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Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
Current rating: 0 |
by Bill Gorrell
(No verified email address) |
13 Jan 2003
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As you know, wealthy and wannabe wealthy people of Limbaugh's ilk claim that progressive income tax systems don't make people pay their fair share for a society that provides them with opportunities to make loads of money. No, instead, the ditto heads believe that their wealth comes from hard work, thus, people in the top tax bracket are the hardest working people in America. Using that logic, Bill Gates is the hardest working person in the world. Man, if Bill Gates works that much harder than I do, he does the equivalent of running about a thousand jackhammers twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week! |
Bill Gorrell's rant, originally broadcast on the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturday, January 11, 2003.
Tragically, the only AM talk radio station I can pick up in my pick up truck, runs Rush Limbaugh so I occasionally listen to his bilge during my lunch break. The other day he talked about an guest commentary that he read on some newspaper's op-ed page, written by a corporate purchasing manager who's in the top income tax bracket. Of course, this was only a tiny part of the ongoing propaganda campaign to do away with progressive taxation and place a larger tax burden on working people.
As Limbaugh read from the column we learned that this man deserves special consideration because he put himself through college by working nights in a factory and because his job has required him to spend a lot of time away from his family. Well, booooohooooo! Talk about being an ungrateful crybaby!
We don't hear any details about this six figure whiner. Did he go to public schools? Did he go to a state university? If he went to a private school, did it never receive any money at all from any government? Did he finance his education with grants and government loans in addition to his factory job? Does he drive on public roads? Does he use bathrooms that feed into public sewage systems? Does he attend sporting events in venues paid for by tax dollars? Is his salary and his expense account deducted from his employer's income taxes? Would he call the police if he was a crime victim? Has he ever sued anyone and used the tax financed power of the state to redress any wrongs perpetrated against him? Does he expect our military to protect him from foreign invasion?
You probably realize how I could go on and on and on listing the benefits that the six figure whiner receives from our society, benefits that we help bestow on him and his family with our tax dollars. Beyond his use of public services, his claim for special privileges is betrayed by his personal choices. First, he didn't have to work his way through school, but he was greedy. He could have just kept the factory job or done something else that doesn't require a college education. Second, he didn't embark on a career of public service, or art, or social work or anything else requiring him to sacrifice for the good of our society as a whole. He is a purchasing manager who has the job of buying products and materials for his company at the lowest prices, thus putting pressure on his suppliers to produce things at the lowest cost, thus putting pressure on his suppliers to save money on labor costs, thus pressuring his suppliers to treat their workers badly. This isn't exactly a job that helps improve society! Rather it's a job that tends to make working conditions worse for other people.
The six figure whiner took the greedy path of business and he got what he asked for - a bunch of money and all the things, good or bad, that comes with it. He whines about the hours he works, the weekends away from his family, and the business trips he has to take. What about truck drivers? They spend a hell of a lot of time away from home for a lot less money. A lot of construction workers must make long commutes or leave their families for months at a time. Many factory workers are forced to work severe overtime, too. How about retail workers who must work weekends? Of course, if you've listened to the Illinois Labor Hour regularly for a few months, you realize that I spend many Saturdays running jackhammers instead of running my mouth on this show, and you know that Peter Miller spends many weekends organizing university workers at various campuses around this state. I can assure you that we aren't making six-figure incomes!
What about the six figure whiner's working conditions? After I heard Limbaugh's presentation, I didn't go back to an office and hammer out emails demanding lower prices from a supplier. I didn't go to a fancy restaurant and have a good meal paid for by a sales rep trying to get me to by her company's product or service. I didn't hop on a plane to China to make a deal with the owner of a sweatshop so that I could buy the cheapest widgets on the market. No, I got out of my 1989 Ford Ranger truck and trudged through sticky mud six inches deep in temperatures just above freezing with wind chill below freezing so that I could pump water out of the junior high school that we're building. Meanwhile, the whiner Limbaugh quoted probably had his ass parked on a comfortable desk chair in a warm and dry office. Hell, he probably sits on a chair that's worth more than my truck! Moreover, I spend my day dodging backhoes and trying not to fall off of ladders and so on while the six-figure whiner is in danger of getting a paper cut!
As you know, wealthy and wannabe wealthy people of Limbaugh's ilk claim that progressive income tax systems don't make people pay their fair share for a society that provides them with opportunities to make loads of money. No, instead, the ditto heads believe that their wealth comes from hard work, thus, people in the top tax bracket are the hardest working people in America. Using that logic, Bill Gates is the hardest working person in the world. Man, if Bill Gates works that much harder than I do, he does the equivalent of running about a thousand jackhammers twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week!
