Lazy Millenials, unreciprocated work ethic, and the right-wing race-to-the-bottom

Listening to Mighty House on WCPT-820 Saturday morning, the discussion turned to how the millenials entering the workforce expect a good job and benefits to be handed to them and are unwilling to pay their dues. Callers and Hosts lamented the lazy, entitled attitude of the younger generation.

This feeling about how the modern American worker is unwilling to do the menial tasks, or expects to much, or doesn't work hard enough is nothing new. Plato expressed dismay at how the young greeks weren't as industrious or studious as the young egyptians.

But, why should any American Worker exhibit unquestioning loyalty to Corporations? Why should a young worker bust his ass, put in his dues with the expectation of reward after achieving a level of seniority? Why would any worker give his time and life over to an American Company? Long ago Employers and Companies broke their end of the deal. Over the last 45 years, "American" Companies have turned their backs on the American Worker and actively sought to undermine the standard of living for every American.

Over at Fortune, Gene Marks tells employers what to do with a long-time, loyal, hard-working, dedicated, 20-year employee; Fire his Ass! Why You're Not a Jerk for Firing a Longtime Employee

So why should millenials or any American Worker break their backs, work overtime, miss holidays, weekends, family get-togethers, when it is incontrovertible that companies will dump that worker, raid their 401k, and off-shore their job as soon as a "Free Trade Deal" allows them too?

This false nostalgia and back-in-my-day bullshit of how American workers used to have can-do spirit and were willing to work-your-way-up-the-ladder should go the way of the private union. When Labor had a more equal footing with business in the mid-20th century, after bloody battles in the 19th and the efforts of America's Greatest President FDR, workers knew their sacrifice and hard work meant they would be rewarded. But, since then the Republican Party allowed itself to become the lapdog guardians of the 1% and began to crush Labor laws and protections.

Before his ousting for being insufficiently orthodox, Republican Eric Cantor was leading the effort by Republicans to ensure Companies could work employees hundreds of overtime hours and then never pay them for that work. Fortunately, that scheme failed and under Obama's NLRB and Department of Labor, other Conservative machinations, like Wage Theft and classifying hourly employees as management, have been severely punished.

This is why Republicans are furious with President Obama. For years the right-wing efforts to get Americans used to less benefits, lower pay, longer hours, and less employment security, while abolishing Unions and worker's rights had been progressing nicely under the direction of the Republican Party. And here comes Obama, ensuring employees get paid for overtime, expanding SSI coverage, increasing wages, and undercutting the right-wing dream of reducing the American worker to mercenary status pitting their time against any other worker in the world in a worldwide race to the bottom.

Republican Wimps cry and complain President Obama is being mean to Them

If anything the President has been entirely too cordial.

President Obama has now met with both the House and Senate Republicans about hammering out a solution prior to Default on October 17th. Eric Cantor described the House Republicans conference as “a very useful meeting.”

Oh shit...

Whenever Eric Cantor describes something as "very useful" hold on to your 401(k) because it means 99% of Americans are about to get screwed.

Of course, the ironically hilarious useful meetings and declaration by Republican Pete Sessions that, "We’re all working together now, "comes after days of Republicans blubbering that President Obama was being sooooo mean to them.

The Republicans are the biggest group of fake tough guys ever assembled. Right-Wingers learned during and after Vietnam to talk tough and walk tall from the safety of their plush air-conditioned security-laden DC playground far away from any dangerous battleground.

During World War IV (i.e the Global War on Terror), Generation Chickenhawk eschewed military service to fight the Islamo-Fascists and instead manned the keyboards of a thousand computer battling on the home front.

During the Iraq War, which Conservatives declared won on 11/22/08 to give George W(orst President Ever) military laurels, Right-Wingers continually and counter-factually attacked Liberals as weak on terror and anti-american when we questioned Bush's Blunders and Cheney's Bravado.

Iraq was primarily one of the reasons for President Obama victory in 2008.

Now, Barack Obama has handily won two Presidential elections yet he's been subjected to the most disgusting campaign of deliberate disrespect from elected Republicans. After 5 years of being the most moronic, uncouth, loutish, boorish insults of the President and his wife, the opaque and blatant threatening of his life and the safety of his children the Republicans are blubbering to every news host about how mean Barack Obama is being.

“It’s obvious any time he goes on TV,” Representative Austin Scott said. “I mean, words he uses to describe Congress, the tone of his voice, what he says, how he says it.”

Waaaaaah! Oh America the President's tone is so rude! 

