We just got past the nation's so-called 'labor day'. There is no more meaningless Holiday around though since our country's corporate elites actually hate laborers and think that they are the bottom scrapings of society and should be treated like shit.... ALWAYS. They do not want laborers (called workers by many) to have either a minimum wage, or what the elites label 'entitlements'. Think I am making that all up? Then go to the Wall Street Journal's Saturday edition immediately before this years' fake-oH!'labor day'. There, the corporate criminals that hang out in loads at the US's leading capitalist publication, the WSJ, headlined THEIR idiotic question of 'Are Entitlements Corrupting Us?' ... the 'us' meaning not them! See their real views about LABOR at Are Entitlements Corrupting Us? Yes, American Character Is at Stake. Really, the use of bureaucratic word, 'entitlement', tells us a mountain about the Wall Street Journalist and America's capitalist ruling elite. You see? The word as used by them does not include any of the trillions of dollars that big time capitalists got to 'help the economy' out during the current depression. It does not include any of the trillions upon trillions of dollars of contracts that the government hands them out yearly via Pentagon contracts either! 'Entitlements' is a defamatory word used by capitalist elites to describe what laborers might get handed out in pennies to keep them halfway together and marginally alive, when they are sick and/or age... and to keep the laboring class from starving or landing in the gutters of American streets, where they would be a cleanup problem for the country's big shots. So what is it like to see this phoney 'labor day' pass us laborers by, year after year in our society that despises the common laborers that do the real and hard work of keeping society running? It is a repugnant society we live in that hates us and 'labor day' just underlines that, by being a day that has been made meaningless by those who flagrantly run our Planet down into destruction and disintegration. A society that truly values LABOR and the LABORING CLASS makes everyday a day for Labor, not just creates a fake 'holiday' in September while moving away from that real day for international workers in May, called May Day. The US 'labor day' makes us sicker, and not happier about the role we have of being exploited by the capitalist class for our labors.
Tag: working class
“Invest in America” speak-out at Lame-Bone’s Office Tomorrow
Instead of his lame-ass "town halls" like the Tea-Party ones he held for health care, remember those? The one at a Country Club on the far edge of town that started after the bus stopped running on a Friday evening, no more bus service till Monday morning? Working Class need not apply? Then they filled the hall with a Republican Party strategy session before the "open to everyone" Town Hall? And the Republicans stayed for the "open" Town Hall, making sure nobody else could come in? Yeah... THAT old Pig tactic. This Speak-out is outside his Luxury Office Suite, where anybody with a million-dollar annual income and a campaign contribution check has easy access. Again, Poor people, workers... need not apply. Unless the Punk can prove that he actually does own one square inch more of the streets and sidewalks than any other citizen, there ain't Jack they can do about it. Bring stereo equipment, something with microphones and amps. Make sure every TeaBag sellout who works for him can hear what the REAL people have to say. 10:30 tomorrow morning, Thursday 24 Feb 2011, at Doug Lamborns congressional district office in Colorado Springs. MoveOn.org is sponsoring, and this is an info blurb: In dozens of state legislatures and in Congress, Republicans are proposing massive cuts to education, police, emergency responders, and vital human services—instead of asking big corporations and millionaires to pay their fair share. This is a moment for national action, so we're holding Invest in America speak-outs tomorrow (Thursday) and will follow them up with rallies in all 50 state capitals on Saturday.
From last Friday’s action, some pictures, some linked commentary
The linked commentary isn't about the bus lack-of-service, it's to fellow local activist Loren Wirbel made a short documentary film just showing a FEW of the multi-gazillionaire "defense" plants around town. You know the ones, our Magnificently Superior Business Experts at City Hall made the command decision for us to give them Tax Exemptions that would make Reagan blush, to draw them to a Strategic Location where they were going to come anyway. So they get local services on the local dime far disproportionately to what they actually paid for. It's bad enough that We The People have to subsidize Corporate Welfare Cheats like Lockheed but they're also Corporate Warfare Daddy Warbucks types who make their money from other people DYING. Deathmongers getting a free ride from our Wise and Noble and Ever So Much Better that us City Hall. The rest of us paid our fare, but we don't get the ride. That's not fair. By the way, that last line isn't complaining, it's telling the Ayn Rand worshipers that they're complete Liars when they say stupid shit like they're actually a Free Market where everybody has a chance. Lying... Cowardly... PUKES. A swarm of Parasitic Slugs in search of a bag of salt. A LOT of canes and wheelchairs, and a few burnout refugees-from-the-70s Ahem.. Cyrus of course. Just some of our friends. Notice the preponderance of canes and wheelchairs. There's a reason for this, it's because the other people who depend on the buses were at their jobs waiting their turn to be injured then disposed of. Timing of the event has to be when buses are running, it's a Catch-22 of massive proportions. The bus service abruptly cuts off at shift change. If you'll notice, the Bus Service people had their Q&A session scheduled for the middle of the afternoon as well. Intentionally? Orders from Above? Eh. One of the people who uses the bus to go to and only occasionally FROM work, said "Hey, they didn't even actually pay attention to the badly disabled, how are they going to handle the Working Poor?" How indeed. Republicans and Ayn Rand "libertarians" tend to take the short view when it comes to Workers and our rights. If it isn't happening to them personally, immediately, they just don't see it happening. If they personally aren't staring down the barrel of the gun, they'll simply say "Gun? What gun? I don't see any gun... nothing to see here, citizens, keep moving, nothing to see.."
