The blog of a North Country Swede!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I hear America singing ...

Once again the elites controlling the two parties as factions of one political system have found issues that divide we the people ... and these issues divide us BECAUSE they are major issues ... life and death issues ... what could be more major than that?

In the meantime our elite ruling class -- the global financial services sector gurus -- ship our labor enriching jobs offshore and offer us instruments of debt on inflating assets in return.

When are we going to wake up? We're being suckered in a Three Shell Monte game of distraction ...

Think of it ... China's architects, engineers, ironworkers, tool and die machinists, operating engineers, welders, mechanics, maintenance mechanics, etc., etc. etc. are building their experience ... raising their foundation of skills ... while ours atrophy.

The global financial services sector gurus are so far removed from experiencing the existential fact of earning one's living by the sweat of one's brow ... in both physical and mental labor ... that they cannot value its worth ... and have given our storehouse of labor wealth away as if it was worth nothing ... a storehouse stocked with experience and skills acquired in the industrialization of WWII in defense of our nation and the '50's under Eisenhower and his federal highway program ...

Take one example ... creating a workforce able to creatively handle work with exotic metals ... necessary to build with them ... requires a long, active apprenticeship with those metals. We've GIVEN those jobs away.

Our global financial services sector gurus are really "brilliant idiots" on the economy ... but they have mastered Karl Rove politics to keep themselves in power, enriching themselves ... by dividing us.

By the way, Senator (Common Man) Joe Biden is in the pocket of the Delaware credit and banking corporations -- in my opinion. But I wouldn't vote for McCain and an extension of Bush world if my life depended on it.

I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;

The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.


http://www.bartleby.com/142/91.html

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Y'know ... a few months from now ...

Y'know ... a few months from now (not even years, let alone decades or centuries) the new wizards will be 'splaining to us how "we" allowed "that" bunch of brilliant idiots (the global financial services sector) to transfer our productive wealth (which is the real source of modern wealth -- the historical sources being property, natural resources, and SLAVE labor) to China ... and thereby giving their workers the opportunity to learn the skills our workers perfected in establishing our extraordinary manufacturing base in WWII and the Eisenhower years ... while our workforce was allowed to atrophy.

I have nothing against Chinese workers becoming skilled, but not by the direct transfer of the production capability that our workforce had as much a hand in creating as anyone else including the financial gurus ... without so much as a fare-thee-well to our workforce.

(Doesn't anyone stop and think about what the free workforce and citizen military of these United States accomplished in WWII? ... that our current leadership is pi$$ing away?!!! Turning us into a banana republic.)

I think it's this obsession with money as if "money" were a commodity.

For the middle and working classes our strength has never been "money". It is skill in the production or distribution of goods and services that have value (others want in exchange for what they have to offer us) in the marketplace ... a marketplace that has sensible rules, by the way, like standard weights and measures.

If government -- as one of its legitimate functions -- safeguards an orderly market for its citizens, free citizens will do the rest. (Like, why are so many businesses and citizens leaving New Jersey, Governor Corzine?)

We are selling (giving away?) the seed corn ... labor skills that are a huge part of what makes ordinary people free ... because they are valuable to employ. Of course, we need a nation that protects the rights of free labor as much as it protects the rights of property ... which does NOT necessarily mean unions (or what unions have become, rather).

The current crop of brilliant idiots ... 3rd and 4th generation removed from labor ... have no appreciation of the stored wealth in labor's skills ... so they blithely give it away. They are so dumb I would laugh, but they are so weakening our nation by their ignorance that it makes me want to cry.