How Do The Moneyed Interests Divide The Poor?

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Interesting Dr Martin Luther King Jr Quote from a Leonard Pitt article (2/3):

     ” If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the “poor white man Jim Crow.  And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him no matter how bad off he was, at least he was was a white man, better than the black man.”

Pitt’s point was that moneyed interests had long conned two men stuck in the same leaking boat to fight one another rather than standing shoulder to shoulder. 

Believe it or not, “The King Fish” Huey Long of Louisiana and George Wallace of Alabama began their public service careers with this populist philosophy.  They sought to raise the standard of living through education for all citizens in their respective states.  Eventually both were sidetracked as History testifies…..

I’d like to hear your thoughts and comments on the King Quote or Pitt’s take on it…..

Tags: Dr King, George Wallace, Huey Long, Jim Crow, King Fish, Leonard Pitt, populism
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Congress Raises Debt Limit

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

At the end of January, Congress voted to raise the national debt ceiling higher allowing the Federal Gov’t to go another $1.9 trillion deeper into debt.  For every dollar spent of the 2011 Obama Budget, 4o cents is borrowed (deficit spending).  Much of the debt is owned by Red China, Japan, and the Arabs. 

High deficits are not new;  Bush’s tax cuts, Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, No Child Left Behind and TWO wars led to record deficits.  He kept war budgets separate from the general budget to mask some of the costs.  BUT, Obama’s budgets have set new records for deficit spending w/ the continuation of the TWO wars and drastic domestic spending increases.

By October 2012, the end of this fiscal year, the national debt [the sum of annual deficit spending] will reach $14.3 trillion –  more than $45,000 for every man, woman and child in the US.  “Through the turn of the 20th century, taxes remained very low; the national debt was less than $1 billion (in 1910, $1 billion = $12.40 per US citizen” (For The Cause, p.19;D. Hinson).

At the end of World War I (1919), the debt was $1 billion; it ballooned between the wars (with the New Deal) to $25+ billion.  With victory in WWII (1945), the debt had risen to $150+ billion.  It leveled off during the prosperous Fifties and Kennedy years before exploding with LBJ’s Great Society and  the prolonged Vietnam War. It has continued spiraling out of control since. 

You cannot run a home or any Business like Washington runs the Federal Gov’t.  Foreign governments own most of the debt w/ interests in direct conflict to ours most of the time.  The Federal Reserve prints money, with no foundational security outside of the confidence of the American public, which serves only to devalue our currency.  A day of reckoning must come eventually. When it does, the Great Depression will look like  a vacation at Disneyland.   

Ed.Note-  The quote is from the book For The Cause  available on this website.

Tags: deficit spending, Federal Reserve, For The Cause, Great Depression, great society, national debt, new deal, obama budget
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