found my true calling, to explain this purgatory and this existence to anyone who will listen but more and more, there are two kinds of Americans. The Americans who are waiting for Santa Claus and the Americans who know Santa ain’t coming. From my experiences this weekend, I take great pride in my people and great pride in myself because no matter what, I won’t quit. I’ll continue until I die or until this plague is lifted from us.

If that means I shall spend my days alone, I shall be alone. If that means I’ll spend my days broke ass poor, I’ll be broke ass poor. Those of you, who understand living the Santa less universe, understand. Those of you who don’t understand, never will, some things are bigger than our egos or our feelings. Some things are bigger than our desires and even our lives. Some things need to be said, shouted from the roof tops, recorded for posterity and this is one of those events. The story of a people debased, impoverished and robbed. The story of children without a future and a story of those who have plenty who say, it sucks to be you.

“It has always seemed strange to me…The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”- John Steinbeck

What Is The Meaning Of Labor Day?
August 31, 2012 By David Glenn Cox

(Photo: Beverly & Pack/flickr)

A Historical Reconstruction

It’s cold most mornings in the Rocky Mountains, especially when you are living in a canvas tent with nothing but a cast iron stove for heat. I reckon a fella sort of gets used to those sorts of things, but it’s most a hardship on the wives and the youngins. It all began in September of 1913. Many of us colliers had had enough of Mr. John D. Rockefeller and his C.F & I coal company. The death rate in them mines was seven per thousand, we lived in company housing and had to shop in company stores, cause we was paid in script stead of real money. Weren’t no one to check the weights on the coal we was hauling cept for company men.

We’d had enough. Why in 1913 alone, 110 men got killed in Colorado mines and they left behind 51 widows and 108 orphans. Being paid on the tonnage system made some of the boys reckless with their lives, cause they was desperate for money, cause they had hungry children, but sometimes their recklessness got others hurt as well, I reckon.

We began to listen to the union men, who was telling us how the death rate in union mines was about forty percent lower. They was telling us how the company was breaking the law by not paying us in real money. The boys and me, we didn’t know nothing about such things; most of us couldn’t even read. Even so, we reckoned we had a right to be paid for “dead work.” I mean, if in you ask a man to cut down trees and clear right of way and lay down railroad track he got a right to be paid for it, don’t he?

The company over the years had tried to make things some better for us, with some better housing and a doctor every once and a while. We was uneducated, but we weren’t stupid, they was trying to buy us off, and that don’t feed no widows, nor orphans. So we was stuck, we didn’t have no place to turn. There weren’t no government to speak of, and the law, if you could call em that. Well, they was all company men, they weren’t no copper button blue coat policemen but toughs, just roust abouts with guns, so we was stuck.

The boys decided to throw in with the United Mine Workers of America and it weren’t long before the company hired the Baldwin–Phelps Detective Agency. They was from back East, but we knew who they was, they was strike breakers and when they arrived they begun putting the strikers out of their houses. It was snowing like hell that morning, but they didn’t care nothing bout that. They had writs, don’t even know if they was legal or even what they said, but them detectives they began emptying out our houses stacking our belongings into the street, snowstorm or no snowstorm. The union had leased some land off of the company’s property and we began moving our stuff there. It was located in a small canyon where we could keep an eye on the mine. We was all in it now, but we’d made our demands and we would stick by them.

Recognition of the union as bargaining agent:

An increase in tonnage rates (equivalent to a 10% wage increase)
Enforcement of the eight-hour work day law.
Payment for “dead work” (laying track, timbering, handling impurities, etc.)
Weight-check men elected by the workers (to keep company men honest)
The right to use any store, and choose their boarding houses and doctors.

Strict enforcement of Colorado’s laws (such as mine safety rules, abolition of scrip), and an end to the company guard system.

Course the company rejected our demands out of hand and as soon as the strike began, the company began hiring scabs. Fore long, them detective boys set up searchlights and was shining them down into our camp all night just to make us mad trying to disturb our sleep. That weren’t so bad, but every now and again they’d fire a stray rifle shot into the camp. So the boys began to dig pits under their tents where they could put their women folk and the youngins to protect them from the flying lead. Well, it didn’t take long for them harassment tactics begun to take affect. Some of the boys, well, they was ready for an out and out shooting war, but we talked’em down from it. But just you let us catch a scab by his lonesome, and then, you just wait and see what would happen.

Them union men they had their hands full trying keeping the boys calm. They splained it, we had to follow the law and not let the company goad us into a fight, cause the big city papers back East would paint us as a violent mob disrupting an honest business. Didn’t make no sense to me, but I reckon it was so. They was shooting into our tents where there was women and kids, and didn’t care none, all they cared about was their money and their coal. Them detective boys built themselves an armored car out of a big old sedan car and mounted a machine gun on top of it. It was getting just plain awful when Governor Ammons sent in the National Guard at the end of October, trying to calm things down. At first, it helped a might, but then the Guard just became more cops rousting the strikers and backslapping the company men. It weren’t no surprise really, we’d already been warned bout the general in charge of the Guard.

