Making it Easy to be Greedy
Afraid of going bankrupt? Saddle up and go south, my cash strapped friend, head for Florida or Texas and keep yourself rich while screwing your employees, creditors and partners. It's easy!
The rich and their servants incessantly grouse about socialism while spewing out Corporate State propaganda that promises prosperity if only the rest of us would allow even more big tax cuts for them and their corporations. Typical of their work is to ardently beat the drums and blow the horns against "creeping socialism," while simultaneously, stealthily and silently, birthing, nourishing and promoting the alien invasion of "slithering fascism."
Ronald Reagan spent years running for president and swore in every speech his #1 priority was to never burden his grandchildren with a massive national debt. But his promises never panned out and after twelve years of "voodoo prosperity," during which the stock market boomed (for the rich,) We the People found our nation was 11x more in debt than before Reagan rode to the rescue.
Reagan began with a debt of $450 billion and Bush ended with our debt at $5 trillion, and now, after two more tax cuts for the rich, it is approaching $30 trillion. Forget about Reagan's grandchildren and worry about your own grandchildren's great- grandchildren. Voodoo Rules! Get used to it.
Does the figure $800,000,000 mean anything to you? It should, but the corporate state propaganda machine has been hard at work pulling the wool over our collective eyes and obscuring the awful truth that We the People now pay private bankers eight hundred million dollars PER DAY in interest alone on our national debt but we never pay down the principal and instead keep on shoveling our hard earned tax dollars into the black hole of eternal Wall Street interests. We are, in essence, paying a bill that's forty years old and it never gets smaller. It is all rigged in the bank's favor, just like they have always wanted.
The bankers have all the bases covered. Even Democrats now worship at the feet of the rich. That is why Hillary lost: she just couldn't shake the habit of serving the rich and giving them mysterious secret speeches that only they can access, while leaving most of us in the dark, perplexed about her true allegiance, and herself hundreds of thousands richer.
But even with all this state-sponsored socialism for the rich, many rich can't even manage their own finances and therefore head for the greener pastures of Florida and Texas.
These reactionary states have bankruptcy programs that save the rich and forces the rest of us to pay THEIR bills while they recoup in the sunny states. Florida and Texas legislation literally over-rides the federal bankruptcy courts and provides a beckoning haven for the soon-to-be destitute rich with what is known as the Homestead Exemption.
That means anyone who is a legal resident of one of those states can file for bankruptcy AND keep their principal residence no matter how much it is worth. That's why so many rich re-locate to Florida or Texas which only require they live there for at least one year to gain protection against losing their wealth, (although Texas has circumstances that may require a longer wait.)
These laws were originally written to protect the abject poor from losing their shelters which were largely shacks and trailers, but were made broad enough to include the rich from other states who want to preserve their fortunes from their own bad decisions and if they are rich enough they can plan their bankruptcy and move south with plenty of time to qualify for the state's generous welfare plan for the rich.
What usually happens goes something like this: realizing they have, say, six million in assets and five million in debts which will only get worse, the endangered rich can easily cash out and pay off their creditors and still be millionaires. But wealth is closely associated with greed so the rich just cash out and head south and invest all 6 million in a luxury mansion and wait a year to get established as a resident before filing.
After their bankruptcy-arama is finished they own, free and clear, a six million dollar house that they can do anything with. Mostly, they sell the white elephant, buy a smaller domicile and reinvest their bankruptcy windfall. Their creditors back home don't like being cheated, of course, but that is the price they pay for participating in the current Wall Street style free enterprise system in which the greedy, incompetent rich get to keep the wealth they have "accumulated" and everyone else pays the price, (except the actual financial miscreant.) It's a scam, certainly, but it severly illuminates the character of those state governments. They used to have debtor's prisons but now they have debtor's mansions. The only warning creditors get involves an expensive house in Florida, a sun-tan and a gigantic grin.
None of this penetrates into the minds of our people because we are so busily enthralled with the spectacles the Corporate State displays to distract us. Corporate State propagandists are like magicians who use misdirection to trick us. We don't guard our own best interests and continue to lose big bucks while paying "tribute" to corporate power. We have finally been thoroughly brainwashed by Corporate State propaganda and the business bureaucracy as evidenced by how meek we are and afraid to confront the problem.
At this rate, the meek will NEVER inherit the earth. We are at the point where malignant forces can now declare victory over us by simply pointing out that they have successfully trained us over the years to mindlessly sign over our right to "petition for a redress of our grievances." (And to obey their commands.)
This wholesale violation of our rights is the same insult to our freedom that our founders, known to history as "classical liberals," listed in the Declaration of Independence as a justification for our Revolution. A petition for a redress of grievances is the fancy way our founders expressed what we now simply growl: "sue the bastards." We're not allowed to do that anymore so we must surrender our rights by signing a contract that we agree not to sue them, even when they are being extremely bastardy.
