- I found it rather ludicrous reading of
President Bush's plans in proposing a $2.7 trillion dollar budget.
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- Bush will ask for an outright reduction
in the 'discretionary' part of the budget (this applies to students - the
elderly - the handicapped- the homeless - the poor - the unemployed etc).
We have no energy program - except a gilded trough for oil - gas - coal
- timber - utilities; and no domestic policy to address the concerns, needs,
health and crisis American citizen's face, as we bomb the world into democracy.
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- In contrast, the president plans to recommend
for the Department of Homeland Defense (protecting athletic events), an
increase from this year's $30.8 billion, NOT counting emergency spending
for last year's hurricane.
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- Increases in our new military industrial
society (piss on the people) will increase the Pentagon's funding. The
$439.3 billion includes $84.2 billion for weapons systems. In another area
of emphasis, Bush will include $5.9 billion, under the newspeak of 'American
Competitiveness Initiative". In everyday language this is a tax credit
for industry.
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- While Mr. Bush, and his cohorts Sununu
and Gregg etc, are well covered in medical - pharmaceutical - and extended
hospital stays, with their privately funded taxpayer subsidized health
plans (prescriptions - dental - eyeglasses), they intend to stomp the country
lauding the cutting of Medicare by $36 Billion in the next few years and
by $105 billion in the next decade. It's called kicked to the curb! There
is NO medical policy for American citizens'; only massive giveaways to
HMOs, the Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance companies. If you die you die....!
Senator Gregg of NH - said that he favors tightening spending on Medicare
- Medicaid and Social Security. Hey why not, he's got a cradle to grave
job - full medical coverage - yearly cost of living raises - exotic vacations
at taxpayer expense called 'fact finding missions' plus he won a million
dollars playing the lottery recently - so he's not concerned on how citizens
in NH; toxified by coal plants, incineration, toxic sludge, massive dumps,
making $5.15 an hour, fare. In times of austerity it's always the voiceless
and powerless that gets cut out of the pie.
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- So what we have is Gregg - President,
and company, protecting the HMOs and drug company profits, while shifting
costs to beneficiaries and providers. From Washington State to the Gulf
region, we have multitudes of the dispossessed, the unemployed, the mentally
impaired, the homeless living in tents, under bridges, or in decaying abandoned
buildings. Those who built a nation from Detroit to the steel mills, and
textile plants, and various supporting industries - find themselves aliens
in the land of their birth. Everyman in Anybody town, now sees himself
shuffling past; echoing shuttered mills, and factories, told to reinvent
himself at age 40 - 50 - 60 as a Wal-Mart clerk, nurses aide, Home Depot
Associate, garbage man, prison guard, or any other number of McJobs. None
these low wage jobs produce anything of worth. A nation cannot support
itself on service sector jobs.
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- When Senator Kerry visited our town (NH);
during the pontificating of election time - I confronted him on the issue
of 'terror'. I advised him that 'terror' comes in many forms, and that
citizens were more fearful of an eviction notice, an unemployment slip,
a shut - off notice than they were of the elusive face of al-Quidea coming
to do them in. He paid no attention and dutifully disagreed with me. But
then he paid little attention to the school teacher who informed him of
her battle, in trying to secure medical attentions for her husband. How
could Senator Kerry, or any of these cradle to grave politicians identify
with work a day people; as they throw down mandates and announcements of
cutbacks, in 'discretionary' spending, from their marbled tomb, of servicing
the demands of to the multi - nationals and military industrial complex?
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- Detroit - epitomizes the blight across
the land with manufacturing and auto plants being relocated to far off
distant lands. Whatever the town or hamlet - some are making heroic efforts
to turn decaying structures into malls or upscale condos! These are hardly
the replacement for production or livable wages. Who's going to buy these
condos or shop at these malls with the massive unemployment taking place?
Regretfully the blight is too massive in Detroit to even venture such plans.
Detroit has been a racist and segrated town, pretty much since day one.
Blacks and whites never really got a long. When Ford started to turn the
ex-fur trading into the industrial capital of the world, Ford knew that
a cheap automobile needed a cheap labor force. He courted local churches
and created a steady migration of African- Americans from the south. Most
left their farms, for a supposedly brighter future which most never found.
Blacks found themselves relegated to 'the black bottom' or more sarcastically
"Paradise Valley". There was nothing green about it, no trees,
or parks. A new expressway cut through the heart of Paradise Valley displacing
multitudes. The riots of 1967 proved what discontent there was. After five
days of violence, forty three people were dead, thirty of them killed by
law enforcement personnel. Altogether 7,231 men and women were arrested.
The property damage is still visible today. Detroit, in many places, which
won't be visible in the brouhaha of a Super Bowl, very much resembles Chernobyl.