They said, ole John Chase had been a real hard ass in the Cripple Creek strike ten year ago, but what he done to us was down right criminal. He weren’t no Christian nor honest man. The searchlights and shootings continued in the camp and then on March 10th 1914 the dead body of a scab was found on the railroad tracks near Forbes Colorado.

Well sir, General Chase, he ordered our camp destroyed, he didn’t hold no hearing nor investigation, he just went ahead and ordered the only lodgings for poor and hungry men women and children destroyed, cause one man had died someplace on company property. On April 10th the day after Easter, the National Guard appeared on the rim of the canyon. A lot of the Greeks was attending a funeral for a baby what had died the day before. Then Guardsmen appeared at the camp entrance, claiming we was a holding some fella against his will, but there weren’t no truth to it. Our leader, Louis Tikas asked for a meeting at the Ludlow train depot, less than a mile away with the head of the militia.

Original Post

Portland is Like Algebra
By David Glenn Cox

Portland is like Algebra, it is hard and it’s complicated and I just don’t get it. This has been a hard one for me, my luck had been changing, I’d got an ID and a cryptic letter from the state of Georgia which promised hope when out of the blue, I lost a dear friend. I lost a friend while trying to be one, by telling the truth when they didn’t want to hear it. When you leave out of Portland all is lush and green, by the time you reach The Dalles, the scenery is tan and golden brown covering over the volcanic basalt rock which pops through periodically.

It wasn’t until I reached Baker City, Oregon before I’d finally figured it out. The Cascade Range shields Portland; it is like a Shangri-La unto itself, separating its self, from the real West waiting, just on the other side of the mountains. By the time you reach Umatilla County, the land is sandy brown and dry on undulating hills frozen in time. They made it into an Indian Reservation, if that helps sharpen the image. But now, Baker City is famous from Oregon Trail fame. It conjures up images of covered wagons, pioneers and John Wayne movies.

I guess what upset me the most, was watching my friend dismantle her own life. Not through drugs or alcohol, that would be understandable, this isn’t. You can stop drinking and dry out, but this? I don’t know, maybe something snapped, maybe it was chemistry, or stress or paranoia or dark demons from the past come to call. Whatever it was, it hurt, because I don’t have much real family besides my son and I loved her like a sister.

Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw, but there is a full moon out tonight over the high desert, seems I always travel on the full moon, maybe its astrology, or maybe just dumb luck. We rumble along in this rattly Greyhound bus, which is far from the pride of the fleet. That’s a funny story in its self, I stood outside gate number eleven for about a dozen hours and right on the other side of that door sat this beautiful rich blue and grey shiny new bus. It proudly advertised WiFi and electrical plugs and I got all excited, then at the very last minute, I mean the absolute, very last minute, as we stood in line waiting to board they pulled it away from the gate and pulled in this bus. Which I suppose was the pride of the fleet a dozen or so years ago. The overhead lights don’t work, the air conditioner fan rattles and outside of the window passes some of the most extraordinary panoramas the human eye can ever experience.

We’re headed for Boise, Salt Lake and Denver now, funny thing, the last time I was in Denver I snuck up on it from the other side. It gets really dark when the mountains block the full moon; through the dusty windows it appears to shine two searchlight beams. When it hides, I can’t read the road signs like, Dead Man Pass or Old Emigrant Hill, the last one made me smile, conjuring up images of old Emigrants sitting up on a hill in rocking chairs. The roads are twisty and the turns are sharp, it feels as if we’re following the Chef Boyardee route. Foothills on both sides of us, as the moon pops over a hill once in a while, just long enough to wink.

We are out in the high desert headed for Boise, a haze now covers the moon, and it’s a spatial filament letting off a warm and comforting glow, like a night light, which watches over us but doesn’t listen. Boise appears to be a city of consequence with a five lane Interstate highway, sound barriers and billboards advertising gambling casinos. It’s really too dark to tell much more or perhaps is it too light? The Interstate has homogenized our cities with the usual assortment of fast food joints and only occasionally something odd. As we pulled out of B town, there was a neon lit marquee sign for a funeral home and it just struck me as less than somber or subdued. Out of the dark, off to the left, ghostly mountains appeared, at least the way the light played on the shadows they looked like mountains to me. The lights of civilization stopped right where the shadows began, so I have named them the Phantom Mountains, at least until the sun comes up. As I look out the other side of the bus I see my other dear friend the moon, is also slipping away, I will miss her, hell, I’ll miss them both.

