The 99ers: America's Tempest-tost

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me - I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This, a welcome and a promise from our Statue of Liberty.

The Current Debate on the Deficit, Social Security, Tax Breaks for the Rich, and the Unions

Basically we now only have 3 classes of people who live in America:

   1) - The Upper Class - Who are the wealthiest 2% and includes the big bankers and the big corporate executives (who control the Ruling Class)
   2) - The Ruling Class - The politicians, many of whom belong to the Upper Class and include the President (plus his cabinet, diplomats, and "czars"), 535 members of Congress, and 9 Supreme Court judges.
   3) - The Working Class - The rest of us (the majority), of which a very small minority also belong The Ruling Class.

Of the Working Class 13% aren't working at all, 17% are under-employed, and 12% are retired and rely solely on Social Security.

Of those employed full-time in the Working Class only 12% belong to labor unions (with collective bargaining agreements) and may have received fair and equitable wage increases and benefits along the way - the rest have subsisted on relatively flat wages and may have decreased wages and benefits.

Over the last 40 years people dependent on Social Security have lost ground with the skyrocketing cost-of-living-index which corporate America created, driving many elderly people into poverty because of the meager COLAS they received throughout the years - not getting the same generous increases that congressional members and corporate executives have enjoyed. (NOTE: But yet many of these congressional members and corporate executives are critical of the public employees unions).

The Year-To-Date Consumer Price Index rose 1.6% higher. Are you earning 1.6% more in your paycheck today than this time last year, just to break even? How much more are the CEOs and banksters earning today than they were last year? What about the year before? And 30 years before that?

Have you, the desperately hard-working rabbit, been running at top speed all your life while the fat and wealthy tortoise had been sluggishly passing you by with no effort at all? Now 30 years later that old rich turtle is light years ahead of you.

Wouldn't 1.6% mean a hell of a lot more to you when paying your monthly rent and utilities for a place to live - and for food? What would it mean for a multi-millionaire who can pay cash-in-full for their 15-bedroom mansion and eat out at 5-Star restaurants and hire their own live-in chefs?

Now the wealthy had their tax cuts extended, just as they had after the last ten years when all the jobs went away - - - and just as the deficit rose. No coincidence there. Now we have more poor people because of the Great Recession, but yet the politicians want to cut home heating for the poor and Social Security and Medicare for the elderly to reduce the deficit.

READ: Six Things Everybody Knows About Deficits...That Are Completely Untrue

Exerpted: "Deficits aren't caused by spending. They're caused by spending more than you collect. Yet in a year when the mediasphere is breathlessly sounding the alarm over "entitlement" programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which will cost around $800 billion this year, it remains rather silent about ten years' worth of tax "entitlements" - sorry, tax "breaks" - to the wealthiest 2% of Americans, which cost more than $1 trillion."

And why do the politicians, on behalf of the taxpayers, keep giving the oil companies subsidies when over the years they have been consistently the most profitable companies in the world, netting billions of dollars annually? ExxonMobil has 82,000 employees worldwide and earned $46 billion free and clear after ALL expenses in 2008 alone.

That's $46,000,000,000 divided by 82,000 employees = $561,000 net profit for every single employee in ONE year alone! But the politicians gave these people extended tax breaks and wants to make up the difference by cutting heating, food stamps, healthcare, and Social Security for the poor and elderly!

Social Security was enacted in 1935 when the life expectancy of a man was 60 years old, but they couldn't qualify for Social Security benefits until they were 62. They weren't supposed to, they were supposed to die before getting one dime. Then the age was raised to 65, then later to 67. Now, because we're living longer (and have to work harder and longer as elderly people), the government wants to raise the age again to 70.

The rich don't need Social Security, so they don't want to pay for it. But not only was this country supposed to take care of their own, didn't we promise the rest of the world too? What about OUR poor, OUR elderly, and OUR "tempest-tost" (pounded or hit repeatedly) such as the "99ers"?

America has been known to break promises to other countries, and to throw their leaders under the bus when we no longer needed them...when they lost their economic and/or strategic value to us. But should America be allowed to break its promises with its own citizens when they are no longer economical or strategically viable to the country? Should they be tossed like old tennis shoes in the dumpster?

   Definitions of ENTITLEMENT
    1 : a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.
    2 : belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.

Social Security isn't an "entitlement" as defined in the 2nd definition - as the media and politicians proclaim with such distain when saying the word - likening it to some wealthy estate that a rich man would leave to his bratty and spoiled son; and the elderly aren't the heirs of a vast fortune either. Social Security is for  people who had an agreement with their government - a contract that said if they and their employers contributed to the Social Security fund all during their hard-working lives, they would have a supplemental income to help sustain them in their "golden years", when they could no longer break their backs in the factories and mills and shipyards any longer.

Now the government wants us to break our backs even longer, because despite our failing health, our hearts now beat a little while longer because of great strides made in medicine and pharmaceuticals.

But were these scientific break-throughs meant for just the rich, so they could enjoy their power and wealth longer while still mortals on earth? Were the poor just meant to only have these new medical miracles just so they could work longer for the wealthiest?

Are we, the "little people", all being forced to work until we're 90 years old? Or if we don't, die sick and homeless in the streets of America?

It's our government leaders that have entitlements: Huge salaries that are 4 and 5 times greater than the national median, and "allowances" and healthcare benefits that usually only the wealthy enjoy - - - all at the expense of the little taxpayers in a Great Recession when everyone else is getting laid off or taking cuts in salaries or hours.

It's the rich that have entitlements: Tax breaks for no other reason that just to further enrich themselves when the national and states' deficits suffer while local governments struggle just to pay for basic services. Yet the rich want to cut the budgets, reduce services, and screw the elderly just so they won't have to pay any more into the U.S. Treasury to maintain our government and our way of life.

Are you tired of working 20, 30, 40, or 50 years and getting nowhere fast with no end in sight because the government keeps moving the finish line with Social Security, all while the vast Abyss in the disparity of wages grows every year between the rich and the rest of us?

Read: "How the middle class became the underclass"

The politicians and CEOs are, and have been for many years, the biggest problem to average working Americans...but THEY blame old people, the poor, and the unemployed for the deficit!

READ: The revenge of trickle-down economics - "The differences between Democrats and Republicans on the deficit are cosmetic. Both are committed to a broken, corrupt system."

How many yachts do you need sir, and how many jobs do yacht building yards create? And what of all our pathetic little boats that no longer float, but have sunk to the bottom where the bottom feeders dwell - there in the depths of the murky and muddy waters along side the rusted out hulk of what was once called the American Dream?

Those words that once held promise and hope to those first coming to America, are crumbling like this country and the Statute of Liberty some day will - when this once mighty country is destroyed from the enemy within - our honor-less corporate and political leaders.

The Statue of Liberty is about as passé as Ellis Island - just another historical place of interest from our past. We might as well pack up the old girl and ship her back to France. It's become more of a symbol of broken promises than of hope to anyone. It is we, the American people, who are now the tired, the poor, the homeless, and the huddled masses...the "99ers", their tempest-tost.

And the torch of liberty, forever extinguished, may be long forgotten in our future.