The ditto heads claim that capitalism is a meritocracy where the wealthy somehow rack up merit by exploiting workers, destroying the environment, owning pieces of paper that fictionally represent value or future value, collecting interest levied on workers in debt, collecting rents from workers for shabby housing, overcharging workers for products and services, manipulating stock markets so that they can steal from workers' pensions, selling dangerous products, polluting our minds with propagandistic media fare like Rush Limbaugh's show, forcing workers to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, buying politicians and political parties with campaign contributions, busting unions, forcing strikes, locking out union workers, creating and sustaining a horrendously inefficient, expensive and profitable healthcare system, cheating on their taxes in a system that gives them tremendous tax breaks to begin with, and so on. I'm sure that we could spend days listing the horrors perpetrated on us by the 'meritorious' capitalists who lie and cheat and steal and scheme their way to the top.
These people of great merit are the real terrorists whose actions deprive most of the world's workers of any hope for a decent, comfortable, healthy, safe, and secure life. Their actions raise the ire of the world's Osama bin Ladens and I am amazed that our country, the home of the meritorious capitalists, doesn't experience more terrorism than we already have. We will all be in danger as long as we allow this meritocracy to exist, the meritocracy that lies about taxation while its members cheat on the taxes levied on the incomes and wealth they gain from destroying this planet and its inhabitants. The meritorious members at the top of our society lack the patriotism to pay their fair share for our society. They avoid the taxes that pay for our military while profiting from supplying weapons and services to our armed forces. They create this market for themselves by oppressing workers in other countries who turn to violence as a last resort. Meanwhile they try to move their corporate headquarters to offshore tax havens. American capitalists are not only lacking in patriotism, they are actually traitors. They are traitors to America and its working people. They are traitors to this planet and its peoples and its environment. If they are meritorious, they are gaining merit with Satan and I hope they spend eternity with him.
They don't deserve tax breaks, they don't deserve their luxurious lifestyles, they don't deserve their power, and they sure as hell don't deserve any sympathy from working people. They deserve the fruits of their greed, their traitorous practices, and their actions that make this world a living hell for about a billion other people. They are the economic equivalent of Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and Genghis Kahn and they employ weapons of financial mass destruction. They deserve to burn in Hell!
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Comments
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by GP
Mdwestdude (nospam) aol.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 3
13 Jan 2003
Modified: 09:31:22 PM |
Whew! A rant indeed!
I, like yourself, wake up every morning with my back and knees aching so badly I often feel I'll have to take the day off from working. Yet I rarely, if ever, do. Motrin is a Godsend.
I also work hard, in construction (much like yourself)and tend to feel no pity, in fact often bitterness towards people who make entirely too much money, yet whine and moan about never having enough. I basically think "Cry me a river you uppity derelicts without a clue, who somehow have more say-so about how this world should be ran than myself".
Yet I don't seem to draw as many conclusions and sweeping generalizations as yourself. I don't believe that every person who goes to college and lands a corporate desk job is a social leper worthy of slaughter because they succeed only by sucking up all the natural resouces and polluting our environment.
In fact, you and I are equally as guilty of the latter mentioned. Our jobs entail the consumption of natural resources, and our old beat-up pick-up trucks are not exactly environmentally friendly. Then again, I have even less respect for the guy who shows up on the job site with a freshly waxed, leather interiored, "work-truck" with surround sound and heated seats. He either has too much money, or too much personal debt. But he's on a construction site worried about his vehicle getting scratched, hence he becomes a self-invested moron.
Another way of defining a self-invested moron could be that of any individual who sets goals for the acquistion of material items they truly do not require or remotely need.
Ultimately, it's anyone who attaches themselves to ideals of materialism and concepts which suggest that whoever has more things and more money is more attractive and more "successful". And sadly... it describes Americans as a whole.
I've always felt the flat tax was the best concept. But I also feel like our government should drop about 100 million programs which exist for people who have their hands out for completely bogus motiviations which do not serve every American equally...with said elimination of programs drastically reducing the tax burden to the people.
On another note, I don't despise Bill Gates. He may not physically work hard as you and I, but the man has done his time, and he happens to be a man who changed the world. He also pumps out many millions of dollars per day to charities. His net worth was at one time equivalent to the combined lower 40% of the American populus. I suggest he does better things with his money than our government does with mine.
What we truly need are less greed-driven people; less politicians who want to "offer" things to select factions of society(in order to buy votes); a massive return to common sense and practical values; far less commercialism; far more type-B drivers; a boxcar load of smiles for everyone, and cheaper smokes.
:)
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by LK
larryekeller (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
13 Jan 2003
Modified: 14 Jan 2003 |
Bill was "on" last Saturday. Good Labor Hour especially single-handedly.
One of the limiting factors to wealth is the hours in the day. When you see extreme wealth someone is dipping into someone else's work day and taking a cut. Greedy people want to legitimize theft as just business. We need a website that investigates every wealthy person and which shows the step by step way they made their money. I think THAT reality show would quickly debunk the myth that the richest people are the hardest working.
