The Middle Class Is Worse Off Than You Think

[truedelphi]

5. In many ways, Canada is run much more sensibly than we are.

For one thing, anyone who wishes to emigrate from another nation and become a Canadian citizen must be willing to learn either English or French - none of this "The people of your country need to learn my language!"

And although many folks calling themselves "progressives" deplore what happened under Reagan, during his tenure, the fact remains that under Ron Reagan, we took only baby steps toward the total fascist-ization of the economy.

In fact, back in the late 1980's, when the Savings and Loan Scandal hit, the Federal Government followed sensible guidelines in which local banks were allowed to have a newly issued state charter, and then they could receive Federal monies, but those Federal monies had to be loaned out to the people who were involved in Main Street.

But by 1990 the hand writing was on the wall. Rich Democrats running companies paid their workers as little as those who worked at companies run by rich Republicans. People of both party affiliations would eagerly seek bankruptcy status for a company they had inherited from their parents -- and then offer themselves the lucrative Golden Parachutes' payments to "reward" themselves for their service to that now defunct company. These Golden Parachutes came at the expense of the workers' pension plans - which were raided to pay off the debts of the "failing" companies.

Among the last major activities of the Clinton Presidency was Bill Clinton signing off on the Bank and Financial Institution's Modernization Act - an act that broke down the barrier between financial insurance and financial trading. Only a single solitary Senator voted against this Act 0- that was Senator Dorgan, "D" of Nebraska who claimed that this one Act would destroy the protections of Glass Steagal, and would also soon lead to a steep implosion of the economy. Less than nine years later, this Senator was proven right!

With the 2008 economic implosion, the American people attempted to tell Congress that they did not want the major players on Wall Street to be bailed out. And they did manage to postpone the Bailouts of Wall Street for a few weeks. But at least 80% of Congressional members cared about only Wall Street. And these Congressional members responded to Wall Street firms' lobbyists with far more enthusiasm than the millions of phone calls, emails, faxes and letters that the American people utilized to try to stop this madness of rewarding the top financial firms for the collapse they caused!

And in 2008, every single major presidential candidate, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, were so deeply entrenched with Wall Street interests that the American people's sensible notions of NOT handing our economy over to the Big Financial Players went unheeded.

People voted for Obama across party lines, as he was an unknown and his final rally on his late October presidential campaign in Wisconsin included many strong remarks about regulating Wall Street. But once elected, Obama immediately decided that Geithner would be the best person for the job at Treasury - this despite the fact that Geithner's actions while he headed the NY Federal Reserve deserved a RICO conviction!

Now we have a nation in which in every industry there is room only for the top two or three companies of any type. Congress rewards the top companies such that the small businesses must pay for the ability of the top firms to have to pay little and sometimes ZERO for government services, while we pay an increased price for those services. And to top it off, the top companies then pay NOTHING in taxes. (As a person who is a small publisher, my husband and I pay a steep price for the fact that Amazon gets discounted services through the US Postal Service. And so we cannot afford to have books bought directly by us, through our website, as Amazon can offer free shipping, for our books while we would have to insist on at least a half postage price paid by the consumer. So most consumers by through Amazon. then Amazon gives us only 40% of the profits we would otherwise make. Such is the "gifts" bestowed on our economy by the Lobbyists Rule Over Corporate (Friggin' Fascist) Amerika! And this US Postal Service deal with Amazon was brought about directly through Congressional actions in Spring of 2007 - the first few months when Congress had a clear and strong Democratic majority!)