Hypocrisy of the corprate politicans in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings

This is not a natural disaster

Not so long ago I received a call from a woman living in a motel room with her husband and child. She was disabled but didn’t give me any details. She contacted me because at the time I was trying, along with other activists, to bring together people who were being forced out of their homes by the bankers. We were hoping to form Hands Off Our homes Committees in each neighborhood where people were being thrown out because they couldn’t pay the moneylenders.
The capitalist propaganda that we are in control of our own destiny is garbage but it is pretty strong here in the US. I mean, George Bush never pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Because people fall prey to this false idea it is difficult to discover something like who in a community is being foreclosed on. People feel ashamed. They feel like they have failed, that they are in this situation because of their own personal weaknesses. That’s what that ideology is meant to do, make us blame ourselves for finding ourselves in a situation that is a product of society and how it is structured and managed.

This woman was living in the motel because the bankers had kicked her out of her home.
But she had not “lost” her home, this is the language of another class, it was still there; it was stolen from her. Her home was not far away in the same town and most of her belongings were in it. She was not allowed to enter that property without a sheriff.  Her husband had to leave that motel room every morning to go to work and they lived their lives as best they could given the circumstances. I regret at the time that there was not much I could do to help.

I am reminded of this by the news today that one million homes were foreclosed on by the moneylenders in 2010. How many people that effects is anybody’s guess; maybe three million, maybe four, and who knows how many children. These are people that get up and go to work every day. They are people who may have served this country in one of its wars or have sons or daughter’s in Iraq or Afghanistan, most of them there as victims of an economic draft. What’s more, five million (perhaps 10 million debtors) homeowners are more than two months behind on their mortgage payments, or more accurately, interest payments on the loans, according to the foreclosure tracker, Realty Trac. And they expect that 201l will top 2010 for foreclosures.

This is why we stress on this blog, the hypocritical nature of the ruling class and their representatives. We have stated many times that we vociferously condemn the killings in Tucson and that such acts are against the interest of the working class and lower class consciousness as Sean wrote earlier.

Obama said in his speech in Tucson that "it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

Who’s he talking about? Is an armed police force physically removing families from their homes and out on to the street on behalf of speculators and moneylenders an act that brings healing to a community? Is it possible that being thrown out of your shelter and living is a motel room with two children might have an effect on the mental health of the family and the individuals in it? Does it affect the personal relations between the mother and the father? Might it affect the development of the child as they grow older. Might it lead them to drink, steal, have erratic behavior or even commit acts of violence?

The Wall Street Journal reports the president as saying that for his speech he, “chose to dwell on the heroes of Saturday, and the victims of the violence—especially nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green—as he urged the nation to rise above ugly political debates and see civic life "through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol'' of adults.

How caring. But how many children’s lives are being torn apart by the deliberate actions of the politicians of big business, and Obama is one of them, in the interests of speculators, moneylenders, bankers and others that do no productive Labor. The same Wall Street Journal reported on Obama’s recent meeting with CEO’s as they have an accumulated $2 trillion in cash on hand that they won’t invest in the economy; in putting people to work. Various terms have been used in the media on the subject, that Obama is trying to “charm” the CEO’s or “coax” them in to stop hoarding capital.

All the talk now is about “national unity”. Why would I want unity with the people that are slashing wages, cutting services, eliminating jobs and throwing people out of their homes? These forces are not our friends; they are our enemies. Friends don’t do such things to each other. Unity is a positive thing; but unity around what?

They don’t “coax” families out from under their shelter when they have been bled dry by the moneylender and can’t continue to pay them their pound of flesh. No, private property rights are paramount there and they will remove you by force.

The point was already raised today about the incredible pouring of mourning for 6 Americans while the US military machine slaughters thousands upon thousand of people abroad. Obama represents the real people that make policy decisions in this country, those that fill the boardrooms of the major corporations and the offices on Wall Street. They meet in Jackson Hole Wyoming, Doha and London with their foreign counterparts and discuss how best to manage the society they govern and plunder the wealth working people create.

The murders in Tucson are a national tragedy. We have similar tragedies every day as young people are killed in the streets, youth with no future and no chance of a job, harassed by the very same police forces that physically remove workers from their homes when they can’t pay the bank. There are thousands upon thousands of deaths in the US due entirely to the inability to pay for health care. There are another two million in prison.

It is not that the murders in Tucson are not real tragedies. It is the hypocrisy of those who are waging a war, not only against the workers of the world, but the workers of America using this tragedy for their own ends; that we have to oppose.