A L O H A !
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—
a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Benjamin Franklin
(1706–90)
" Give us this day,
our daily noodles. "
" In America
there is not one single
element of civilization
that is not made to depend,
in the end,
upon public opinion. "
HENRY WARD BEECHER
" - these days young Americans
are considerably less likely
than young people
in many other countries
to graduate from college.
In
fact, we have a
college graduation rate
that’s slightly below
the
average across
all
advanced economies."
PAUL KRUGMAN,
My grandparents came to America from Europe
as young children. I have no pictures,
but in my mind's eye, I see them hand in hand
with their parents who I never met.
They left behind homelands
(Rumania, Kiev, Vienna)where your father's class
determined one's own.
They came to a Dream, a Promise:
"I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door."
It was a dynamic, early 20th Century America
of great wealth,
and also
teeming poverty in great slums;
BUT a ladder too existed-
difficult, challenging,
requiring hard work,
and no little luck-
and this ladder could
provide a worker with a
decent home,
a community,
in which to raise a family.
That great 20th Century invention:
the Middle Class,
grew, and raised all boats
with it's swell.
It was a land where
if you are white: alright!
If you are brown: stick around.
If you are black: get back!
We have come a long way
since those times,
and that progress was made
by growing the pie,
expanding our "Us"
and including all of us,
all of our children,
in the Dream.
Now, the Dream seems far away
to many Americans.
We are in a time of huge changes
that I call the Great Theft.
The broad and fluid Middle Class
that won WWII, and built
unprecedented shared prosperity,
all while becoming increasingly inclusive,
was based on shared values
like a level playing field, basic fairness,
transparent rules of the road.
We were told that Capitalism
was better than Communism
because average people
had decent lives under Capitalism.
But with the end of global Communism,
pronounced forces in America
turned their eyes
to new forms of business;
business that created nothing,
added no real value,
that decreased our tax base,
and abandoned
whole regions of American workers.
Instead of making things
that our huge domestic market,
and vast potential foreign ones
wanted,
we turned to the making of
deals.
All of the painstakingly created
prosperity of the 20th Century
was chiseled off
of this still-great nation
and pawned to the highest bidder.
One of my least favorite political commentators,
Patrick Buchanan,
recently explained the details
very concisely:
"For decades America has been de-industrializing,
with manufacturing shrinking
as a share of Domestic product
to 11% from over 30% in 1950.
Not since before the Civil War
have we been so dependent
on foreign goods-"
" When the history of American decline
is written, the historians will zero in on
a choice the nation made
when the interests of Middle America collided
with those of Corporate America.
"Decades ago, America's great companies,
having saturated the American market,
wanted to go out and capture
the world's markets.
Free to move production out
of the U.S.A.,
they wanted to bring their products
back to the United States,
duty free.
Make them there; sell them here.
And if the US companies were to be
allowed to produce and to sell
in foreign countries,
those countries wanted the right
to dump their goods in the U.S.A. "
"And here is where
the national interest
and the interests of Corporate America
diverged. . .
where what was good for
the boardroom elite
collided with what was
best for Middle America. . . .
North American Free Trade Agreement. . .
GATT, the
WTO - what they all produced
is a Magna Carta of the transnational corporation,
( I would say "Transnational Class" - Cloudia )
which looks longingly
to the end of nation-states,
and the arrival of
world government."
The Government
is supposed to be
"By, for, and of the People"
as Abraham Lincoln said.
By subverting,
then destroying our government,
the broad swath of us
is made defenseless
in a time of global changes
that are rocking our families.
Right now, a
masterful job of misdirection
is causing us to squabble
with one another over
inconsequential issues.
In 2008,
a vanishingly small group
of people basically
STOLE 40%
of the average
American family's "wealth".
"Too Big to Fail"
is another word for
EXTORTION.
And the game rolls on.
We bailed them out.
Now we learn
that private hands
hold untaxed wealth
in the TRILLIONS (32)
of US dollars
in hidden off-shore accounts.
Seems the "job creators"
are REALLY hoarding
what USED TO BE
shared prosperity!
This untaxed hoard
is estimated
equivalent to the
economies of Japan
and the USA!
And yet
we are firing police
and teachers.
A few years ago,
a respected Navajo wise man
came to Oahu.
I was lucky
to hear him speak to a small group.
He told us of unprecedented changes in
our life times.
World Changes.
He advised us not to hoard,
but to use, enjoy,
and share
what we have accumulated
before the changes,
which he felt were
quite near.
He did advise us
to hoard one thing:
Food.
Many feel that 2012
is the year for pivotal change.
But it can be a
transformation
of how we live together
on this globe,
for good,
or for struggle.
The peaceful, wise,
ancient Navajo
said one thing that I remember specifically;
In his words:
" We will hunt the rich down
in the streets like dogs."
A small group of people,
with no loyalty to nation,
or any community,
beyond their elite bubble,
hold the power to indeed
create jobs.
Ask Mitt Romney about that.
Will they?
We changed our laws
so that drug dealers
lose their assets even before
they are convicted of any crime!
We are the police, the army,
Interpol.
How bad will we let things get
for average people,
before we depose the Corporate-ocacy?
They bought legislation
and made laws
that allowed all this
to happen.
We can change the laws
and change things back.
What human family
needs TRILLIONS,
or Billions in the bank?
OUR larger human family does.
We are all stake-holders
in the human experiment!
Fear not.
Tomorrow, I shall go back
to posting personal,
and positive vibrations
to share with you.
But this had to be said.
We now return you
to the joy
in THIS MOMENT,
already in progress. . .
Thank YOU, dear friend,
for your valuable time.
YOUr visit
adds much to my day!
Do YOU have a comment to add?
PLEASE DO!
Most Sincerely & Fondly, cloudia
