IfLizWereQueen Cross post ,

IfLizWereQueen Cross Post

IfLizWereQueen

Cross Post from IfLizWereQueen

Yep.  No doubt about it. Ole Gingrich won last night and he will make a formidable opponent for Obama.  Unlike Romney, who no doubt is intelligent and viscous, Gingrich is all that and more.  Gingrich is clever, thinks on his feet and likely writes most of his own stuff. Unlike Romney, nothing is lost in translation because Gingrich’s words are connected to the horse’s mouth.  There little  feedback time delay between what he thinks and what he says. Also, unlike President Obama, Gingrich has a knack for knowing the hot buttons of Americans and he is willing to push them all.  President Obama seems to be totally out of touch with Main Street America.  It’s not that Gingrich represents us any more than Obama, but Gingrich seems to at least be aware of what makes us tick and what really ticks us off.  Gingrich goes for the knockout while President Obama plays the ropa dopa game.  That game may have worked with McCain and Romney, but it won’t work with Gingrich because Gingrich is no gentleman, and he is not above sucker punching.

Already this morning I read where Ginrich is comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter.  Now that’s a heck of a metaphor since in the minds of most Americans Jimmy Carter, while intelligent and a kind person, is viewed by many Americans as having been a weak and ineffectual one-term President.  It’s what I would call a “bless your heart” attack.  On the one hand Carter is a kind man while on the other hand, he was a one-term President.

But let us not forget that even Rick Santorum is still a viable candidate.  It’s all about electoral votes.  The candidate with the most wins.

Gingrich: 21 – Romney 18 – Santorum 16.

At least at this  point in the campaign:  Even Santorum is still in the race.  It’s all about electoral votes.  Gingrich, who the profane argue has outdone Jesus Christ by arising from the dead three times, holds the lead  having gone from zero to  21 electoral votes last night;  Romney follows on his heels with 18; and Santorum follows even closer on Romney’s heels with 16 electoral votes.

Ron Paul? Not so much.  Paul has garnered only 11 electoral votes. Think of this as a marathon that has just begun. Gingrich is already at the 21 mile marker and Paul is back at the 11 mile marker.

The only reason Paul should be in this race at all is to obtain national exposure that he could never get as a third party candidate.  But if Ron Paul doesn’t run as a third party candidate at the end of this dog and pony show, he should have once and for all proved himself for what he really is–just another Wall Street shill like the rest of them.

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The Ironies of the Gingrich Win

*See note below for photo credit.

Irony #1:  To Win the Presidential race, Gingrich may have to Pass off Moderate Republicans as Socialists.

The only way that Gingrich may able to garner enough votes is to show that Obama is a Wall Street shill just like he showed the majority of the American people what a private equity company like Bain Corporation really does.  In order to do that, he will alienate much of the old guard from the Republican Party.  Simply calling Obama a “socialist” won’t work this time around.  Thanks in part to Gingrich’s recent pulling back of the curtain,  and three years of the progressive bloggers along with only four months of OCCUPY, the American people much more about how Wall Street works than they ever have in the history of our nation.  Many of them are beginning to see that Obama and the leadership of the Democratic Party are  not that different from the middle of the road Republicans.  Many Americans are letting go the myth of the two-party system and its 4 year cycles of presidential sideshows.

Gingrich’s challenge will be to pass off moderate Republicans as socialists because if Obama is a “leftist socialist”, then moderate Republicans are too.  This, I don’t think that even Gingrich can accomplish.

It is ridiculous that these candidates stand up and refer to Obamacare as socialism when in fact it would be more accurate to call it “WallStreet Investor Care”–a right-leaning program since it forces 50 million Americans to buy services from Wall Street corporations and the only ones who really benefit from it are the ones who work for a corporation.

Irony #2: A 15 year Anniversary

Gingrich won his first Primary and captured the lead in electoral votes on January 21, 2012.  On that same day and month in 1997 Gingrich’s Congressional colleagues voted 395-28 to penalize him $300,000 for misconduct.  See this article from Washington Post.

Note: Eighty-four ethics charges were filed against Gingrich during his term as speaker. After extensive investigation and negotiation by the House Ethics Committee, Gingrich was penalized $300,000 by a 395–28 House vote. It was the first time in history a speaker was disciplined for ethical wrongdoing.

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* This image is a work of an employee of the United States Farm Security Administration or Office of War Information domestic photographic units, created during the course of the person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

Cross Post from IfLizWereQueen

I’m not at all surprised by Gingrich’s rise in the polls.  The American People realize that it will take a bold, intelligent leader to make things better–someone who is willing to shake things up in a big way.  And at the moment, that’s more than either Obama or Romney seem to realize.  You need to take their pulses to determine if either of  them are still breathing.

The USA is not likely to  get better fast enough to save a lot of drowning people without a bold leader with bold, specific, new and credible solutions who  is able to stand up to the establishment and fight for the 99%.