What a joke. What a bunch of mewling babies. After the ignorant Joe Wilson shouted "You Lie!" during the State of the Union, Obama didn't break stride let alone breakdown like these Republican Wimps.

But, beyond that I've never seen a group of wimpish turds, like the Republicans, able to speak out of both sides of their mouths so effectively as they do about President Obama.

No matter the issue, President Obama is both a stone-cold Thug practicing Chicago-Style politics and a weak, ineffective leader weakening America at home and abroad.

They've done the same with the Shutdown, simultaneously telling their crazy Tea Party fanatics They Shutdown the Government, while slinking off to CNN and MSNBC to bemoan President Obama's and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's Shutdown of the Government.

Capitalism is just Feudalism with a new name

Well, the classic defense of capitalism as a system from much of its history has been, okay, it has this or that flaw. But it quote, unquote, "delivers the goods." The reality is that for at least 30 years now, that isn't true. For the majority of people, capitalism is not delivering the goods. It is delivering, arguably, the bads. - Richard Wolff, 08/09/13 during an interview by Bill Moyers

Wolff mentions during his great interview and with his Capitalism Hits the Fan roadshow is that Real Wages have remained stagnant for 30+ years. Of course, during this time costs (Healthcare, College, Homes) have all gone up and the productivity of the American Worker has increased while his pay has not. Americans have tried to combat this with dual incomes and with increased overtime. But, it's been a losing cause as we've seen more and more wealth accumulate with the Top 1% and even faster with the Top 0.01%, a group which owns more wealth and assets than the 150 million Americans.

Medieval Serfs worked less days than we do today. Of course, religion allowed them the extra days off but besides a 3-4 day work week (excepting for Harvest) the other days were the Serfs to hunt, fish and forage in the Commons and Forests to supplement his meager living.

Feudal Lords took better care to protect Serfs than Corporate Overlords do today. Nowadays, Wage Theft and Wage Slavery are the norm.

Restaurateur David Dadon and his son Barry, formerly co-owned the State Street Grill, engaged in a lengthy scheme of wage theft stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged unpaid wages from their workers. Father and son have been arrested by U.S. Marshals and charged by the California Labor Department with a number of crimes, including grand theft of labor. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is consistently against any protections for employees.

The Republican push to get overtime transferred into Compensated Time (CT) is a Grand Scheme to Bilk the working class of Billions in Pay. Overtime gets you extra money but the Republicans and their Corporate Overlords deem you to be their wage slave. The scheme is instead of paying you a company will create a bank of "CT" at a 1.5 to 1 ratio which a worker can then use to get an extra paid day off.

As masters of Orwellian Doublespeak, Eric Cantor and his Teahaddist co-sponsor Martha Roby titled their Wage Theft Bill, the Working Families Flexibility Act.

If a public employee is fired or retires their CT Bank must be paid out. Private sector workers are overwhelmingly at will. When your boss says 'No you can't use your CT', you can't and when you tell your boss you'd like the pay instead he'll give the overtime shift to someone else willing to take the comp time. And when your Company decides to fire you or when it goes belly up because the Owners are stealing are that bank of Comp Time you've saved won't be paid out to you the Invisible Hand will just make them vanish into the Free Market.

But, back in the Middle Ages Serfs could, sometimes, turn to the Church for comfort or aid or as a last bastion of assistance. Today, people had been able to count on the blessed reforms of FDR and LBJ to provide a Social Safety Net. Which is why ALEC, the Koch Brothers and the US Chamber of Commerce have demanded the Republicans (and Pro-Business Democrats) obliterate it.

And in a fight to rob Americans of the Birthrights and reduce us to penury and Wage Slavery no tactic is too despicable or too reprehensible. Which is why Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin, invoked Ronald Reagan's Spectre of Welfare Queens and Steak-Eatin Young Bucks,

So I’m in Crystal City and I’m buying my groceries…and I noticed everybody was giving that card. They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month. But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me.This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program. She was in the spandex, and you know, they were both physically fit. And they go up in front of me and they pay with that card. Fraud. Absolute 100% all it is is fraud…it’s all over the place. And there you go, to the fact that we shouldn’t be supporting those who won’t work.

This anecdotal Bullshit story by Mullin is designed to work the struggling duped right-wing voter into a frenzy in which they'll help destroy the Social Safety net, because the 1% love nothing more than for Americans to fasten the chains of bondage upon themselves.

