The Frame Game

People both good and true have been struggling how to frame a new platform for the Democratic party.

As my signature asserts, parties divide, movements unite.
That said, I have worked out a ‘frame’ for labor driven society!

That which is so woefully lacking in our current society is a stake, a true role for each individual in our society.

Cash driven society says your vote is the great equalizer, your vote carries the same weight no matter if you are rich or poor…

But wait a minute. You are NEVER allowed to vote directly on the issues if the matter isn’t local. The only thing your vote provides you is who will decide in your name without ever consulting you.

How much influence do you have when your vote gives your right to decide to someone else?

No, a stake in the society you live in needs to be substantial, something worthwhile that is capable of sustaining you. A tool that you can use to build the life you want.

Ever wonder why you aren’t guaranteed a job? More importantly, a job that pays a living wage!

The problem with guaranteeing every citizen a job lies not with society but with the private ownership of commerce.

It’s not in private enterprises ‘best interests’ to hire everyone that needs a job.

To put a finer point on it, there really aren’t enough jobs to go around…which is weird because there certainly isn’t a lack of things that need doing.

No good citizen, the conflict here, simply put, is the good of society vs. the best interests of the owner class.

If everyone were guaranteed a job that paid a living wage the owners of private enterprise would have to charge outrageous prices in order to make their ‘customary’ profit margin.

That is, they do what they do not to serve society but so they themselves become wealthy.

That said, society be damned!

Do you see the problem? If we forced private enterprise to employ everyone, they’d pauperize the workers by charging insane prices.

Now the ‘living wage’ part of the proposition would really throw a wrench into the works!

How could they afford to pay their workers a living wage if they started charging insane prices?

Short answer, they can’t.

Obviously, something has to give.

Do you want a society where every member has a stake in that society through a job that provides them the means to build the kind of life they want. Or do you wish to continue to bust your backside until you’re old and gray (or replaced by a machine) to make someone else rich?

Only owners have a stake in our current society. We’re not talking homeowners here but those who own businesses.

While we’re all ‘able’ (meaning it’s not against the law) to open our own businesses, the simple fact that there isn’t enough market share to keep everyone’s head above water makes the assertion ‘anyone can do it’ absurd.

Even if there were six billion niche markets out there so everybody could have their own ‘unique’ product, people buy the basics first and you can count those on one hand.

Most of us don’t have much left over after we get through keeping a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs (and that most important item of all, wheels under our ass!)

Think for a minute just how important it is to have a job. While many of you would prefer to have an ‘income stream’, doing that requires exploiting your fellow humans, not a nice thing to do.

You see, those who do not lend their labor to society weaken that society by leeching off of that society.

Nothing happens without labor. It is only fair to require every member of society to surrender their labor in exchange for the benefits of civil society.

Not a life of back breaking misery for some that provides income streams for others. Where’s the fairness in that?

There isn’t any.

You know, criminals aren’t the only one who think people that toil for a living are chumps…your employer thinks so too.

Yet if nobody works, nothing gets done. If left to your own devices, Mother Nature would keep you busy 24/7 just trying to stay alive.

You probably wouldn’t mind working at a job if EVERYONE else had to do likewise. Work not only provides an outlet for your creative talents but it also gives you the added benefit of social interaction.

Yes good citizen, you would actually get outside your own four walls and see other people!

By and large people tend to get along with at least some of their co-workers. In an environment where the boss’s position was up for grabs every year, people would be a whole lot nicer too!

You see, if there were a tie for the boss’s job, those who would work under you get to vote for which person they’d prefer to work for…so being an asshole would likely work against you.

A guaranteed job provides social interaction, an outlet for your talents, a means of income and the knowledge that your labor was building a better world for us all rather than making some ingrate rich…aren’t those reasons enough to change the way things are?

More importantly a guaranteed job provides you with the security to plan for your future…

Right now most of us don’t know from one day to the next if we’ll even have a job tomorrow.

The change will do you good!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It couldn't happen here...

This is the mindset of most people, that ‘it’ couldn’t happen, not here at least. Too many people would oppose it.

It’s almost universally agreed that our nation is currently saddled with the poorest leadership our, or any other generation, has ever seen.

Yet a coup is still unthinkable. Almost as unthinkable as a hurricane wiping out a major US port city and the victims being left to fend for themselves or becoming embroiled in another quagmire just as the kids of those who served in (or protested) Vietnam are coming of age.

Almost

It’s as unthinkable as the Iron Curtain being cast aside in favor of the riches of capitalism…for all the good it’s done them. The Soviets only thought they knew what corruption was, now they have both abject poverty and more corruption than they ever thought was possible.

So, this coup I’m going on about. Is it going to straighten everything out? Not a chance. It won’t be a people’s coup, it will be one arranged by the fat cats.

These hand picked saviors, you know who we’re talking about here don’t you? It’ll be those handpicked men in uniform that managed to pass the Rummy ‘sniff test’.

Those who have displayed unquestioning loyalty to the administration and have proven that their strongest motivation is a lust for power and the riches that come with power.

Those guys.