Many Americans I talk to believe that it will take someone who is a fighter and a screamer like Lyndon Johnson who is willing to make waves and crack heads–perhaps someone a little crazy and grandiose–not some pious religious fanatic like Rick Santorum who criticized Gingrich for being grandiose and not a Wall Street yes man like Obama who gives away the farm even before negotiation have begun as he did with health care insurance and certainly not someone like Mitt Romney, an avowed plutocrat.

The tepid leadership of Barack Obama has been great for Wall Street investors as many of them have more than doubled their wealth (including Congressional members) over the past three years. However, his leadership and his hand selected,  Harvard and Yale graduated Wall Street groomed cabinet and administration have not been nearly enough for the 99%. His campaign team still don’t get it because they have surrounded themselves with people who  agree with them–people who like them belong to the Wall Street invested 1%.

The tepid leadership of a mealy-mouthed private equity plutocrat like Mitt Romney certainly would not be enough.  After all, why vote for someone who looks so much like the current President we have–especially in his unabashed support of Wall Street.  The people realize this and that is why Romney is losing South Carolina with its 9.9% unemployment and why Gingrich is winning.

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Gingrich Needs to Work on His Solutions for the USA

But if he wants to win, Gingrich is going to have to do a lot better than offer Associates Degrees for unemployed workers as he suggested in one of  the debates:  He is going to have to be able to offer the unemployed jobs that pay a living wage.

The problem in the USA is not lack of education, nor is it an unwillingness for Americans to go to work.  Ask a friend of mine who holds a Masters degree and is working as a checker at a WalMart in Houston.  Ask any one of the 1,000 people who last fall applied for four jobs at a McDonalds.  I’m sure there were several hundred of them who even had four year degrees.  Tell me how an Associates degree is going to help them obtain a non-existent job.

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Gingrich and Clinton’s welfare reform act was one of the cruelest examples of “bipartisan” leadership in the history of our nation and few Americans realize what really happened.  Gingrich is going to have to do better than offer solutions such as his and Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act.  Peter Edelman, a Clinton appointee was so disgusted over the injustice of this bill that he resigned over it, calling the bill  the worst thing that Clinton had ever done [ Rwanda must have slipped his mind and of course this was before the "Bank Modernization Act of 1999".]

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was passed August 22, 1996–just in time for Clinton’s presidential campaign that year. PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). which became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program.  TANF put a time limit on poverty.  It gave the poor parents (usually just one parent in these families) assistance for 2 years.  After that, if they didn’t have a job–tough luck.  No more help.  The rug is jerked out from beneath them.  This is justice?  This is humanity?

Making people work instead of keeping them on the dole sounds great and fair and few Americans including me would argue that..  However if there are no jobs to be had, what the hell good is an education and what are these parents going to do. Even more basic, what are their children going to eat?

At the beginning of his first term Bill Clinton passed NAFTA (with the assistance of Rahm Emmanuel shoving it down the throats of reluctant Congressional members).  Then throughout the Clinton presidency, they turned a blind eye as Wall Street cooked the books and inflated the value of stocks–particularly for all the newly formed dot com tech companies.  Clinton’s parting gift to the 1% and Wall Street investors was the deregulation of the  financial system of the USA with the “Bank Modernization Act of 1999″.

But back to the “welfare reform” and its time line.  USA Trade agreements like NAFTA hit the people of the other countries hardest first.  There is lag time in the USA, a lull before the American people feel the full brunt of such one-sided agreements for the rich of both countries.  Within the first two years after the passage of NAFTA, the Mexican corn farmers were decimated.  They could not complete with the heavily subsidized USA corporations such as ADM and Cargill.  As the Mexican corn farmers failed, so did hundreds of other cottage industries whose prosperity depended on the corn farmer.  Within two years inflation had gone through the roof and thousands of Mexicans were out of work.  They did what all citizens of a nation do when they are displaced by war, famine or unfair trade agreements that decimate their local economies:  They migrate.  From 1996 to 2000 the illegal immigrant population in the USA swelled from just under 2 million (which it had been for almost 10 years) upwards to estimates as high as 15 million.

TANF became active in 1997–just in time for the USA to start feeling the full impact of NAFTA in our own country.  It is estimated by most reliable sources that by 1998 NAFTA had resulted in the loss of over 2 million jobs for Americans.  Then the crash of the dot com bubble brought more job losses.  So here these people are, mostly young women with children under the age of five with their training and associates degrees but no jobs to be had.

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Newt’s not going to win by regurgitating solutions from the 1990′s–or if he does, he is not going to make any more difference for the 99% than Obama has.

We’ve been living with an administration for three years who have been reliving the Clinton solutions from the 1990′s so we already know that doesn’t work.

Cross Post from iflizwerequeen

Yes, we currently have a modern-day serf economy.  Wall Street=Serfdom

Most of my readers understand all that follows at an intellectual level.  However, simplifying the story often reveals the sheer absurdity of a situation which is often obfuscated behind layers of cliches and standard political rhetoric, propaganda, and hyper intellectualism.