As the new sun rose in the morning, we were headed for the land of Mormons and murder. It appears some of them Mormons beat me to naming those mountains. You get a little loopy after hours on a bus, but you know what? You only live once, and it’s a fair trade for a full immersion in America. They’s real folks on a bus, ain’t no sissified dandies here. They’s folks going home or moving on, going to a job or leaving one or leaving someone. You start as strangers and in a couple hundred miles, your pals. We hit all the high spots in the Mormon holy land with their nice bus station with a lousy intercom. The station was filled with last nights overflow and so, I began to worry.

Two lines divide the station from front to back, with some folks who’d been waiting since I began my relationship with the moon the night before, but it all ended well. They brought us out a shiny bus with WiFi, enabling me to catch up with my E-mails. Before long, we were into the lunar landscapes of Wyoming, shining with glass shards from broken beer bottles. Kind of like sticking a wad of gum on the Mona Lisa, nothing but scrub, greasewood and sagebrush as far as the eye can see, and still, man finds a way to fuck it up.

They’ve got snow fences put up and signs which read, “Interstate 80 Closed when flashing.” Way off in the distance I can see downpours, cloudbursts maybe twenty or thirty miles away. It’s the closest I’ve been to rain in months, as even soggy Portland has dried out for the driest August on record.

Perfect silhouettes of ancient nature made pyramids arise, as the blue grey down burst shimmer off in the distance like flowing curtains. The color of the land cannot be described; it is sand and tan, brown and black, tinged in pale illusive greens. It is all so humbling and awesome and magnificent in its own special splendor that it makes you weep for the blind. Ancient palisades capped with cell phone towers as the pallet plays out in colors Crayolla never dreamed of. It’s is so beautiful, I’d ride on top of the bus just to see it. The down pour has been here, but we’ve missed the show as it appears to be going the other way.

I’ve heard too many conversations about people late on the rent and folks looking for a couch, small world, ain’t it? Fence posts, telephone poles and open land, that’s it, but I can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s ten in the morning but it feels like ten at night and it is overcast and around every turn is a new vista and a new pallet of color. Strange sights peculiar names, Green River, Rock Creek and Covered Wagon Road, Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, in the land where old cars go to kill time.

We just crossed the Continental Divide at 7000 feet, while above me, white whale clouds swim by in a deep blue sky. The railroad has on its sidings hundreds of grain cars which won’t be used this year. It is a strange dichotomy, an ocean above a desert below. The high water mark of a continent, being crossed by a bus carrying the bottom 10% of the 99%. We are all lost here, lost in a continent, lost in a government and lost as a people.

Then, just as suddenly, a cloud burst gets us, ten maybe fifteen seconds of spitting rain which appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quick, just a reminder, if you close your eyes here, you might miss something. Isn’t that just the way of things, how much we miss while looking at nothing in particular? How many roses we might pluck when not worried about the thorns.

The sun rose slowly over Minden Nebraska, a beautiful fiery orange sphere burning off the night’s gathered haze. Exposing the lush green rolling hills and the specter of dwarfed and dead corn plants, all stunted between three and five feet tall. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word. Because yesterday, before this sun fell, we rolled into Denver and amidst the glass and steel towers, amidst the beer drinkers on the warm Café patios there was this rescue mission and directly across the street, a small concrete plaza.

The plaza was filled with several hundreds of people of all ages and descriptions. They were poor, so poor that they were ragged. They weren’t just down on their luck, they were down to their last, and it reminded me for all the world of a scene out Mad Max, Beyond Thunder Dome. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word.

It is all the same, isn’t it? One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million, ten million, twenty million on and on. Come spring we shall replant our corn, but what of the people, what of their lives? I travel across thousands of miles of this amazingly beautiful land with a beneficent sun by day and reassuring moon by night. I see something which cannot be described nor quantified, something like a cancer, something like a feeling in your bones, something you can’t describe, but you know it when you see it.

Mitt accepted the nomination for President of the Suicide Party last night and now he and his evil little co-conspirator must go out and convince the populace to elect him and to commit societal Hara-kiri. What Mitt doesn’t know and what his grubby little brown noser can’t see, you can see from a bus window, in America, the ponds have dried up. After the show is over, because that’s all that this is really, is a show, the comedy team of Romney and Lewis will return to their fine homes, they will eat their sumptuous food and live their sumptuous lives. Maybe they will look back and reminisce, saying, “gee whiz, where did we go wrong?”

Never, have so few, been so wrong about so much. Never has a nation’s leadership been so blind as to have not ended up with their brain trust riding on a pike. The sand flows through the hourglass and tells a tale of time, the bough breaks and the limb falls and down will come baby, cradle and all. The mobs will grow in number and intensity, legions of the hungry and dispossessed and today they call for food, but if left unmitigated, will someday call for blood.

