Foto by tgw, nyc, 2009 "Nothin' From Nothin' Leaves Nothin'"
First view from austinhighchew "from the reality high chair":
Get ready to send all your old gold in for cash. Get ready to send your new SUV you just bought in the "cash for clunker" scheme back when you get your first payment notice from GMAC or Chevrolet.com. Get ready, if you still own a home, to get a call from your friendly banker telling you your mortgage payments will be going up a little more than you were first led to believe. And worst of all get ready for that unexpected heart attack or unexpected need of a liver transplant or for the kindly old doctors at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America to tell you they are shipping you on a gurney out to the back loading dock where you'll await the Volga boatman under the care of a little nun of mercy because your healthcare providers will say, "Sorry, your cancer was caused by a precondition so we can't cover you." "But...er-ah, my bill from this Indian-from-India surgeon who cut my lymph nodes out and half of my jaw out and who pulled all my teeth and shot me full of fluorides alone is $300,000...er-ah, and, Jesus, here's a $2,000 charge from an anaesthesiologist, and, Jesus, a $25,000 charge for X-rays from an X-ray technician named Mario who is with the De Lay Medical X-Ray-Double-Charging Laboratory (unaffiliated with your hospital, your HMO, and your healthcare provider), or, Jesus, this pharmaceutical bill from the hospital, Jesus, it's $30,000 for drugs...Jesus, how am I going to pay this?" "You might be better off dead, don't you think? Heh-heh-heh-heh. Anyway, now my next question, When will you pay your bill, please? Or do we have to file criminal charges against you?"
Yes, folks, get ready to tighten your belts around your formerly overweighted waists. Get ready to start getting in line for Food Stamps, which when the Repugs gain control of the House again will be done away with, along with unemployment insurance, Medicare, and Social Security.
As soon as the Repugs regain control of the House one of the first things they're gonna try is to privatize Social Security. It's the last big pool of money that they are in debt to--where do you think a lot of this bailout money came from? It was borrowed against the Social Security pool. A pool that is now floating full of IOUs from We the People. The Repugs when they privatize Social Security will force people on Social Security to invest their Social Security monies (monies We the People have had taken out of our earnings all of our working lives) in government-guaranteed-t0-Wall Street investment schemes. In other words, you will be forced to invest your money in the stock market whether you want to or not. This will be a boon for companies like Fidelity who already hold in their coffers millions upon millions of pension monies, retirement monies, 401K monies...I mean can you imagine the power the Corporate World (the New World Order) will have over us when they gain total control over our government and its divisions. The Repugnicans when they take the House back over will extend the working life of each of us. Billy Jeff Clinton extended it to 70; the Repugs will extend it to 75.
Do you see the so many contradictions in the sarcastic predictions I made in the above paragraphs. And these are serious predictions, but would you have believed back in January of 2009 that in September of 2009, just 9 short months from January, that these sarcastic predictions could be the truth about where we're headed.
President Obama has now gone shield-speech crazy. This week alone he made 4 or so major speeches, with another in New York City coming up before the UN, and then today (Sunday) he was all over commercial teevee, on "Eat the Press," on the George Steppin'inhisownshitopolis's DisneyWorld talk show on ABC (the American Broadcasting for Children), singing his constant song, "It's not racism in most cases, though, yes, it is racism in some cases, I know that...but...." Always that "but" shielding him.
The stock market this week went nuts after President Obama's "Praise of Wall Street" speech. I mean his PR gave Wall Street that extra shot it needed to get its Power Elite investors playing the option market full blast or playing the put and call game with great turnover magnificence. Why millions of shares traded "hands" on the market this past week and dammit if the roller coaster ride didn't carry the Wall Street Gravy Train up to 9,700! The Yahoos in the commercial presses and teevee channels are jumping with joy hollering, "The recession's over, no thanks to President Obama, but thanks to our glorious Wall Street leaders, our glorious real presidents...our dictators." And We the People soon must fall on our knees and worship the Wall Street gods--and what a bunch of oppressive gods they are, too, folks.
Thanks to good ole Max Baucus, the pitiful politician from the tiny state of Montana, a state that has more celebrity landholders than any other state in the union--Ted Turner is the largest landholder in Montana--Euro-Trash Private Equity nouveau-riche are coming to Montana and buying whole mountains--and Montana was once the most beautiful home to a most peaceful Native American society--and Montana was once a beautiful natural monument to the magnificent beauty of this our Mother Earth--but now Montana is where the celebs, like David Letterman, have their faux ranches, and there are wild game hunting clubs, and gun clubs, and snowmobile destruction, and I'll bet there are even some White militias active in them thar hills of old Montana now, too.