Ever since the creation of FEMA and the dictatorial powers that act bestows upon the executive office, I had thought that Clinton would be the last president but obviously I was mistaken.

His job was to set it up. Now it’s looking like the Shrub will be the last one. The only question in my mind is will he make a grab to stay in power himself or will someone else grab the reins from him when he makes his move?

The end result will be the same. A state of emergency will be declared, the elections cancelled and the Constitution and Bill of rights will be ‘suspended’ indefinitely if not forever.

What will you, the people do about it?

Nada…not right away anyway.

These guys will call themselves your saviors and you’ll be half inclined to give them a chance, after the Shrub reportedly goes off his rocker and nukes Iran.

Yeah, you’ll be downright happy to see someone else in charge after that happens.

Who will take over? Not anybody we hear about on a regular basis. Like Roberts, this guy has been waiting in the wings with an impeccable resume, waiting for his moment in the spotlight.

You won’t even care that the suspension of the Constitution also means that Congress will be disbanded. Why should the fat cats keep paying three hundred (a simple majority) when they can get away with paying off, say, fifty?

Nope, you’ll be dancing in the streets…until they announce their agenda. An agenda that will be lifted straight from the religious right and shoved down your throat at the point of a gun.

Can you think of an agenda more repressive than one with an official language as well as an official religion?

By this point, given the ‘unthinkable’ nature of what I’m, admittedly, making a wild ass prediction about. You must be thinking I have a few loose screws.

This is an exercise in the possible good citizen and just about anything, unthinkable or not, is possible.

Let’s put things into perspective. We have five hundred some odd elected representatives that answer to what, the top fifty CEO’s in the nation? Maybe it’s as few as twenty, who knows? (What you do know is that ‘our’ representatives don’t listen to us!)

These top exec’s have, for the past thirty years, looted the nation although ‘disemboweled’ is a lot closer to the mark.

We’re just about tapped out. No jobs to speak of, most of our economic activity is buying foreign junk and everyone of us is up to our ears in debt thanks to easy credit and stagnant wages.

Peak oil, which really happened five years ago, is being brought forth as a ‘new’ economic threat.

The coming financial storm will pauperize our nation (all except the investor class) and every one of our national institutions will collapse.

Schools, police and fire departments will be eliminated as the workers whose taxes paid their wages hit the streets wholesale.

Why do I say this? Private enterprise is a ‘for profit’ venture. When the cost of energy puts the price of your products out of the reach of your customers, you don’t make profits.

If you don’t make a profit, regardless of how ‘vital’ your industry is to consumers, you go out of business.

Here we have the one, well actually it’s two but it looks like one, item that can bring private enterprise to its knees.

Energy, without cheap abundant energy our entire way of life grinds to a halt. Not in fits and starts by like the flicking of a switch.

'Poof' it's gone!

No power = no work. If that isn’t scary enough no power also equals no communications.

How does this all tie together?

The export of our heavy industries to the cheaper there has wiped out the working middle class, all that’s left is a white collar equivalent.

Now those jobs are being outsourced.

Next we take the ocean of debt, an ocean that gets deeper every day because price creep has eroded the average worker’s purchasing power. Inflation may be negligible from month to month but it goes up a few percent every year, wiping out the meager raises the investor class hands out.

Now, on top of the phony war, we have an energy crisis. None of which is an accident.

The numbers speak for themselves. One tenth of one percent of the population controls over eighty percent of the wealth.

The wealthy have been grossly outnumbered for a long time but they’ve been successful at maintaining an illusion of prosperity…until now.

The end of cheap energy, something they’ve known about since the seventies, has placed them and their precarious hold on the nation’s wealth in jeopardy, mortal jeopardy.

The solution, in their eyes, is martial law.

Think Abu Gharib was scary, it’s even scarier if you look at it from the perspective that those atrocities were committed as a test to see what soldiers would do when ordered to torture innocent civilians.

The soldiers not only didn’t balk, they willingly participated!

That which is coming will make Saddam look like a saint.

All so a few can be rich.

Once again, I have merely laid the pieces out on the table for you to see. Make what you want of them, or me for that matter.

Not that misery likes company but if it’s any comfort, the rest of the world will quickly and quietly follow suit with brutally repressive regimes wresting power from the hands of the elected…all to preserve the status quo.

The lust for power is a horrible thing but not nearly as horrible as the ruthlessness displayed by those determined to remain in power.

Our society gutted and divided, our children’s future mortgaged to the hilt and ruthless despotism just around the corner.

You have the power to stop it. The question is will you be brave enough to make a stand and refuse them when push comes to shove?

Your children’s future depends on it. Don’t sell them out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: the ‘other’ thing in those two items I was talking about is money. In a labor driven society, price isn’t a consideration. While energy, fossil fuels, are a ‘finite’ resource their value to society is relative to keeping vital systems functioning until viable alternatives can be established…where again, ‘price’ is no object. Hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen powered vehicles, free.

In the end, it’s all a game designed to keep you in debt, working like an idiot while they do nothing.

Pretty stupid, huh?