I liked the guy locked up in his Chinese factory. His employees must have seen "Nine to Five" for the inspiration. We all know that "specialty medical supplies" like underpads, catheters, and Depends are a huge bilker of medicare/hospice programs.

I am in construction and other fields directly involved with real people everyday.

I love when people protest in the streets instead of complain to random innocents.

So many people are hurting so bad, i have never seen this many people this bad off in my whole life of 47 years in the cicago/il. Area.

All the wages went down or froze or jobs just disappeared. People with jobs cant keep up with cost of living increases.

The middle class is the only group that ""spends money"" and they are destroyed and destitue.

As douglas m says above, I too have "never seen so many people so bad off," and I am 73 years old, which is old enough to remember when the children of Appalachia, walking to and from public school, gleaned lumps of coal off the railroad tracks so their mothers would have sufficient fuel to cook their suppers. The gleaners were the daughters and sons of families so impoverished, the random droppings of steam-locomotive tenders and the region's endless processions of coal trains were often their only source of heat as well. Girls and boys alike carried little burlap sacks -- they called them "pokes" -- in which to fetch home whatever tiny quantities of coal they might find.

But oppressive as the 1950s were, as seemingly bottomless as Appalachian poverty was, the region's children still had rational expectations for at least somewhat better lives. Now though there is no hope at all -- which is why today's poverty is infinitely worse than anything the people of the United States have ever experienced. Yes, just as Mr. Hartmann says, the strikes and protests now sweeping the country have the potential of coalescing into a movement, which could in fact restore hopefulness to some factions within the 99 Percent. But that is not what the One Percent wants. What it wants is workers with the submissive hopelessness of slaves. That's why, the minute any real Working Class movement begins to form, the Ruling Class will again order their bought-and-paid-for politicians to crush it, the legions of oppression will again be unleashed, and like Occupy, the movement will be murdered before it is even fully born.

"I guess this is why so many 'cities' turned down Obama's transit money...They can't afford to run them." KEND

Really!?!?Please PLEASE tell me you are just a wee bit more intelligent than your comment lets on.

Cities did not turn down Transit money States did. Here in Florida, the big cities; Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and 60% of Fl. residents, were in favour of building a High Speed Passanger Rail System that would connect tourist and buisnesses to popular destination and their surrounding communities.
An independent study showed that such a system would have created over 13k jobs, and boosted construction. The study also showed a surplus of 25 million dollars within the first 10 years of opperation.

What was the slogan Dick Scott ran on???? I remember now..."Let's Get To Work!" After 3 years I've yet to see 'ol bald Dick prime the jobs market. The most he has done is enforce voter surpresion policies, cut money for education, Extend punishment to Convicted Felons by denying them a path to reinstate their voting rights (after they have paid their debt to society), and dismantle the Fl. EPA; Which if you don't already know Florida has some of the most diverse eccosystems in the country. Systems that not only support life but also bring in a butt load of tourist money. Without stricted enviromental policy and enforcement, developers will be allowed to clear cut land and back fill wetlands that are vital to a healthy enviroment and prosperous to our (Fl.) economy.

Charlie Crist 4 Govenor 2016

Right from the start, motivated by the out of control lust for greed and power, it has always been a goal of the rich and well-born to control government. They've always had the fear that with a true democracy such control would be tempered by the vast majority of, we the people. In a true democracy, we the people, would be able to pass legislation providing for social and economic justice. Laws making the rich pay their fair share of taxes and abide by environmental regulations are both good examples of a functional democracy.

The current democratic distemper is necessary to position and give labor a voice and status with ruling class like authority. Once this happens, in my opinion anyway, representative democracy can finally begin to function on behalf of the vast majority as it should.

How do we get there?........Communication is the key. We know the corp. media won't help. However taking to the streets and using social media is what we can do to facilitate this communication. Block ports supplying Walmart with slave produced goods, at least even with temporary disruption word will spread about the global economic injustice monopoly capitalism has wrought. Labor slow downs, wildcat strikes, efforts to unionize all large companies, etc., all would have an impact.

OH THE TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE.

I agree with your gloom & doom, yet profound, perspective. The only people we can blame for this demise, serfdom, and breakdown of a TRUE Demacratic Government are those that are greedy and abide by a "by any means necessary" ideology. Who specifically are these greedy swine??? EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN THAT HAS VOTED FOR A REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT AGENDA SINCE A CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM WAS ESTABLISHED.