Reid asks: Why would Hispanics Vote GOP, GOOPers upset
Like, Jews voting for Hitler. Seriously, it's THAT obvious. The GOOPers actually are getting all bent out of shape because somebody pointed out that a) They've made official oppression of dark-skinned people a Platform Priority Plank ever since the only Good Republican was assassinated at Ford's Theater in 1865. b) A lot of us swarthy folk have actually noticed that fact and c) Calling people Racists for noticing that their Get Outta Our Party! "big tent" has a "No Coloreds" sign at the door, and the only bilingual sign on the tent is at the back door and says Servants Entrance, is kind of Stupid. OK so it's REALLY Stupid. They gun a man down, actually make him lay down on the concrete face down, THEN shoot him, Oscar Grant in Oakland California, the GOOP notice only that people of color say that it's a racist crime, and the GOOP do as they always do, and Back The Badge, say that the Colored Fellow deserved to be shot for talking back to Uniformed StormTrooper Thugs who believe and state that they're "The Law" in their own persons. Rex est Lex, animata et loquens The phrase is Latin and means, "The King IS the Law, breathing and speaking" They'll criticize any "Lefty Elitist" who actually knows the phrase without noticing that the Bush Administration "good ol' boys" resurrected the phrase to describe their own policies. I'll probably be called a Pseudo Intellectual again. See, it's a matter of Words for them. When their Might Makes Right "Let them hate us as long as they FEAR us" Shock and Awe policies, both foreign and domestic, was stated by one Gaius Julius Caesar II, known by his Latin nickname for Bootsie, "little boots" Caligula. And his second cousin Nero... Confronted by that, and that it was their own Elitist "intellectuals" in the PNAC who started calling their policy Oderint dum Metuant they get all huffy and try to talk their way out of it, with what they consider insults. They won't say "Faux Intellectuel" because it's French and they HATE French People so they pretty much have to invent combinations of words, also called "lying" by those who know Engish, they got burned publicly a few times saying just "intellectual" which means literally "intelligent and educated" (Only the GOOP could consider that an insult). They keep bouncing these words and catch-phrases around, trying desperately to make one stick so the people they call "The Great Unwashed" when they're not trying to get them to elect their Faux Intellectuel non-Elite elitist Racist collective Arse back into office. Trying to impress the Working class with phrases like "working class" without mentioning that it would mean that they, themselves, would be automatically the Non-Working class. Social Parasites in other words. What's tragic is that they've gotten quite a few of the TeaBags to buy into it. Now they believe they're going to get Blacks and Hispanics to forget that they're pushing a national law that singles out people who "look" Illegal for special harassment. They say that
Doug Bruce on video mouthing off about “illiterate peasants”
When Rivera shot off his own foot saying something similar, at least he wasn't running for Mayor (can't, term limits) To be fair, the "Illiterate Peasants" he was referencing weren't the Bus Riding Public who incidentally are the Working Class who support him and the rest of the Parasite Class. They're seasonal labor Farm Workers who quite literally feed his fat piggy ass and those of his Parasite Class comrades. The ones who, like him, feel that the bus service and the people who ride the bus to WORK, mostly, are extraneous and needn't be considered. One attitude spills into the other and then back again. "5000 Illiterate Peasants", compared to your similar indictments of people riding the bus? When Mayor Rivera said something similar, the "illiterate peasants" with whom I was riding the bus and discussing this same issue (Before the Big Purge of bus service) were a retired lady, with really bad health problems that come from aging, and a SCHOOLTEACHER who is blind from birth. I personally can't drive because of my neurological problems, similarly, from birth. Mayor Lyin' el had said that only bums and winos ride the bus. You could tell right there that he wasn't running for re-election. Doug Bruce and his accomplices at "Citizens for Accountable Leadership" who aren't "accountable" enough to put their Leaders Name (Doug Bruce) on their corporate letterhead even as a member of the board, are petitioning for a "strong executive mayoral city government". And it's just a coincidence that Bruce, Former Prosecutor, is rumored to be wanting another run for Mayor. Of COURSE it's just a