To those who believe the poor are at fault for destroying America -
You reckon that poor women like me that have no job, no income and have a bunch of children I can’t afford is what messes up our country?
Wow, I don’t have as much to live on in an entire year as Washington pays to buy one chair in one office of any Senator and you figure that I’m the one causing America to fail?
It sickens me to see executive after executive that has driven their companies into the ground who are allowed to walk off with tens of millions of dollars for not doing the job they were hired to do. The billions of dollars being paid to these people while their companies are failing isn’t being listed as the cause of the problem – no, you figure it is the poor people causing it.
The US government took all of one day to bail out Bear Stearns whose idea of accounting wouldn’t have been tolerated in any smaller business and whose risky decision-making, shoddy maneuvering and poor use of their resources cost their own demise.
But, listen to the reasons given for not bailing out individual homeowners and apply these to Bear Stearns and other big financial institutions engaged in high powered gambling and illegal accounting practices. Why is it acceptable to bail out billionaires, millionaires and big corporate entities whose profits should be providing their safety net?
And every few days, I watch the Feds “float” hundreds of millions of dollars to these large corporations and financial institutions to buy them time to adjust their accounts for the mess they created by pretending the losses they had didn’t exist and that the values of what assets they had were greater than reality could support.
These corporate and financial entities engaged in risky and criminally negligent business practices in order to conceal the truth from investors, government regulators and the general public. The use of these fraudulent accounting practices has today and in the future removed opportunities for everyone and is costing each of us. It is our money that is bailing them out.
All the while, these companies’ executives are personally walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves and their friends. They have intentionally manipulated their investment positions, monopolized their markets, heavily lobbied legislators and regulators to turn a blind eye to their actions and driven their formerly profitable companies into the ground costing hundreds of thousands of jobs and opportunities to be lost.
For some reason, you and others are not placing blame on these individuals directly responsible to the world for creating this mess but instead cussing the audacity of poor people for creating it. And, for some reason, these upper class decision-makers are being given the protection and status of royalty within a democratic society founded upon equality while taking none of the responsibility for their actions.
If the government had to put back the money they’ve stolen and re-routed from the social security system and stop hijacking its funds to pay for other things that don’t belong to it – the system would be solvent for many generations to come. It was not the people of the United States that decided to steal from the social security system funds – it has been legislators, government officers, accountants and administrative decision-makers who have done it. They’ve hijacked the funds to pay for other things and should be required to put those funds back where they belong.
If the small business administration supported small businesses once again, rather than loans to support financial institutions and giving out grant monies to city, county and state governments, it would do the job it was created to do. The changes that have been made in policy and practice over the last fifteen – twenty years, has caused the small business administration to be no more than a clearing house of funding for large institutions and government operations at various levels.
With the number of regulations required exclusively of small and start up businesses by the government in the United States, it is remarkable that anything gets done. But any time there are any regulations for the safety and well-being of the public required of larger companies, the government steps in and undermines the regulating agency, its funding, its authority or negates the legislation that founded it. How is that the fault of the poor people suffering America’s double standard?
How do you figure that any of these factors are not the culprits in America’s financial and economic instability? Why can a few hold tens of billions of dollars in futures positions without accountability for having manipulated commodities and oil / energy futures prices? Why is that accepted in practice along with leveraging against money that doesn’t exist to buy more of some future commodities than could possibly exist in reality? Why isn’t that system of gambling and unsecured risk taking illegal when it directly caused the Great Depression and Stock Market Crash of earlier days in America and other places?
Why is it okay for every House of Representatives member, Senator, agency, department head and government administrator to have a staff in excess of 30 individuals making over $50,000 a year each without successfully achieving anything worthwhile for the people of America? How can it possibly take over 22 million people to run our government and why continue paying them even when the infrastructure they’re paid to protect is crumbling and the job is not getting done?