So this petty politician from the low-populated state of Montana (can Native Americans vote in Montana elections?), Max Baucus, has sold We the People (and very few of us does he really represent) down the River Styx in a leaky rowboat on this Public-Option National Healthcare that we were promised by President Obama when he was running his PR-political-bulldozer over Johnny Boy "I Needed Outside Sex" Edwards and his public-option healthcare and First-Lady Hillary Clinton's old-worn-out same-ole corporate national health insurance scheme she was peddling as first lady.
So thanks to Max Baucus and the woman from the health insurance industry who wrote this National Healthcare Bill, the Bill good ole Max is presenting to Congress next session, We the People are now going to be forced to buy healthcare insurance from the very scoundrel-riddled, inhumane, all-for-profits industry that has caused our desperate need for a Public-Option National Healthcare in the first place. "Hey, come on," these criminals bellyache, "We have to make profits off your health because we have shareholders to keep alive before we can even think of keeping you alive. In fact, if you sick people would all just go ahead and die and leave us to make our profits off the healthy (they still have to carry health insurance, hah-hah) and the hypochondriacs and the seniors (by ripping off the easily-ripped-off Medicare and reeling out AARP-industry schemes to lure in the last of the old folks's savings). Hey, automobile insurance is mandatory. And just like your automobile insurance goes up the more wrecks you have, so's your mandatory healthcare insurance going to go up every time you visit a doctor or God help you should you need major surgery. Just like on your automobile insurance you are rewarded for safe driving, we in the healthcare industry will reward you for staying healthy and not using your health insurance by not raising your rates that much every year or every time you need a flu shot. As far as we're concerned, the sick should die off and leave only the healthy--those who don't need insurance and never use it and thereby should be favored by our shareholders and our well-paid, raise-and-bonus-expecting CEOs."
Max "Montana" Baucus, by the way, don't forget, is the largest recipient of Healthcare Industry contributions in Congress (Hillary's up there close to Max, too, don't forget). Max has gleaned thousands of dollars of over-the-table industry contributions and god-knows how many thousands of under-the-table gifts and bucks and deals he's made for doing his duty to his masters, now our masters, the Corporations. Welcome to the Corporate State.
President Obama said today on one of his talk-show adventures that no, fining people for not having health insurance wasn't a devious way to put a burdening tax on poor people (the fines will average $3800-a-year. This fine will be collected by the IRS at tax time--so if you are already in debt to the IRS then Katie lower the boom, you may be headed for prison, pal--just because you couldn't afford to buy that mandatory healthcare that our President seems to think is so much better than any kind of public-option package). Oh no, the President said, it's not a tax at all, it's just the fair way to do it since people who don't buy health insurance use our emergency facilities (isn't that what emergency facilities are for?) at a burden to folks who have industry health insurance and are satisfied. Then our president spiels out that tale of "you see if we were starting from scratch then, yes, I would back single-payer, but since we already have a healthcare insurance system in place...blah, blah, blah." He then quickly started assuring people who already have healthcare insurance (from their jobs we are left to assume) that they were satisfied with (who that is he never says) that this bill would not affect them in the least bit--and if their rates go up, they'll gladly dig deeper into their cash-lined pockets to pay a little more for the best of care there is in the world. Hey, according to our Power Elite way of thinking, when you pay more for something that's because it's better than anybody else can afford. "You pay for what you get" is one of their adages. It's very complicated and Obama doesn't clear it up; in fact, he makes it more confusing when he explains it.
I am sorry to say this, but President Obama is over his head in trying to appease both sides of this very corrupt aisle he's been given charge of by a change-expecting American people (and that includes the people of South America, too). Both sides of this aisle are corrupted by the Corporations, and even President Obama himself is obligated to them since they paid for most of his largest-ever-costing presidential campaign--a campaign run by ex-Clintonistas and PR'd by high-rolling corporate lobbyist and lawyer types. Like we've always said, we don't think President Obama is dumb to any of this shit that's going on. He's not a nincompoop; he's a bright thinker; he's able to grasp exactly his situation. It frustrates him, you know it does. What's his wife telling him, I wonder? What does she hear from him that we don't? I'm sure it's probably more along the way I'm thinking than it is the way he's trying to portray himself as thinking behind the shields of these many speeches and interviews he's rather fanatically hiding behind.
