When Pigs Rule

[NorthCarolina]

By David Michael Green
OpEdNews

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The reduction of the American voter's choices down to two options -- catastrophic or catastrophic with nice words -- has very real consequences. This game is played for keeps. People are not making it anymore. The middle class has been shrinking for three decades. Foreclosures are off the charts. People are literally dying from lack of health care. Children are literally dying from lack of health care. And every day, we in the richest polity that ever existed on the planet not only fail to address those crimes, we exacerbate them with the actions of the Walkers and Christies and Cuomos and Obamas of this country. It's no longer a question of whether we'll adopt the destructive policies of the regressive oligarchy, merely a question of how fast we do it.

A recent report entitled "The Basic Economic Security Tables for the United States" finds, according to the New York Times, that a single worker (no partner, no dependents) "needs an income of $30,012 a year -- or just above $14 an hour -- to cover basic expenses and save for retirement and emergencies. That is close to three times the 2010 national poverty level of $10,830 for a single person, and nearly twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. ... The most recent data from the Census Bureau found that 14.3 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2009." Imagine how many were living below the real minimum threshold three times higher than the official poverty level.

Fortunately, however, there is still some good news out there. The number of billionaires in the world grew by 199 in the past year, according to Forbes magazine's annual survey. Now there are 1,210 of them. And they possess a combined wealth of $4.5 trillion. Awesome, dude! The even better news is that that figure is up from $3.6 trillion -- a mere 25 percent growth -- in just one year's time. And what a year, too! Who says there's a massive, devastating, killer recession going on? Sounds to me like it's nothing more than a boatload of whining from a bunch of lazy, low-achiever, can't-cut-it, non-billionaires!

What amazes me the most about this disaster is that it is the biggest single political story of our era, and simultaneously the tiniest. Of course, that's not a coincidence either. You hardly want the media or social critics covering you when you're in the midst of committing the crime of the millennium. We have witnessed what is undoubtedly the greatest redistribution of wealth in all of human history. As importantly, the public face taken for the process facilitating this mass rape has been a lie. Oligarchs didn't tell us they were buying our politicians in order to take our money. They told us instead that "free" trade is good, but that unions, queers and Middle Eastern bogeymen are bad. Very bad. They told us they were lowering our taxes, when in fact they were simply transferring their tax burden onto us and onto our children. They're telling us now that it is fiscally irresponsible to properly fund public education, health care and pensions, yet humongous corporate subsidies and a military the size of the entire rest of the world combined are completely necessary.

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Link: http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Pigs-Rule-by-David-Michael-Gree-110403-490.html

As Mr. Green points out, the crime of the millennium is going on right before our very eyes, and NOBODY is talking about it. This was an exceptionally good read, hope y'all will take a moment to do so.

[KoKo]

1. K&R!

[freshwest]

2. Powerful OP. This is the soundtrack.

When I heard about Cheney's secret oilmen meeting, all I could hear was this song in my head and it's never stopped playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LXbVjcD3_c

Now everyone knows what they did. They planned this all along.