OUR NEW DICKENSIAN WORLD

It's April 10, 2011. I talked to my son, Gene, this morning. He's in the same occupation that supported both of us so well for so long. He's a carpet technician who had to move from Prescott, Arizona to Houston over two years ago just to have any work at all, after losing his home and 401K. (He's 48. So much for his retirement security!) He had to go to work for an installation company that services Home Depot.

He was hired for wages less than what we charged customers when we worked together 15 and 20 years ago. (You know what inflation has done since then!) He told me that his compensation has been cut again and that the $40 trip charge he was getting for long distances has been cut to $15. I don't know what is being put on his table for meals – I'm afraid to ask. Retirement? That's a joke!

Yea, for capitalism. You're seeing the glories of a “trickle-down” economy. The cliches we all bought are now the buzzards coming home to roost. Capitalism and uncontrolled free enterprise are running their predictable course. There's an article on Huffington Post this morning about soaring executive pay and record corporate profits: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html?_r=2&ref=business

Every destructive weapon imaginable is being zeroed in on the middle and laboring classes. Unions are being savaged and destroyed. Every legal safeguard that protected people from unfairness is being attacked and obliterated. Regulation is demonized. We are becoming a carbon copy of the society that existed in Dickensian England and Czarist Russia, as well as in the age of the American “robber barons.” We seem determined to return to poor houses, company stores and pestilence ridden slums where the common people are expendable fodder for corporate machines.

As far as I can see, the “American dream” has become the “American nightmare.” It certainly is for my son and his family. It's even worse for many others.

We still have it pretty good. My wife and I both have Social Security coming in and my wife gets a moderate state retirement check every month. I do a few small carpet service jobs and an occasional wedding ceremony, and we manage to survive. Don't count on that being the case for my son or anyone else of his generation, if the aristocrats of today have their way. They have the famous “Let them eat cake” snotty attitude (think Boehner here).

Socialism is almost universally badmouthed in this country, and most of the badmouthers don't have a clue what they are talking about. Their ignorance is appalling.

Total socialism has never worked. The fate of Communist Russia vouches for that fact.

What people don't realize is that total capitalism is just as bad, or worse than, total socialism. Both lead to a super rich ruling class that lords it over everyone else. Communism was really just state run capitalism dreamed up by Stalin, not by Lenin. Both, in their ultimate form, lead to feudalism. You see it every time you enter one of these giant corporate run franchises. Over the whole thing sits the corporate “Lords” raking off enormous profits from the “vassals” in the local operations supervising armies of clone-like “serfs” running around in their dopey little uniforms, lucky to be paid “minimum wage.”

I'm not dumb enough to believe that all that has happened has happened by accident. It's been carefully planned by the faceless super wealthy overlords who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes ever since they engineered the election of “trickle down” Reagan with his “voodoo economics,” the haughty elitist who wouldn't think of “demeaning” his office by taking off his coat and getting down to business in his exalted oval office. He was a great “acting” president. He was guided, like the clueless puppet he was, into giving us the original savings and loan crisis. That was just step one in the steady parade of maneuvers that have never ceased and have brought one society changing (and destroying) crisis after another, all intended to accomplish the same goal.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence should be able to figure out what the real goal is.

SLAVERY! A FEUDAL, AND LIKELY THEOCRATIC, AMERICA!

Nothing, absolutely nothing, controls a population as well as a theocracy.

Wake up, my fellow Americans! Quit being led around by the nose and swallowing every stupid story you are fed!

SOCIALISM -- THE GREAT BOOGEYMAN

To label something “Socialism” has become a knee-jerk reaction ultra-conservatives like to use as a convenient put down to any progressive idea or program. Bill Maher triggered some new thoughts on the subject with his “New Rule” comment this weekend:

“New Rule: With the Super Bowl only a week away, Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, for all the F-15 flyovers and flag waving, football is our most successful sport because the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poor teams....Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of 100,000. Yet this sleepy little town...has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets...It's no surprise that some 100 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl next week....The World Series is like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in...they literally share the wealth, through salary caps and revenue sharing - TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call 'punishing success.'"

Total socialism has never been a good idea. Neither is demonizing, under the pejorative label of “socialism,” everything that seeks to level the playing field and see that a society doesn't become a class regimented arena in which a privileged few sit at the lavish pinnacle and grind the masses into a poverty ridden mass of the hopeless and downtrodden in never ending debt to company stores, etc.

The only legitimate way to do things is the conservative way, according to most Republicans. By conservative, they mean the “old way,” how America was before all this “New Deal” crap came on the scene.

If we really want to be totally conservative, let's go back to a monarchy, what we had before the American Revolution. Nothing is more “conservative” than that. In fact, that's what most Christians look forward to as they breathlessly await Jesus' return as a conquering “king.”

Whether we like to admit it or not, that's exactly where we have been headed ever since elitist-minded Ronald Reagan ascended to the White House and began to push for what George H. W. Bush at first called “voodoo economics.”

We progressed at leaps and bounds all through the fifties, sixties and seventies. We became the economic powerhouse of the world.

The new “conservative” tack brought us the savings and loan crisis under Reagan, but that didn't wake people up to where we were headed.

Steadily, step by step, regulations were not just modified and improved to bring more fairness and strengthen the economy; they were wiped out. The legalized criminals on Wall Street and in the banking system were given free reign to economically rape the nation and as much of the rest of the world as they could. If anyone objected, they were demonized as “socialists.” You heard catch phrases such as “greed is good.”

I recently watched the movie, “Wall Street – Money never sleeps.” It was a real eye opener. I recommend it.

Taxes weren't just cut back to keep the rates from being confiscatory. For the short time that they were cut back to more moderate but still responsible levels, the economy boomed. They were then rolled back so far that we had to borrow trillions against the future just to keep from defaulting on fiscal responsibilities and fund our international military ventures.

Any person who funded their household or business in such a manner would be considered an irresponsible idiot headed for bankruptcy and foreclosure!

The Chinese, under Mao, tried to build a totally socialist economy. It didn't work out too well. They have been steadily learning the lesson and brought in more and more capitalist principles, with the result that they are rapidly advancing to the position of a dominant super power. They haven't, at least not yet, swung to the opposite extreme like the US has.

The moderate approach is almost always the best course to take. The course we are taking now is far from moderate and is steadily eroding all the progress our nation made in the twentieth century. We are back to a mindset which is rapidly returning us to the days of the “robber barons.”

One of my great, great uncles was in that elite group at the turn of the century. He had invented the first Automatic paper folding machine, and, already wealthy and successful in the newspaper industry, founded the Dexter Printing Machine Company. He became a multi-millionaire, and, as in the case of many rich Americans of the time, hobnobbed with the rich and famous of the world and one of his daughters married into Spanish royalty. The last I saw of that company name was on a massive web printing machine at Ambassador College which sported the conglomerate name, Dexter Goss Miehle.

I remember how Herbert Armstrong hated labor unions and looked down on anyone who was not part of the exalted upper crust in the college and church (or anywhere else, really). He was always a total elitist, although he put on a front that hid it from most people in his early days. Nothing pleased him more than to hobnob with the rich and powerful, a total slap in the face to the common church membership and to the principles put forth in the epistle of James.

We have a lot of Herbert Armstrongs sitting in exalted seats in Washington today. They will not rest until they have succeeded in wiping out all the social gains so hard fought for and won in the last century.

Socialism in moderation makes sense and never hurt anyone. It leads to fairness and progress. In fact, it's a very Christian way of thinking and acting. Read your Bible again.

Try Acts 4 and 5 for a starter. Then, the epistle of James.