Working Life

You’ve probably read about the remarkable political rise of Syriza in Greece, in an election that was a rebuke of the European austerity model led by Germany. Next up: Spain.

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Well, a tip of the hat to some people in labor for reaching down and remembering they have a few cojones left–or maybe it was reaching deep into their pockets and remembering that they have the money, and there are a lot of people (read: politicians) who will do just about anything to get a check. Like vote against fast-track and the Trans Pacific Partnership.

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Workers get killed and injured every day on the job: just the daily toll the “free market” exacts for the glory of CEOs and their enrichment. Mostly, no one goes to jail–sound familiar?–because the laws of the country make it virtually impossible to hold anyone criminally liable when a worker dies. Today, a small tiny bit of justice was done in the case of Sarah Jones.

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Not to be holier than though, I’m writing this on a Mac Air…and the IPad is on the desk along with the Iphone. But, it did make me think: how many of my dollars did Apple find a way of stashing overseas in its $69.7 billion hoard that sits out of reach of the U.S. government? Not to wag a finger just at Apple, it’s a bunch of other tech companies that lead the way on stashing overseas $2.1 trillion in corporate taxes–and the number just swells.

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It’s a good thing when we use real words to describe the truth. When bankers rip off people with mortgage scams, it’s robbery–even if they get away with it because we have a government unwillingness to jail them. And, once and a while, a politician gets it right.

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It’s not enough that Goldman Sachs is a ” financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing.” The company has to dodge paying a fair share of taxes, too.

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Just in case you wondered if the pigs weren’t still at the trough looking to take every dollar they could.

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Good to see Elizabeth Warren taking on the Trans Pacific Partnership. Aside from her terrific leadership opposing Wall Street, her views on some other issues (for example, her fairly mainstream blindly pro-Israel views) have been less clearly progressive. But kudos on this.

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Let me give credit, up front, to a splendid idea from the actors Greg Wise and Emma Thompson that clarified my own outrage at a simple reality: the bankers destroyed the economy with their greed and incompetence, the Obama Administration lets each bank CEO off the hook with a negotiated deal for a fine that the institution, not the banker pays, and with no jail time for a single high-ranking Wall Streeter and WE PAY FOR THIS.

That’s right: each one of us, with our taxes, pays for this sleazy deal with the financial elite.

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We’ve never had a problem with finding money in the federal budget. Iraq War/Afghanistan/Drones? Pfft…a few trillion, no problem. Tax cuts for the rich? Here, take hundreds of billions of dollars. The problem is PRIORITIES and MORALITY.

Today, the question boils down to: does the Congress want to help 25 million kids and their families have a few dollars more in the household budget–to buy food, clothes and pay for heating–OR would the Congress rather give billions of dollars in useless, wasteful tax cuts to business?

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