Pay Attention, New Jersey…..

Perhaps due to the abrasive nature of politics in New Jersey, its citizens will not be as beholden to having “royalty” tapping their ruby slippers with their wand, as were the squeamish citizens of their sister state across the bay, who tend to blindly follow whatever direction those with more money in their pockets, tell them ….

New Jersey has always been a knock-down, drag-out, state when it comes to political fighting… Which means, I hope its citizens who are immune to fighting entirely, don’t get sucked up in it, and do stay clear to vote their self interests….

It’s like if you never see your parents argue, then see a heated discussion involving anger as the prime force of reason, it scares you… But if you see the same stuff every other day, you think: “crap, I’d better see if I can get a seat at Beth’s family’s table today….”

Because, ever since Wisconsin, the media redundant focus on the Democratic race has been on Hilary’s fights with Bernie… who said what, and how did Twitter respond, and how much time can our news milk this topic so we don’t have to tell voters about what really matters…. Which like parents arguing… affects us squat…

So what is important?  Our money.  Everything, and I mean, everything else is a distraction…. 

Oh no.  I don’t mean to imply we should forget about everything else… We are under a lot of problems now… Global warming for one; it needed to be addressed 16 years ago instead of shuffling arguments with hired skeptics defending its denial.  Racial injustice… Certainly important.. Having a good economy for only one color of skin is a scenario we do not want to have return. Public Education being corporatized?  Heavens! That’s our nation’s future we’re talking about. Certainly it is important… Police responsible to “We, The People”, and not themselves? Absolutely, that is important…..

So what am I talking about when I say other than our money, everything else is a distraction?

What I’m talking about:  is how money and power go together…. What I’m talking about is how even you, in whatever capacity you find yourself, when you have to choose between opposing views of people who a) can really fvck your life up, or b) people whose only hold on you is their moral persuasion, in order for yourself not to get royally fvcked up, you side with those who could do you the most damage…

What we are talking about:  is whether you matter any more!….

Let’s waltz through all those distractions we get tossed, ok?  One by one?

Global warming may happen or it may not, but unless you have power to make change, it is out of your hands. If you are a 2nd class citizen who can’t or won’t vote because it truly makes no difference, then that resolution will be decided by those who do… Just for the record, how many lobbyists can you hire to lubricate passage of laws limiting carbon’s use through your state and national legislatures?  If you yourself have no assets to speak of, no stocks, no clout, if you still rent, and don’t own, if you make so little you can’t support your own necessary expenses, much less financially fund some progressive cause,  why would someone listen to you over someone who has demonstrated the capacity to promise them a $500,000 a year job after their term expires?…

You need to elect someone right now to whom you will matter.

Racial Injustice?  How does having equality on paper, translate into having fewer of your color in prison? Fewer of your color in jobs? Fewer of your gender in executive positions? How does yourself being poorer year, after year, after year; of having less money to spend on yourself, help others of your color, of your gender, of your sexual persuasion?  How does you getting poorer and poorer and poorer and poorer help anyone really, if you can’t even help yourself?  And if you can’t even help yourself, why would anyone sane ever listen to you again, once you’ve received their vote?  Are the vows of commitment you make before you have sex, ever the same strength long after you’ve gotten it?  Or are you ready to make new vows of the same ardency, to the next target who crosses your sights?

You need to elect someone right now to whom you will matter.

Public Education being corporatized?  How does having corporations tear apart your public schools affect you, when all the choices given you are bad?  Like slaves on a plantation you really have no choice because you really have no income with which to make a choice; you simply have to put your child on the bus hoping the interest of others keeps him from being thrown under the bus,  and have him taken to “where-ever” school someone wants him in  You have no say, because you have no money with which to get your “say” noticed. Why should anyone even care that you object to businessmen raking in millions of your tax dollars and giving nothing beneficial in return?  Uhh, who are you, minimum wage person, with a credit rating of under 325, living week to week off your crappy job?… Who are you professional teacher, behind on your bills, fired for your low rating, who has “loser” in the shape of an albatross around your neck? Really who even cares what you say, where you say it, what you wish for you child when you can’t even put up two pennies for a candidate who would otherwise take you side of things?  You expect people to ignore millions of dollars offered them, simply on moral grounds?  What do you smoke btw?

You need to elect someone right now to whom you will matter.

Police accountability?  Ha… Police run themselves… If they want to shoot a black.. they do it.. If they want a live target, they get one… NO ONE WHO HAS MONEY CARES!  “Oh, tsh, tsh! So sad Trayvon died… Whoa! The bid is only $300 for the gun that killed him? That’s my investment in the future… some billionaire collector will want it.”  “Oh look, my stock value in gun manufactures has soared double what I expected it to be before Trayvon was murdered… ‘Bout time we kill another black kid to shoot it up even higher.. ” So really you who have no money, no clout, no pull; how much money are you going to throw at legislatures to counter laws like that?  You who have no job?  You who live on less than $100 in cash a week? You, whose housing is paid for, whose food is paid for, whose phone is paid for by people who won’t hire you, won’t pay you a fair wage, who won’t give you the respect of a decent job, because your government is run by people to whom you don’t matter?  To whom those with only big money matter because you can give two extra pennies to help them fight your battle….. What warped world do you live in where people will hold police accountable to the law at their own peril, when they could do quite well by leaving the police alone to kill in cold blood, anyone they want?

How is anyone going to change that over to what whatever it is you do want, YOU WHO DO NOT MATTER?

