Now that we have one of the ex-insiders of the George Bush administration come out with a book on some of the trade secrets of the Bush White House, it not hard to imagine what could come out next. You know the old saying; “A secret is no longer a secret when more than one person knows it”. And I suspect that there will be a lot more trade secrets revealed in the future. Not just White House secrets, but secrets from a lot of other power organizations. The sad thing is, like the White House, there will be a lot of press, some screaming, & idle chit-chat about it; and then it will be back to “business as usual”. Nothing else will happen and no one will be held accountable. This is the society we live in now; “no offending party is to be held accountable for their actions”. And this attitude is so wide spread. It has infected every element of our world, including corporations, religious organizations, and all arms of our government. It is a world of “I come first and to hell with everybody else”. I tell you the truth; I am ashamed to be classified as an adult if this is acceptable actions of adults.
As for government, ever wonder why many documents are really labeled “Top Secret” or “not for release until year —-”? Not in all cases, but in many it has nothing to do with “national security”, a phrase that’s often used solely for self-serving interest. Many of these documents would reveal some very embarrassing information for some very powerful people. This is one of the extremely few examples that tell us that our government is still minutely afraid of the People. But after a sufficient period of time, this information will no longer have any negative impact, and government officials know that. After enough generations pass along, the information only becomes a footnote in history. But had it been revealed when it happened, there probably would have been a genuine uprising of the People.
I do not have the best ways to describe what all this means to us as a society, but I found an article by Mike Adams that goes far in describing what is happening. I guess the thing I get most frustrated about is that almost every single one of us honest citizens are standing by and not doing anything about it. We may say there is nothing we can do, but there is. We just aren’t willing to sacrifice, and take the time & effort to do it. We just go on with our life insisting that that little warm fuzzy feeling of acceptance we have in our stomach is there because it is out of our hands. Let me tell you something; all we have to do is to just say “no more” to our boss, our company, our local officials, and to our federal officials. We must remember one thing; without us, there is no productivity, no job for the boss, no money in the church coffers, and no people to govern. WE HAVE POWER! But we have given it away to those I speak of. It’s time to take it back and use it to keep them in line. Nothing is going to change until we do that, except that things will get worse for us.
What is keeping us from thinking about tomorrow? And I am not talking about what you plan to do; I am talking about our future, our children’s future, and our grandchildren’s future (please don’t brush over the latter two; stop and really give them some thought). Too many of us are living just for today. Most of the destructors of our society have already prepared for their future, or they are on a sure path of taking care of theirs. Unfortunately, we have been placed in a position, either by our own doing or by others, that we can not afford to take time out to ensure a good future for us and our own. We have schedules to meet, bills to pay, places to go, etc. We are too afraid of loosing our job or not having a future. We are too worried we won’t get that promotion. Simply put, we are too busy trying to get there that we are not thinking about what is going to happen if we don’t get there. Relatively few of us will “get there”. But, who knows, we may hit the lottery.
Unfortunately, we the People are in the place these offenders want us in; a position where we don’t have the time, or can’t afford to take the time, to regain our power and correct the course we are on. None of us can fix it all, but each of us can fix a part of it. Naturally, there are some problems that will take the majority of us to fix, such as with our elected officials. But that is also possible. Companies can be dealt with one at a time. One thing is for sure; once we the people let it be known that their gravy ride is over, we won’t have to deal with each and every one of them individually. These ivory tower people have a knack for following suit when they see trouble on the horizon.
One of the questions I asked myself was why are these people not bothered by being labeled as greedy and corrupt? Besides the absence of morals and the fact that most of us do not view ourselves as others do, these folks have several ways to deal with this label. Many justify it by “spinning” the term or the words. As an offender, if you don’t like what you are being called, just come up with a slant on the definition that is easy to live with. I feel obliged here to say something I said in another report; “denial of truth is a very convenient state-of-mind when you don’t like the truth”, or “the truth is a lie & a lie is the truth if I want it to be so”. All of them have very low morals & standards as defined by Webster’s. However, they define morals & standards differently than you and I do. Company leaders will say they are doing what is necessary for the long term future success of the company or to be competitive in the market place. (This is the excuse they use for exporting American jobs.) Political leaders will say they are doing what is “best” for the people. In both cases, what they are really doing is what is best for them as individuals. I recall seeing an interview once with a company executive of one of the very first companies that started exporting American jobs. When asked how Americans would earn money to buy their products if this policy of exporting jobs became wide spread, the executive’s answer was a nonchalant “Aw, they’ll find the money somewhere”.