The Truth is… The Truth Is
By David Glenn Cox

I have come a long way from where I once was, I have both progressed and digressed as person and as an American. I once thought that this was all about me, but I now know better. I look back on that strange person estranged from who I am now and I wonder, who that person was then, I wonder, who I have become and now question whether the two can ever become reconciled again.

I no longer travel in the warm orbits of the sun; instead I have become a dark solitary asteroid traveling through the empty voids of space. I have nothing and have been referred to as a transient. Imagine such a definition applied towards your own life. The sum total of your existence condensed to a single adjective, all your glories and all of your failures reduced to a single word definition of your life.

As a boy I had a paper route, I worked in high school for spending money and I worked after high school. I worked long hours, doing dirty jobs until slowly, I began to rise. I had been fully indoctrinated in the Horatio Alger image of America, where any boy can be president, but that was that other life of mine. I know now, that it was all a myth, all make believe to keep the young hopeful and hard at work and to keep them from rising up an killing their jailers.

I got married because all of my friends were getting married and I thought, I was supposed to, just more subliminal societal pressure. I bought a house from the Veterans Administration, windows were broken and the hardwood floors were ruined from the broken pipes. I attacked the project eagerly; I fixed the holes in the walls and the floors. I worked nights and weekends slowly changing it from the worst house on the street to the nicest. I cut down trees and hauled dirt to make the yard a show place. That was before, back when I still had a future, I built a sand box and swing set for my kids, I paid my taxes and I didn’t complain.

I know better now, I’ve heard the punch line of the joke; it was my reflection in the mirror. I was paying a mortgage and improving a house that was mine but temporarily. I spent my wages at Home Depot and Lowe’s and I helped their bottom line and yet there was no one to watch my bottom line. In 1995, I relocated to Atlanta Georgia. I took my little equity pile and bought another house.

I wasn’t flipping these houses; my goal was to create a decent home that I otherwise could not afford. In 2001, I divorced. I began to pay child support which I paid religiously until July of 2007.

In 2003, I remarried and in 2005, I started my own business. My previous employer threatened me with lawsuits despite his declining my suggestions before beginning my business. The irony here is that he has fared no better than I have and has fallen from a higher perch. An Internet business… just crazy talk, I suspect. No sooner had I opened my business than I began to receive invoices from bogus companies claiming debts for services. I quickly learned the woods were filled with wolves seeking the unsuspecting but then the business took off.

I was paying the county and the state, I was paying my vendors and I was making a profit. As I sat waiting in my car for the red light, I looked at my bank deposit slip and read my balance of over $10,000. My bills were paid, I was living the good life and I look back on that guy in the car at the red light and I don’t know him. He is a complete stranger to me.

Then in 2007, things began to falter, as business began to fail, I began looking for work. I went to work for an ambulance company which was also trying to keep their own heads above water. This small ambulance company with four used and aged ambulances was owed over a quarter of a million dollars by the Federal Government. Daily, I would hear them as they would beg for payment from various departments and from Congressman and Senator’s offices, all to no avail.

I was laid off as the owners were two months behind in their own rent. I went to work for a company selling coupon books as a fund raiser. Each paycheck I received, drawn on a different bank from a different state. I began freelance writing; I had an interview with a company that cleaned air conditioning ducts. Money was short, the $ 10,000 was long gone, but the interview went well. I was called back for a second interview and then a third. But unbeknownst to my prospective employers it was hard to raise the gas money for these interviews. I had one final interview on Monday and I was so certain I was going to be hired; I brought my lunch and left it in my truck.

As I pulled into the parking lot something was wrong, the company trucks were there but there weren’t any cars. I parked and went to the door and found a bright orange sticker affixed to the door. “Sealed- by the Georgia Department of Revenue,” so ended that job. It began to be a struggle to keep the utilities on and needless to say, my marriage suffered.

While driving across town to collect my last check from the ambulance company I was rear ended by a person talking on a cell phone. The car was totaled and I was injured but to the insurance company despite their client being ticketed for the accident, claimed the fault remained in doubt. This was the beginning of my true education; I saw a corporation use law and government as a tool to dodge their contracted responsibilities. Their stated goal was to wait, delay and starve me out. Most people need their car replaced and despite a state law saying they owed me a rental car their answer was, sue us!

In July of 2007, I could no longer pay my child support. I had two years left to pay, a total of around $7,000. About this same time my wife suggested that I leave the home and I became homeless. That was over three years ago and now the state of Georgia claims my debt to be over $35,000 dollars. To get my license back they require $500 dollars down and a promise of $200 per month from a man who earns less than $100 per month. How can a homeless man argue with a state, when it takes weeks just to send me a form letter? $700 might as well be $7,000 or even seven million dollars. Without this driver’s license, I have no legal ID. Technically, under the Patriot Act, I commit a crime just walking down the street but more to the point, I can’t get a job. I can never pay the state as the total still grows. I can’t vote and I am dispatched from this society.