It was after the riots that the great white flight occurred. Whites moved
to the suburbs with their automotive salaries. Based on a 2001 census,
Detroit is now 82% Black.
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- Be it Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with its
huge steel plant rusting away, Ohio and Pittsburgh, or the textile mills
in the south - and across the land; various foundries or machine shops
closed, citizens have little to no concept of the dismantling of America's
middle class. When is the last time you saw Black leadership in Detroit
lamenting the poverty and decay? Who cared when the steel workers in Pennsylvania
were advised with their scarred calloused hands; to become nurse's aides,
or computer programmers? This is the moronic attitude of Foggy Bottom indifference.
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- With Japan given quotas on the number
of cars they could import -they simply solved that by opening auto plants
here. And now the great exodus is on to China where they can't build auto
plants fast enough; thanks to subsidies, tax exemptions, and various global
treaties - creating a great global plantation. In November of 2005, General
Motors announced plans to close or eliminate nine assembly, stamping and
power train plants and cut 30,000, hourly workers' jobs by the end of 2008.
This elimination of 22% of the North American workforce is called "restructuring".
This plan is designed to boost profits and raise the values for the company's
stockholders. This plan to 'boost profits' will see thousands across the
country kicked to the curb. Since 2000, GM has cut its salaried work force
by 32%. This is combined with the 21 assembly plants and operations that
were cut in the 90s. At its peak, GM employed more than 600,000 American
workers. That's a lot of Wal-Mart Greeters, snow makers, (for ski slopes),
Home Depot Associates, and prison guards (our newest lucrative industry).
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- This virtual collapse of GM shows the
great decline in the position of US industry in today's global market.
GM, founded in 1908, grew to become the world's largest industrial concern,
dominating the global auto market. Why a man could work here and send his
children off to college. Amongst other things, like Asian and European
competitors, the malignant, insatiable greed, of corporate executives;
who allotted themselves millions in annual salaries and bonuses, has seen
a 'meltdown' of a once vibrant city and its people. Unlike Foggy Bottom
politicians, who have seen to their own protected obscene pensions and
health plans (tax payer subsidized), GM executives have imposed unprecedented
cutbacks in health care benefits. Meantime Delphi Automotive - the parts
company that was spun off by GM, has now declared bankruptcy and will eliminate
24,000 workers. It is also seeking to impose a 60% wage cut and eliminate
pension obligations. Meantime the tens of thousands of unemployed across
the land can gain comfort in the fact that "the economy is booming
- and all kinds of new jobs are being created". Of course it's all
a matter of semantics and what one identifies as a 'job'.
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- Those in the swamplands of Foggy Bottom,
like Labor Secretary Elaine Chao ( married to Senator McConnell), identify
our new 'job' growth, as being realized in business, the health field,
hospitality and service sector. Here in NH one is advised to become a financial
advisor or trust attorney, for those seeking to protect their wealth. The
unemployed, not having the wherewithal of securing that specialized law
degree - or having to compete with 'guest workers' for that hospitality
job (maid, waitress, parking attendant, bell - hop, groundskeeper or ski
lift operator), should know that Secretary of Labor Chao - states that
the 'Trade Adjustment Assistance' policy, will help them through the difficult
times of job retraining along with a tax credit towards health insurance.
Try sending this bit of information off to the bank, utility company, or
as payment for that unaffordable medicine.
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- If you listen to the PR - BS around Secretary
Chao - you'd think that at age 8, she washed up on the Carolina shores,
in a Chinese Junk and made it good. Elaine's father is James S. Chao. He
is chairman and chief executive of Foremost Maritime Company, NY. He ships
goods to China and buys ships from the China Shipbuilding Company. If you
have a problem with getting job retraining, to become that convenience
clerk, you always dreamed of becoming, Elaine will not be available on
February 20. While those in the Gulf are still scattered across the nation,
and the homeless are living in tents in Washington State; Ms. Chao will
be attending the dedication ceremonies of a library wing being named in
her honor at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. It pays to be married
to those in high places. Her hubby, Senator McConnell had $14.2 million
of taxpayer dollars "earmarked" for this library.
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- But enough of this doom and gloom; lamenting
the implosion of the middle class, livable wages, and the billions cut
in school loans, Medicare/Medicaid, and robbed pension funds. It's Super
Bowl at the coliseum - with the moneyed gladiators; heaving and grunting
over a pigskin ball before the hyper - ventilated screaming, painted masses.
On the home front its sports bars and kegs of beer; as the doughy - greasy-
lounge chair fans, imagine themselves as super stars, if only for a few
hours - then it's back to the unemployment lines.
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- "The people who once bestowed commands,
consulships, legion, and all else, now concerns itself with no more, and
longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses ". --Juvenal
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