The economy that we currently have in the USA and the world is a Wall Street corporate economy that benefits the few–15 to 20% at the most.  Today in the USA 1 in 2 Americans live in poverty and the situation is not getting better for the majority.

This corporate economy is based on the principle that labor is cost and cost is bad (thus workers who ask for living wages are “bad”.)  Anything to cut cost is justifiable–even so far as murdering workers who oppose corporate domination and non-living wages by encouraging workers to organize.

This corporate economy is based on the principle that the lion’s share of profits do not stay in the local economies where the goods and services are created by the workers.  Instead, it is sent to the location of the headquarters of the corporation where the lion’s share of the profits are distributed to the preferred shareholders of that corporation–the members of the 1%. The distribution system of the wealth to the wealthy is Wall Street and it is a system that the majority of our elected officials not only support, but also participate in.  These people only spend a tiny percentage of their wealth.  The majority of it they horde and invest in other large corporations who are following the same economic principles.

It is indeed the modern day version of the old serf economy where the workers gave the lion’s share of the end-products of their work (goods, crops, tools, etc.)  to the elite who ignored the poverty and misery that they were creating. Today that same willful blindness exists among the elite who tend to blame the poor while refusing to look at their own part in creating and continuing to maintain the current state of economic inequality.

This is the situation, but it does not have to continue.  We the people can change it.

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ILWQ COMMENTS ON CHANGE

1. Realize that Wall Street is a system that only works for a few–20% of the population at the very most (and that’s a high estimate).

2. Realize that you are not going to change this modern day serf system as long as the people who are in control of our law-making are millionaire Wall Street investors. How dumb is that to expect a Wall Street investor to represent a citizen on Main Street who works for a living.

3.Realize anyone who is invested in Wall Street has a direct conflict of interest with all local economies–and that includes your local economy.  The Wall Street system is bleeding Main Street to death and has been for at least 30 years–drip, drip, drip.

4. Realize that Democrat or Republican/Tea Party membership makes no difference. Both parties are Wall Street corrupted to the core.  You will not have significant change by voting for members of either party.  Their leadership are all Wall Street investors and over 44% of them currently in Congress are Wall Street multimillionaires who profit from this corrupt system that exploits the majority.

For one example: Romney, the Republican candidate likely to carry Iowa is one of the biggest Wall Street jerks of all.He made much of his fortune via hedge funds.   He even mocks the people on Main Street.  We have a photo of Romney and a bunch of his hedge fund pals clutching money in their fists as they posed for a photo in the 1980′s to prove his disdain for Main Street.  If the people in Iowa are smart, they will stay home from the primary caucus tomorrow and spend their time looking for a non-millionaire, non-Wall Street invested candidate who is neither Republican nor Democrat.

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Understand that politics down to and including the local level must be swept clean of Wall Street Influence

It’s not just our national level that has been polluted by Wall Street influence.  Our local level politics suffer from the results of Wall Street influence as well.  If you wonder why there are so many  empty store fronts in your local downtown, you don’t have to look any further than your local city councils, mayors and Chamber of Commerce for your answer.  In municipalities across the nation, leaders have sold out their communities to Wall Street by offering outrageous tax breaks and even paying incentives to have Wall Street corporations locate in their communities.  The result of these tax breaks and other incentives to Wall Street has been erosion of the tax revenues to support, schools, roads and other infrastructure support for the community.  And also higher taxes for the individual citizens of the community who foot the bill as usual for rich Wall Street freeloaders.

The only way it will stop is for voters to start asking candidates: Do you own Wall Street stock?

and if the answer is “yes”, then look elsewhere for a candidate who is not a Wall Street investor.

As long as Wall Street investors are in charge of our Congress, we will not have a democracy that works for the majority.    It’s called “conflict of interest.”   What do you think that your elected officials will support–legislation that puts money in their pockets or legislation that will benefit you but not be so profitable for them personally?

If you want the answer to that question, all you have to look at is the across the board increase in net worth of our Wall Street Congress over the past three years as millions of Americans have lost their jobs and homes.  This increase in Congressional net worth is directly related to legislation that they have and have not passed–legislation that benefits Wall Street investors to the detriment of the Main Street majority.

Cross Post from IfLizWereQueen

And speaking of snowball’s chances in hell–How about that Sarah Palin.  Palin, like any astute predator, smells blood in the water in Iowa.  “It’s not too late for folks to jump in,” Palin said during an interview on the Fox Business Network, according to advance excerpts. “Who knows what will happen in the future.”

But again we all need to remember the two-party system is nothing more than a tawdry circus. THROW THEM ALL OUT IN 2012!  Vote for non-millionaire, non-Wall Street investor, Independents from the 99%.

Cross Post from IfLizWereQueen