Things go better without Koch

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Bricault (ret) on November 17, 2011 at 12:30am

Benjamin Franklin said, “Passion governs and she never governs wisely.”

How fickle, forgetful and short minded we all can be.  Was it not just a short while ago we were lauding our teachers as the bastions of our society, those who were charged with molding and shaping our youth, educating our children and preparing the next generation to take its place to care for us, the next generation of elderly?

We decried the fate of teachers, chanting of the injustice of poor wages as we watched our teachers desert our communities in search of wages befitting the service.  “Our children are suffering”, was the cry in all corners.  Now these same people are villains.  How dare they ask for competitive wages to teach our children!

Policemen and firemen were not so long ago the very first line of defense against terrorism and those who would seek to do America harm.  Ah, but 9-11 is so long since past.  How soon we forget America.  The very men and women we call upon to protect us in those dark moments when we cannot protect ourselves.  How dare they ask for just compensation to place their lives in harms way for strangers!  How arrogant they are to ask that their medical bills be covered when they are injured while performing their sacred duties.  They should be content just doing the Lord’s good work and return to their homes covered in sackcloth and ash, happy to just be making ends meet while they ruin their health for the sake of others.   They do not need tools and equipment nor fair compensation for their skilled labors!

The cry continues unabated, against the reprobates that make our communities livable and disease free by hauling away our refuse, not only for our convenience but the sustaining of our healthy environments.  The audacity of those that haul our trash!  To ask for reasonable wages and safe working conditions that they might be able to live in the very communities in whose garbage they toil.  The impudence they must have.  And yet our reliance on them continues, all of those faceless, nameless individuals that perform the myriad of tasks designed to make our lives in this great nation more than livable but comfortable.

What’s more, those same mouths, screaming of the injustice created by those that provide us with service, are the very sons and daughters of Americans that stood up to oppression in the work place, the very ones who fought for equality in the workplace; those who struggled to create a safer work environment for all.  The very grandchildren of those who said, “no more” to a six-day workweek, “no longer” to the 78-hour workweek, these people are now the ones attempting to undo the better life given them to suppress those seen as subservient and expendable.  It seems oppression knows no bounds and matters only from perspective.  “Here, here!!!”, they chant for the return to indentured servitude of the American worker.

And now we seem to live in a country in which our elected officials, those that serve but to voice our collective opinions and not their own, these political figures, who have done a superb job of painting themselves as victims, believe that their position in our society exists not to protect the helpless but rather to promote and protect themselves.  Selfishness abounds in those that have mismanaged our communities and economy and yet somehow they still point to the lowest members of our country as the ones to blame.  How dare these peasants ask for more!  Should they not be content with their low lot in life and their scrapings to get by?

Our cities and towns are beset with political duplication and duplicity.  Cronyism thrives as elected officials continue to create unnecessary, imaginary titles and positions with exorbitant salaries for friends, funding these positions with Blue Collar service wage cuts.  The Wisconsin Governor is publically caught considering the perpetration of violent, illegal assaults in the form of labor busting tactics from the 1920's.  Bankers that receive federal stimulus dollars give executive pay raises while refusing to make loans that would prime the pumps of our economy.  All this while lawmakers continue to probe the wound for legalized methods to subvert the American Dream of a better life for workers who long for better than just getting by.  Of course the little man is the cause of all our woes!  We have entered the wilderness of mirrors.

How dare those who prevent our communities from crumbling ask for the means to live amongst us!  Those who provide skilled service, security, fresh water and lighted streets!  Their arrogance!  Those who drive our cities buses and pave our roads, do they really need to be our neighbors?  How does your heart beat Sir?  Will we continue to abuse those that provide us with the very services we demand in order to live as Americans?

And as the rain continues to fall on the heads of the lowest in our great homeland we see our industry and business leaders pining for and extolling the virtues of the days of the Robber Barons, when the little workers knew their place, worked for scraps and would avert their eyes from their social betters.  The insolence of those workmen!  They’re lucky to be given a job at all!

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in which he said, “Now is emphatically the crisis”.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security,” the Declaration Of Independence.  This is the cornerstone of our beliefs in this great nation, that our elected officials exist to voice our concerns, not their own; to help those that cannot help themselves.

We cannot live in communities without certain services, otherwise what is the point of civilization and residing within a community? Neither can exorbitant budgets be balanced on the backs of a very select few that provide such vital services and who live within the very communities being served.  These folks, who are made out as pariahs, live amongst us and pay taxes too; they also feel the burden, sometimes more than the rest.  Are we going to allow our community pillars and servicemen to be undermined to the point the community will crumble? If so at what cost, the very survival of our community?

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Mitchell on November 17, 2011 at 12:36am

Ahhh, Mayor Berry and IAFF L244.  See? People pay attention. Great to hear from you, Brother!

-J

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion