Yesterday on National Public Radio (Texas Public Radio
KSTX 89.1 fm) I heard a listener suggest to the NPR host that members of
congress should be put through conflict resolution training. I agree. It’s
unlikely but it is an idea.
Then again news personalities, even the lucid ones on PBS
and NPR, have this notion that what we see happening in the congress today is
somehow new and different. While I agree that when viewed in the context of
very recent history, the last 30 years or so, the 112th Congress was
"do nothing- dysfunctional", I
must question, “what’s your point?” That “dysfunctional-do nothing” attitude
has been more the norm rather than the exception in the history of this nation and certainly over the past thirty years.
Even before there was a “nation” there were deep schisms
within what was then a largely Anglo-Saxon community. Think about it, when this
nation was comprised of 13 odd, occupied and repressed colonies of Mother
England there was jagged disharmony among its largely homogenous population. That
alone tells you much.
To begin with just the notion of “revolution” two and a
half centuries ago was for the fringe element. Actually engaging in revolution
in mid 18th Century within a single people was counter-culture and
radical.
So how did it all come about? Well, there were a few men(sorry ladies, women were mostly thought of then as property) who had a vested financial interest in getting out from under the shadow of Mother England.
The chasm, the yawning gap, the gulf between those who
have and those who don’t was a deep, wide one indeed. And even the founders had
no intention of changing that.
The problem then was how to enlist the ninety-nine percent
to act as the law-enforcement, the military of, by and for the one-percent.
Distraction, disingenuous rhetoric and co-opting bumper sticker slogans works
and then there are always lies. We’ve seen lies used to get us into at least
two military conflicts just in the last generation.
So why should any of the really significant discussion of
how to divvy up the fiscal pie be any less disingenuous?
Not that there’s much to discuss. The one-percent,
one-tenth of one-percent (a heady population of roughly 300,000 US citizens) by
some accounts own it all. So what we the people are arguing over is how to
divvy up less than two-percent of the total.
What does that mean? Well that means that a little more
than 98 percent of the population has to find a way to divide up, live on and
be happy with less than two percent of the total wealth of this nation.
Let me put that in easy to understand terms. Imagine that
the total worth of the nation is one dollar. You know those ubiquitous pieces
of green paper with pictures of dead presidents and founders on them. And there
are 100 people in the room where this dollar is going to be divvied up. Hope
you brought “change.”
When it comes time to sharing that one dollar, the
discussion gets, well interesting. It’s what we’re witnessing in the congress. Right
out of the chute, the one percent of the population gets a little more than 98
cents. Yes, that’s right one of the persons in the room would receive a little
more than 98 cents. The other 99 persons in the room would have not quite two
cents to divvy up among them.
That’s basically where we are today. Interestingly,
that’s how it was for those living in the thirteen British colonies more than
two and a half centuries ago as well.
Consider this, today 2013 only three percent of the US
population makes $300,000 a year or more. Three percent of the population is
roughly 9 million US citizens out of 300 million plus.
One-percent of the population equals three million
people. These are the people who own just about everything in the US. They are
in the driver’s seat. We go in the direction they say we go, when and if they
say we go.
Put another way, one-percent of the population (3 million
people) of this nation are worth more than half the population of this nation combined. Half
the population of the US is 150 million of us, more or less.
It’s the reason at least half the US population lives paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to see a dentist on a regular basis, much
less pay for adequate healthcare.
The fiscal “cliff” which is really little more than a
slope given the numbers I just shared comes down to paying for what GOPers,
conservatives and misanthropes label “entitlements” and taxes.
Entitlements being assistance to the “poor, the tired,
the huddled masses yearning to live free.” That would include Medicare,
Medicaid and any other benefit for the masses but not the subsidies to oil and
gas, tax breaks for big tobacco, subsidies to the largest banks including
JPMorgan Chase, and on and on and on.
The other side of the equation being that we as a nation
have some debt to pay down. Debt is as historical to the US as violence.
However, we are approaching a point at which the debt can
get out of hand.
So how did our intrepid congress deal with the
“entitlements” and taxes on the one-percent? We’ll talk about next time.
Suffice to say for now that what the US is faced with is
not so much a financial deficit as much as a leadership deficit.
Presently we are little more than a ruder-less paper boat
adrift in an endless sea of unintended consequences.
We have no national leaders. We have only petty, selfish,
opportunistic, partisan professional politicians serving the 1 percent,
themselves and special interests.
It’s only as an afterthought that these ridiculous, ignorant
and self-serving "public officials" consider the needs of the nation
and its people. As for consideration for unintended consequences and the
future---fugetaboutit!!
From Texas Red: a cratered landscape of
prisons, deplorable apartheid public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority
population intent on keeping it that way…
Hasta Siempre,
