Before the Storm
By David Glenn Cox
We are one people in this country and sometimes we seem to forget that. We may not like our neighbors for whatever reason, but if a tornado were to tear through your street and destroy all the homes you would have an immediate kinship with those people.
Your immediate situation would eliminate all those things that you didn’t like about them, and you would depend on them as they would depend on you. I was once in a hailstorm with golf ball to tennis ball-sized hail. When the storm hit, all of the neighbors who we never spoke with and who never spoke to us were busy leading their own lives. As the skies darkened and the tornado siren began to wail we all hunkered down in our individual houses.
I could hear a roaring sound coming as the trees bent and swayed violently. I’ve been in tornado before and felt certain that I was about to be in another one. I put my wife and child in the bathtub as I went back to look out the door. I saw first one and then two more hailstones hit the lawn and then an explosion of hailstones was upon us. The roaring sound that I had heard was the sound of thousands of hailstones hitting the ground and everything in their path.
Our cars were destroyed, dimpled and dented with cracked windshields and broken side mirrors. The roofing on our houses was also destroyed. But after the storm passed all the neighbors emerged from their single-family homes and became one family. We talked and joked and rejoiced that no one was killed or injured. We shared our experiences and had become a common people, living through a frightening and difficult experience. We lamented the man next door who spent many hours in his garden which was now completely destroyed.
The couple across the street had been building a garage and was one week away from installing the shingles. My first ever new car, which I’d owned for less than three months, had taken on the appearance of a silver golf ball. As the weeks passed and our cars and roofs were repaired and garages completed and gardens replanted, we returned to our normal existence. Yet now we spoke often and it was never the same as it was before the storm.
We are in an economic emergency in this country. For thirty odd years the incomes and fortunes of working people have been in a steep and steady decline. At the same time the incomes for the top ten percent of Americans has been rising to ridiculous heights. Not since the gilded age has the disparity between rich and poor been so great. The media, true to its masters, apologizes away the disparities.
“While Blankfein, 55, has been one of the most handsomely paid executives on Wall Street –compensation of $54 million in 2006 and $70 million the following year–he’s hardly proved one of its flashier players.” (From the Daily Beast)
No, of course not. He earns more in two years than the entire hourly staff of Walmart, but he’s a regular guy. He earned $124 million but he’s not gauche about it. What a nice guy.
NPR, recently published this story: Homeless but Enjoying Hawaii on $3 A Day
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126675999“At the Sumner Homeless Men's Shelter in downtown Honolulu — less than a mile from Honolulu Harbor, where luxury cruise ships are docked — shelter operations assistant Alfred Ho'opi'i tells guests to line up for their lunch. 'The majority of people that I can see here are from the mainland,' he says. 'You have your locals, but not too many.'
"The meal is chopped beef steak with vegetables, mashed potatoes, bread, a fresh apple and cake. Ho'opi'i and his volunteers serve from 750 to 900 meals a day at the three shelters operated by the nonprofit Institute for Human Services.
"The shelters' resident population has increased 10 percent in the past year, and one-third of all the guests — 1,300 annually — come from out of state."
Well, let's start with the numbers that don’t jibe. A majority of the people cannot be one-third. But let's not let facts stand in the way of a good narrative.
“Gary Phillips purchased a $400 airline ticket to Hawaii three months ago. He was homeless in San Diego for years, but is now earning cash from Hawaii's 5-cent redemption program for plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
"'I recycle here,' he says. 'I make money doing that.' Some days, over $40, he says.
"And he sleeps at the IHS shelter for $3 a day, with three free meals, $200 worth of food stamps and the state's free health care program.
"'I went to the dentist today, and I had a tooth pulled,'" Phillips says. 'It cost me nothing.'"
Well, if Gary gave his address as a shelter that serves three meals a day, I doubt that he is eligible for food stamps. They do ask about those sorts of things.
But the narrative is this, Lloyd Blankfein, multi multi millionaire, is a great guy while homeless Gary is just a leech. The author of the article never asked Gary what he did before he went into the recycling business. Because the author didn’t care about Gary; he cared about sending the derisive message that homeless people aren’t really homeless.
“"I think that we really need to begin to look at who's really homeless — not by choice and by misfortune — and who's really homeless by choice, and have a different solution for the two different populations."
Great work! Millionaire bank president is a great guy and a homeless man who picks up aluminum cans is a bum and unworthy of society's attention. It is the same old story, the same story Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover liked to spout. Ford once said, “An American worker wouldn’t do a good day's work if he could get out of it.” Hoover feared that extending charity to the hungry might make them emotional cripples, but didn’t worry about what the affects of a poor diet might do to make them actual cripples.
We are one people in this country and sometimes the powers that be don’t want us to remember that. Before I became unemployed I worked for twenty years without missing a paycheck, and in my year or so of homelessness I’ve met and talked with a lot of people like myself but I’ve yet to meet a bum. There are millions upon millions of people just like me and you and we haven’t changed. It’s the economy that has changed.
The only true obligation for government is the welfare of its people. The English nobles did not hold a sword on King John for more support of free trade. They held the sword because they spoke as one and made it clear to the king that he was answerable to the people. Kings and Congresses could not just go off with a like-it-or-lump-it attitude and that’s why I say we are one people in this country.
Trade is the exchange of goods; exporting jobs is a circumvention of wage and hour laws. Exports are supposed to help our economy. Exporting jobs is not trade but treason. The offshoring of corporate profits is also a crime, a $60 billion a year crime. Recently former President Bill Clinton said that he didn’t think that Lloyd Blankfein was guilty of any wrongdoing. Apparently in Mr. Bill’s retirement he’s forgotten that that determination is to be left up to the court. Mr. Bill also suggested that America needs a value added national sales tax just like Europe. The former Democratic President has joined hands with right wing ideologues who favor the value added tax.
Europe also has single payer health care and I didn’t hear Bill singing the “Let’s all be just like Europe” song about that. Sales taxes are the most regressive of all taxes, and before we start talking about a national sales tax let's plug that $60 billion a year corporate tax hole. The new government in Great Britain wants to raise income taxes on upper level earners to 50 percent. Damn good idea! What do you think, Bill? The governments of Europe also have lower levels of military spending, so, okay, let's be just like Europe!
No, it’s that same old story, we have to raise your taxes because we have to, but if we raise taxes on the rich it will hurt the economy. Our perfect economic storm completely demolished that theory. We’ve cut taxes for the wealthy and it’s brought us only budget disaster. We’ve deregulated the banking industry and it’s brought us only economic calamity. We have welcomed free trade and it’s brought us only poverty.
We are one people and every day the labels that separate us drift further and further apart and lose their meanings. Moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats like Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, while liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans don’t like her. It would appear we now have the One Party, with the left and right shunted off to the fringe.
The One Party likes nuclear power and more coastal oil drilling.
The One Party believes in the unitary executive and curtailing constitutional protections.
The One Party wants to continue our overseas wars until our last dollar is spent.
The One Party thinks that social programs need to be scaled back to balance the budget.
There is no give and take with this government, unless you’re Lloyd Blankfein or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. There is only take, with the paternalistic attitude of “Just wait until the new green jobs get here,” ala Bill Clinton's promises for the new information economy that was promptly moved offshore.
We are one people, whether employed or unemployed, no matter what color or race, no matter whether young or old. Returning the economy to the people of this country and making it function on their behalf should supercede all that separates us. This is not a revolution but restitution, because this is your country and it’s your government's sovereign obligation to protect you before the storm.
“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”
“You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.” Malcolm X
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