Bottom line:

[HughBeaumont]

If a person cannot make a living wage at what they do, this all FAILS.

If Corporate America's 30 year trend of stagnant wages that don't meet the cost of living, offshoring (or just flat out eliminating) living wage positions and reducing product quality is the only way they can make a profit, this is a FAILURE.

If a person's present success and future well being is almost completely tethered to how gainfully they're employed, this is a FAILURE.

If America wants to be in the business of quixotic turkey-shooting, making more maimed and PTSD-addled veterans, destroying nations, filling cemeteries all over the world and doing it with money we don't HAVE at the expense of our infrastructure, education and health, this is a FAILURE.

If 45-50 million people in this country don't have health insurance, another 45-70 million have incredibly inadequate insurance due to it's unaffordability and/or ineffectiveness, yet we're still keeping the private insurance mafia in charge for really no apparent reason other than to make rich people richer and to "not be soshulist", this is a FAILURE.

If we're so mesmerized and arrogant to think that we can keep getting away with low taxation that isn't paid for, especially for those that proportionately use the most resources and need the money the least, while the private sector refuses to hire and our debt and deficit skyrockets, this FAILS.

If America's taxpayers continually have to bail out unfettered capitalism's crashes and the taxpayers get nothing but long-term unemployment and a middle finger passed down to them from the beneficiaries (essentially paying for their own firings), this is a FAILURE.

If the American voter is willing to give the Milton Friedman brand of Capitalism another decade (added to it's thirty-year record of disaster) to work, while only giving Keynesian economics a less-than-2-year window to "cure" things, this all FAILS.

If our "opposition party" is, without a bat of an eyelash, willing to compromise with rather than cause much needed static to their Republican counterparts, is completely in tune with their "FREE MARKETZ" fantasy and on board the yachts supposedly lifted by this phantom "rising tide" rather than figure out how to save the people most in need, they've FAILED US.

If more than half of this country is incapable of seeing the unbelievable idiocy of continually giving the keys to arch-conservative slash-and-wasters, ex-CEOs who fired workers as easily as they blew their noses and people who (let's just be blunt) belong in a straitjacket and on horse tranquilizers, then this has already FAILED.

Bottom line is, as a nation, we cannot go on like this.

If anyone heard Harry Belafonte's speech as I did on October 2nd, it would likely hit them that, speaking as an active observer for the past 5 decades to the unprecedented political and corporate corruption and greed that's been undeservedly bestowed upon this country, he sort of understands that if we "stay the course" it's only a matter of time before another economic collapse or another unnecessary tax-wasting military invasion happens.

Capitalism, with the path it now takes, one-sided toward the profit motive only and without care for long-term continuity, fairness or integration, is failing America and holding her hostage.

Both parties seem to be on board with this unfettered crapcake of a system, its thirty-year lack of success be damned. Its sustainability is about as solid as an average person's job security. Its foundation now depends on an outdated plantation format as its blueprint, non-union low-cost labor for its industry and manufacturing and consumer spending with an average wage that cannot keep up with its necessity. Its progress mirrors the rise of the average American wage in real dollars.

Bottom Line: It's either more laissez-fail trickle-on, or this country's future. And I'm speaking to the voters and owners of BOTH parties on this one.

You wouldn't think this would be that hard a choice.

If I took anything with me from October 2nd, it's the hardening of this belief of what the country's general long term plan should be as far as it's survival is concerned:

Tax the rich. End the wars. Subsidize education & health care and shore up your social safety net. Make your nation more equal.

Or die a slow, painful and chaotic death.

[Newest Reality]

1. Very well said!

That's a good laundry list of what needs to be washed NOW!

I have the impression that the PTB, (plutocrats, etc.) want it all to go to hell in a hand basket, as per Shock and Awe economics. So, the economic darkness around every corner appears to be suspiciously a win-win for the victorious winners in the final stages of the Class War. It becomes one big opportunity for the vested interests to grab everything and force change while increasing power.

Sad thing is, they already have more power and wealth than has been held historically, IMHO. It seems that, left unabated, that drive will thrust most of us into an increasingly draconian, Fascist and Orwellian nightmare from which one cannot wake up and that's our final legacy to generations to come?

There is a visible line. It is no longer hard to see it when willful ignorance is abandoned. The corporate mass media can only simulate a functional, stable reality for so long. The water is boiling to the point of over.

[bobbolink]

2. Could you also add this... When we have untold MILLIONS of homeless people, including over ONE

MILLION HOMELESS SCHOOL CHILDREN, this country has failed.

I'm going to keep repeating this until you all begin to GET IT.