This year begins with positivity and light. And though I have plenty of places where I let my positive FREQuency flag fly, this blog has been dedicated (mostly) to writing on behalf of those who deserve a lot and have not quite enough but have earned it. Here I write about the difficulty we have in the hard-working middle class to get our government to hear us. As the push continues to denigrate us further by denying us a healthcare law that has passed through a vote and the courts and by continuing the smackdown of Social Security in the attempt to raise the age and adjust the numbers.
Who better to decide for the rest of us than the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and the money monkeys in Congress whom they have at the end of a leash to pass bills that only benefit the already wealthy. Yes, I speak of the American Legislative Exchange Council who boast on their homepage that they are “America’s legislators partnered with the private sector” (read: corporate shareholders) who “…write model legislation to advance free-market enterprise and limit government”. Isn’t it great for us to have those caring Koch brothers who along with other CEOs with massive retirement fortunes pushing for cuts to Social Security? Have they rescinded all benefits to their own Social Security since they have no need for it?
Here’s an excerpt from an important read in an article in The Nation posted on November 19, 2013: “One of those CEOs is David Cote, the vice-chair of Business Roundtable and a member of the steering committee for Fix the Debt. After eleven years at Honeywell where he’s now the chief executive, his retirement assets are worth $134.5 million. That means that as a retiree he’ll draw a monthly pension of nearly $800,000. Cote is a deficit hawk, and claims to be worried about the long-term stability of Social Security. A member of the Bowles-Simpson commission and President Obama’s debt committee, Cote has called for $3 to $4 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, “especially when it comes to entitlements.”
So, here is President Obama who includes CEO’s like David Cotes on his debt committee. Makes you realize that this is not a bi-partisan push but rather a rich-over-the-rest-of-us- regulars power grab in Washington.
I can’t help but navigate you to the recent Bob Lefsetz blog titled: “The One Percent“. We’ve all heard the term bandied about for the past few years, but this is a REALLY GREAT READ and should be in your arsenal of things to take note of and understand as we make way through the teens of the 2000’s. (And I’m talking years here, not younguns.)
Go see the movie “12 Years A Slave“. It is a poignant masterpiece that makes your heart burst with sadness. How could humans treat one another this way? How could ruthless wealthy individuals enslave others? And if you think technology makes us forge ahead into the future, just revel in it longer, missing the realization that it enslaves us and that rather than achieving progress, we are being completely manipulated and undermined by a very small group of people that wish us to bury our minds in their well-designed programs while our future is wiped out by the self-centered, grand poobahs of industry and our own government who are among them.
America the free? Think again.
danajae33 