Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Lowdown from Jim Hightower (America isn't Broke)

  
America isn't broke. There's plenty of money to build an economy worthy of our ideals and can-do spirit

Jim Hightower

Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are--names like the Bears, Panthers, Ravens, and Lions. But, come on, such animalistic monikers are no longer intimidating in our modern world, so I suggest that teams upgrade to names that really would spark terror in the hearts of opponents: "Big Oil Frackers," for example, or "Monsanto Genetic Mutators," "Walmart Middle-Class Crushers," "Big Pharma Price Gougers," and "Wall Street Banksters."

Such corporate predators rule today's economic and political jungle, and a hail storm of statistics confirms the vast and long-term damage they're wreaking on the poor and middle class, our environment, democratic rights, and sense of justice.

Behind those stats, though, are living, breathing, striving humans--an entire nation of real people being knocked down and shut out, unable to realize the aspirations they have for themselves, their families, communities, culture, and country. The elites--to their eternal shame-- literally are stifling the enormous possibilities of America's grassroots people. That's why the public's approval rating of today's aloof Powers That Be is now (as a friend recently told me) "two digits lower than poisonous snakes."



Public anger at the raw selfishness of those ruling our economic and political systems is so severe that even Lloyd Blankfein flinched. The $21-million-a-year chief bankster at Goldman Sachs, Blankfein has presided over the bank's multiple acts of fraud against its own customers, grabbed a taxpayer bailout of $12.9 billion in 2008, lobbied furiously against legislation to restrain Wall Street's reckless greed (including especially fierce opposition to proposals for opposition to proposals for restricting CEO pay)--and then declared: "I'm doing God's work."

To read the entire article click here.

 

1 comment:

Stickup Artist said...

I agree with Mr. Hightower and support his bullet points for improvement. However, until a vocal majority of "average workers" agree, I feel we are doomed to a continued fleecing. It's astonishing how minimum wage workers without health insurance still label one as a socialist or communist because you support a decent minimum wage and medicare for all. (I run into those attitudes all the time and have probably bemoaned that fact here before).