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Hidden with code "Submitted as Feature" |
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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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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 Limbagh 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 Limbagh 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 Limbagh’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 Limbagh 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 Limbagh’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 Limbagh’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.
READY TO FADE UP CD2
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.
FADE CD2 UP UNDER BILL’S MIC
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 Hussien, Hitler, and Genghis Kahn and they employ weapons of financial mass destruction. They deserve to burn in Hell!
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