100 Reasons for Revolution

(Excerpt from David Glenn Cox)

"In 2007, after more than eight years of manipulation, the economy collapsed under the weight of its own corruption. The most basic structures of the economy have become infected. A record numbers of banks have failed and trillions of dollars have been paid out to assist the Wall Street criminals in their get-a-ways. A record numbers of Americans are now chronically unemployed and millions have lost their homes...and your government's only answer for them is tax cuts for the rich.

Tax cuts to buy new cars, tax cuts to buy new homes, tax cuts to hold on to their stocks a little longer, government grants to huge wealthy corporations for research and development, and billion of dollars in grants to prosperous private corporations to build factories. What solutions has this government offered for those struggling millions of American workers? What has been done for their families? What has been done for their children? A complete abdication and abandonment of the welfare and well-being of the citizens of the United States.

In 1960 the minimum wage in the United States of America was one U.S. dollar per hour of labor performed. In 2011 the minimum wage in the United States of America is $7.25 per hour labor performed, but if you take the 1960 minimum wage and adjust it for inflation, then the minimum wage of the United States should be in the range of $18.00 to $22.00 per hour of labor performed.

It means not only a more than fifty percent cut in base wages, it also means that many workers working in trades and technical careers are earning no more than minimum wage. The national average wage for workers is $22.86 but that figure includes supervisors and straw bosses. Your economy has been cored out and only the husk is left behind. This figure alone and by itself explains so much. It explains the mortgage crisis; it explains why Americans were over extended in their finances.

Despite the repeated and massive failures of "Free Trade" agreements your government persists with even more and more free trade pacts. They see no need for a correction or abatement of these programs despite their repeated failures - and at huge cost, since the implementation of free trade programs the United States has gone from the largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation. It now holds the largest trade debt in human history. And still, your government cries out for more tax cuts for the rich. Democrat or Republican, they cry for more! More!

Both parties cry out for more spending cuts to social programs which assist their own citizens while sending $7.5 billion to Pakistan to build schools and roads. Billions more go to Afghanistan to build roads in a country where the American-installed President owns the national concrete company - an Afghan president who was elected Wisconsin style, with corrupt elections and vague promises to do better next time. Millions of dollars were shipped off each year to build infrastructure in Mexico to speed the delivery of sweatshop goods while our own infrastructure languishes.

This week Quisling-in-Chief Obama will begin his public relations work to implement yet another free trade act, this one with the nation of Colombia.  For their part of the bargain the Colombian government has promised to try and halt the murders of labor leaders. Colombia is considered the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists - more dangerous than Iran, and more dangerous than Venezuela - and your government wants to open up free trade with these murderers!

Bloomberg - "This sets the stage for enactment of all three free-trade agreements in the next few months," Karan Bhatia, vice president in Washington for General Electric and a former deputy U.S. Trade Representative, said in an e-mail. "It is important to U.S. exports, to U.S. jobs, and to the credibility of the U.S. as an international trading partner." 

Bloomberg- "This proves the United States can still lead on trade," Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobbying group, said today in a statement." 
Bloomberg- "The trade agreement would boost U.S. shipments to Colombia by $1.1 billion a year from $12 billion in 2010, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. For Colombia, the deal would lock in unilateral trade privileges that are subject to renewal by Congress, providing greater certainty to investors. The preferences lapsed in February, dealing a blow to Colombian textile makers and flower growers."

Read the paragraph above twice, a ten percent increase in U.S. sales, but "the deal would lock in unilateral trade privileges that are subject to renewal by Congress, providing greater certainty to investors." Are they trying to say that Colombians would be investing in the United States and creating jobs? Or are they saying a greater certainty for U.S. investors in Colombia? They said it themselves, "the deal would lock in unilateral trade privileges that are subject to renewal by Congress," taking trade policy out of the hands of your government and codifying it forever with a nation which murders labor leaders.

There are a hundred reasons for rebellion; and there are also a hundred reasons to look away. To pretend that these things are not as they appear to be, that this national Katrina in which we live was our fault after all. A life of complexity that wakes us at dawn with memories of the sweetness of our pasts versus the bitterness of our collective futures. The locks on the doors of the empty store fronts that mirror the locks on our own lives.

A government that does not put the well being of its citizens as its first objective is a tyranny. A government whose policies benefit the few over the many is a damn sham! A government that does not protect its elections (Wisconsin, etc.) makes itself a fraud. War is the failure of politics and a government whose politics are war is unholy and unclean. So then, the revolution begins not with a brick or a shout or a gun, but with a realization. A realization that the responsibility for life falls on our shoulders and we are in the breech.

It begins in the beating of our hearts and in an unwillingness to accept fraud, sham or tyranny as a way of life.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." ~ John F. Kennedy

The original and unedited source at Oped News