What cracks me up is when I read a prospectus and find some 25 year old kid on some corporate board of directors; I'm sure he worked his way up. Those guys are typically on a bunch of boards and get thousands of dollars to attend meetings, a thousand or so to be on a commitee and another thousand to be the chairman of a committee. Hey who wants to chair the X-mas committee this year? WHEEEE! Plus they get another grand if they travel over two time zones to attend a meeting. Make sure you take off from Aunt Clara's Villa in Italy or the family's summer home in the Bahamas.
Back to the world of honest work, thanks to my union and those who laid down their lives ahead of me, I do okay with what I can do in a years worth of railroad labor. At least I can manage to save money beyond my expenses. I think its about right and should be a baseline for anybody who is willing to work. Let's create some real jobs and turn workers loose on the World to create clean drinking water and good, practical housing. Maybe people could do something for the non-human living creatures on the planet too.
Those people who take a huge amount of wealth over that of their fellow beings should meet their maker--- THE IRS.
And by the way, if the Bush Administration wants to do away with the tax on dividends, how about not trying to block the idea completely; but turn in a compromise and exempt only the first ten thousand dollars of dividends. That would benefit a much larger pool of taxpayers, would encourage more people to own some stock and wouldn't be a significant source of fodder for the bloated Greed Heads.
Ranting Bill, pick that banner up and inspire us to march behind you. In solidarity, Brother. YEAH.
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by riashan
riashan2205 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
14 Jan 2003
Modified: 07:08:32 AM |
Well said! Those of us interested in counteracting
RL lies should use the word "whiners" more often when
referring to these "six-figure-crybaby-chickenhawks!"
Another good one is "traitors". Vocabulary can
transform thinking of non-thinkers! |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by Bill
social darwinism (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
14 Jan 2003
Modified: 09:20:11 AM |
Look it up!
It is quite popular among the whining-classes. It helps them think that they deserve what they have been given because they are better than others. It helps them think that others deserve nothing because they are degenerate failures. Most importantly, it helps them think that they are being 'good' (spurring the failures to greater effort) when they take what little others have.
Look it up, and compare what the whiners say to what they mean... to what their behaviours really mean.
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by john
unluckythirteen13 (nospam) msn.com (verified) |
Current rating: 0
15 Jan 2003
Modified: 12:25:46 AM |
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gotdamn dude! that was one kick ass column! i agree with everything you said in it but how is it gonna change? people now days are so snowed that they listen to all the propaganda the rich shell out and eat it up as it is the truth. people like rush limbaugh are a cancer to this country and deserve nothing but to be homeless, pennyless, and die miserable deaths just as those who him and people liek him who make there millions off the back breaking labor of others then say WE should be taxed higher. its not even worth working in todays society cuz no matter how hard you work you will never have enough money and will always struggle, and they wonder why unemployment is so high. . . |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by james
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Jan 2003
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Wow. Somehow you think paying a "fair" share of taxes entails progressive taxation. The wealthy because they make more income will already have to pay higher taxes even if they only paid the same percentage of taxes as you. The wealthy might not be as hard working as you but that is but one part of the wealth equation. Luck of course is another equation. However you totally discount the brainpower of the wealthy in creating their wealth. Do you think even with your hardwork that you could have built an empire like Bill Gates has? Bill Gates is the economic equivalent of Saddam? How many ordinary working joes has he made millionaires through his generous sharing of stock options? Hundreds? Thousands? How many cushy white-collar jobs has he created around the world? And for this he deserves to "burn in Hell!"? With all due respect, it is you, Mr. Gorrell, that needs to get a grasp on reality. |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by J.A.Venuto
tvenuto2 (nospam) cox.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Jan 2003
Modified: 10:25:25 AM |
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While Bill Gorell's article might be a bit heavy with over-the-top rhetoric , I fear he is bascily correct ... The "class war" is very real,and its being waged against US by the wealthy & powerfull .. indeed, this Republican administration seems to be little more than an elaborate smash&grab caper , a Govt bought&paid for by the "ruleing class" to rape and pillage our society and country as they please (at least it USED to be our country, if the far Right have their way we'll soon be little more than wage-slave Serfs for the Robber Barrons).. O'where is our American William Wallace to lead us in revolt against this tyranny? (Hellooo Democrats,is anybody home? )....Ok, so maybe MY rhetoric is now getting a little over-wrought , for a more eloquent expression I highly suggest the 01/12 commentary by Molly Ivans ...... Good luck everybody (we're gonna need it) |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by GP
MdWestDude (nospam) aol.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
22 Jan 2003
Modified: 08:19:47 AM |
Man, I gotta say the hostilities loom large here! It surely is an interesting display of how people think for themselves, of how they are influenced by the thoughts of others.
