Nantucket, Ahoy!
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! So great to be with you and yours on this first day of March in the year of our Lord, 2011. The image above is of some writer on a recent trip to one of his favorite places on planet earth, Nantucket. Ahoy! It is a quiet Tuesday morning here in little old Osterville, a football toss from my favorite town on Cape, Hyannisport, former home to our late, great President Jack Kennedy, his beautiful wife Jackie along with his brother’s Teddy and Bobby, not to mention his sisters, most notably the wonderful Eunice Kennedy, who was laid to rest only a mile or two up the road, along with her great high civic minded husband, founder of the Peace Corp, Sargent Shriver, at Saint Francis cemetery in Centerville. Saint Francis of Xavier is a small Catholic church on South street in Hyannis and was the parish for many moons of the whole Kennedy family, as Joe Senior and Rose Kennedy brought their children up with the teachings embodied in the symbolism of one of our most beloved Saints in the Catholic faith, Saint Francis of Assisi. I bring this all up as a sort of set up for what I wish to say to all Americans who still believe in one person, one vote, or better yet, one person, one voice equally distributed in fair and balanced ways, so as to represent the WILL of the people and not the small, but extremely powerful and wealthy monopolies, multinational in scope, called corporations who are now in the position of literally taking over the United States of America, along with the traditions we ALL, if you are in your right mind, hold so dear. What is transpiring in Wisconsin is a travesty and should be called out as such. Here you have a hand picked republican governor who is being TOLD by his employers, the KOCH brothers, to strip unions of their individual and collective VOICE, coming in the form making it illegal for public workers, or private for that matter, to voice his or her opinion, a RIGHT, on anything they damn well please. By stripping these rights, human rights for all intents and purposes, corporations, with the aid of the Citizens United ruling of 2009, will be in the position to blanket the country with their negative advertisements, created by the Madison Avenue wizards that are very good at what they do, swaying public opinion in the process, and, moreover, stripping the unions ability, coming in at 6, 7 and 9 respectively in the top ten money contributors to public office candidate’s campaign coffers, with corporations and their henchmen, e.g. the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, taking the rest of the spots in that list of campaign donors, to collect money and organize an effective counter attack to the next vicious election cycle and every other election cycle going forward, dramatically altering the way politicians are elected and thus, ultimately, when the corporations get “their man” in office, begin writing and ‘re-writing’ legislation, writing it in ways that do away with any help for the poor or the middle class and squashing the real spirit of America in favor of the multinational wish list of only a few corporations, and thus, rewarding only a few people in the process, therefore, creating a real oligarchy or plutocracy defined as ‘rule by the wealthy’, the complete antithesis of what America once stood for. This is, of course, the first domino, Wisconsin, for this strategy to monopolize the game of politics in this ‘free’ country, and thus, assuring REPUBLICORP wins in the end, for what do the 98 percent of the “American people” know anyway? Couple this “movement” with the republicans criminal budget slashing bill for the squaring the 2011 national budget and you see the same devious plot, but from a different “Angle”, sorry for the pun. The republicans propose to cut 61 billion dollars from the federal budget, all from the 12 percent of the budget that they can, i.e. “discretionary spending”, you know, home heating oil programs for the poor and the elderly, public education, the environmental protection agency, Pell grants for students wishing for a better life through higher eduction, and the like on down the list that targets anyone who makes under 30,000 dollars a year. Since that proposal has been made public, firms as surprising as Goldman Sachs, the famous New York City investment banking firm, along with Moody’s, an established financial ratings firm, not to mention countless other credible economists, from Paul Krugman to David Cay Johnston, have all expressed their dismay at this counter productive move, for all have concluded that it will not only keep the unemployment number high, actually boosting the number upwards, but it will bring the GDP number down even further, with investors, corporations, not investing in new plants and new research and development, that leads to new jobs, and further, it will curtail economic spending by the consumer, for without jobs, consumers cannot spend, thus, setting up a vicious cycle when, as all economists will agree, that is the last thing a recovering economy needs. “So be it”, I hear in the eves from some nasty ghost… It needs more spending in the short term, with an ever watchful eye on the overall national debt over the course of the next 10-15 years, not a reduction in spending, presently, on items that actually give a return of about 1.75 cents on every dollar spent on say, unemployment benefits, education or health care for children, as opposed to giving tax breaks to the wealthy which brings a return of much less than the buck we “invest” in borrowing that money from China so that we may GIVE a 100,000 dollar check to those who bring home $1,000,000. or more a year. “Can someone say shared sacrifice? Sure I knew that you could”. (credit the late, great Fred Rogers of PBS and Harold Ramis, noted comedy writer of the film Ghost Busters among many other greats as well as SNL fame). This overall condemnation of the republican, cliched, non-starter ‘ideas’, of which there are countless examples, by every credible economist worth his or her salt, gives you a blatant example of just how far the republican party is willing to go to sabotage this fragile economic recovery, and, because of this, it all becomes crystal clear as to what their overall strategy is, for if you put the “little” union thing in Wisconsin, threatening to go viral, with the whole insane economic policy of the corporate controlled republican party, which, if implemented, will hurt the economy of the United States of America, not the bottom line of said corporations, and therefore, will hurt at least 98 percent of the “American people”, the republicans claim to love so much and speak ‘for’ so often, yes, when you combine those two lines of strategic ATTACK on our country, by enemies of the people, as WE defend our brothers and sisters, remembering what these congressman and Senators professed, when they swore an oath to our nation, on a BIBLE, namely, “…Defending the Constitution of the United States of America, from all enemies, both foreign and domestic”–you have the makings of a coup, a hijacking, in the long term, of our basic rights as citizens to stand up to powerful lobbies such as the NRA, the oil lobby, the insurance lobby, the coal lobby, or the criminal ‘pay day loan’ lobby–for how can one man stand up to all of these organized lawyered up ‘corporate unions’, (many of whom are subsidized by government subsidies, such as the oil and gas industry) as they have already squashed private unions almost to the point of non-existence since 1980, with their eye now squarely on the last bastion of hope for our democracy, a democracy created 236 years ago in the spirit of “We the people”, a country “of the people”, “by the people”, and ultimately “FOR the people”, which is, symbolically, the public sector unions. Unions are the voice of the common man or woman who seeks dignity in the workplace, not a handout or special treatment that is not seen in the private sector. Is it too much to ask that our very rights as citizens, spelled out so clearly in the FIRST AMENDMENT, be heard, organized and rallied for in a supposedly free and fair society? Where is the fairness in giving all of those tax breaks to billionaires who don’t only not need them, but are clearly using them for the demise of the country they all claim to LOVE so much? It does not make any sense now, just like it did not make any sense in 1980 when this whole economic picture began losing lug nuts, as the wheels of democracy fell off the gas guzzling monstrosity flying down a road to nowhere, going in circles, endlessly, and taking the country with it. GOD HELP US ALL. Again, GOD’S continued SPEED to those brave and inspiring souls that make up the WISCONSIN 14! You ARE WINNING this fight and the true majority of the American people are behind you 110 percent! Have a nice day folks and don’t forget to tip your waitresses! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
