Corporations are not people

I used to know a guy in college who always said, you are either for me or against me. Usually he wanted help in some way and everyone had a good laugh. But there is no laughing now. Sixteen million people unemployed with a double dip recession looming, one quarter of all mortgages under water, houses worthless, and a vanguard of zealots running for President who want to destroy Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. See Paul Ryans plan if you doubt what I am saying or watch Governor Perry in the debate last night.

These are the times of you are either for the people or against the people. Ideology aside. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, green whatever, this concerns the people. Black, white, yellow, brown, it doesn't matter your color. The people are on the line right now. The American Jobs Act will be unveiled and it will help middle class people. It will help the people. Even if you are employed and doing very well, this plan will be better than doing nothing because we might have a chance to get things going.

Corporate America will bail out nobody in the United States. They are in pursuit of other markets. They are in other countries where the emerging middle class has buying power. They are after those consumers. They are sitting on trillions and are not going to employ Americans because the American consumer has been shucked and left with only the husk. There is no more money for the corporations to mine. This is a basic concept. There is no Buy America. The buyers have left the country for ports where people can buy. And corporations are not churches, they do not have our best interests at heart. They could give a damn.

Mitt Romney was wrong. Corporations are not people. They are not feeling creatures. They are entities created to make money anywhere in the world. America to them is like a service station where you can pick up some gas and a few goodies, but you are on your way somewhere else. The right will try and obstruct Obamas plan. They have already begun. But they are not obstructing the Presidents plan. They are obstructing the people.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man  One Man's Search for the new American Dream. James Frey

Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds

So went Hemingways famous quote about his hometown of Oak Park. A reviewer of my recent novel, Rocket Man compared my take on modern suburbia to this quote. I would have to say that Hemingways quote seems mild by comparison. Rocket Man deals with another phenomenon not thought of in Hemingway's time--the corporification of suburban American. If Rocket Man deals with anything it deals with this final rung of our oligarchy (rule by the wealthy class) that has gone so horribly bad. But for years this is what we have had. A rule by the corporations of America and they have literally changed the landscape. Corporations thrive on homgenity, organization, streamlining complexities down to general assumptions. If we have on man do one thing then he can do that one thing all day long and be efficient at it. So went the thinking of Henry Ford when he came up with the assembly line. This basic maxim has spread out over the land in our homes that all look the same, our schools that churn out good little soldiers, not original thinkers, and our institutions, from churces on down that quite literally look like corproate buildings. Rocket Man's main character Dale Hammer is at sea not because he is so different in this landscape, he is failing because he refuses to be a cog not unilke the character in Orwells 1984. Dale is losing his home and struggling to keep his family together which includes his unemployed father who has come to live over his garage. In a sense they have been corporate refugees, hanging on to see when the next shoe will drop. In that way, they certainly do mirror us all.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

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