The truth is and this is hard for progressives (what I call true liberals) to understand this nation is a WHITE nation. Its wealth is owned lock, stock, and barrel by a homegrown bunch of White boys, most of whom have inherited their wealth and power, most of whom have crooked connections in their backgrounds if you check them out closely enough, most of whom know each other, know each other's families, know each other from going to the same Ivy League colleges or from going to the same New England snazzy prep schools (recently WHITE only--Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc., late in integrating, late in admitting women, being exclusive men's schools until what the 1980s?).
An interesting irony with regards to Tiger Woods, absolutely now the world's greatest golfer--screw Jack Nicklaus: Up until Tiger turned pro, most of the golf courses on which he has now made a fortune were closed to Black members, especially the Augusta National Golf Club who only changed their NO NEGROES policy right before Tiger turned pro in order to get him to play at the Master's--his first time at the Master's he broke several of the old White boy records including the lowest rounds ever and winning it eventually by the widest margin ever. I can remember when, and this was back in the 60s, all the caddies on the pro tour were Black men. Lee Trevino's famous caddy was a Black man. Now most of the caddies at these clubs are Black until the Pro Tour comes to town when all the caddies are hired by the players now and since most of the players are White, most of the caddies are White. I did not spy one Black caddy on the pro tour this year; not one. And there's only one Black golfer playing on tour at the moment.
While the rich get richer, how are you doing? Me, I'm living on a shoestring, as the old Great Depression survivors used to say. I've heard my father talk about how if it hadn't have been for potatoes my family would have starved to death--and my family was very middle-class, which in those days meant my family owned a successful local business, in my family's case it was the soda-pop bottling business--Pop's Perfect Cola and Sunbeam orange drink were their two big brands. Pop's Perfect Cola was later bought by Dad's Root Beer out of Chicago, which made my dad sort of rich but not really. He still remembered when he was living on a shoestring and that made him frugal--and rich in a practical way. But then a lot more Americans were practical in those days.
Though we are now ruled by the White Power Elite, that doesn't mean White folks in general can settled down and reap the rewards of the New World Order. Oh no, the White Power Elite can't tolerate impoverished people no matter their race. If you're poor to the Power Elite, you're merely a rumor down in the streets below their Cloud 9 residences and offices--and they can't tell what color you are up there. Poor Whites either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or else they become enslaved by the New World Order plantation system same as poor anybodies, though, of course, Blacks and Latinos are "hated" by the Power Elite no matter their wealth--like Ron Williams, a Black CEO, even though he is head of Aetna Insurance and makes 22 million bucks a year, can't just walk in the front door of the ALL WHITE Power Elite private clubs and smoke-filled backrooms without an invite--else, Ron has to go to the back door like the other servants.
Did you know one of the best paying jobs in New York City is being a private chauffeur? Did you know doormen in the really exclusively White hi-rise luxury buildings can make $100,000-a-year in tips? Not all doormen now, don't get me wrong. Some doormen are non-union illegal immigrants. But not in the big luxury hi-rise closed-community living spaces--like New York City's Battery Park City or the new huge and ugly Trump City on our now-clogged-with-hi-rise-condos-and-hotels Midtown East Side.
The Power Elite do need servants. They need body guards galore. They need lots of maids and butlers and houseboys and cooks and secretaries and social directors. They need chauffeurs and pilots and sailors and captains. They need someone to keep their oxfords shined up. They need someone to make sure their Armani suit collections are kept clean and arranged for the boss's butler to lay out the proper suit and shirt and tie each morning while the boss is having his champagne breakfast out in the penthouse garden. Yes, landscapers and gardeners are needed by these people, too. Who knows, they may even hire servants to wipe their asses.
There are good jobs to be had catering to the needs of the rich. They will hire illegal immigrants to take care of their broods as nannies and mammy-replacements. They don't hire many Blacks as servants because Blacks want wages far and above even the outrageous-to-the-rich minimum pay the illegal immigrants fight each other over.
Yep, folks, get ready to have to work for the rich--oh, that's right, most of us have done that all our lives, haven't we?
austinhighchew
for The Daily Growler Watchtower Edition
Foto by tgw, nyc, 2009Watch Your Back
Second View from the crusty old pen of Walter Crackpipe, our The Daily Growler old fossil reporter and ultrasnide columnist:
There was a recent bullshit terrorist attack on private homes in Queens, New York, ending up in Denver, Colorado, where this morning it was announced the FBI had arrested a man who admitted to al-Queda training in weapons of mass production in Pakistan. They arrested him and some Queens, New York, Muslims--oh sure, they're all Muslims, so relax, they're not coming after you yet. The charges? Oh they'll probably be of the bent-on-meaning-to-kill some Americans (White Americans) kind or that they had plans on a paper sack to blow up some of our precious skyscraper towers of world domination, though, of course there's nothing to prove these charges.