And, you think I’m the reason America is failing, the economy is unstable, the government is past bankrupt and our position in the world is degrading rapidly? You figure that is caused by me and every other woman and her children like me living in a fourth class, third world America?
It wouldn’t be that the Democrats and Republicans both, failed to protect our freedoms and rights and opportunity while forcing us to endure their use of us to make money and insure their own paychecks? It may be that the greater culprits here are not on the bottom rungs of the ladder but isn’t it easier to blame those denied a voice and kept out of the game entirely?
Why would anyone turn to the poor and the “disenfranchised” and say, “you’re the ones to blame for all this?” I and others like me have been denied any voice in the matter at all. Who has been making the decisions and how much are they being paid?
Why do Senators deserve a parking deck at over $78 per square foot to build while any person in America is homeless? Why is that considered appropriate uses of our money along with very expensive decorations for their offices, paid “field trips” to vacation spot seminars and conventions, obscenely overstaffed offices and departments and exaggerated paychecks while any person in America is without opportunity or is going hungry?
Why should it cost $200,000 – $250,000 to create / or to start up a business in America simply to provide assured income for banks and government regulators in states and counties? How is it that you don’t think this is creating and contributing to many economic problems and eroding the foundations of our country?
Why is it that knowing these things and others you would turn to the poor and blame them? Do you not understand that our markets are not supported by the two percent at the top of our caste system in America, but rather by the participation and purchases by well over 98% of the rest of the population?
Is it not clear that our government and its big corporate friends they support have engaged intentionally in severe social stratification measures to take large segments of the population “out of the game,” thinking it would secure higher profits and limit competition for their own benefit?
Isn’t it possible that since there are no realized consequences to them personally for these tactics, little will be changed now or in the immediate future? Why aren’t all these and similar known-factors placed squarely to blame for the mess they’ve directly created and perpetrated to the detriment of us all?
They’ve created a prison system for profit that only does well if they continue to herd people in for even the smallest offense. They’ve manufactured a system of “justice” that is no justice at all and supports the careers of district attorneys, judges and politicians rather than what is right and just. They’ve created a health system that only secures its profits by making people sick and keeping them in ill health to keep pharmaceutical companies and medical industry companies healthy at the expense of everyone.
They’ve manufactured prison camps for the disabled and disenfranchised that profit only by heavy traffic and abusive use of pharmaceuticals in the name of behavior modification. These drugs wouldn’t even be used in tranquilizer guns against enemy combatants during war in the name of humane treatment of combatants and the Geneva Convention guidelines.
Police routinely round up women and disabled individuals to fill these locked behavior modification based mental health systems and deny even the most basic rights to them that are assured to every American. There is no due process, no recourse, and typically abusive policies are used throughout these agencies and their systems.
They’ve made a family and children services that profits by taking children using gestapo tactics and forcing those taken through profit-driven social services programs. Their funding is critically supported by forced administration of pharmaceuticals whether they are needed, or beneficial, or appropriate, or not.
They’ve forced viable livelihoods and opportunities for livelihoods to be denied to many while securing opportunities for themselves exclusively. These despots in this, making decisions that destroy people’s lives aren’t sitting in Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Armenia – not from the old Soviet Union or Cuba or North Korea – but in America and somehow, since they are in America doing it, that makes it okay, especially if its profit-driven – no matter what the results to individuals suffering from it and being subjected to it.
They’ve managed to create hospitals that few can survive with any opportunities to a healthy life thereafter while using a billing prowess would make anyone’s head spin. These unconscionable places hurt more than they help on a regular basis but nothing is ever done to hold them accountable nor to correct the travesties they are commonly found to have caused.
The women that are not paid enough to support themselves and their children nor allowed to create a business to support themselves are such a huge portion of the US population that it is surprising that they are dismissed so easily. But then, haven’t businesses, states and US Congressional members done everything possible to disenfranchise these women and deny them resources to participate in the free market economy on equal footing?
