The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that there are almost 50,000 homeless veterans in California, "the most of any state". New York comes next with just over 21,000; the total US homeless population is well over 100,000. Mind you, this doesn't include people who sleep in their cars or drift in and out of homelessness and go unreported.
When it comes to ending homelessness or poverty, or providing health care or education, there is never enough time or money. People on welfare are portrayed as lacking initiative or in their predicament due to their own miserable failures.
But not so for the private companies lining up to get their share of the $800 billion taxpayer relief fund.
GM is claiming it is broke and wants the taxpayer to help. The moneylenders whose parasitic existence traps people in a life of perpetual insecurity and who, if their circumstances are such that the blood money can no longer be paid, ruthlessly drive their victims from their homes, deprive them of their health care or transportation with the government's help, are lining up for their share of taxpayer's money. They feel no shame and none is heaped on them by the media and the state.
American Express, one moneylending firm has just been granted the right to appeal for some of the taxpayer's money. What allowed this is the federal government stepping in and suspending the rules to allow AmEx to miraculously become a "bank holding company". "Normally it would take months to win regulatory approval for such a switch" writes the Wall Street Journal (11-11-08)
Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, another bunch of moneylenders also had the rules quickly changed enabling them to apply for corporate welfare. Having former employees well positioned in government circles has its advantages.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Fed waived it's normal procedures to "expedite" these applications. The Fed's justification for giving this unprecedented access to public funds for corporate welfare is "unusual and exigent circumstances affecting the financial markets."
Hundreds of thousands of homeless people, many of them veterans, the mentally impaired and such, are not facing such circumstances it seems as there is never enough money to help. Is sleeping under a freeway underpass a "normal" set of circumstances then? There is never enough money we are told, for housing, health care, education or other social needs. And apart from that, the cogs of the government machine turn slowly we are always told. Even Barak Obama said in his acceptance speech that the road will be steep, will be hard, we may not get there quickly etc but we will get there.
Yet how quickly these corporations who bleed the American workers and middle class dry get their hands on public funds. One bourgeois commentator says "How could you possibly pass up the flexibility to be able to access these programs in a highly uncertain and volatile world."
So corporate hand outs are sound rational decisions. What stigma, what a savage media war the capitalist propaganda machine wages against the poor and low paid who cross that extra "T" or dot that extra "I" to "access" a measly payment that barely keeps them alive.
In their own papers they talk so rationally and honestly about plundering the public wealth, "Without this status we do not have access to these important tools (government money)" says Toni Simonetti, a spokeswoman for GMAC, GM's financial services arm. So they get their politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties to change their status overnight and give them access.
This crisis is far from over and is only beginning to enter the real economy. Thousands more job losses are on the way. Cuts are already being made in public services like health care at a time when more people will need them. We should keep in mind the term Monolines. These are the insurers who insure municipal bonds and such, in other words, they insure the money our communities are forced to borrow to maintain public services or build our infrastructure. It is likely more and more municipalities will default on debt and if the Monolines go under that will be another insurance group the taxpayer will be expected to back up.
It is likely the government will take a stake in GM. The company and its bought politicians are urging the government to bail it out. It's possible it could be nationalized altogether depending on the depth of the crisis, something that no one can really determine. But the arrogance of these bastards. Rick Wagoner, the head of GM refuses to resign in return for taxpayer money, "I think our job is to make sure we have the best management team to run GM." he says.
These are the same people that have run industry in to the ground and have wasted human and material resources. He is still making demands when him and the rest of the capitalist class have forfeited their right to own the prodcutive forces and govern society.
This is one of the great lessons of this crisis and working people in great numbers will draw this conclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment