Bob Ackley loves to complain about the increase in the cost of   
    living, what does he think of this? Not only did he not get any   
    real COLA, but probably won't again, maybe never. If the right   
    wing has their way.   
      
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     America's Shameful Leadership   
      
    Wednesday 27 July 2011   
    by: Jim Hightower   
      
    OK, Barack Obama has not exactly turned out to be Mount Rushmore   
    material, but -- good God! -- the petulant pettiness of   
    right-wing Republican congressional leaders has turned them   
    into a national embarrassment.   
      
    America has big needs right now. But those needs are not even   
    being addressed, because little whiney ideologues like Eric   
    Cantor, the GOP's House majority leader, keep throwing hissy   
    fits, demanding that they get their way, or there'll be no way.   
      
    Of course, their way -- on everything from tax policy to Wall   
    Street regulation -- is always the corporate way. Their   
    plutocratic theories were exactly what was tried throughout   
    George W's eight-year reign, and they failed spectacularly. Yet   
    Cantor & Crew are now pushing the same nonsense -- the very   
    policies that caused America's economic crash, which continues   
    to crush grassroots people. "But it's ideologically correct,"   
    cries Little Eric, "so we and the Koch brothers won't stop   
    screaming until you give us more of it."   
      
    They are so insanely obsessed with extremist anti-government   
    dogma that they have even hitched their star to the reviled   
    Lords of Wall Street -- the only group in America with a lower   
    public approval rating than that of Congress itself!   
      
    Bankers are furious that Democrats created a new regulatory   
    agency last year with real clout to protect consumers from the   
    assorted rip-offs and frauds that banks keep inventing. So, in a   
    perverse political reflex, Republicans have rushed to protect   
    Wall Street's gougers from us gougees, locking arms (as well as   
    their minds) in a ridiculous "Save-the-Poor-Bankers" stand.   
      
    Stamping their tiny feet, they say they'll block Obama's   
    nominee to head the agency until Democrats let them rewrite the   
    law to make the agency toothless. In fact, they've declared that   
    they'll block anyone that Obama nominates, no matter how   
    qualified.   
      
    Great -- a government of dogmatists, by temper tantrum, for   
    corporate elites. How pathetic.   
      
    Meanwhile, both the GOP Congress and the Obama White House   
    continue to ignore America's greatest economic need: good jobs.   
    Beaucoup of them. Now.   
      
    As Bob Dylan famously wrote, "You don't need a weatherman to   
    know which way the wind blows." Especially when the wind is   
    right in your face, howling at gale force. While Washington   
    fiddles with the knobs and levers of budget reduction, America's   
    great working class is being blown down by harsh economic winds.   
    Our country's political and financial elites, sitting in the   
    comfort of their power centers, however, don't seem to see, hear   
    or care. If the elites just looked around, here are just a few   
    of the real-life indicators that would hit them right in the   
    face:   
      
     * In Central Texas, a surge in poverty is now severely straining the   
       area food bank, which is struggling with more than a 50 percent   
       increase in demand in the past three years.   
      
     * Arizona, which has added only 4,000 jobs in the past year, has 10   
       unemployed job seekers for every opening -- and 45,000 Arizonans are   
       set to lose their jobless benefits in the next few months.   
      
     * By the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the median white   
       household in America had lost $36,000 in net worth. Worse, the   
       median African-American household had lost 83 percent of its net   
       worth, which is now down to the financially perilous level of less   
       than $2,200.   
      
     * While CEOs of major corporations have jacked up their pay by a   
       fourth since the recession technically ended in 2009, average wages   
       for workers have stagnated. Meanwhile, the price of such basics as   
       food and gasoline have risen relentlessly. Real wages today are 1.6   
       percent lower than a year ago.   
      
    So, who is Washington working to help? Not the hard-hit workaday   
    majority, but those pampered CEOs, who're now averaging more   
    than $9 million a year in pay, and the Wall Street hedge-fund   
    barons who are hauling in as much as $5 billion each!   
      
    Suffering from what appears to be incurable ethicalitis, these   
    moneyed narcissists are demanding that officials of both parties   
    make devastating budget cuts in programs that help working   
    families, while also insisting that their own lavish fortunes be   
    spared from even the slightest dings.   
      
    What a shameful time in our history! Can't America do better   
    than this?   
      
    Copyright 2011 Creators.com   
      
      
   BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn   
      
   ... Solve America's economic problems, get rid of free trade and republicans.   
   --- Via Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg]   
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