Sea Cape Cod by Michael Mosier

Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the rather balmy, at present, soon to be frozen once again, island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Monday, the 27th day of January, 2014, a cool, cloudy day here at the Hyannis Waterfront, looking forward to yet another Alberta Clipper and much colder temperatures, as the Polar Vortex makes another swoop down as far as Florida, with Wilmington, North Carolina expecting up to a foot of snow, perhaps more on the Outer Banks.  Quite a January indeed.  In less than 36 hours the President of the United States, Barack Obama, will offer this young nation the traditional “State of the Union” address on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.  In this “year of action” the 44th president faces some tough opposition, dare I say OBSTRUCTION, once again from our friends on the right, whose mission has been to block any common sense policies this president has thrown out there to get millions back to work, as WE take a good hard look at income inequality across the board in the new year.  It is no secret that the GRAND CANYON gap between the haves and the have nots has grown exponentially in the past forty years or so, with that inequality higher than it was during the Gilded Age, the 1920’s, right up to the GREAT DEPRESSION, bringing the nation back to balance under one of our greatest presidents of all time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The trend began in the seventies, was stoked in the eighties by another popular president, Ronald Reagan, who famously pushed the theory of trickle down economics, which has proven to be a RED HERRING, as the top one percent’s income has risen by 274 percent in this ‘time’ period we are speaking of here (the top .001 percent doing even better, with 85 of the richest people in the world having as much or more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion people, or half the world’s population), while the bottom 90 percent of regular working folks have seen their wages remain frozen or actually go down, with the minimum wage far below what it should be if it were adjusted for inflation, as those who work for minimum wage might as well be living in the sixties, ’cause that’s how much they are really making, not a living wage for the 21st Century.  And this statistic based on IF they can find a job, as manufacturing dries up with more of that on the way, as the ‘fast track’ is being pushed for a very controversial trade agreement, many are calling NAFTA on steroids, the TPP, or ‘trans-pacific partnership’, where critics contend that if passed, by an up or down vote in congress no less, it will harm U.S. workers even more, with even more jobs going oversees, for that is where the cheap labor resides.  The policies the law makers have put forward over these past few decades, as economist/author/professor David Cay Johnston points out in his new book, “The Fine Print”, ARE the problem, many of them TAX issues.  To quote the fine law professor from the great Syracuse University and author of “Free Lunch”, Perfectly Legal” and the aforementioned new book, “The Fine Print”, stay warm Rochester, New York!, “…the average increase in real income reported by the bottom 90% of earners in 2011, compared with 1966, if measured by one inch, would extend almost five miles for the top one percent of the top one percent.”  To further the professor’s point, “…Incomes and tax revenues have grown from 2009 to 2011 as the economy recovered, but an astonishing 149 percent of the increased income went to the top 10 percent of earners.  If you wonder how that can happen, the answer is simple:  Incomes fell for the bottom 90 percent.  The top 1 percent enjoyed 81 percent of all the increased income since 2009.  Just over half of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and 39 percent of the gains went to the top 1 percent of the top one percent.”  Put that in your pipe and smoke it Senator!  With the crumbling lower education systems (urban deserts) and expensive, ever rising higher education for our children, you can clearly see how the rich continue on with the march up that ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and the poor cannot penetrate the “Orange Curtain”, keeping the masses down and begging for food, as the top one percent get all the breaks, hand outs (subsidies/corporate/taxes) and political favors that grant them immunity from the will of the free market, a free market that is ever rigged in their favor.  Corporate lobbyists now own most of the congress, with organizations like ALEC, the ‘American Legislative Exchange Council’ calling most of the shots on the Hill.  Sure, these guys and gals draft actual bills, working side by side with the law makers, many times doing all of the work, and upon completion, said congressman sign the bill into law, a new corporate law, without changing ‘ner a comma…  How can one man compete against that?  This President is up against a party, the crazy fake grass roots, corporate tea party, who is hell bent on repealing the ACA with God knows what, we will find out today, a party obsessed with abortion and women’s reproductive systems, paging Dr. Sugar (otherwise known as “uncle sugar”)!, paging Dr. Sugar! (Huckawho?), and a party that no longer believes in a nation where opportunity is not a joke, but a promise kept…hence, the problem of a rigged, outdated system that only serves the richest of the rich, while it dehumanizes that plight of the poor, all in the name of God himself!  Praise the Lord Senator, praise the Lord!  This is a story about monsters, huge sea monsters called global corporations, who have proven, right bp?, that they will continue to use the earth as an open sewer, while they pull in record profits, giving nothing back to the country and the people who helped them get there.  Pity that.  Just ask the CEO of Walmart (always lower slave wages), he’ll tell ya!  Although he can’t be reached right now, he is still taking in some skiing in Davos, Switzerland.  Greed gone wild with a hint of gluttony, sloth and narcissistic self promoting glory that makes one want to vomit immediately upon receipt.  No where else is this PROFIT over PEOPLE more evident than in the energy biz.  You see companies like Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries are making so much on our lands one would need a PhD in mathematics to calculate all of that ill found wealth.  Take FRACKING for example.  The new found source of energy in shale rock, ‘natural gas’, is all the rage, as one more well goes up in the good ‘ole US of A.  If you were to take a map and review just how many of these DIRTY wells there really are, you would be shocked, as Erin Brockovich pointed out on Bill Maher’s HBO must see “Real Time, with Bill Maher” this past Friday night with a map that showed the United States and all of the filthy wells therein.  You can’t see the map, just the wells.  This process of FRACKING is horrible and will result in water problems in the not too distant future (both the problem of poisoned water nationwide, as well as a lack of water, say in the U.S. southwest, where the drought in California is taking it’s toll on the citizens of the Golden State…still think global warming is a hoax Senator Inhofe, you maniac pilot from the great state of Oklahoma?), for you see the 596 deadly chemicals they use for this attainment, very profitable gain of natural gas is not regulated, AT ALL.  The chemicals are off limits to the toothless EPA and with one more well going up this hour, you may as well kiss New York City’s famous restaurant water goodbye forever!  We are effectively allowing these large monied interests to supersede OUR interests as a people in general.  Doing this by divide and conquer methods, banking on the ignorance and short attention span of the general population all while knowing that money talks and bull$hit walks, as they buy one elected official after the other, eventually buying the elections all together and turning this once proud democracy, a beautiful thing, into a plutocracy, or rule by the wealthy, can you say “Hunger Games”, sure, I knew that you could.  We need to stand up collectively as a country and state LOUDLY and CLEARLY that WE are not turning the clock back on voting rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, environmental rights and all forms of CIVIL RIGHTS, as we fight for JUSTICE, the fruits of which always being PEACE.  Have a wonderful day and week ahead folks and may God be with the President tomorrow evening, God’s Speed Mr. President, God’s Speed!  PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M