Geoffrey Fieger: "New Slave Owners, New Plantation"

[Bozita]

http://fiegertime.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/new-slave-owners-new-plantation/

New Slave Owners, New Plantation

The economic suffering of working families is nationwide, but I hope that it is not nearly as severe as in my home state of Michigan. It breaks my heart to drive across the Detroit area and see foreclosure signs popping up like weeds in the summer heat.

In 3 of the 4 zip codes in the area, the foreclosure rate exceeds 25% according to government statistics! The City of Detroit is already an urban Prairie with whole neighborhoods of deserted homes and empty lots. Coyotes have been seen within the City limits, along with other wildlife. But coyotes are not the only predators Detroit has seen. The City Fire Department’s pension fund is nearly bankrupt after being duped into investments by a slick Wall Street firm. City business has been up for sale to the highest briber of City Council members and other utility department heads.

It’s not only desperate in Detroit. Near Detroit’s Wayne County is Oakland County, one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the Country. Even in Oakland County the foreclosure rate is skyrocketing and challenges to property tax assessments are creating huge backlogs. Michigan is in a depression and I have to wonder how long before civil unrest begins. Hundreds of thousands of people are jobless, homeless and getting desperate – and who could blame them for being angry about yet another jobless recovery where the same multibillion dollar banking and investment firms who have ripped us all off are now being underwritten by our own tax dollars?

Citibank, which charges the people of Wayne County more in interest rates than some loan sharks, is increasing the salaries of managers 50% and giving out bonuses greater than those given before the recent bust – AFTER receiving billions of dollars of tax money for a bailout! Meanwhile, Detroit is becoming the reincarnation of Batista Cuba where poverty and desperation surrounds a few oases of Casinos and yacht clubs.

I get angry just being a witness to this social injustice which is only tempered by compassion for the people who are jobless, homeless and hopeless.

Are bankers the new slave owners and is a new style of plantation emerging in the U.S.?

[juno jones]

1. K&R! n/t

[flyarm]

2. This is not new..the Rodney King riots were not about Rodney..they were about supression

of the poor and working class..by our banks and our government..some things just repeat over and over again without people ever really getting it! Its called different names..but it is all the same shit over and over again..they powers that be change the lingo and tell you to have bullshit as hope..well what is hope really..and illusion..what is change you ask..another illusion..keep the masses silent with dreams of hope and change and then they always get it up the ass big time..it is about time people wake up to what it really is..a form of facism...sold to you as hope.

[bvar22]

3. "Free Trade" has worked exactly as designed.

Mission Accomplished.

Thank You Republicans,
and Thank You "Centrist" Democrats!
:party:

[troubledamerican]

4. Detroit is the model for dismantling the U.S. -- you can buy a house for $1

but nobody in Detroit has jobs.

That's the goal. Cheap labor. And buying assets for pennies on the dollar.

Create a bubble (Dot Com, housing market, etc.), transfer trillions in wealth, pop the bubble, deflate the assets, decimate businesses, create pools of needy laborers who will work for subsistence.

Then you move in with your Goldman-Sachs bailout trillions, buy up the neighborhood for pennies, and employ the masses for peanuts.

Wonder how much they're going to pay for Boeing next year.