The Clowns Who Rule

By TRB

Remember the guy, he was in every class you had. He always sat at the back of the room because he thought, he truly believed, sitting there would make him invisible to the teacher. He was the class wise guy the class bully, the class clown. He had many jobs. He wasn't in school to get an education because in his mind he already knew it all. He was there to entertain, to talk, to create havoc and to terrorize other students.

Did you ever wonder what happened to him? Well, I believe I have found him. He is resting comfortably in a mahogany armchair, he is wearing a $4000 suit. He is making deals that will diminish your social security, evaporate your retirement fund, close the doors on AIDs prevention centers in most major cities, see to it that you have to pay more co-pay for your prescriptions. And he is not through. Because while he is doing this, he is also ripping to shreds any regulations that might have made it easier to expect our corporate government to do right by you.

It is the guy who used to sit at the back of the class. Except he is not hiding anymore. He is right there on your television news every night bragging about his "austerity" programs, but failing every time to mention that if they are implemented they will have terrible consequences for your life and those lives of the people you love. He is failing to mention, for example, that some of the cutbacks, especially the medical ones, will probably result in the early deaths of some people who might have lived longer.

What could be so important, so essential that the U.S.would risk the deaths of some of its own citizens to accomplish? Is it a war? In a way it is. It is a class war. The middle class and the poor will have their lives further down-graded so that the wealthy can maintain their low tax rate, so corportions can hire tax lawyers to go through the many loopholes Congress provides for them every year. Our corporations practically write our tax law as it is. Yes, the so-called private sector is doing the job we voted these clowns into office to do.

That is why it is necessary - even if it takes a few election cycles and some recalls - to get them all out. That means every holder of political office in the Senate and the House of Representatives. They have to be replaced and this has to be done soon. Because they are replacing you.

What's more is that finally the stupidly wealthy are realizing that their tax break is not doing them any good. In fact, if things keep going in this direction on the world markets, their tax rate could be one of the reasons they wind up in the poor house with the rest of us. All because of a little thing they taught to us in school a long time ago, back when today's politician wasn't paying attention, maybe he was trying to get his hand up Mary's dress, or he was sticking his gum on the bottom of his neighbor's shoe. In any case, when the time came to discuss the ins and outs of supply and demand, he just wasn't paying attention.

Warren Buffet was paying attention. He was sitting in the front row seats, he was writing down everything the teacher had to say, plus some new ideas he already had. He is a financial genius. And, as a certified billionaire, he more than qualifies for this outrageous tax break. But yesterday he was on television telling anyone who would listen that he doesn't want the tax break, he doesn't need it, and that most of his wealthy friends feel the same way. Warren Buffet believes everyone who makes one million dollars or more a year should be in a special tax bracket that takes more money from them - a lot more - than it does from your average person. He even believes the more you make the more you should pay.

Warren Buffet believes in a graduated tax system.

Also making the rounds yesterday was Howard Schultz, founder and CEO of Starbucks Coffee Shops. He employs 195,000 people worldwide. So we can surmise that Mr. Schultz knows something about employing people. Mr. Shultz believes corporations like his own should have to pay more taxes. He also believes the economy is going to hell in a handbasket because the class clowns in Washington don't have any idea what they are doing. He believes we have a real crisis in leadership.

And we do. We have democrats who are afraid of their own shadows. We have republicans, who are now being led by a third party, the Tea Party, which appears to be made up of people who were advised to see a shrink a long time ago but didn't take the advice. And why are people listening to these Tea Party screwballs? Because politicians are so far removed from the reality of our daily ives, that they don't want to take the chance that the voters are not on the side of the Tea Party. Put more simply. The republicans believe that all of us have some of the Tea Party in us and they are appealing to what they think is there.

If you watch television network or cable news, they have made it quite clear - at least in their polling - that most Americans are not of the same opinions as the Tea Party. And that a surprisingly high number of Americans believe Tea Party folks are in fact mentally ill. But republicans believe one thing about this and only one thing.They believe the Tea Party and its followers are more likely to show up in the voting booth on election day, and more likely to hold rallies in their favor, if they just support the issues they stand for.

Truth is, they don't really stand for "issues" per se. The Tea Party would like to see the destruction of the U.S. government. Go ahead, sit down with any member of the Tea Party and eventually you too will reach that conclusion. The Tea Party believes in a whole different form of government, and, for now they are not saying what it is. They believe democracy is not working. They are right, but they don't want to take the time to fix it.

Warren Buffet and Howard Schultz don't come out to talk to the press about the economy unless something is really wrong. They are worried. Nothing worries a capitalist more than problems with supply and demand. When the economy goes South, people tend to purchase less. When people purchase less, more workers are laid off. When more workers are laid off, people purchase even less.

It is that kind of cycle. It is the kind of cycle that if you get so far along it that you can no longer see where it began, you might never find your way back.

This is what really worries Buffet and Schultz - that the school clowns in the House and the Senate are so fat with bribe money that they have taken their eyes off the economy. The economy, which sometimes seems to be a one-way street, at least to the consumer, with the consumer paying and paying and receiving very little in return, is actually a two-way street. If America's poor and middle class begin to purchase a lot less, that could upset the whole damn apple cart.

That would mean that corporations would receive less profits, that there would be even fewer jobs. We already have "stagflation," a stagnant economy. That is bad enough. Our lack of an industrial base makes it almost impossible to get out of this mess. Our politicians are useless. The entire republican Congress has been allowed to take an obvious racist stance against Obama, showing him no respect whatsoever. The overtly tanned House leader actually refuses to take phone calls from Obama on occasion. That is what it has come to. Obama, being the president who doesn't like to talk about race, hasn't said anything about it. But any white person can tell you, Obama is being treated with less respect than the white presidents before him. Hell, Obama can't even go on vacation without some white politician who is probably building an extra wing on his own house compliments of the military industrial complex, questioning if its right to be spending tax money for Obama's vacation at a time like this.

So you all see why this has to end. I am talking to the rest of the class now. You all understand why we have to wait for the class clown/bully outside of school during the very next election, drag him to the ground, tear his clothes off, light them on fire, and send him home screaming like a stuck pig.