UNITED STATES, REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION

“TOMORROW BEGINS TODAY IN MAKING PEOPLE AWARE”

Millions of jobs lost today can be traced to millions of jobs raped yesterday by our elite leaders. The basic issue today is the same as it was back in the days when I first started to bring forth issues and concerns about our economy and U.S JOBS!!! Two dire problems have befallen us recently, but out of darkness light is born, so let us hope that these disasters awaken us to a new dawn.

The horror of September 11, 2001, and the present economic chaos, if not worse, are basically the result of the same derelictions. They are failure to monitor our country’s policies, as perceived throughout the rest of the world, and as they are affecting our country here at home, by our presidential administrations going back several decades. They are no less the failure in oversight on the same two counts by our Congress during the corresponding span of time.

Job losses were ordained when the Reagan Administration decreed that this country was to become a high-tech society, a service economy and was to enter the post-industrial era. Such policies drove out relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. They were replaced by low-paying service, retail, clerical, fast-food and other non-manufacturing jobs, many of which have been literally destroyed by one or both of these calamities.

Making things (manufacturing) make sense and real jobs. Making comparatively nothing makes nonsense and perishable jobs (services). Certainly neither is without risk. However, the risk is far lower if we have jobs making things for our own use and consumption, then for sale to the export market.

As it stands, however, we can not make even some of the products that are needed to prosecute the war against terrorism. Being unable to supply our military totally from our own shores is just plain dangerous for our defense, not to mention damaging to our real jobs availability (relatively high-paying jobs).

Should we depend upon former, as well as potential enemies for some of the means necessary to protect ourselves because we no longer can or make these products ? I don’t think so.

China and Russia, as well as others of similar stripes don’t exactly inspire great confidence as suppliers of critical materials for our future peace and well-being. With apologies to our State and Commerce Departments, convoluted logic often turns out to be less than logical. To put it another way, when you go up a busy one-way street that is supposed to be down only, it does not really matter which side of the street you use. Generally there is one result---CRASH!!

Back to the Reagan years, President Reagan did many important things for this country, such as furthering development, restoring patriotism, rebuilding our defense capability, facing down the Soviet Union, rejuvenating our faith in ourselves as a nation and more. HOWEVER! From the standpoint of real jobs for the American people and maintaining our essential manufacturing base, here are a few questions that were posed to his administration which met with disturbing replies or no answers at all. These are not verbatim answers, but they are the essence of responses from that administration.

“HOW MANY MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WILL BE UNEMPLOYED BY THIS MOVE TO A HIGH-TECH SOCIETY? WE DO NOT KNOW”

FOR HOW LONG WILL THEY BE UNEMPLOYED? WE HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THE TIME”

WHAT WILL PEOPLE WHO LOOSE THEIR JOBS DO IN WHAT MAY BE A TWENTY OR MORE YEARS? WE SHALL HELP WITH RE-TRAINING”

HOW DO EXPECT TO RETRAIN PEOPLE WHO ARE OLDER, PEOPLE WITH LACK OF EDUCATION, PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR RE-TRAINING, PEOPLE WHO WOULD NOT BE HIRED REGARDLESS OF TRAINING FOR REASONS OF BACKROUND, UNSAVORY RECORDS, ETCTERA? NO REAL ANSWER”

“WHAT WILL BE DONE WITH THE PEOPLE WHO CAN’T BE RE-TRAINED OR COULD NOT SECURE A JOB EVEN IF THEY WERE RE-TRAINED? WE DO NOT KNOW YET”

HOW MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WILL BE REQUIRED? HARD TO SAY”

“IF YOU KNEW HOW MANY BILLIONS WERE NEEDED, FROM WHERE WOULD THEY COME? WE HAVE NOT YET DETERMINED THAT”

HARDLY REASSURING ANSWERS TO CRITICAL QUESTION!!!

These questions were posed a little more than twenty years ago. What we have seen since is many people working two or three jobs to keep families going on a desperate survival basis. NAFTA, under the Clinton administration, siphoned more and more jobs out of the country. Job “globalization” under the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations compounded the job losses like a jet vacuum cleaner sucking sand from the ocean floor. More of the same is to come from another free trade agreement covering the entire Western Hemisphere unless it is stopped.