And then they cheekily claim that we gave in voluntarily, an assertion that is straight out of the authoritarian handbook, especially the chapters on disinformation, coercion and the Stockholm syndrome.
Meanwhile, the Corporate State's handsomely paid propagandists rail against socialism but NEVER refer to the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican president. Millions of poor folk, unable to make it back east, went west and were handed FREE land with nary a cent changing hands and all they had to do to keep this land was to work it for five years at which time they were awarded the title free and-clear. Virtually every farm west of the Mississippi got its start with the greatest socialist give-away program in the history of our planet.
And it was a totally red, white and blue enterprise but if you attempt to repeat that today, you will quickly be serenaded by the wealth interests and their loyal mouth-pieces squealing exactly like the legendary punctured swine you've heard tell about.
The times they have a-changed and now we coddle the rich and ignore our history and heritage. America was originally settled by pious religious refugees in the north and nasty slaveholders in the south. The Puritans seem to be the only Christians who actually embraced the Bible's anti-wealth message: "the love of money is the root of all evil."
Fewer than 30 years after the Puritans landed here, their brethren who stayed behind won the English Civil War, executed the former king for treason and teamed in the House of Commons with the Levellers, a popular political party, to abolish the office of king and all nobility. The Levellers got their name because they sought to "level the estates of the rich." They were the very first socialists.
The English Civil War was kicked off, partly, by the enclosure movement which sought to allow the rich to seize public property for their own private use and profit. They evicted the small businessmen who had kept their livelihoods in the commons, a green place shared by all the local livestock owners who kept and tended their animals there. This created many hardships for the people and the revolution was on.v
Later, the Masons in America, who seriously followed their roots in the Enlightenment and their instinct for justice, carried forward the ideas and ideals of democratic capitalism, tried and succeeded in planting a secure American government that would specialize in keeping common Americans free and prosperous. Until, that is, the 1830s when the necessity of organizing the financing of the building of the railroads created the actual "Corporate State" that plagues us today.
The concern is the concentration of wealth and power. Even though the Constitution intended to disburse those twin threats, the rise of the Corporate State, first with the railroads and then the Civil War profiteers, the grain companies and the banks, shattered the dynamics and desires of Main Street. The citizenry was dazzled and overwhelmed by all the new wealth careening around, as were their grinning $enators and Representative$. We know that the Constitution was built to aid and maintain a Main Street type economy because the Wall Street of the Corporate State was not even in existence in 1787.
Masons also created a uniquely American vow, used by genuinely honest businessmen as a greeting and adieu: "we meet on the level and depart on the square."
It all went downhill from there. Instead of being the thriving focal point of a "power-to-the people" democratic ethos in western civilization, Jeffersonian democratic capitalism is today is merely, but fondly remembered as "Main Street," home of the meek. This once prosperous all-American entity has been dismantled and buried by the ever burgeoning Corporate State that gladly destroys small businesses, family farms, and labor unions and with them our collective American Dream of financial independence and to be your own boss.
The family farmer has historically been the victim of corporate predators, going back generations. Today, the farmers are held in thrall by corporate bad actors who defy the social contract to squeeze every last dollar they can get from the farmers. Farmers are adopting their own saying concerning the dragons of Wall Street: "nothing cheats like a Deere."
John Deere, a farm machinery manufacturer, has upended the ecology and economy of the heroic family farmer by forbidding him to repair his John Deere equipment, his own private property. Deere has made it impossible to do the repairs himself, as per tradition, because the corporation has changed the mechanics of everything in order to force the farmer to bring his equipment to a John Deere dealer. John Deere does this just so shareholders will get a bigger profit.
The American farmer's famous ability to be a "jack-of-all-trades," to have the tools and knowledge needed to fix his own machinery, immediately, right where it broke, is no longer respected by companies like John Deere which have computerized the works so well that the average farmer has no ability to deal with the special tools and expensive computer needed. Incredibly, John Deere expects to service the farmer's equipment at distant, and expensive, service centers AND retain his brand loyalty. Farmers always plan ahead for such events and keep spare parts in the barn so that when they are needed they will be right there.
John Deere is willfully oblivious that, to the farmer, "time is money," but is perfectly willing to push thousands of family farms out of business, only to see their land absorbed as a cog in a mega-agribusiness that is run by Wall Street. The Corporate State is essentially a permanent, self-declared, self-perpetuating un-American business aristocracy hungrily lusting for raw power and populated not by the dukes and earls and lords of 1776 but a new crew of elites: CEOs, chairmen of boards and executive vice presidents.
And Wall Street has no conception what-so-ever of our Masonic vow.
There is still time to prune back the Corporate State and restore power to millions of small businesses, family farms and working people but we need to play it like the big guys. We need to search for a tactic they use and then turn it against them. Hmmm. America still has vast and plentiful natural resources that we can tap. After all, the rich are easily America's #1 untapped natural resource AND they are already fattened up. It is time to tax the rich. Big time!