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Friday, October 14, 2011

Apparently we're just a country full of lazy whiners


If this were being used to applaud someone who's overcoming a rigged system, that would be one thing; but it's being used to tell people who are speaking up against a rigged and unfair system that they're just a bunch of lazy whiners. The fact that any child in this country (the country that was established for and by the people) has to go to these extremes just to break even is not something IMHO to be applauded. It serves to continue to enable those who take our money in tax breaks, bailouts, etc, and reward us with crappy, low-paying jobs
If we, the 99%, had that attitude about things, then the Wall Street banks would not have gotten their bailouts and the system would've crashed. Then anybody who was hurt from that crash through no fault of their own , it would've been their fault because they're just lazy losers? There are good elements in that piece but overall it's basically calling everybody who complains about unfairness is a lazy whiner. Bullshit.
What about the people who worked hard, saved their money, invested wisely, didn't go into debt but yet lost their retirements in the crash?  That was their fault too?  
So the young mother of two who decides to leave her abusive husband, she should stop her whining and stay?  If she leaves and can't find a job that will pay enough for her to put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, that's her fault because she's just lazy and looking for a freebie?  It has nothing to do with the fact that the median income in this country has hardly risen in 30 years while the cost of everything necessary to survive has gone up at a much higher rate?  It has nothing to do with the fact that the biggest corporations in this country are paying less taxes than ever before, are making much larger profits than ever before and yet not creating new jobs with the tax breaks we're giving them?  It has nothing to do with the fact that Wall Street owns the Government of the United States, the government that's supposed to be "by and for the people."
Did you know that now corporations can spend money on elections just as if they were people?  But if you're a corporation, you can hide behind your corporate status and not be held libel for the decisions made by the people who make up that corporation.
As William Buster says in this interview with Charlie Rose, (sorry, there's no embed but I highly recommend you watch) "Occupy Wall Street has been depicted as anti-business.  We're not.  We're not anti-business, we're not anti-banks, we're not anti-government...we're anti-corruption and we're anti-systemic corruption."
I always get a kick out of the right always using personal attacks on the messenger without even trying to understand the message...whatever garbage Fox News puts in front of them, they swallow.  They use things like the note above to try and divide us.  If you want to know what class warfare is, that's as good an example as I can imagine.
This quote from the Vanity Fair article on Elizabeth Warren (that I'll do a post on shortly)  may sum it all up as well as any, “There’s been such a sense that there’s one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It’s so pervasive that it’s not even hidden.”

3 comments:

Brent said...

Nice post

Anonymous said...

Great post and welcome back!

mamajoan said...

Great post - gets right to the heart of the problem