There are really only two big questions to be answered by the candidates in the 2016 election. The first is how do we get the rest of the country back to work and the second is how do we get the workers a living wage. There are a number of other issues that will garner a lot of attention, issues like healthcare, immigration, education, the environment etc., all important, all of which must be solved but the two described above are head and shoulders above all else at the voting machine, and that is shown most dramatically by the fact that both parties have placed it at the top of their agendas.
Of course neither party has the same solution to unemployment and low wages but how could they? Until this upcoming election the GOP didn’t even admit to the fact that they were problems. Now the party of the billionaire is miraculously discovering that there really is an income difference between those that earn five billion a year and those that earn fifteen thousand. Wow! What a discovery. All of a sudden Republican, would be candidates, are making speeches about how low wages and unemployment are something of a problem and that, they, the party that historically causes low wages and unemployment have miraculously discovered the solution to these problems. Of course they never tell us what it is, because they are lying again. That’s how they survive.
As I am writing this I am watching Ted Cruz, corporate butt boy extrodinaire, doing an interview in which he attacks the millionaires and billionaires who have benefited under the Obama administration. He storms on about those who have the power, those who have a bigger share of he pie, who walk the corridors of power in the Obama administration, etc. Where the hell has this asshole been all his life? When he talks about the poor people across the nation who are hurting, doesn’t he understand that his party has caused this situation? Is he so stupid that he doesn’t see that this financial catastrophe, which we have just lived through is the result of Bush and Reagan policies?
Of course he does. Cruz is not stupid, what he is, is cynical and duplicitous, a sub-species completely without morals who will do or say anything to get your vote. Cruz obviously believes that the American public is so stupid that it will buy his bullshit and I am sure that there are a significant number of them that are exactly that stupid, but I’m still optimistic enough to believe that a more significant number knows bullshit when they step in it.
I’m watching Cruz lay down this steaming pile on This Week with Whoever Shows Up, and it’s clear that Stephanopoulos doesn’t buy Cruz lies, but it’s equally clear that he doesn’t have the balls to oppose Cruz on a program sponsored by the same big corporations that shuffle cold hard cash to Republican’s like Cruz. Too bad! Too bad for him but more important too bad for his viewers.
But, back to the subject. Everyone knows the answer to more jobs and better salaries. It doesn’t take an Einstein to know that jobs are created in two ways. Projects like infrastructure, building plant and research are sponsored either by government or by private industry. Right now, private industry has trillions of dollars that it is holding in its coffers but won’t use to create jobs. Why not? Because a rush of new jobs will crate a need for labor and a need for labor will push up the cost of labor and strengthen the union movement and that’s the last thing the super rich want. This has been the situation for the last six years. Big business holds onto its money and workingmen go without jobs that could easily be made available.
But, hold on! Haven’t the Republicans all the way back to Reagan told us that when the rich have enough money, money that they have accumulated by not paying taxes or not having their businesses regulated, they would spend that money on plant and promoting infrastructure, they would use that money to create jobs. Isn’t that what trickle down economics is all about? So big business is sitting on trillions, so where the hell are the jobs?
So when you hear Cruz, or Rubio or Bush talk about creating jobs you know they are talking out their asses. You know that because they are in the pocket of big business they are lying in their teeth and if you are still stupid enough to believe them, to vote for them, you deserve the “No Hiring” sign that’s staring at you now.
On the other hand, if you don’t buy the bullshit, If you try to think for yourself, then you might see that all the Right Wing noise about the evils of big government is just another steaming pile. Maybe you will even realize that big government is good; if it’s run right. Big government, if it can get the financing out of congress can create jobs in infrastructure and research and create the environment where new businesses can thrive.
The biggest opponent of new and small business isn’t, as the GOP would have us think, government regulation, but big business and its bullying tactics. (I’ll cover that in an upcoming blog) The government already creates almost as many jobs a does industry. With the proper financing, it can crate a lot more and they will pay a hell of a lot better than industry does. You mothers in West Virginia and Kentucky; wouldn’t you rather have your sons working at a modern solar panel plant, subsidized by the government, than down in the filthy dangerous mines that kill them on the spot and whose product is poisoning our planet?
The only way to get rid of fossil fuel is to make renewable fuel cheaper to deliver and the only way to do that is to get rid of the Republican backed subsidies that the already super rich oil companies have bought from congress. Why do you think the Koch brothers have announced that they will spend $889 million in the next election? It isn’t because they are filled with charitable notions. (Yes they do some real charitable work but only stuff they can put their names on) They are spending huge in this election to make sure they can buy enough congressmen to keep their oil subsidies and to keep the environmental movement at bay, just long enough to spread their death from the poisonous streams of West Virginia, to the quake trembling earth of Oklahoma, to the almost completely ruined state of North Dakota. Who cares if we destroy the earth, so long as the Koch’s stay rich?
To be fair, I will admit that, yes, some of these poisonous activities do create jobs, but there would actually be many more jobs created if we concentrated on developing a whole new renewable energy infrastructure and the funny thing is, that with just a little creative thinking, it could be led by the same people who are now busy poisoning our land. They already have the infrastructure and the connectivity to do it. They could implement it in a heartbeat but, yes, it would cost them some small percentage of their profits and no, these greedy pigs are unwilling to part with even that, even if it means the poisoning of their own children, because when the skies turn black with carbon, all the money in the world won’t save anyone from no longer being able to breathe, just like it seems, all them money in the world doesn’t care if their workers have to live on starvation wages as long a they don’t have to live without a second yacht or a third Maserati. Greed, it seems, is definitely thicker than anything else.