Seriously;  social issues are distractions. They are panacea. They are offered to get you all excited so you forget how little money you now have; how much smaller money you will have in the future, and how little money your children will have to fight over among themselves if ever they have a future,…  because YOU… yes, YOU, totally dropped the ball when it came to YOU YOURSELF making more money, and YOU, yes YOU, simply let them take it from you because YOU YOURSELF was concerned too much about Global warming; because YOU YOURSELF was too much concerned about racial injustice; because YOU YOURSELF was concerned too much concerned about educational deformity; because YOU YOURSELF was too much concerned about the inconsequences of police brutality……

So while you were distracted…. you simply scrolled through financial La La land and let them take your money, money that was to have been yours….

It is your money they now use to buy your state and local representative, your governor, your US House Representative or US Senator,  so he/she must listen now to them, not you. It’s true.  You are made to believe you are being listened to, but in truth, do you really have a voice?  How’s your bank account?. People with money have awesome bank accounts, do you?  All they have to do is whine:  I’m not making money and it gets handed to them; when was the last time that ever worked for you?… They can act with impunity, take your property, your children, your pension, only because somewhere deep down in your soul, you were emotionally persuaded NOT to vote in someone who would dramatically change the rules so you could again begin to earn more and those with money might have to live with less….

These rules we are mentioning are not something new… They are the ones in existence across most of the rest of the world, and existed here up until 2002. They were the ones in play when the US had a roaring middle class, when every income level made more each year than they did the last, when it was unheard of to make less this year than you did last, when even when you lost your job, you still made more the next year because someone hired you paying you more money.  That life is not a dream.. That life is memory for anyone over 45.

But every year, across those lifetimes, we took one or two planks off the House that Roosevelt built, called the New Deal, which guaranteed financial opportunity for all people.. Rich or poor.  you would do alright in this life, as long as you lived in America; nothing bad would happen to you.

In that house with every new contract, your union would negotiate your wage based off a percentage of the success your work was providing your employers… Profits were split 50/50 between workers and investors, not 0/100… Then suddenly we “changed” the law to allow states to ban unions… pffft…. good bye profit sharing…  “Sorry, kiddo, if you want to live, as in eat, you’ll have to work for $7.25 and hour and no benefits…That’s all this state offers; no, we don’t do raises.. Take it or starve..”. 

Employer pension funds used to belong to the employees… Companies could not be bought and have their employee’s pensions dissolved sending the money straight to investors.  You worked, you retired, you would live very comfortably in your old age… Today, many grandparents are subsidizing their children and grandchildren through the largess of these pension plans they were luck to retire on before the law was changed…

Marginal tax laws were also higher… meaning there was strong incentive NOT to gouge or bleed a business for high profits.  With more than 50% of your top dollars handed over to the treasurer of the Federal Government, it made good sense to invest in your employees. and get a return on that investment instead of just handing the money over.  Today, that is the craziest thing any company exec can do…  (President of the Corporation):  “Our profits are lower this year because I gave good raises to my employees to keep them on board to continue our success, and also because I opened up a new department to research and develop new products instead of buying out competing companies and firing all their employees.  I will be sad to leave but do accept the stockholders’ decision..”  We passed low tax laws letting corporations keep all their profits, requiring none to be invested back into our economy… We could have easily used our tax laws to provide incentives to invest in America instead of China, but since Americans were so preoccupied with social issues, no one cared.  Prophets of doom were contemporarily ridiculed as pessimists, yet they predicted exactly the world we have today.

With more tax revenue available, the public sector was much more effective in controlling excessive corporate behavior, and large numbers of people had good jobs making good money monitoring Corporate America to make sure all existing laws were being followed. If a corporation was found to be violating American law, they were charged and punished… Now, only after a city’s whole water is poisoned, does anyone even begin to look for a culprit and usually blame falls on that person least able to defend themselves; not the real culprit who is allowed to continue their business.  The Freddie Macs and Fannie Maes get blamed; not the Wall Street firms who knowingly sold very bad investments, then bet correctly they would fail… getting richer while we lost everything we had.

The point?  The point is that we did this to ourselves… We did this by not paying attention to the rules by which our financial system was run, and by favoring rules that benefited corporations and those with lots of money, and by removing protections that served the middle class.

We put a gun to our head, spun the chamber, and lost.

But it is not yet over. Just as we voted rules to favor the elite class. we can also vote in new rules to favor the middle class…

But unless you start with electing and supporting someone who understands that being comfortably well off and having certain inalienable rights, is far better than being impoverished so you can’t even fight to maintain the rights you once had, it won’t change. Never. Never. Never… for how could it?  How is it even possible that in a nation where 1% of the people now own more wealth than the other 99%.. the poorer segment can ever get that power back in their grasp?

So New Jersey… They will do their best to confuse you… But anyone who sticks out their tongue to lick the frozen pole put out by Wall Street, loses skin off their tongue… When people distract you by saying that “other” candidate “only” talks about Wall Street and that they couldn’t give a damn about Wall Street, remember that without money in your pocket you have no power… And today without someone fighting for you, you will never have money in your pocket… Across the entire history of this world, Wealth has always stayed in the hands of those to take the power to keep it in their possession.

If you want more wealth, there is only one way to get it… Take it from those who have it and are fighting you hard to keep it in their possession….

There are three candidates remaining… Two of them are part of the 1%…. One of them isn’t and it it only that one who is fighting for you.  Don’t let the other two distract you.