So, what was set in motion decades ago, tragically has come to pass. Real jobs in too great numbers have disappeared, cheap (non-manufacturing) jobs have swelled. Low and moderate income people have been hurt severely. Wall Street, corporations, and people in their upper ranks, along with people who had money to “invest” or to risk, did very well, (since they had the inside track). On the other hand, those who were not privileged to have an inside track, took a bath on the “old economy”, and were blown away by the dot coms of the new economy. The players continue to play and make lots of money, and it does not matter if the markets go up or down, or mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies occur they still strike it rich. These same people buy solid enterprises cheaply, because such companies have gotten into cash trouble, (balance sheets destroyed by stock looses).

Let us re-trace our steps back to the Reagan years, and Reagan’s economic policies, which were the beginning of the rift of new billionaires and at the other end of the rift, the millions fighting to keep body and soul and family together with too many jobs paying too little money. When households can’t meet their needs with one income, the family pays a high price with children frequently on their own. The society suffers because of a loss in values by their children and possibly even more, by their parents. This cycle goes on, repeating itself with each new generation.

The Reagan policies created more and more high -risk family situations. Too many jobs required in one family to make sheer survival into what is called “living”. This situation was a result of moving jobs out of the United States to nations where labor was cheap. Another reason for the same dire consequences was selling our manufactured goods markets to whatever companies offered the lowest prices. Initially these companies saw the opportunity to produce in such countries like Japan, China, Mexico, etc. with low labor costs. U.S companies and greedy executives saw an opportunity to produce in such countries and then turn around and sell them back in our country and create a bigger profit.

U.S companies were able to increase their profits greatly, and what this meant was millions of real U.S jobs lost to other nations. U.S companies even shipped parts to other countries, assembled the final product there and shipped back for sale in the United States. A great example is the auto industry, as cars were assembled in Mexico and shipped back to the U.S for sale.

These economic and market changes were accepted by certain Americans for one or various combinations of three reasons. First, they did not understand the real losses to our country (they did not loose their jobs). Second, all they saw was that they were paying lower prices for things they bought (imported), car , shoes, clothes, computes, TVs, anything and everything they needed or thought they did. The deprivation of their fellow citizens was either unseen or rationalized. Third, all societal pressures of having it all convinced them that having an SUV or bigger house was more important. It was more important than having mom and dad working three or four jobs, while the kids were in daycare and later on their own, instead of one or the other being at home taking care of those kids.

The new economic structure, along with the financial magic involved, led to the accumulation of large sums of money by many organizations and certain people. Much of this money and new technology were invested in the “new economy”. The “old economy”, making things in brick and mortar structures here in our own backyard, and selling such things had passed. So, out of nowhere and in no time came the dot coms.

Whether or not these dot coms had a business plan that made sense, or they made a profit was irrelevant. Wall Street , and the financial community as a whole, saw a bonanza in the offing and beat the drum of greed, literally to death, so that in due course emerged what was called the “dot com bubble”. As with all bubbles, it burst!! With it went millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in bewitched investors money.

So, because of this economic delusion and the horror of September 11, 2001, our great country is in recession, if not worse, thanks to greed and tragedy. The U.S economy is affecting that of much of the world which will make a return to economic health far more difficult. Jobs here and elsewhere in the developed nations, let alone the third world, will be a dire and dangerous problem for the future.

The reasons that both of these traumatic events, 9/11 and economic difficulties, took place is because Presidential administrations not monitoring our government’s operations in intelligence that should have prevented the attack on September 11, 2001, and not monitoring operations in the financial sector that should have prevented the dot com bubble, not to mention the bursting of that bubble. No less responsible, and possibly even more so, is the oversight which our Unites States Congress is supposed to exert in each case. These traumatic events could have and should have been prevented.

September 11, 2001, clearly involved all of our intelligence organizations, the FBI, INS, Custom Service, CIA, State Department and other entities. With respect to the dot com disaster, the SEC, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and certainly others were guilty as well. However, the ultimate responsibility was in the Presidential Administrations and United States Congress. They abjectly failed the people of the United States. The people, the reason they were elected to protect. Sadly, they will never be held accountable, despite the fact that they clearly had numerous credit warnings, in both cases, over an extended period of time and yet were totally remiss in not protecting this nation, and its citizens from either catastrophe.

Worse still, a number of people will capitalize on one or the other, if not both of these tragic events.

