Occupy Wall Street

I am a ninety-niner on the lower fringe of the middle class, I pay taxes and share the angst of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I've ranted at the unfairly-tilted playing field and the fat Wall streeters who would steal from  Joe the Plumber. Ingrates! I've seethed at the United States Supreme Court which has ruled that corporations are people and therefore are unfettered in political campaign contributions. As lying attack conservative ads proliferate I've wondered 'where is the outrage?'

The conservatives got their way by a landslide, getting  established members of Congress in their "gun sights", to paraphrase Sarah Palin.  Demonstrations convened against federal regulation and incipient socialism with the singularity of defeating Barack Obama.  His attempts to fix the economy have been rejected by right-wing extremists.  Do you really think  right-wing ideologues want to revive our moribund economy and put people back on their feet?

Wake up America! The GOP and the (elite) 1% want America to return to the America of the early 1900s, the golden age of wage slavery. Workers died in factories, packing houses and our local mines. Regarded as expendable, they were replaced by other desperate souls and the process repeated ad infinitum. No safety and health regulations in those years. No minimum wage, unemployment compensation, child labor laws or social safety net.  If you got hurt on the job for the lack of federal safety regulations you paid for your medical treatment but more likely you applied a poultice to the injury because of your poverty.  While you were disabled, you received no pay. Your position at the company was not preserved. You had no money, no job and would beg to work for $3.00 a week as you limped from your unhealed injury. Ten-year-old kids worked to aid in their family's subsistence. Senior citizens worked until the job killed them. There was no limit on the number of hours per week companies could impose on workers. The corpses of workers laid the foundations of financial dynasties.

Will obstructionist members of Congress feel the pain wrought by the trend of increasing financial disparity?  Do the billionaires and the newly-personified corporations have pangs of conscience? I suspect opulence has seared their conscience. They worship mammon, not God. They are more concerned about preserving their tax loopholes. Beware! We are returning to 1900 as the obstructionism continues in congress.

Occupy!