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I am tired of the government shoveling OUR money to greedy failed businessmen. It is sickening. How many times has some industry said "if we could just get deregulated, things would be AWESOME and everything will be perfect! TRUST US!!!" How many times has this happened just in my lifetime? Shall I rattle off a list? Let's see - we deregulated the savings and loans when I was 12 or so, and less than 10 years after they were deregulated we had to bail out the whole goddamn industry at a cost to all of us (the taxpayers) of something like half a trillion dollars. We deregulated the airline industry, and now not only can they not make airplanes fly on time (at least without cutting major corners on issues of maintenance and safety) they can't even seem to turn a profit, and this was BEFORE 9/11 (when we had to bail them out) and BEFORE the cost of fuel went through the roof. We deregulated the energy trading sector, and in return the state of California, which had suffered a single major blackout in the entire history of the state up to that point, got rolling blackouts and the cost of energy went up something like 3000 percent. There were blackouts even in winter, when supply seriously exceeded demand. How the fuck was that possible? I'll tell you how. Read a few of the books about Enron and you'll see how. Enron and the other energy trading companies were essentially allowed to loot the wallets and bank accounts of the people of California on a scale that was truly breathtaking. Dick(head) Cheney insisted that there was no funny business going on and the Federal government refused to step in. Now Governator Schwarzenegger still can't make the state balance its checkbooks, there are some rumblings about him experiencing his own recall, and he has only his Republican friends to blame. We deregulated the telecommunications industry, and now the price of cable goes up no matter what the circumstances are, we seem to have fewer choices with internet service or cellular or home phone service, and one of the biggest of the big, AT&T, the same company that the government broke up in my childhood for being too fucking big, the same company that is illegally allowing the government to tap our phones, read our e-mails, etc., has created a new 2,500 page customer service agreement that they expect all of us to take seriously. They have tried to derail VOIP, the only thing that threatens their little cornered market scheme. Even now they are threatening to limit both access and bandwidth to their customers and even skew search engines towards companies that pay more, which will naturally affect the small businesses that I prefer to patronize. It will become much harder to find them, unless I know where to look. We deregulated the banking industry, and once again, in less than ten years, it is failing in a spectacular fashion on a level that most people cannot even comprehend. We don't even know how bad it is or if this bailout will be enough. And even now, the Powers That Be are insisting that we can't afford to help the ordinary people - us- who will be losing their homes. So who is going to buy all these empty houses, assholes? Who is going to fix them up, and care for them, and do the sort of things that make neighborhoods worth living in? Are we supposed to believe that we should pump a trillion dollars into the banking industry, just so they can own a few million vacant houses while everyone else gets forced onto the street? We are supposed to roll over and buy into this bullshit? Well, fuck that.
It doesn't even stop there! Payroll taxes were increased when I was a kid with the intention that the excess money generated would go towards making sure that Social Security would be adequately covered once all the Baby Boomers started retiring. Instead, every single administration since that time has used that money for their own purposes, and in what can only be called a cynical and underhanded attempt at budgetary hocus-pocus, used that Social Security surplus to make their budget deficit seem smaller than it really was. With the exception of two years in the Clinton Adminstration (1999 and 2000), that is what has always happened. THAT is what Gore talked about when he talked about a "lockbox" on Social Security. He promised that we would stop spending that money. I guess we'll never know if he would have actually carried out that promise. But Bush sure as fuck has spent that money away, and once again the so-called fiscal conservatives of the Republican party have gone completely hog-wild in an orgy of spending while cutting the taxes of the people who can afford the most to pay taxes. In essence, those of us who are putting money into social security are subsidizing the tax cuts of the extremely wealthy, many of whom do not themselves pay taxes anyway. Corporations keep getting benefits from connections in government even as they enact policies that move jobs and profits offshore. They expect us, the public, as well as the government, to turn a blind eye to it all even when their products cause harm to us and the environment. Well, fuck that.
I am fucking sick and tired about how the goddamn Republicans, along with more than a few Democratic enablers, have shoveled untold TRILLIONS of dollars to these motherfuckers in the past twenty years or so and yet we are continuously told that "we can not afford" to do things like fix infrastructure, take care of sick and elderly people, give out loans and grants for college students or lunches to little kids, or make sure vets have the best care and opportunities to make a decent life post-military. But somehow we can afford to keep fixing these fuck-ups on behalf of big business. Well it's time to draw a line. No more top-down economic policies. No more supply-side economic theory. It doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work. You can come up with all the fancy names for it you like, but ultimately those economic models are based on the principle that all we, the ordinary people, are entitled to are the scraps from Massa's table. And we are supposed to be happy we get even that. Well, fuck that.
I am tired of people who shrug and say things like "why bother?" and "it's beyond fixing" and "I don't even vote". News flash: YOU ARE PART OF THE FUCKING PROBLEM. Generations of people like you, with your goddamn apathy, helped make things the way they are today. I love George Carlin, God rest his soul, but I think he was wrong. All of you slackers think that those of us who actually try to participate in the political process are suckers. Those assholes who have skewed government to work in their favor at the expense of all of the rest of us? They COUNT on people like you. They figure that there is no way the masses can organize well enough to do anything to stop them. And when the ordinary people organize and try to do anything, like labor unions or MoveOn.org or whatever, they do everything they can to belittle them, limit their power and influence, even turn the power of the government against them. Why the hell do you think Sarah Palin and Rudy Guiliani and others made fun of community organizers and the crowd at the GOP convention cheered them on? Fuck that. Those assholes are lucky that we have not, to paraphrase Lewis Black, risen as one and slain them. They are lucky that there are not mobs of people marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks, ready to run most of Congress out of town on a rail after we tarred and feathered them. Honestly, who knows, if things get bad enough we may actually see that sort of thing, particularly once there are enough people who are homeless and going hungry. I hope we don't end up, as a people, resorting to violence. But as long as normal means of recourse to us keep getting limited, they have to expect that eventually there is going to be a breaking point. We don't want it to get that far, because the people that are going to become the majority of casualties in a scenario like that are all of us. The assholes will use those of us who are supposed to serve the public, the police and the military, to protect them from all of us. The ordinary people versus the ordinary people. So, for the love of God everyone, please keep trying to do something. Please try to make an effort. Please make a difference, even if it is just at a local level. And for God's sake get out there, attempt to educate yourself on issues, become an informed citizen, and exercise your goddamn rights. We the people can't afford our own goddamn lobbyists. So all of us are going to have to do it ourselves, at our own expense. At the absolute minimum, become informed and vote. And if you can participate in public discussions, do it, and talk to your representatives in Congress and in state and local governments and let them know that you are not some dumbshit boob-tube addicted doormat. You aren't going to take it anymore. Get fired up. If you want to do this for your kids or your grandkids, then do it, but I don't care if you have kids or not. This is something all of us have to do for all of us, in this generation, now, and not just for any future generations. For the love of God, I am begging you. Lead, or follow, and don't just get out of the way.
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