The police and armies of law enforcement personnel engage in brutality against people in every state, county and city in the United States as a common practice. This is true across America whether a person has committed an egregious crime or simply made a minor offense or none at all and is being hauled off for feeling agitated. There is a huge status given for beating a suspect down, among the opinions in the police agencies and among fellow officers. In the United States, flagrant cruelty, brutality and viciousness by police against citizens is glamorized, accepted and encouraged.
No other country in the world could get away with that kind of police force abuses of power and brutality without the United States and the United Nations holding the country’s leadership accountable for it. But, when the police in America are driving a woman’s face into the ground while digging their knee into her liver, or when videotape surfaces of another brutal beating by police of a handcuffed suspect, it makes no difference to anybody.
In statistics that are reported and those not reported, the most likely cause of death for a woman and her children comes not from strangers, thieves, disease or car accidents but rather from her family members, spouses, male friends she is dating or the father of her children. The real chance of any woman being safe in any of these relationships in America is extremely slim based on the overwhelming evidence and even the most conservative statistics.
The chance of a woman or female child being critically injured or permanently disabled from rape, domestic violence and abuse in America has surpassed every other nation except Saudi Arabia and Taliban controlled factions.
But, these American women are supposed to get up and in some way compete for opportunities to take care of herself and her children. That it is commonplace for those opportunities to be slighted to her, denied to her and that the government and business systems that seek to profit from her difficulties will further abuse and victimize her are facts. Then to turn and place blame on these women for all the troubles and difficulties of America? You’ve got to be either blind or engaging in pathetic jest at the expense of reality.
What is the problem with placing the blame squarely where it belongs? Are you and those who agree with you afraid something would have to change knowing there’s a problem these institutions, programs, businesses and government administrators can be held accountable to solve? Would that be bad?
If those who created the problems were to have to fix them and change what they’ve made into something that will work better, how is that so undesirable? Do you think everything would unravel unless the poor are treated as the scapegoats?
The criminal and unjustifiable practices that have been in use by businesses, lobbyists, government officials, churches, political parties, financial institutions, wealthy executives, hedge fund managers, brokers, “experts”, large investors, corporate decision-makers, industries and state sovereignties have done their damage already. They are guilty of directly and indirectly undermining our economic foundations, of creating a caste system in America and dissolving the tenets of freedom, human rights and equality guaranteed in our Constitution. Why shouldn’t they be held accountable and be required to fix it?
We have global warming because our businesses didn’t want to put a $2,000 filter on their smokestacks or stop dumping industrial sludge into streams, rivers and oceans. We have glaciers melting because they didn’t want to produce any vehicles that would run on something else besides petroleum products.
And, we’ve done little to change it in the last forty years when it was known to be creating severe impacts because all the resources were poured into propaganda to discredit the facts about any of it. Where did they think they would be able to live with clean air after polluting it around the world with nuclear fallout, industrial waste and vehicle emissions?
Do they really not know the consequences that were and are inevitable from what they’ve done in the manner and the cost to society of the way they’ve done it? Have they not studied history at all?
At what point do you think they will recognize their part in creating these problems and do anything to change it? Never? As long as their comfort is assured and the blame does not rest with them, why should anything be any different until the game unravels and everyone knows what has happened?
Do you genuinely believe that I, as a poor and a disenfranchised fourth class “untouchable” living in third world America on $6,000 a year from the government, have managed to bring down our entire economy? After I’ve been beaten in my own home by husbands, roommates and “boyfriends” and nearly killed by them, had my children taken off by family services to homes where they were abused as I watched helplessly and after being forced to endure chemical lobotomy that left me unable to function or to walk in the sun or to accomplish anything, you are placing me to blame for America’s troubles?
After I’ve endured “experts” that weren’t qualified to know what reality is like in America for any woman, diagnose my real-life experiences as a delusional reality without ever attempting to verify the truth of it, and suffered the fruitlessness of working to get my children back and support them, and after being subjected to abject poverty, lack of opportunity and miserable circumstances, you say to the world that I am causing our government to bankrupt?
