Saturday, April 16, 2011

"Look What We've Done" - Pete Rivera of Rare Earth

This song and powerful music video "Look What We've Done" was produced by Pete Rivera (former lead singer & drummer of Rare Earth) and contains these crucial lyrics, “We hardly ever see the words American made.”

The song was born out of discussions about the state of economic conditions in our country. It came out of frustration and anger seeing so many of our American workers finding themselves out of work and living with increasing desperation over the security of their futures. People are worried about supporting their families, paying their bills, and watching their security slip away at a record pace.

"Look What We’ve Done" - Lyrics written by Peter Rivera

Daddy worked on the assembly line
For 37 years he was puttin in time
Workin for the future of his family
He thought he could provide them with security

(Chorus) 
Look What We’ve Done
We gave it away
They’re selling it back to us and now we’re gonna pay
Look What We’ve Done
We gave it away
We hardly ever see the words “American Made…Look out

One by one the factories are closing down
And people look for work but there ain’t none around
What happened to the dream of the American way
If we don’t change our thinking, that’s how it’s gonna stay….. Look

(Chorus) 
Look What…..

(Bridge)
Un-employment lines at an all time high
People getting desperate cause they’re left behind
We gotta get a grip on what’s going down
We gotta get the jobs back to the company town..yeah

We’ve given our production to the foreign land
Our leaders try to fool us with their slight of hand
It’s all about the dollar not the quality
It’s all about delivering the quantity….

(Chorus) 
Look What….
And out…………………….

From Pete Rivera (a.k.a. Peter Hoorelbeke) - "I must admit that I'm not the one to write about all the situations of the world in one song. I did my best to point first to my own home experience with Look What Weve Done. There was a lot of conversation in my heart and head about focusing on one element of our national condition. My family were for the most part factory workers including me..(for a very short time on me). The collapse of industry in Detroit puts out waves of hurt across America. So although my home town is the focus for me, I'm sure that the song could apply to many other cities and people and situations that come up in our country. It doesn't matter where you are, if you look around and see that things are going wrong then hey, Look What WE'VE Done."

His website:  http://www.peterrivera.com/home.html



There are many different views as to where the fault lies.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and opened up the market among banking companies (i.e. Goldman Sachs), securities companies (i.e Enron) and insurance companies (i.e. AIG) that led to America's financial collapse.

A co-sponsor of the bill, Senator Tom Bliley from South Carolina is retired now and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. He attacks free trade policies as inherently destructive, suggesting that certain protectionist measures have built the United States, and only a few parties actually benefit from free trade, such as large manufacturing corporations.

In his latest article at the Huffington Post he writes, "This is the real world. It doesn't pay to produce in the United States. We're getting rid of production and jobs as fast as we can. We're in a trade war and disarming."

There are more Americans unemployed today than there were at the height of the Great Depression.

* This paged was ranked at # 7 out of  253,000,000 hits in Google results for "look what we've done".

1 comment:

  1. From the Atlantic:

    The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled.

    * Meaning, our pillars of society, out captains of industry (our "job creators"), our CEOs of multinational corporations, are not very patriotic. Many are not only tax dodgers but draft dodgers. Would that really make them an enemy of the state?

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/

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