The Earth Dragon “Bamboo Box”

And so, the Malignant Menagerie of Morons Award goes to ….

… The 2011 US House of Representatives!

[Hooray!]

The MMMA goes to the republican-led House for their collective work in the following efforts:

1. Trying to lower taxes for the wealthiest citizens while unemployment is at 9% or more;
2. Working to reduce health care funds to the nation’s most vulnerable citizens;
3. Refusing to accept the biggest government spending reduction deal in history;
4. AND …. voting to repeal federal light bulb regulations designed to save money, and the nation’s natural resources.

For these stunning achievements in collective stupidity, the 2011 US House of Representatives receives the Malignant Menagerie of Morons Award!

The following poem is by Langston Hughes.

Rick Santorum, who apparently believes he is pro-union and pro-gay, chose as his presidential campaign slogan, “fighting to make America America again,” which clearly references this poem. Moments after introducing his slogan, a middle school student with a good knowledge of poetry, asked Santorum why he had chosen this pro-union poem by the gay poet Langston Hughes. In true politician fashion, Santorum immediately denied choosing this as his slogan, then denied any connection between himself and unions or himself and gay poets.

Here’s the whole poem – by all means – pass it around …

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

There is a class war going on, in full swing. Here’s the summary:

20% of the people (60 million in the USA) control 85% of the wealth.

80% of the people (240 million in the USA) are left to scrap over the remaining 15%.

Congress believes this is completely fair – particularly considering the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy, which the Democrats decided to extend, so neither party of politicians is on the side of the “people” – or more accurately, “the peasants.”

John Lennon summed it up nicely a few years ago:

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool,
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.

If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

In an article by Robert Scheer (published today – here), he gives us more tightly defined percentages: “the top thin layer [1%] of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations.”

He goes on to describe some of the results of this class-divided society: “Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.”

There’s a song by the Proclaimers that keeps echoing around in my brain: “What do you do?” Here’s a bit of the lyrics:

I want to find out where the heart’s gone
Find out where the nerves gone

What do you do
When democracy fails you
What do you do
When the rest can’t see it’s true? …

… But times running out pal
Cause they’re giving up in numbers

What do you do
When democracy’s all through
What do you do
When minority means you?

Years ago, I was saying that we live in a two-tier society. I believed then and still do today that we only have a ruling class and a peasant class and nothing in between. The USA hasn’t had a middle class for decades. A middle class started to develop for a few years after WWII, but once Nixon was elected, that was the beginning of the end. By the time Reagan was elected, the all-out war on the middle class was in full swing. Bill Clinton did his bit to further the demise of the middle class, and George W. Bush & Co finished the hit job. President Obama is continuing the crush-job.

When we know Republicans are on the side of the super-wealthy 1%, and we know that Democrats are on the side of the super-wealthy 1%, for whom might we vote? To whom could we turn to help us, or at least, lead us, out of this mess?

I have no clue.

My advice: ?

I suppose we could all abandon ship and make a desperate swim for somewhere safer – but where would that be?

A few weeks ago, the wonderful, mean-old-white-guys (mowgs) in congress were complaining that the mowgs on the left were trying to start a Class War. The mowgs serving as “mouths of Sauron” for the wealthy – otherwise known as “republicans” or “tea-baggers” or “tea-partiers” – even used the term, “Class War,” as a talking point over and over again.

Getting right to the point: There is a class war going on, in full swing. Here’s the summary:

20% of the people (60 million in the USA) control 85% of the wealth.

80% of the people (240 million in the USA) are left to scrap over the remaining 15%.

Congress believes this is completely fair – particularly considering the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy, summarized in the chart below:

If you’d like more information about this chart, you can find it at the Center for American Progress (www.americanprogress.org)

The wealthy, through their contributions to tea-party types and republican mowgs, are waging war on the rest of us. Consider, as an example, the recent attack on bargaining rights in Wisconsin. First, the governor, backed by the wealthy, gave away $117 million in tax breaks for the wealthy, then attacked the average citizen, saying they needed to give up $137 million in wages and benefits to save the state budget.

This “raiding of public treasuries” by the wealthy and their minions is happening in several states, at a time when state budgets, and the federal budget, are in a state of near collapse.

To me, this seems like a fairly straight-forward attack by those who have the resources to do it against those who do not have the resources to stop it.

In other words, the wealthy are attacking the meager resources of the middle-class and the poor.

We can safely call this a “Class War.”

We can also safely say the wealthy are the ones who started it.

If I had to bet on it, I would say that the wealthy will win this war. I would also bet, however, that as those at the bottom become more and more desperate, life in the USA is going to become very ugly and very dangerous.

I’ll admit it.

I’m very anxious about what is coming the next few years.

At a time when most people think we need less government spending, I believe we need more.

At least, we need more government employees – at the federal and state level – and we need less businesses awarded government contracts.

I used to be a contractual worker, writing for the federal government. Their cost for my services was about $100 per hour. Of course, I didn’t get that money, but that’s what the feds paid.

That works out to about 200K per year. I made nowhere near that amount. My salary to the company that held the contract was well under 100K. That meant that over half of every dollar the government was spending for my work was not translated into actual work. That’s wasteful.

The feds could have easily just hired me for much less.

I now actually work for the government – for much, much less than 100K, and every dollar the taxpayer spends for my services gets turned into productive work.

Yet, the part of the government where I work – even though the bulk of the work is information driven – does NOT have an Information Technology department. No IT folks whatsoever.

Instead, the government has contracts with huge firms, such as Lockheed Martin (the one I deal with), and the firms provide all the IT support.

Except, they don’t really provide support. One of my colleagues was telling me how, at his office, the IT contractors won’t come in because they’re afraid they won’t get parking. Yet, the contract costs upwards of $350 per hour.

Before we start cutting major programs, we need to start cutting these contracts that don’t produce the efficiencies and savings that were promised, and replace them with less expensive and more efficient government employees.

This type of overpaying goes on all the time – all because our attitude is, for some reason, that hiring contractors will save the government money.

It doesn’t.

Hire more workers and get the work done “in house.”