And then, because only the knowledge, skills, talents, experiences, opinions, ideas and inventions of those who are successfully making money are considered valid, my skills and abilities are kept out of the marketplace, which means that in thirty years, I haven’t been allowed to make a living with what I know how to do. And try as I might, there will apparently never come a day in which I can make a living from it in the United States, either.
But, somehow I am to blame for the economic disaster taking place in my nation. Is that what your intelligent use of resources has figured out? And, what? – you figure that if I weren’t here that somehow it would all be just fine?
Where were you when I was doing the jobs you wouldn’t do despite my poverty, personal despair and hardships? Were you helping anybody or busying yourself with self-flattery for identifying those like me as the crux of all our nation’s problems?
Unlike you, there is no reason for anyone to pay me for the work I do or that I can do – I’m a woman and certified by “professionals” to be delusional. Well, it isn’t a delusion that tells me how the therapy available doesn’t fix poverty nor heal the wounds of having the man married to me beating me within a breath of dying. And there is no delusion nor illusion in the grief and pain that will always be with me because my children and my home and my freedom was taken away from me when we didn’t deserve to have that happen to us.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the “system” only exists to serve its own survival at the expense of those being subjected to it. And, the fact is, there is not one single thing I can do to change any of the choices being made by the people running the show for their own profit.
The lies of our government leaders are so commonplace it is expected. The lies of the “expert analysts” of any arena are obvious, yet supported as if a good argument simply means rhetoric and a valid opinion position. And yet, major decisions with far-reaching impacts are being made based on these lies. No one I know would get away with that, but it is such a common practice in business, in government, in economic and statistical analysis and other arenas like American law, that when true facts become evident, there is no place for them.
Then, once those facts no longer can be denied or “reframed” by experts and decision-makers, there are new lies created to sidestep any responsibility and to prevent being required to make any changes in the “business as usual” status quo.
There is only one crime in America that is considered no crime at all and that is the ones committed against a woman. The only employee that is required to do three times the work to get less than one half the pay or no pay at all is the employee that is a woman. The only value a woman has to American business and particularly to business men (of a non-sexual nature) is as the decision-maker of which toilet paper to buy. The chances of any American woman getting beaten to death in her own home by a significant and trusted male she knows is greater than one in four every moment of every day across America.
There is over $60,000 a year on paperwork alone being spent on each homeless, poor, disabled, disenfranchised, and elderly to be tracked, identified and analyzed. With that much money outright given to them, not one of them would be living in poverty or homeless, now would they?
Grants, subsidized research, tax breaks and outright subsidies of billions of dollars are being paid by taxpayers for every large industry in America, while these companies’ profits which should be used for these things in order to sustain their growth and opportunities are being used like free money to enrich their own lifestyles. But no one looks at them and says they are stealing from America and causing government budget deficits.
Why should the American people be paying them to do business while they refuse to reinvest a portion of their profits into research and development or future sustainability? Why are corporations being allowed to gouge the public on monopolized fuel and other necessary resources to keep their profits at 300% when the raw products have been solely owned and subsidized by the American people?
How is it that you don’t think artificially propping up profits and refusing to honestly value assets, profits and real losses would be responsible for undermining the economy and stability of the US, (and in turn, negatively impacting the global economy)?
What kind of thinking supports the ideas you are espousing that if the poor would stop being poor then all this would straighten itself out and our government, our businesses and our nation would be strong, stable and comfortable for everyone? How does that make sense to you and to your listeners?
Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 08-24-08
(In answer to what I heard on CNN Headline News Cable Show, “The Glenn Beck Show” during this week.)
Who are the “they” in this writing – well, if you are making over $6,000 a year, work for the government or think poor people are causing the problem – go look in the mirror, because you have helped create this problem and are among the “they” it describes. And you can fix this.
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