coincidence. Doug Bruce would never lie, unless of course he needs to lie or just wants to lie. Nor would any of his Accomplic errr I mean "Associates" yeah, that's the ticket, Associates. By the way, Doug, if somebody is reading this to you... I don't like cops in any form, especially the Prosecutor type. I feel strongly that as a Prosecutor you would by default have covered many a crime committed "in the line of duty" by your fellow pigs. Especially as you feel that certain Racist Urge to dismiss whole segments of the people who work to support your system as "Illiterate Peasants" the way you did the farm workers. And, Brucie-baby, when I was riding the bus that day, Illiterate Peasant schoolteacher was on her way to work, Illiterate Peasant Senior Citizen lady was on her way from one of the Senior Centers which you're in the process of closing, to her home. SHE was worried because your shadow-government was cutting Saturday bus service off at 5 PM on the route she rides from her home to Church on Saturday evenings. Correction, (damnation, only an ILLITERATE PEASANT could possibly make such an error... RODE the bus to her church services... because you and your Noble, Intellectually Superior Ilk managed to get Saturday bus services cut off completely.) The third Illiterate Peasant, moi meme sui, who speaks three languages and has a larger English vocabulary than YOU
Workers create wealth, they have rights
Work in a capitalist society does make people sick
In a previous commentary here at Not My Tribe ... I wrote that there was scientific evidence, as well as everyday common sense evidence, that work as defined and dished out by our upper crust bosses under capitalist society in America makes people sick. I was amazed that such a simple and easily verifiable observation provoked so little intelligent discussion by our esteemed readers! What gives? Personally, I have easily worked about a dozen made-dangerous-by- capitalism job types in my lifetime and feel fortunate that I have not been totally crippled by the experience. Apparently not all of us have had these work experiences though, and not having actually done any of the dangerous work in America might put rather rosy blinkers over the eyes of some few folk about the dangers of American capitalism as well as world capitalism as a whole? The experience of writing here on this blog about how work under capitalism eats away at workers, and then getting dissed off personally for having brought the subject up at all, I have found profoundly demoralizing. (what discussion began to occur about my previous commentary was quickly erased from this site//// I hope and trust that it does not happen again?). Why write about everyday life for me and others in this country, when one only gets disrespected and put down as being an idiot for doing so? There may very well be much better venues for political expression than this blog if this sort of thing was to become routine here on Not My Tribe? Back to the subject at hand though. Much work in the US, as in all other capitalist societies is undertaken with little concern for the physical safety, let alone emotional well being, of the workers doing the actual work. Farm workers are put out into fields with cancer causing chemicals all around, not given adequate water to drink under the hot sun, and then are harassed like they are some sort of human vermin by Immigration. Yes, work in a capitalist society does make people sick, and many farm workers get sick here in America. Only a totally hard and contemptuous person would actually call such observations about the dangerousness of work in capitalist America into any kind of real question, IMO. Farm work is only one single egregious example of the abuse of the American worker (YES, Migrant workers are from the Americas and should be considered American workers), and this abuse of us all who do the actual work goes on in each and every sector of our economy, and the damage to our health is extreme. This is a rather simple and obvious truth, and it should not need for multiple examples to be listed out to anybody, who has been living in US society and not born with a
Working
One of America's great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others. Studs was best known for his book,WORKING, which was not a novel, but rather a book of interviews where working people told of their lives. In today's America, the reading of this book would be a revelation for many, who grew up and learned only the warped values of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Cheney Era. See Democracy Now for interviews and programs about Studs Terkel, a Great American leader of the First Class, the American working class.
