Ain’t Got No Future

Who knows what Pres. Obama will say at tonight's State of the Union Address. What can he say? Things are not going well and we all know it. Things are not even turning around and we know that too. We also know we will hear the usual hype rising to a height of understated eloquence before it levels off and begins to descend at a slower pace back down to the "sensible rhetoric" that has become the new propaganda - in other words, the standard architecture of the typical Obama speech. Opposition party leaders merely have to say "Detroit" to rebut any positive prediction the President might make. But mostly the State of the Union Address will mean nothing. It will promise some growth in the job market, it will assure us that our failed global trade policies are getting better all the time. It will once again make the dishonest argument that our economy is in recovery. All of it would mean something if only a new reality could be invented in which it might work.

Your name it. It is all coming down around us, and Pres, Obama and even the damned republicans believe they know how to drink this awful poison day in and day out as every day billions of dollars are sucked out of the U.S. economy into overseas investments and foreign financial institutions. And every day U.S. jobs are shipped overseas where they will stay forever. And every day another of our corporations gives up it technological secrets to the police state of China, because if they don't, China will not allow them entry to do business. This is called "fair trade." China undervalues its currency. More fair trade. China charges the U.S. ten times what we charge it in tariffs. More fair trade.Only one in ten computers in China have a legitimate Microsoft system installed. The other nine are illegal. This is what China calls fair trade. It is a sucker's game. And we are the suckers.

And in the distance in some pre-historic sweat shop an under-nourished man will make 70 cents an hour if he just assembles one or more iPhones before he dies. iPhones American citizen will purchase in part insuring the ultimate demise of our economy. And bad reception, too. iPhone karma..

The state of delusion which runs rampant within our government and is so precious to our elected officials who now work for another paymaster, the institutions of high finance, the same institutions that needed our blood to survive in 2008. And what is our reward for saving their hides in 2008? A stoned cold reluctance to loan to small and new business just when we need to jump start our economy.

That is our reward. We can be assured, however, that our politicians were rewarded amply with political contributions taken straight from the taxpayer money used to bail the banks out - it is like very bad poetry. Even the economics of political greed don't make any sense. Think of this: Banks feed approximately a few million dollars, or quite often even less into a legislator's campaign chest. For that "spare change" the banks receive billions of dollars of taxpayer bail-out money, assurances to keep deregulating so they can continue to steal , and access to global banking markets where the real money is.

The problem the U.S. consumer has to see is that their bank is using their money to invest overseas thereby increasing unemployment at home and threatening to destroy the economy. So consumers have to look at what their banks are doing with their money. Are they doing anything to improve your local economy? If the answer is no, bank somewhere else. Why should the American consumer provide the funds for our financial institutions to reap large profits overseas, depriving the U.S. economy of taxes and raising service fees on consumers to boot? This is the ultimate rip-off, and requires action by the consumer to change the way the bank dioes business. Or withdraw your account.

There are two things Obama could ask for tonight that, if accomplished, would change the whole dynamic of the nation for the better.

1. Foreign trade has to be fair and balanced.

2. The banks and other financial institutions have to be regulated, re-regulated actually.

But he can't do those things while he is in the pocket of the banks. He might say he can do them. Meanwhile, America is stolen from us, traded away for mere baubles, as the Native Americans traded away vast tracts of land for British glass beads and junk. And later tonight we will hear from the Tea Party member who is set to provide the republican state of the union, a woman who believes Barack Obama is a "socialist".

That's right, the banker's president is a socialist.

We are living at a time when American history is almost too embarrassing to write.