New York City's billionaire mayor, who's already spent 44 million dollars running for an illegal third-term as mayor of NYC, has already adjusted his lying ads to include how he's protected us from terror since the NYPD and the FBI announced last week they had invaded in the early-morning hours several private homes in Queens, New York!
Oh how humane of this little rich-prick bastard who trust me cares not one iota in Hell about whether NYC is attacked by terrorists or not as long as his private jet is fueled up and running 24/7 ready to whisk the mayor away from danger to the safety of one of his many "island" estates all over the Caribbean, especially in the Bahamas where the mayor likes to invest in the off-shore real estate market. In fact, in this mayor's privileged way of thinking, he hopes there is another terrorist attack.
The man running against this worthless piece-of-shit mayor is Bill Thompson, a Black man. Bloomberg can just totally ignore this guy like he does most Black people. His gang of cronies is currently going after poor old Black Congressman Charlie Rangel as Bloomberg and his developer pals have their eyes on the White-izing of Harlem--take Harlem back from the intruding Blacks--especially during this moment in New York City where we're currently giving praise to the contribution of the Dutch to the culture and history of New York City, which was named New Amsterdam when the Dutch tricked bagged the Native Americans who owned Manhattan Island out of this valuable piece of property for some trinkets and a mirror our White history likes to brag (how easily the savage injuns were duped by the wily Dutch (of course early slavetraders and colonizers--New Amsterdam and New York built by Black slaves from Wall Street up to Peter Stuyvesant's farm--but which was quickly renamed New York when the British besieged the Dutch by posting their naval ships in New Amsterdam Harbor with their canons aimed toward Wall Street and giving an edict to old one-legged Peter Stuyvesant, "Give up or be bombarded." Peter, a successful Manhattan farmer and politician, a practical Dutchman, said, "Heave-ho the British Jack up the flagpole, me wooden-shoe-wearin' mateys, New York it is now."
Does this rather unknown Black man, Bill Thompson, have any chance in Hell of beating Bloomberg? Hell no. It's that simple. For every Bloomberg-blasting ad Bill Thompson runs, no matter how accurate his ad is, Bloomie's gonna spend another 10 million and run more and more superslick ads claiming Bloomie loves New York City like its his own property--he doesn't ever say he loves New Yorkers! But he loves this city.
He does cater to the Middle-Class New Yorker, whoever the hell that is. The mayor never specifies just who is the Middle-Class New Yorker, though in his rent guidelines he specifies that a New Yorker who is Middle-Class had better make $80,000-a-year with family or $50,000 if solo or you can't rent an apartment in the New-World-Order New York City. The mayor even in his ads says the Middle-Class New Yorker to him is the New Yorker making at least $115,000-a-year. That means if a Middle-Class New Yorker, say with an entry-level job in let's say in the pharmaceutical drug industry as a biochemist, making a guaranteed $80,000-a-year with a sign-up bonus of $100,000, then, say, you marry one of the biochemist babes you work with, suddenly you are, according to Mayor Billionaire Bloomberg, a Middle-Class New Yorker couple making a combined $160,000-a-year with your $200,000 sign-up bonuses either in a savings account or invested in a stock portfolio. There ya go, folks, if you and your better half or vice versa, make $160,000-a-year entry-level, with $200,000 to invest during your first year of your career, then, folks, you are in the New York City Middle-Class. Drink up. If you're a Middle-Class New Yorker, you can afford the next round of $7-a-bottle Budweisers (now a Dutch-Brasil-brewed "American Lager"). Oh, but wait, that promising young model you're dating (man or woman) drinks only Hennessey 5-Star at $15 a shot! No problem for you if you're a member of the illusional New York City Middle-Class.
And, yes, folks, there are a whole host of New Yorkers making Middle-Class incomes according to a billionaire's definition of Middle-Class. And there are millions of mostly youngish New Yorkers who fit that category. On the other hand, there are more millions making less than $60,000-a-year, and though you can afford to pay $2,000-a-month for your one-room apartment and still have $30,000 to live on, you ain't Middle-Class to the Power Elite, you're a loser, working at a job you may soon lose due to a downsizing move, or due to a merger in which your services are no longer needed, or perhaps your job can be outsourced to Singapore or India, or perhaps your company is fixing to uproot itself and move to Mexico or better yet Communist China.