That is all well and good, because on an intellectual level and an emotional level, I am also dispatched from this society. A society which would allow banks and financial institutions to pillage and dispossess tens of millions of Americans with assistance programs left under the exclusive control of the criminals themselves.

A politicized court system, a propagandized public who are told that my plight and your plight, is all our own fault. Citizens United? Need I say more?

I have watched as state governments have assaulted its own work force and demonized them in public. Over a hundred thousand school teachers have lost their jobs, just like I did. The follow behind me and wonder like I did, what did I do wrong?

The Congress of the United States has declared war on the United States Post Office, an institution established by Benjamin Franklin for Christ sake.

We face a Presidential election between Barack Obama and Willard (Mitt) Romney. These are our choices, as this charade is peddled to the propagandized as a democracy. The candidate from Goldman Sachs versus the Candidate from Bain Capital. Ten million homes foreclosed, falling wages and the debate is centered on tax cuts? If you are still waiting for the Republicans and Democrats to save you, you are waiting for a bus that is not coming.

Yet the highest crime waits in the wings, under an agreement by both political parties. If the two parties cannot reach an agreement on budget cuts there will be automatic budget cuts on January 2nd. The cuts are a dagger pointed at the heart of the poor, the unemployed and the struggling. These cuts will not affect exclusive private schools but will decimate public education. These things they say must be done to cut the budget deficit. The same deficit caused by tax cuts, wars and free trade agreements.

I know now of American freedom, as I can no longer board an airplane or Amtrak train. Yet through my three years of study in this American University of the streets, I have met you. You, who are me, you whose stories vary only slightly from my own. You who have lost your jobs, you who have lost your homes, your cars and in some cases even your families. You graduated from college with a degree in International studies but in the Nation’s capital you work at the Hard Rock Café and pay out two weeks of your earnings every month for your education debt. You’ve worked as a certified credentialed auto mechanic for six years and can barely afford your own rent.

The truth is… that the truth is. It is neither vague nor cloudy, you are no freer today in America than a peasant from the Middle Ages, you have no health care or retirement. Politicians eye greedily your Social Security. You live in a Police State and without your papers you have no right to exist.

“We need a Nuremberg to put on trial the economic order that they have imposed on us, that every three years kills more men, women and children by hunger and preventable or curable diseases than the death toll in six years of the Second World War”. – Fidel Castro

Craigslist – Explained

By David Glenn Cox

I found this on Craigslist the other day, posted in the writing jobs section. I was struck by what it saying superficially versus what is was actually trying to say. My own comments are in the block quotes

washington, DC craigslist > district of columbia > jobs > writing/editing jobs

please flag with care: [?]
miscategorized
prohibited
spam/overpost
best of craigslist

Avoid scams and fraud by dealing locally! Beware any deal involving Western Union, Moneygram, wire transfer, cashier check, money order, shipping, escrow, or any promise of transaction protection/certification/guarantee. More info

SaveAmericaMovement (SAM) (DC)

Greetings. This is going to sound a little crazy, but it’s not.  [But it does sound crazy, right?]

I’m a newspaper guy (Kansas City Star, LA Times, local newspapers) who has worked in government (two summer internships on Capitol Hill, a year at the White House, as a White House Fellow).  [You’ve never heard of me]

I’m very middle-of-the-road, and like many, fear for the future of our country. Things have become WAY too partisan, it’s all about scoring points at the opponent’s expense.

[I'm not really very middle-of-the-road,]

I have an idea that basically goes like this:

1) The SaveAmericaMovement, or SAM — think “Uncle Sam” — is intended to spark a movement of sane, probably mostly middle of the road, pragmatic types who just want to solve the problems facing our great nation. Think of this as a Tea Party or “Occupy” movement for sane people. [That’s it, problem solved we can all go home now, never would have thought of it.]

2) We write an “A – Z” set of “fifth-grade simple” policy prescriptions, solving, on paper, all that ails us a country. The program would be fair, balanced and done with the context of a balanced budget. The whole thing might run 100 pages, we can produce it in print and post it to our website (still being built). This will be called “The Sam Plan.”

[fifth-grade simple" policy prescriptions, now there’s your answer.]

3) We build a grass roots movement around this. We get the word out. We give the forgotten middle, or silent majority, a voice. This could take years; if that’s what it takes, that’s OK. Then again, with social media, maybe SAM takes off like a rocket. [We won’t get the word out, you will have forgotten about this by the time American Idol comes on, because you are after all the silent majority.]

4) We engage the citizenry in a real way. Government can’t solve everything. It was never intended to. We want our members to embrace personal responsibility, eschewing obesity, addictions, abuse, financial irresponsibility, etc. We want to embrace doing well in school and in the workplace. We want to do this right, free of corruption. If the people lead, the politicians will follow. [Wow, okay now that is crazy.]

