The first story on the local news tonight is the conference in San Francisco called the conference of volunteers. Schwarzennegger is there as is Michelle Obama and 400 volunteers turned up. Nancy Pelosi, worth some $30 million is about to speak to the crowd about the need to donate your time to get the nation on track.
They interview a young guy who volunteers as a teacher's aide without pay during the day. I have a friend who is a teacher's aide and they are in a Union. They are understaffed and, as in education in general, more cuts are on the way. So multi-millionaire politicians hold conferences to recruit scabs, calling them volunteers as they cut back libraries, education, and, as is being reported on at the moment, fire stations.
The Obama administration is no different than the Bush one in the eagerness to cut services and replace paid jobs with scabs calling them volunteers. The whole thing is to make the public feel guilty about doing nothing to make society better.
People will have lots of time on their hands with unemployment at its highest since 1941.
We should see this for what it is, hypocrisy, a great con game. These politicians are responsible for the crisis and for the ongoing destruction of people's living standards. They use their power to savage public services and then ask the victims to work for nothing to replace some of them as if this can replace the state's role in this process.
2 comments:
It seems that the public interest and corporate interests are inherently at odds. There's only so much wealth to go around these days and it's already been ear-marked for the banks, pentagon, ailing insurance industry and corrupt officials who would like very much to squeeze a few more money bags out of the system before getting a private consulting job.
The tax-paying public is left to fight over table scraps
"It seems that the public interest and corporate interests are inherently at odds."
They are indeed. The British Guardian had an article about tanks not solving the problems we have so they should stop building them. It reckoned that Britain could cut its defence spending by 90% and still have no threat to its national security.
Who knows what the figure for the US would be.
Post a Comment