Any one out there remember little companies with names like Bre-X Minerals or Enron????I found it fascinating to read the headlines today ... The Conservative Party is about to drop their economic plans for the ongoing election campaign ... Meanwhile, Community Foundations of Canada have dropped a news release on their pending Vital Signs 2008 report that finds Child Poverty rates in Canada to be equal to those of 1989, when the Federal Government committed to eradicating Child Poverty in Canada by the year 2000 !!!
Couple these two news items with the reports of Richard Fuld the ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings appearing before the Congressional Hearings looking into the economic collapse that is gripping the United States, and most of the Globe ... a republican Congress man questioned the lavish and obscene payouts to executives of Lehman Brothers just hours before the company declared bankruptcy ... in excess of 20 million dollars was given to departing executives, while Mr Fuld himself was paid bonuses in the neighbourhood of 200 to 400 MILLION dollars as the company he headed was collapsing ...
Echoes of the Enron Scandal came to my little brain ... Executives padding their already over-the-top wealth while tax payers and the average investors are left to foot the bill of their greedy excesses ... I find the WHOLE focus on Main Street to be simply laughable ... the interest of these clowns who greedily paid each other lavish and truly obscene bonuses and premiums that now will cost EVERY man woman and child in the United States of America in EXCESS of 500 000 dollars EACH, was never on Main Street ... Main Street USA is where people making minimum wage are watching powerlessly as the once good paying jobs vanish overseas by the day, taxes spiral ever upward to support the breaks these corporations are granted regularly and fund a war that is ultimately over the control of oil resources, while something as essential as basic medical care, adequate food security, appropriate housing and economic freedom have, like the American Dream, dispelled on the winds that are blowing ...
Are we EVER going to wake up and see the reality around us ????
Fifteen years ago prophets like Bill Hicks used comedy to warn us that the vision of the world held by the Neo-Conservatives that Bush and his ilk represent was totally and utterly unsustainable and morally devoid of ANYTHING resembling compassion, care or kindness ... YET ... here we are two decades AFTER Reagan still believing that these greedy, profit driven yahoos have the best interests of the "nations" at heart ...
It's time to wake up and tell the greed that Wall Street represents - THANKS, but NO THANKS, we want a compassionate world where NO ONE gets paid 20 MILLION dollars or MORE for sitting in an office and thinking up new schemes to make the rich richer and the screw the working class and the poor ...
If Bre-X has taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that if it sounds too good to be true - it IS ... multi-million dollar bonuses are too good to be true - sooner or later the real bill will need to be paid, and today we're witnessing the full cost of that bill ...
Can you imagine what the average American could and would do with a cheque for 500 000 dollars???? Instead of the average American paying THAT bail out bill, perhaps the Forbes Fortune list should be FORCED to ante up to the table and finally share the wealth they have so unjustly accumulated ... then maybe the economic crisis will rest where it belongs - with the obscenely wealthy ...
But hey, what do I know ... after 20 years of full time work, I'm still living pay cheque to pay cheque like most of us ... and will likely have to work far past my 80's just to feed and clothe myself, and there won't be a generous bail out to help the likes of me (and YOU) ...
Such is the "just" society we inhabit !!!
Let's send out notes of thanks to the likes of Mr Bush, Mr Harper and Mr Fuld ... they're the ones who advocate this ...
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