5) Over time, we win over the vast middle, solve the problems and save America. Uncle Sam has been good to us over the years; it’s time to repay the favor. [Over weight middle aged white people watching Fox News unite! You have nothing to lose but your remote controls!]

I know this sounds hopelessly idealistic. I’m also aware that movements like this generally go nowhere. But suspend your skepticism for a moment, let’s give this a try. What have we got to lose, really? A country — that’s all! [Movements like this generally go nowhere.—that’s all!]

We need political science types, academics, writers, marketers, social media types, experts, non-experts, housewives who need something to do, summer interns, financial backers — anyone who’s interested. This is a volunteer effort; there is no pay involved. Maybe this will change over time as we get SAM up and running. [Doughnut salesman, Fuller brush men and just plain Joe’s, you know, anyone!]

Send me a cover note telling me a little bit about who you are, what your area of expertise (if any) is, what it is about this that grabs you. [Send me a cover note telling me why you’re as crazy as I am]

We’ll be in touch right away and tell you more. We hope to put on a big push this summer. If we divide this up, we can make quick work of it. [i.e. The official handshake, decoder ring and gang sign.]

We are based out of LA but I wanted to post this in DC because everyone there is a political junkie. You can work from there and we’ll do this via conference call, email, Skype, etc. [We are based out of LA but I wanted to post this in DC because I told you going in, this was probably crazy.]

Thanks for your time and attention. Together we can save America. I hope to hear from you. [You may now engage your life lever to the resume position.]

Perception Management
By David Glenn Cox

There is no top to this and no bottom, there are no sides to this and no way to contain it. It can only be held in place temporarily, only with makeshift propaganda and truckloads of hubris. This involves us all, every last mother loving son or daughter of us and it is inescapable, it is our destiny, our Alpha or our Omega, a new beginning or a certain end.

From the power of Barack Obama to the powerlessness of Trayvon Martin, from the violence of George Zimmerman to the violence of Robert Bales in Afghanistan. We are a violent and bloody people who tend to excuse our way past our own violence. Bales was serving his country as a hired assassin six thousand miles from home as bankers were attempting to take his home and throw his family into the street. George Zimmerman comes off as a Travis Bickle wanna be as he says “They ****** always get away!”

The harder the state tries to control us the more it spins out of control, the Revolution has already begun and just because they haven’t shot at you yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t so. If you are a college student you already know it. If you are a teacher you already know it. The Occupiers know it and even the Tea Partiers know it, they might not understand it, but they know it alright.

There are two America’s, the real one and a media created imaginary one and there’s a hard rain gonna fall on the real America,. The other day Occupy Wall Street protestors attempted to retake Zuccotti Park in New York. Here is what the Reuters News Agency reported, “The movement has made headlines for its clashes with police after campsites were set up for months in cities from New York to California.”

Wait a damn minute here, protestors never clashed with police. Police clashed with protestors or to put even a finer point on it, armed men with intent to do violence attacked, maced, pepper sprayed and otherwise assaulted a public gathering which was occupying a public space because the government didn’t like their politics or their message. Get it? Corporations are people and money is speech but actual people expressing their opinions are criminals and are met with state sponsored violence.

Yet the New York police were quick to deploy half of their force the other day to limit the public’s view of this police state in action. A new era of perception management has been put into place as the media couched previous reports of occupiers in Zuccotti Park with terms like defecation and rats. Rats? In New York City? Really rats?

Recently, America’s least favorite used car salesman Willard (Mitt) Romney won the Republican primary in Puerto Rico. The media reported his victory with grand adjectives such as “huge” and “decisive” Puerto Rico really? Has anyone ever heard of a primary victory in Puerto Rico being heralded as important, let alone huge?

Write it down, Romney is the Republican nominee and these events are simply window dressing, simply more perception management. Santorum and Gingrich hang around for no other purpose than to wound and weaken the Romney campaign. Meanwhile, Barack Obama rides the crest of a tidal wave of good economic news, most of which is not only not good, it isn’t even marginally good. New home sales 1963 – 560,000 New Home sales forecast 2012 – 307,000

2008- 485,000
2009- 375,000
2010- 323,000
2011- 303,000
*
But this is the perception which those in power seek to create, the other day the Representative from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan proposed his new Republican budget plan. His new plan is nothing more than a rewrite from his last budget plan. In it, Ryan proposes tax cuts for corporations and the rich and draconian program cuts for Medicare and Social Security. His plan was so unpopular with the public in its last go around that 78 percent of Americans polled said they wouldn’t support it.

