We Know What's Important, Don't We?

Commentary by Michael Bonanno.

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Michael
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We Know What's Important, Don't We?

Post by Michael » June 12th, 2006, 3:43 pm

There must be an election coming up. Same sex marriage is all the rage in Congress.

Between the 2004 election and just recently, there was not one, I repeat, not one debate concerning same sex marriage, and rightly so. Intimacy between two human beings is not a matter of law, it’s a matter of intimacy between two human beings.

While Congress debates the love lives of Americans, we’re fighting a war in Iraq that was built upon the frightening image of Iraq possessing weapons. I left out the “of mass destruction” because weapons are what they’d have been if, indeed, there were any. Once a country possesses a weapon to defend itself, it doesn’t matter much how many people the weapon can kill. Enough rifles in the hands of enough soldiers could be considered a weapon of mass destruction.

The US still has approximately 8,360 offensive nuclear weapons and it’s worried that Iraq may eventually have one? During the Cold War, the Soviets had almost as many nuclear weapons as the US, yet we seemed to feel cautiously safe because of our defense systems. The Soviets, by the way, knew how to propel nuclear weapons toward the US.

Even if Iraq had a weapon or was working on developing one, they’d still have to build a delivery system that could get the one weapon they had into the US.

Alas, it was all for naught. Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, Iraq didn’t even have the weaponry to defend itself against the insane invasion by the US. There’s lots that Congress could talk about in reviewing all of the laws broken to justify that war.

Another issue that might have been debated in place of same sex marriage is that many people in this country fear single payer health care or, as they so hyperbolically refer to it, socialized medicine. It’s up to the individual to take care of himself and his family they say. If he kept his paycheck instead of pissing it away on booze or crack cocaine, he’d have enough money to pay for his family’s health care.

A 4.7% unemployment rate sounds good, doesn’t it? That’s what the US is at right now.

What this doesn’t take into account is the fact that many who are employed are, in reality, underemployed.

The issue of immigrants taking American jobs has recently been the hot button issue. The jobs that go out, however, are the jobs that hide the danger of taking seriously the 4.7% unemployment rate. Decent paying manufacturing jobs have left the US like it was a leper colony. Started by that “liberal” philanderer William Jefferson Clinton and his NAFTA advocacy, free trade has given US Corporations free work forces. No longer do corporations have to pay Americans $15-$25 dollars an hour to manufacture goods here. No, they can “free trade” their employee base over to China, Vietnam, Thailand, India, sub Saharan Africa. They can pay employees in those countries enough to remain in squalor and everyone will be “happy”.

Does the unemployment number take into account the compensation of those who are employed? How many are paid at the national minimum wage of $5.15 per hour? How much health care insurance can someone who’s making $5.15 an hour afford?

Some states, like California, go a little further and have taken the initiative of raising the state minimum wage. California offers the philanthropic minimum wage of $6.50 an hour. I submit that a family can live no better at $6.50 an hour than at $5.15 an hour, especially in California!

No worries, though. There’s a voter led initiative in California to raise the state minimum wage from $6.50 to $7.50 an hour.

Did I say no worries? No worries for employers is what I meant to say. An initiative which would have raised the pay of the lowest paid worker in California to $7.50 per hour failed to get on the ballot! When The Regime says it wants to privatize everything, it means it wants to give oversight of the welfare of US citizens to the very same people who wouldn’t support the initiative to put raising the minimum wage in California on the November ballot.

Other initiatives failed to get on the ballot in California. In fact, 12 initiatives failed to make the ballot for the November exercise.

Seven of these initiatives are showroom models of how The Regime can control the collective mind of its base.

While an illegal war in Iraq which is taking life after life after life, both American and Iraqi, still rages, while 40 million people live without health care insurance, many of whom are probably working for anywhere between $5.15 an hour and $6.50 an hour and the ethical question of that minimum wage still exists, what does Congress begin to discuss? Same sex marriage! It’s called a red herring. Many Americans who are truly paying attention know that The Regime couldn’t give a damn about same sex marriage. But it knows that its base adamantly wants to save the institution of marriage, whatever the hell that means, and it pulls that issue out of its collective ass every two years, just before elections are held.

How do I know this? I know this because, of the twelve initiatives that didn’t make the ballot in California, seven were efforts to outlaw same sex marriage. That’s how important it is to control the personal, intimate lives of others and that’s proof that The Regime controls its base of automatons.

The red herring worked in 2000, in 2002, in 2004 and, hard as it is to believe, it’s working in 2006.

To friendship,
Michael

“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” - Thomas Jefferson


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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » June 12th, 2006, 4:55 pm

I am on easy street at 7.50 an hour. minimum wage has not been raised in 8 or 9 years, meanwhile congress gave themselves six or eight? pay raises. or did you all ready say that :?

I don't know about under employed Michael. But definetly under paid.


My eye balls look like red herrings almost four days of staring at this screen. , just pretty much quick scanned but I liked what I saw.

keep up the good fight

j

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Zlatko Waterman
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Post by Zlatko Waterman » June 12th, 2006, 10:05 pm

Dear Michael:

I enjoy your progressive polemics and your poems. I have read your website.

Keep up the good fight-- we agree politically-- but I'm sure you've already noticed.

In friendship,

Zlatko

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mnaz
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Post by mnaz » June 14th, 2006, 2:56 am

we seem to, at times.

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Michael
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Post by Michael » June 21st, 2006, 2:54 pm

Jack, OK, underpaid. Let’s just call them what they are, what you say you are, the working poor. That phrase should be contradictory, but, unfortunately it isn’t.

I remember people saying “get a job you bum”. I think people had jobs back then, just as they do now. Those telling others to “get a job” just happened to work for someone who paid a decent wage. The problem isn’t people getting a job. The problem is that people are not getting paid enough on which to live by their employers. And most in Congress, it seems, don’t want to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour. There’s another good reason not to leave the care and feeding of needy Americans up to the “private sector”. Disgusting!

Zlatko, thank you. I’d rather be a Progressive than a regressive.

mnaz, funny guy, but good debater and excellent writer. I think you sum it up fairly accurately.

To friendship,
Michael

“It is for us to refuse loyalty when injustice holds sway.” – Henry T. Laurency, in "The Philosopher's Stone”


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