Labor unions have a really bad name today. Unfortunately, some of that was brought on by the unions themselves through greed and corruption; however, a fair portion was brought on by objective-oriented opponents of unions. Most of the rank & file workers of today have not experienced working in a union environment, whether it was as a union member or by association. I was never in a union, but I recall my very first civilian job after military service. I worked for a public utility company that was unionized. However, the department I worked in was not in the union because of the rare nature of the job even though we were all hourly paid employees. But when the union guys got a pay raise or increased benefit, we got the same thing. My point is this; you may not have been a union member, but because of organized labor, our wages and benefits did not stagnate as they would have without organized labor. And today, every single hourly paid employee or any salaried employee who migrated from the ranks of the hourly paid is making the wages they are today as a direct result of past organized labor; period. You are living in a fantasy world if you think that today’s corporations are paying the wages they are paying simply because they want to be good to its employees. So when you think about demonize the unions & blame them for all the corporate trouble in the world, you may want to give these aforementioned facts some thought before you do so. Remember, corporations will never be satisfied until 100% of the gross profits stay inside the four walls of the boardroom.
I feel the need here to repeat a true experience I had about 27 years ago. As a departmental manager for my company, I was working late one evening in my office. At some point, I invited a friend of mine (a manager of another department) over to my office for a drink. As we talked, the subject came up about the then Yuppie generation. I asked him what was wrong with this generation; they were the most impatient people I had ever known in that they insisted on complete & total success now, no matter what the cost just so long as the cost wasn’t theirs. And, it seemed, that they not only wanted their share of the American pie, but they also wanted everyone else’s share. I was really taken back by my friends’ response. His response was “wait until they’re in the boardrooms of America”. Not until years later did I fully understand what he meant.
There is an on-line “School for Champions” that is designed to teach us why there is greed and corruption, and how to avoid becoming one of these people. (Can you imagine that? Greed & corruption is so common that there is a school to teach us how not to become greedy and corrupt.) It is extremely basic, but there should be an advanced school that would be mandatory for anyone who becomes a political or corporate leader. And the school should be an annual refresher requirement after obtaining such position with a test that includes all those things the person did in the past year. Standards should be defined and the test should require a 100% passing grade or they loose their job and all the benefits they have gained during the past year.
This idea of talking about greed & corruption is definitely not a modern day idea, just as greed & corruption in itself is not a modern day disease. What is new for the past few decades is wide spread greed & corruption. Below I have made available hyperlinks to a few of the hundreds of articles on this subject that you can find on the net. In addition, there are literally dozens of books that have been written on the subject. One of the best books of late is by Lou Dobbs. If you are not a fan of his, don’t become one of those who ignore the truth just because you don’t like the messenger. I was once like that, and that resulted in my loose, not theirs. Unfortunately, this is the very reason many of us are never well informed. We’ve become too biased and polarized.
Let me suggest one gruesome scenario for our future. Picture the United States as no more. Imagine it as several small individual nations with each one reverted back to the conditions of 200 years ago. Think it couldn’t happen? Pick any one of several examples in Europe and Asia that this has happened to in the past 100 years. None of their citizens thought it would happen to them either. But when it did happen, it came so fast that not only were they unable to do anything about it, they were all left in shock. And this suggested possibility is one of the better scenarios. From this one, it only goes down hill.
Sit back & relax a bit now, and read these articles. Be opened minded, then afterwards ask yourself what you think. Should you decide to do some research on your own, post any new sites you find along with your comments at the bottom.
Buy It, Strip It, Flip It – Private Equity firms buy up a company, then destroy it for profits.
War Profiteers – Insiders get the “nod & wink” for billions of dollars in profits due to wars while American service men are dying.
Corporations as Nation-States – Giving the same powers to corporations that nations have.
Corporate Excesses – Corporate Executive Greed.
Intellectual Property Laws – Corporations granted patents on the human genome (DNA).
The People Win One – Corporate greed can be defeated; but you must get involed.
™