I was reading the old Extentialist Cowboy a few posts back and he was joshingly telling everybody that if they wanted a good job they should all move to Communist China--where starting at the bottom you'll do better than your chances of surviving over here at the minimum wage.
We all need mojo bones these days to survive the oppression of John the Conjure Root.
If you want a truth about Black people most White Americans have no idea of, you watch a speech by Fannie Lou Hamer sometimes. Especially a speech she gave after the White Deep South Cracker Police had chained her down to a table and had a couple of Black male prisoners beat her to a pulp with blackjacks (black leather pliable tubes filled with lead for affect) while three White Cracker Lawmen held guns on them saying you either beat this "nigger 'oman" or "You all, boys, know what we'll do to you and those big long black snakes you all got along with those golfball-sized testicles you got swingin' in them thar nigger prison pants you wearin' thanks to the White man." So these two Black men beat the living shit out of Fannie Lou Hamer--with the Cracker White Lawmen humiliating her in front of these weakened Black brothers by lifting her dress up over her head and then molesting her with the hands.
And you listen to Fannie Lou Hamer tell you the truth about Black people and how they handle White racists! President Obama, I'll bet you, has heard or read Fannie Lou Hamer's speeches. Certainly his wife knows all about Fannie Lou Hamer!
And what happened to Fannie Lou Hamer? She died of breast cancer. And why was Fannie Lou Hamer allowed to just go ahead and die of breast cancer? Why because Blacks couldn't get health insurance in those White-ruled law-and-order days in Mississippi God-damn. She didn't have health insurance, so, she was allowed to suffer through it and eventually die.
This is the New World Order/Neo-Con National Healthcare soon to be FORCED on us all. The best way to avoid having to use our healthcare system is to avoid it. Learn to treat yourself. Teach yourself through the Internet how to be a doctor or a nurse. How to diagnose your own body's symptoms; then research how to successfully treat your diagnosed problems. The best and most sure way to avoid our healthcare system is to stay well. Learn to PREVENT disease first and then you don't have to CURE it later. In truth, there really are no CURES available for diseases except the old folk remedies--some of which have always worked. Like the old cold treatments--the asphidity bag for bronchial problems, or the mustard plaster for chest colds and coughing, or gargling with hot water with lemon juice and salt in it for sore throats or coughing or laryngitis. We all should study to become shaman or roots doctors.
Here's a post about a roots woman back in old Kaintuck mountains:
davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/780/
One New York City politician running for the City Council from a mostly Black neighborhood states that his community has formed a Community Credit Association, a community bank, that is providing help in overcoming foreclosures and also is offering healthcare aid by opening a community free clinic where people can get preliminary examinations and blood tests and diagnostics and free dental care, too. That, of course, is the way to put these healthcare criminals out of business. You'll never put them out of business through single-payer healthcare or a workable and cost-effective Medicare-based healthcare system; the big healthcare Power Elite will never allow that--and they have the religious rightwingers, the teabaggers and Swift Boaters, and the Deep South Repug racists solidly on their political side.
This is the only way to beat Wall Street, too. Start community banks. Or union banks. Or government-worker banks. Banks that cater to a community's needs and not inventing schemes to pilfer your land, your home, your capital, your savings....
In the meantime, don't believe a word you hear out of any politician. It's campaign time all over the USA. During campaign time the people are the least important. During campaign time the voters are the least important. Nope, come campaign time, only contributions are important and the people who contribute these contributions are the privileged among us. And come campaign time, a whole order of new promises is coming on line--all lies and waiting disasters, but, hey, its campaign time all over the US so don't look for anything progressive coming down the line anytime soon. More taxes; higher consumer prices; higher mortgages; higher credit card interest; higher costs for the wars; and much much higher executive salaries and bonuses; and guaranteed higher healthcare premium costs--that's what you can surely count on in the coming days and months and year--an Election Year, a year of hype and mentioning God's name, and telling us all we have to tighten our belts and get some new bootstraps or as far as your government's concerned, you'd best pass on into some future illusion and get the fuck off this chaotic planet.
"Chaos is a'comin'" thegrowlingwolf was warning us a year are so ago. Now that Chaos is here, the only hope we have is knowledge and access to knowledge and faith in ourselves as self-providers--we are either our best friends or we are our greatest enemies.
waltercrackpipe
for The Daily Growler Watchtower Edition
Fannie Lou Hamer's Speech at the 1968 Democratic Convention
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-RoVzAqhYk
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