And now if you do manage to overcome the obstacles Corporate Hegemony has created with their Republican Hitmen and get a good education the Reactionary Republicans will steal you back into poverty by raising payroll taxes and student loan rates. And by voting over and over and over and over and over and over 40 times to repeal the ACA so that more of your shrinking assets will go towards Healthcare coverage while at the same time helping shield Corporate profits from taxation and creating offshore havens for tax evasion by the 1%.

Facebook made more than $1,000,000,000 dollars in profits last year and didn't pay taxes on that profit. 30 Massive Corporations led by GE, Verizon, Boeing made a combined $205 billion in profits between 2008 and 2011 and 26 paid no federal corporate income tax.

No area is safe from the despicable Republican perpetual motion machine of enslavement to Corporate Hegemony. They declare Government doesn't work and then set about undermining, sabotaging, defunding and lying about Laws, Regulations, and Governmental entities.

Texas Governor Rick Perry screeches, 

"Somebody has to tell the E.P.A. that we don’t need you monkeying around and fiddling around and getting in our business with every kind of regulation you can dream up,” he said. “You’re doing nothing more than killing jobs. It’s a cemetery for jobs at the E.P.A."

Republicans in the House have unveiled their budget which drastically cuts funding for the EPA. Republicans who have sworn fealty to the Koch Brothers have also declared regardless of evidence they will never support Carbon Taxes.

Under President George W(orst Ever) Bush, the EPA was undermanned, restricted and defunded, so that Corporations were able to do whatever they wished like BP repeatedly dumping tons of heavy metals and poisionous hydrocarbons into Lake Michigan from their Whiting, Indiana plant and gross negligence in the Gulf of Mexico.

The gross violations by BP or Boeing or the Koch Brothers are on the macro scale on the micro scale AOL CEO Tim Armstrong used a video conference call to frighten and overawe his wage slave by summarily firing an employee named Abel.
We are living in a Reactionary Time when aided by Republican Lap Dogs Corporations are running rampant over workers. Everything is designed to make the Working Class fearful and accept their lot in life until your status as a working class wage slave is hereditary. Just like Medieval Serfdom.

Triple A, Standard Rookies and Poor Umpires

Born on Third, thinks he hit a Triple... ~ Molly Ivins of George W. Bush

Who could have foreseen that Standard & Poor's would downgrade the Credit Rating of America's debt? And why does S&P have any credibility?

The same group of Wall Street insiders who duped people into dumping their money into Wall Street by crafting bizarre mathematical derivatives, credit default swaps and giving bankrupt Ponzi schemers at Lehman Brothers, Bear Strearns and AIG, AAA ratings all the way up to when the bottom fell out, still have the power to forecast economic futures? Why didn't the Free Market eliminate a ratings agency like S&P which has either had some of the worst blunders in Financial History or colluded in the largest theft since biblical times?

I want to know why the all-powerful and all-knowing invisible hand of the Free Market hasn't strangled the likes of Jim Cramer? Jim Cramer recommended buying each and every one of the Investment banks on every show, which if you followed his advice would have netted you a loss of around 95% of your investment. For instance,

Jim Cramer recommended buying Lehman Brothers on 10/17/05 at $55.18 per share. On 9/5/08 with the stock trading at $16 per share, on CNBC, Cramer selected Lehman as a "screaming buy" and said things couldn't get any worse for the company. The firm went bankrupt and the stock trades for pennies per share for more than a 99 percent loss for Cramer.

I want to know how many Republicons other than Eric Cantor bet against the US economy by having their investment portfolios shored up with shorting long-term US Bonds? And I want to know which Hedge Fund Manager made Ten Billion dollars on his Billion Dollar bet that the US would lose it's credit rating?

Of course, if you wanted to be cynical you would say S&P did exactly what the Bankster criminals and Plutocrats wanted them to do. And after the Wall Street gambling bubble imploded and the Free Market was saved by Socialism what did the people get? Nothing. The Republicons in Congress have spent the last 3 years filibustering and impeding Wall Street regulation.

"I find it interesting to see S&P so vigilant now in downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Where were they four years ago when they, and other credit rating agencies, helped cause this horrendous recession by providing AAA ratings to worthless sub-prime mortgage securities on behalf of Wall Street investment firms? Where were they last December when Congress and the White House drove up the national debt by $700 billion by extending Bush's tax breaks for the rich?" - Senator Bernie Sanders

Precisely, Bernie. Where was S&P when the Free Market was falsifying data for the Plutocracy, the Bush Presidency and the Republican recession?

Update:
The Billion Dollar Hedge Fund wager is contested, but, Faux News and Right Wing blogs know a priori that evil George Soros did it...