Sarah Plain, um, Palin
Someone forgot to tell Cindy McCain that the fashion word on Sarah's big night was "populist." Cin's half-peeled banana outfit was examined by the couture analysts at Vanity Fair and the numbers look like this: Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000 Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500 Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000 Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000 Shoes, designer unknown, I'm thinking Manolos: $600 Total: about $300,000! How long until Sarah Plain stops playing moose hunter/hockey mom/sexy librarian and starts sportin' some real duds? That would make the election season almost bearable. info via Liza at culturekitchen
We have fed you all for a thousand years
Here's an old labor anthem, addressed to the idle rich who claim the fruit of other men's labor. To whom belongs the wealth generated by work? We have fed you all for a thousand years We have fed you all for a thousand years And you hail us still unfed, Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth But marks the workers' dead. We have yielded our best to give you rest And you lie on crimson wool. Then if blood be the price of all your wealth, Good God! We have paid it in full! There is never a mine blown skyward now But we're buried alive for you. There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now But we are its ghastly crew. Go reckon our dead by the forges red And the factories where we spin. If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, Good God! We have paid it in! We have fed you all a thousand years- For that was our doom, you know, From the days when you chained us in your fields To the strike a week ago. You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives, And we're told it's your legal share, But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth, Good God! We bought it fair! And for good measure, from Finian's Rainbow: When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich When the idle poor become the idle rich. You'll never know just who is who, or who is which. Won't it be rich? When everyone's poor relative becomes a 'Rockefellative', And palms no longer itch. What a switch! When we all wear ermine and plastic teeth How will we determine who's who underneath? And when all your neighbors are upper class, You won't know your 'Joneses' from your 'Ass-tors' Let's toast the day The day we drink that drinky up, but with a little pinkie up. The day on which the idle poor become the idle rich When a rich man doesn't want to work He's a bon vivant. Yes, he's a bon vivant. But when a poor man doesn't want to work, He's a loafer, he's a lounger, He's a lazy good for nothing, he's a jerk! When a rich man loses on a horse Isn't he a sport, oh isn't he a sport? When a poor man looses on a horse He's a gambler, he's a spender, He's a low life, he's a reason for divorce! When a rich man chases after dames He's a man about town, a man about town. But when a poor man chases after dames He's a bounder, he's a rounder, He's a rotter, and a lot of dirty names! When the idle poor become the idle rich You'll never know just who is who or who is which. No one will see the Irish or the Slav in you 'Cause when you're on Park Avenue, Cornelius and Mike, look alike When poor Tweedle Dum is rich Tweedle Dee This discrimination will no longer be. When we're in the dough and off of the nut You won't know your banker from your but...ler. Let's make the switch. With just a few annuities, we'll hide these incongruities With clothes from Abercrombie-Fitch When the idle poor become the idle rich!
Higher food prices now being driven by higher fuel prices
We can now see the first effects of the world energy crisis, as local grocery stores are creeping their prices of basic foods upward. The dollar stores also are not exactly dollar stores these days, and never will be again. There are two reasons for these price hikes. First off, the Pentagon is doing this to us. We are throwing them money (and hence the military suppliers and contractors money, too) like it is going out of style. This is money we simply don't have, and therefore it is coming from loans to our government, who then passes it off to those that have literally bought the government. We know who eventually will get stuck with paying off these bad debts, too. It will be the working class and lower middle class of our country. And meanwhile, the rich suck at this gigantic welfare program (teat) with absolutely no shame, as they wave the American flag outside all their offices pretending to be the great patriots. The lower echelons of this fraud get 10% off! Second cause of the rising prices is simply that we have hit the crisis of declining world oil supplies head on, and nobody has any solution to it beyond trying to corner the world supply (Thank you, Dick Cheney and Dumbo Dubya). But capturing control of world petroleum supply doesn't exactly increase it, even if such a plot were to be ever successful. All in all, we still have yet to come up with an alternative to the mobility of oil transport, and we are dependent on oil, as we have been for all the later half of the industrial revolution. Some think that the solution is turning back to coal. Some think it is turning to the deadly nuclear option. Some dream of sun, hydrogen fuel cells, and wind. Meanwhile, in the real world, it is still oil that fuels civilization, uh 'civilization' as we know it. We currently have a rapacious economic system that expands constantly at nature's expense. Nature is now fed up with it, even if our family and neighbors are not. Nature is run down, and will be run out if we continue this way. Meanwhile, the prices have begun to inch up and we grow uncomfortable here at home. Elsewhere, things have grown more desperate from the start. Ahead, it is $4/ gallon prices this summer, and the sky will certainly be the limit. Oil barrel prices flown up from below $10 a barrel (not adjusted for inflation) as close back as the mid- '80s some 22 years ago, to heading towards $120 a barrel right now. It is easy to see how our dollars are now being turned to pennies and we haven't seen anything yet. There are some horrible times for the world