It absolutely amazes me how everyone points such a negative finger at an administration because it is largely republican. (yet, this is venue of expression sports a defiant liberal clan here, so it makes sense)
I happen to see EVERY governmental institution, office and employee as a currupted failure because of greed or special considerations at every angle, regardless of the political affiliation.
We can all have bouts of bitterness, as it's within our nature as humans. What comes to mind for me is the old saying "a man can use his back or use his brain" (made popular in an old Eagles song). Some make that choice, some utilize both their back and brain in the pursuits of life, and some use neither.
The amazing use of the word "whiners" here by many of you only serves to provide laughter, as it seems you seriously need to look into a mirror.
I don't think anyone here has effectively touched upon the base issues of social greed which are responsible for the political, legal, moral and financial cesspools which have become widespread across the nation.
The solutions all start with yourselves as an individuals.
There is no group, no union, no politician, and no affiliation which can solve the problems which stem from your own hearts and minds.
-GP
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by Brian
gonzo145 (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
23 Jan 2003
Modified: 10:27:00 PM |
Right on, my friend. These so-called free marketeers benefit from the government teet so much it's sickening. Limbaugh and his sheeplike adherents don't ever mention the fact that they wouldn't be in business if it were not for taxpayer subsidized infrastructure, government subsidies for r&d, taxpayer funded bailouts, loan guarentees(sic), and protection of their assets by, you guessed it, the taxpayer. The blowhards like Limbaugh seem to believe that capitalism is, in some way, a part of the natural order of the world. There is no reason to belive that is true. They have gone so far as to equate it (free market system) to evolutionary theory (natural selection;Social Darwinism). Anyway, I have worked throughout my life to attain this comfortable life the ultra-cons always tout. You know what? I'd trade places with Rush in a heartbeat and pay 85% on my dollars and I'll bet that I'd still be in the lap of luxury.
Thanks, Brian |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by Labor Hour
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Jan 2003
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If you want more Bill Gorrell, listen to the Illinois Labor Hour, Saurdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. |
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Labor Hour |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -4
16 Mar 2003
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I made $ 240,000 two years ago. Since the beginning of the Clinton Recession, I have made my base which is $ 115,000. You may be interested to know, that I paid $ 58,000 in taxes that year. In year two it was more like $ 28,000. Do you feel better? In the year I made all the dough, I employed several laborers to improve my home and some of my properties. (All non-union) Why, because they work harder for less money. The free market hurts all of us.
Hard Work Pays,
Jack |
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Re: Labor Hour Rant: The REAL Class War |
by Butch Leventry
butch1405 (nospam) charter.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
09 Apr 2004
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Thinking about Rush Lindbaugh, I was arrested for the actual charge of "doctor-shopping" by a local over zeolous District Attorney and his county detectives, along with several others in my area of Cambria and Sommerset Counties of Pennsylvania. Doctor-shopping does not exist in a legal standpoint here in Pennsylvania, so to beat these charges I had to find laws in Vermont since no cases had previously existed here.. My case of "doctor-shopping" came after a previous charge of a reverse sting, where police had an old 76 year old lady lie to a physician to obtain the pills for the reverse sting, who was their ultimate taget, sell me pills. I was trying to get free from addiction by traveling 4 hour round trip daily visits to a methadone center, when the police decided to charge me with 'failure to disclose facts to the Meth clinic and the doctor' I was seeing at home. Cambria County had no jurisdiction in Fayette County where I was supose to have lied to obtain Methadone and pain pills from two separate doctors. My confidentiality was broken several ways especiall under federal laws Code of Federal Regulations 290 (d) (d) laws not to mention the H I P P A laws of the state as well as phamacy confidentiality besides the lying doctor who was scared into lying. I went on to sue him with police in several courts of Penna.; Western Districrt of Pa., Commonwealth Ct., Third Circuit as well as a bad Pa. Supreme Court 1983 case ruling, by the now govenor's wife Justice Rendell. I had beaten all of their cases as a result of standing up for myself, Learning computers with Word Processing, obtaining paid cites such as Loislaw on the internet because I had believed in the State & Federal Constitutions. I beat so called "doctor-shopping" cases for several friends one of which was 187 counts of felony and misdemeanor charges all thrown out. There was a lot of activity here in the court system because for the first time in the history of Cambria Count Pa. someone fought the law. The Judges of the fore-mentioned courts made sure that I was screwed in the end though as a result of my pro-se activism I was told by a Common Pleas Judge Thomas Swope if I did not accept the generous plea bargain which was a third degree misdemeanor, "I would be fighting from in the jail with a bail I could not meet". The good ole boy judicial system in Cambria County allowed this type of activity, under all the laws of Confidentiality. Lindbaugh is not facing, as a result of the A C L U and other right wing extremists, the laws as I had, These guys who did not care about dozens of cases of the same activity. Butch Leventry |
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