So Ryan and the Republicans propose this wildly unpopular budget again during a presidential campaign with great media fanfare. Ryan was asked if the Republican candidates will support his budget plan Ryan answers accordingly, “of course they will.” Imagine, you are the presumptive Republican nominee spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to win over a skeptical public and a junior representative from Wisconsin is deciding your economic policy for you. This is almost an exact replay of John McCain’s ill fated trip to Florida in 2008, locked in a dead heat with Barack Obama McCain proposes cuts to Social Security in a room filled with senior citizens, it was, an is political suicide.

Obama hit the road recently, holding a series of photo ops at new factories and solar energy power plants saying, “We want to encourage production of oil and gas, and make sure that wherever we’ve got American resources, we are tapping into them,” Obama said. “But they don’t need an additional incentive when gas is $3.75 a gallon.” Once again the Republican’s will anoint a wildly unpopular candidate and the media will present Barack Obama as the lesser of two evils. Even so, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

The solar plant Obama visited employs ten full time workers but what Obama is saying with his own inimitable slip sliding tongue is that the tar sands pipeline is a done deal come January. The house passed the Republican Jobs bill (391 to 28) and the Senate passes it on (73 to 26) and Barack Obama smiles in approval. The bill titled Jobs is actually more about deregulation and reversing provisions of the Dodd–Frank legislation. All hail the one party system.

In Barack Obama you have the most right wing reactionary President in American history. A right wing Fascist with a media created persona perception of a moderate Democrat, presiding over an improving economy as home sales fall nearly one percent during a month when traditionally sales should be rising and the fall was reported by the media as good news! The Washington Post reported in a recent story placing the blame on the mortgage companies but in actual fact, you know already why Americans can’t obtain mortgages. The reason is the same reason they were using the finagled mortgages of a few years past. Most Americans no longer earn enough money to afford their own home.

Wages have been falling 1 percent a year against a rising 3 percent inflation; you don’t need to be Robert Reich to figure that one out. We will hold an election in six months to decide which direction that “we” the people wish to go with this nation and our choices will be a candidate on the far right or a candidate on the near right. The choice between a candidate who wants to end Planned Parenthood or a candidate who thought the cat food commission’s findings were “a good place to start.”

A soldier pushed over the edge by repeated deployments shoots down children and innocent adults in a fit of psychotic rage the president says that it is unfortunate and then smothers the issue. A psychotic cop wanna be shoots down a single child on the streets of an American city as police and city officials say it is unfortunate and try to smother the issue while the shooter wasn’t even charged with a crime.

Do you begin to see what is going on here? You don’t matter, your opinions don’t matter, and the lives of your children don’t matter and if you dare to complain you will be shown just how much, you don’t matter because in their eyes, you don’t.

These things will never fix themselves; there is no righting the ship here. Why can’t the Occupy movement give us a clear list of demands? Because the problems we face are too many, too huge, too manifold and too all encompassing.

Corporatism, Fascism, plutocracy, wars, economy, healthcare, homelessness and a growing poverty along with a gnawing anger and just what does our representative government offer us? Tax cuts, pepper spray, rubber bullets and neighborhood watch. This can’t be fixed with a vote but with a movement.

“One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car
creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a
single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered.
And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another
family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat
on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the
node, you who hate change and fear revolution.

Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear,
suspect each other. Here is the enlarge of the thing you fear.
This is the zygote. For here “I lost my land” is changed; a cell
is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate–”We lost our
land.” The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and
perplexed as one.

And from this first “we” there grows a still more dangerous thing:
“I have a little food” plus “I have none.” If from this problem the
sum is “We have a little food,” the thing is on its way, the movement
has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this
tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire,
the side- meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women;
behind, the children listening with their souls to words their
minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby
has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It’s wool. It was my mother’s
blanket–take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb.
This is the beginning–from “I” to “we.” – John Steinbeck

* US Housing & Urban Development

The New Poverty
By David Glenn Cox

I met a man the other day, pretty regular guy all in all except he was homeless. Just one more, one more of the millions of Americans to whom healthcare is dream, food is a hope and even shelter is questionable. It is an American story; it is a microcosm of modern American society. And a most amazing facet of this problem is not the new poverty of millions but the invisibility of the problem.

How many of the fourteen million now unemployed will replace unemployment checks with part time work? The new poverty is subsidized with food stamps to the multitude which end up in the pockets of merchants. It creates a baseline economy, a brutal Dickensian society with a whiff of paternalism which says, “Feed them but don’t actually attempt to improve their lot,” merely subsidizing their poverty.

“Benefits should always be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

A government which goes out of its way to declare an economic all clear when it is obviously not so, conjoined at the hip with a media filled with happy talk. A media overburdened with happy talk, sensationalism and infotainment, the Super bowl, the Grammy’s and poor Whitney, a media of distraction, by distraction and for distraction. A new Hollywood war picture has been released with real Navy Seals to further blur the line between reality and warfotatinment. “Is that you John Wayne?”