Fast forward to the year 2002. Enron is still one more case of dereliction in monitoring and oversight by the various agencies of the Bush Administration, and oversight by the United States Congress. Once again employees and investors have been devastated. Worst of all, however, the employees have seen their pensions and 401s either destroyed or drastically assaulted in the process with this bankruptcy, at that time the largest in the nation’s history. Greed and in this case, fraud and accounting dereliction along with audit irregularities, have been at the heart of this financial disaster. At a minimum, Wall Street and other financial interests had a hand in the situation, if for no other reason than utterly irresponsible stock promotion. So!! Again, where was the monitoring by the Bush administration’s agencies, and the oversight of the Congress?

On September 11, 2001, we were attacked by Muslim terrorists in order to kill and inflict fear into the American people and the world, took place in one day, yet sadly jobs lost due to the “ECONOMIC TERROR ATTACK” by greedy and savage CEOs and financial entities, hiding, not in caves of Afghanistan, but right here in our own back yard, Wall Street, has been waging a slow and steady guerilla warfare, spread over a period of time, and affecting million of people.

What happens when U.S manufacturing jobs are replaced by service jobs, as manufacturing jobs are being moved out of the U.S to other nations, is that our American workers are paid less in service jobs, and have to work two or three jobs to sustain their families, just to survive. However, such U.S corporations, their executives and the investors make unreasonable and undeserved amounts of money.

Cheap labor and lower costs abroad mean lower costs for the corporations. Prices are maintained or increased here in the United States, and the results are higher profits for the CEO terrorists, the rest of their allies, plus all of those who are involved in manipulating stock prices and similar depredations upon the people of the United Sates, make outrageous amount of money. We the people pay the piper, that is the bill for these relatively few people getting sickeningly large amounts of dollars at our expense.

Sadly our politicians who are working with the CEO terrorists argue that Americans now have more jobs available, in what is a service economy. Sure there are jobs, but they are jobs that pay way less, and people have to work two or three jobs while the basic family values are annihilated.

Our politicians who are working with the CEO terrorists argue that Americans pay less for what they buy. Sure for the items coming in from foreign companies, but it is not true for imported good which made or assembled by U.S companies abroad, and sold here as American products.

Rape is a crime. When one commits a rape that person goes to jail. But why is that when an employer rapes an American worker, nothing gets done about it.

For the last few weeks we have seen in the news, and read in the papers of thousands and thousands of people losing their jobs. You have Ford motor company shutting down plants, and you have Enron going bankrupt — enough.

It is time for the people of the United States of America to wake up and say enough. It is the people who slave, sweat 50, 60, even 70 hours a week, which make these CEOs, CFOs, COOs rich and greedy. This must stop. Sure this is the land of freedom and opportunity, and if you work hard you should earn the fruits of your tolls, but there has to be a limit.

You mean to tell me that these executives that earn ten, twenty, or even more millions of dollars, can't survive by putting a million or two back into the paychecks of the people that busted their backs to make them rich?? Has greed taken over and blinded the judgments of these executives?

In the world we are looked upon as the richest country in the world. Other nations look upon us and say that America is the land of opportunities.

Bull.

Did you know that out of the entire industrialized nations in the world the United States of America Is ranked second for child poverty? , That is a crying shame. There is no excuse for this.

The basic heart and soul of our country, not to mention the engine that drives it, is the stakes. The highest and most critical stakes imaginable. In a word, survival! What could be higher? Obviously nothing.

We the people have been victims of economic domestic terrorism, but very few people are talking about it, and those that want to, talk about it are accused of being un-American or un-patriotic.

What Wall Street did to the economy of the United States is a terrorist action. What these corporate executives did to the various cor­porations, are terrorists. I can compare the Chairman of Enron, with the Chairman of the PLO, Yasser "the rat" Arafat. Both men led people, and managed funds, and both of these rats stole the money that was for their enterprises, for their personal selfish gains? So what Is the difference? Both of these men have a hand in the economic domestic terrorism of the United States.

Survival depends upon jobs, real Jobs making things. Not temporary or part time low wage service jobs in restaurants, retail, fast food places etc. We need real jobs and real incomes. Real jobs and real incomes are fundamental for a return to what America was about, "(the American Standard of Living". Jobs and wages are essential for revival of families, revival of values, and revival of education. Real Jobs and real living wages make for an equitable society, and a civilized culture. Real jobs, and liv­ing wages are a plus for effective attacks on crime, drugs, hunger, homelessness and the myriad other afflictions besetting us.