Sucks to Be American

Here it is almost three months later, and my "talking points" thing hasn't gotten off the ground. It's not like the Republican candidates for president care about logic or context or history or facts. Their supporters don't either. By the way, if all the participants in a debate agree on all the major points, is it really a debate? So let's take a detour to the real world. In Money Party news, there is a new irritant bubbling up from the underclass. I'm talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, of course. The wealthy seem confused about how to handle them. There's no leader to attack. There are no talking points to trivialize. The attitude towards the poor, the near poor, the middle class--in fact, anyone who's not a millionaire--seems to be, "Let them eat cake or dirt as they wish, but I don't wish to hear their complaining." For the benefit of someone who doesn't have time to read all my earlier entries, the Money Party is my term for the top one tenth of one percent (one percent in OWS shorthand). These uber-rich have bought up all the influence on our federal government and most on the states. Under the banner of "government bad" they are ruining our schools, our infrastructure, and our regulatory system. With ownership of almost all the major media outlets, they are poisoning our public discourse. They are busily removing the last vestiges of democracy with unverifiable voting machines and voter restriction laws. Ordinary citizens in this country have ceased to matter except as profit generators. The only serious response to OWS from the Money Party, apart from having the police interrupt the protesters in their constitutionally protected protesting, seems to be a note from a futures trader in Chicago. The general tone of the note is threatening, but in an economic way--"you take away my job, I'll take both of yours." He points out that he works long long hours, which also illustrates his sociopathic pursuit of money. For some reason, though, he never explains why his job is so important. What is an important job? Take the oil industry. Someone looks for a possible oil deposit. Someone drills down to the pocket of oil and pumps it out. Someone refines the oil into gasoline. Someone sends it down a pipeline. Someone puts it in a truck. Someone drives the truck to a gas station. Other someones design and build the geological equipment, the oil rig, the refinery, the pipeline, the truck, the station, and all the other pieces and parts that keep the whole system going. All of those someones and pieces and parts make up the real economy. Our futures trader does nothing but move around virtual pieces of paper and associated piles of money. He does it so that the already wealthy people who buy and sell gasoline can have a slightly less volatile price at some point in the future. This kind of financial wheeling and dealing is not part of the real economy. Unfortunately, this bogus kind of wealth creation is now responsible for a larger portion of our gross national product than the real kind of wealth creation. It's important only because it makes the wealthy wealthier even faster. It's like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking all the money out of the country, leaving less and less for everyone else to use to keep the real economy going. If you want a simple answer, there it is. That's why America is in trouble, that's why people are angry, that's why there has to be an Occupy Wall Street.