Yet the plight of the average American is only barely discussed and even then only in the abstract. This is the nucleus of the movement, a lost generation of college educated and formally middle class new poor. I knew a biological engineer with a doctorate who unemployed for almost two years. When he landed a job I asked, “better money?” He answered; with a shoulder shrug meaning “no” but there was a look of relief in his face as if he had escaped. An easily recognized reflex of relief, escape from his brush with poverty, a scientist unemployed this indeed, isn’t your run of the mill recession.

This is a depression where anemic job and wage growth limit purchasing power which in turn fuels layoffs and low tax revenues for tax coffers. The state of California reported tax revenues a half a billion dollars short of estimates for the month of January. The shortage was primarily caused by income tax revenue falling 13 percent in the fourth quarter. Those with low paying, part time jobs pay little income tax and the unemployed pay no income tax.

“Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Despite the knowledge gained from past depressions and even the early lessons of the current depression Federal, state and local governments continue to shed employees at record levels. In 2010, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger began furloughing state employees in response to a budget crisis. The cuts amounted to a 15 percent cut in pay and within just a few months the city of Sacramento went from one of the bright spots of economic activity to one of the worst. Restaurants, furniture stores, car lots and office equipment stores began to close their doors.

The Obama administration has followed the Schwarzenegger path,

Federal employee job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 17,100
Post Office employee job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 37,000

State government job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 71,000
State government education job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 6,100

Local government job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 161,000
Local government education job cuts – January 2011 to January 2012 – 105,400

Nearly 400,000 less pay checks each week to bolster the economy and on the other end are the same small business’s which the politicians love to praise as job creators. They are left to deal with lower levels of government services. Local businesses have fewer customers and the nation’s children have a poorer education. This year’s cuts come in the wake of over half a million government job cuts in 2010.

A government cannibalizing itself to save on groceries,

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Mark Twain

The jobs once held by teenagers saving for a car or school are now held by adults trying to make the rent or buy the kids school shoes. Teenagers once had the most discretionary income of any age demographic in the country. They tended to buy CD’s and go to the movies and buy mag wheels for their cars, but today?

Job loss leaders – December 2011 to January 2012

Heavy and Civil engineering construction, -1,400
Computer and electronic products, -1,900
Communications equipment, -1,200
Textile product mills, -300
Paper and paper products, -800
Plastics and Rubber products, -1,000
Electronic and Appliance stores, -2,300
Food and beverage stores, -5,300
Gasoline stations, -1,300
Clothing and clothing accessory stores, -13,600
Air Transportation, -1,000
Couriers and messengers, -1,500
Publishing industries, except Internet, – 1,800
Motion picture and sound recording, -7,900
Data processing, hosting and other related services, -1,300
Other information services, -600
Finance and Insurance, -7,500
Credit intermediation and related activities, -5,200
Depositary credit intermediation, -2,700
Commercial banking, -2,000
Securities, commodity contracts, investments, -2,900
Rental and leasing services, -1,600

The job losses run the full spectrum from construction, technical, manufacturing and are led by retail and finance.

Civilian non institutional population – January 2011 to January 2012, up by 3,565,000

Civilian labor force – January 2011 to January 2012, up by 1,145,000

Employed – January 2011 to January 2012, up by 2,307,000

Not in labor force – January 2011 to January 2012 up by 2,420,000

Participation rate January 2011: 64.2 %
Participation rate January 2012: 63.7%

Employment –population ratio January 2011: 58.4%
Employment –population ratio January 2012: 58.5%

“Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

“We want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.” – Grover Norquist

The pretender Obama mimics Machiavelli and Norquist while he squeaks out left leaning platitudes in election year shenanigans. The answer is in assisting our people.

The Obama administration has proposed a 9.1 percent cut in funds for homelessness assistance and low income housing assistance beginning in 2013, long after the election is over. The number of families doubling up in a single family homes or apartments has increased by 13 percent during Obama’s tenure. The real income of America’s working poor has increased by less than one percent during Obama’s Presidency and more than half of America’s working families pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing.

“For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor—these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people’s money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.”-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The answers are that simple, they begin with jobs for our people. Public spending, infrastructure or even harmonica bands if that is what it takes to put our people back to work. We cannot therefore ignore the men and women in the park with any expectation of improvement for ourselves.

“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.” -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The number of tax cuts proposed by Barack Obama in three years, 22. The number of tax cuts proposed by Franklin Roosevelt in 12 years, 0.

Number of homes and farms rescued from foreclosure by Obama’s HAMP mortgage program in three years, 700,000. Number of homes and farms saved by FDR’s Homeowner’s loan corporation in one year, 1,200,000 with a net cost to the treasury of nothing! The primary difference in the programs is FDR cut the bankers out of the process and Obama’s plan cuts them in. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” – Bob Dylan

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt