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Revolution Coming?

Ned Haggard

    “...it looks increasingly likely that no big name will be criminally prosecuted. This month, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department decided not to charge Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of the former company known as Countrywide Financial Corp., someone long thought of as a prime potential target....nearly three years after the financial crisis hit, a better way to look at the lack of high-level indictments is as an indictment of the entire financial system — a system that was rife with avarice, ignorance and double-dealing. How do prosecutors find the bad apples in a putrid landfill?” ... USA Today 2-28-2011

“My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.” ...Allen Ginsberg, “America” 1-17-1956


“Revolution!” “Up the Revolution!”
“It’s coming!” from
police officers, house wives, store
clerks, tax preparers, attorneys, elderly
and young, the
in-between, middle-aged...varied
walks of life...
while the headlines drone the
usual verbiage, “Young
Congressional Hopefuls Dismiss
Obama’s
Budget”, “Ryan’s Budget Passes
House, Will Be Dead In The Senate,”
and it all falls
so firmly on increasingly
deaf ears. The S&P is looking at our
Triple A rating not believing DC will provide
anything other than smoke and mirror
political intrigue. While “prosperity” falls so
firmly into the swollen coin purses
of the wealthy, really very, very few
(1210 individuals are worth a billion
and up in a world
of nearly
7 billion people...1 billion of them
Islamic and 20% of those, Islamist extremists)
...Tiffany’s
sales figures are up; Wal-Mart’s,
down. The other day, walking
on a downtown street I overheard,
“I don’t want to hear or read
anything
about the
Koch brothers. I just want them
dead!” I dismissed it as
exaggeration but later, thinking
realized the words were firmly
spoken, with fanged
teeth. An experienced real
estate broker commented,
“Property values are falling but
real estate taxes are going up!
How? What’s that?” He’s been a
successful real estate broker for
26 years. At the gas pump last night,
the owner of the neighboring car,
filling his tank said, “Look at that!
$4.19 a gallon. That’s not Libya, that’s
speculators. We’re being ripped off!”
He grunted as he replaced the nozzle
and closed his tank cover.
His Cadillac CTS coupe was new,
dark, gunmetal gray,
like his low ceiling mood. “It gets good
mileage, nearly 30 miles per gallon
highway. But this!? I’ll
still be paying
the same, maybe
more than I did with my ‘07!” He pointed
again to the digital price marquee and
getting in, hurried on, “College of Surgeons”
a decal in his rear window. Item in
the news: Exxon-Mobil earned 69 percent more
during the first quarter of this year,
2011 than a year ago. The industry
is attempting to keep
a $4 billion annual tax subsidy.

In DC, Representative Paul Ryan’s Budget passed,
symbolically, but a pointed
vote, fuel for the neo-cons. The neo-cons who are
vowing to fight President Barack Obama’s
raising taxes on the wealthy, while
seeking the death of
Medicare and Medicaid,
Social Security a thorn via Ryan’s budget “wonder”
and others competing and
pending. After all, who should care? No
provisions
would
accommodate changes in insurance
rates, changes in medical costs,
Ryan’s Budget would be “tough luck” once
the annual dollar provisions for medical insurance
would run out but oh,
raise taxes on the wealthy? Hell no,
let’s fight
raising taxes on those good folks;
the ones who fatten political campaign chests,
the ones who loophole exceptions on their
earnings at the
corporations they run,
the ones who finance lobbyists
for corporate loop holes, hell
no! Tread on the Rich!? Let’s devise
a new flag to fly beneath
Old Glory! “Don’t Tread on The
Wealthy!” Let’s shrink
the middle class to nothing, let’s
enlarge the ranks of the hapless,
evermore hopelessly poor; let’s freeze
opportunity, let’s build more
prisons. Let them wander worthlessly mouthing
nothings to no one there. Who cares? Technology
will
replace them. Who needs them?
America, America...Land of the
Brave, Land
of the Free...”Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore....”
Ah, Emma Lazarus, if only you knew what has
befallen The Golden Door:
“Save the rich! Save the wealthy!
Piss on the rest!”

Russia was too large for a revolution,
the stones of the Bastille would withstand any
assault, the might of the British would crush the
upstart colonists. GE made a profit in 2010 of
14.6 billion dollars but (loop hole),
their international division realized
the gains, and
despite being part
of an American
Corporation,
GE didn’t pay
a dime. Ah, the might of
lobbying power, ah the 5-4 decision opening the
spigot completely on donations by whom- ever or
whatever business without their identities even
having to be known. It’s proven, a direct
correlation exists between election results and the
size of campaign chests, lobbying might
with no limit dollars in
hand
can forge loopholes
that keep multiple billions
tax free...GE, just the tip
of the corporate
iceberg...icy
indeed
for millions,
thermal warmth for
the very few

I hear a snore in DC,
I hear the growing anger
of the poor,
I hear the growing anger of
the working class,
I hear the growing anger of the
middle class...
I hear the song of the cash
registers at Tiffany’s, I hear
the market is reviving for
Ferraris (they took a dip
after the Wall Street fiasco
that nearly sank the world’s
economy); Raj Rajaratnam,
the Galleon Hedge Fund founder
under indictment for
his part in the crisis on Wall
Street (insider trading) is
expected to use his wealth
well,
40 million dollars for his
legal defense. And what about
corporate taxes? Do you hear the
boardroom celebrations at
“American” corporations with
lobbying might,
with coffers for subservient shills

in government,
with duplicitous “friends” on
the Supreme Court,
with mansions brightly lit
while DC dances, imagining
itself
impervious.

Will they wake up before the
Bastille is torn down, stone
for stone
again? Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
The Birth
of modern Democracy. Madame Defarge
is knitting again. Will this become a
country of, by, and for
the People again (no matter how
imperfectly)? Don’t tell me it is now!
I’m not blind!

I hear the empowered few
celebrating
their impunity before
the law, immune behind
high estate walls,
thinking they
have it made....

“Revolution!” What are
the odds, indeed?
“Revolution” is only in the
mulling stage and it is not
too late to renew
reverence for life,
not greed....

In DC, visitors to the House Gallery
were arrested for singing a variant of
“The Star Spangled Banner.” Voices
are rising,
lives are sinking,
our bought out leaders are
taking aim and,
I fear, others are
as well...Czar Nicholas thought
Russia far too large
for a
revolution. Marie Antoinette proclaimed,

“Let them eat cake” before
she lost her head; Nancy Reagan
similarly said, “Let them eat
chicken!” before her husband
lowered the taxes by nearly 50%
on the wealthiest Americans and
ah, what prosperity came,
and what prosperity went
from the pockets of the many
to the pockets of the fewer
than few....
Who should eat cake?
Who should eat chicken?
All? The many? The few?
Who, America? Oh America, where
government of the People,
by the people,
for the People...?

Are you forever off your track,
America?

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