The pot o water is a bubbl'en!

Downtown Chicago, which is the president's hometown, has many poor and homeless people asking for financial help on the streets. If Christians were really Christian, and if Americans at all care about their fellow citizens, there would be organizing to have a million or more person rally in Millenium Park or adjacent Grant Park against the federal budget cuts that will affect subsidized housing, against adequate housing subsidies and affordable housing so that there would be no waiting lists and homelessness in Chicago and elsewhere, against Illinois state and Chicago cuts in an already inadequate state and local mental health system, against a public school system that does not impress upon students the need to acquire the skills needed for a career, and what different realistic career options exist today, in conjunction with the Chicago Colleges or unions, that would help lift low-income children out of poverty. Progressives should be focusing in more on those who have no home and/or no job, and those who cannot earn very much or any money, due to disability or a lack of education.

It's time to stop running from the enemy, cross the Delaware, and take some prisoners. It's not over yet my friend, not by a long shot! Democratic Socialism is just around the corner.

Though normally I don't return to these threads after their first day, today some curious impulse brought me back, and I'm glad it did.

Let me begin by stating I have the greatest respect for DAnneMarc, who is first person I've encountered in many years who understands it was capitalist savagery that forced many unions to turn to Cosa Nostra for protection against corporate hitmen and thugs.

But to assert "the future is brighter than it seems" is to ignore not only human history, about which more in a moment, but to deny the impending double-apocalypse of terminal climate change and fossil-fuel bankruptcy. The former will make most of Earth uninhabitable by humans or any other sort of sentient life; the latter, because of our dependence on petroleum byproducts for virtually everything, will not only deny our species vital mobility; it will in fact end forever the very technology upon which we have become helplessly dependent. Which is, of course, precisely what is at stake. The Ruling Class -- let's call the One Percent by its correct name -- intends to survive at any cost. And to ensure its survival, it is methodically reducing all the rest of us to slaves, the "human capital" that will enable its survival, much as the slaves of Rome, Medieval Europe and the Antebellum South enabled the survival of their respective owners. Indeed the chronic failure of the Left to understand and name the diabolical purpose that fuels the One Percent's global thrust to impose zero-tolerance tyranny is the worst most devastating failure in the entire (long) history of humanitarian politics.

Moreover, because of its mastery of technology, the Ruling Class is now more powerful than at any time in human experience. Its power is in fact a replication of the omnipotence formerly presumed to be divine. Its mercilessness is shaped, not coincidentally, in the exact image of the bloodthirsty and sadistic god of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam): it sees all, knows all and relentlessly punishes those who do not bow to its mandates and submit to its whims. And in the face of such dreadful might, we humans are defenseless. The chasm of inequality that sets the oppressive power of the Ruling Class over the powerlessness of the masses has never in our species' history been greater. It is far greater than the financial inequality that separates the two classes. In fact there has never been an inequality of power that even approaches what it is now; it is literally as if we had been conquered by some inconceivably advanced alien species. Note the lessons of history: the French, for example, made a revolution by seizing the arsenals; so did the Russians. But any such attempted seizures today would be defeated by weapons more deadly than we can imagine. Even were the seizures to succeed, no more than one one-hundredth of one percent would have the education required to operate the unimaginably high-tech weapons so captured.

While in former times such inequalities of power prompted nonviolent resistance -- Gandhi in India is a classic example -- the success of nonviolence depends on two factors: these are its ability to evoke humanitarian feelings amongst the Ruling Class, and the unspoken threat that if nonviolence fails, violence will take its place. Both these factors are now utterly and forever nullified. The defining characteristic of the present-day Ruling Class is its moral imbecility; it is no more capable of humanitarianism than Ted Bundy was. It's moral imbecility is reinforced -- indeed demanded -- by the Ayn Rand doctrines that shape its paradigms of governance. As to unspoken threat, in Gandhi's case this was the certainty the superb intelligence services of the Soviet Union would do as their Tsarist predecessors had done in 1858 via the Sepoy Mutiny and foster armed rebellion throughout British India. But the existence of any such potential died forever with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the capitalist co-optation of China.

Unfortunately most USians who think of themselves as "progressives" do so from an emotional basis that has no grounding in historical reality. The truth of the human condition is that tyranny -- often unspeakable tyranny -- has been the norm since the advent of patriarchy about 4,000 years ago. To understand patriarchy's impact, think of it as the intellectual equivalent of the smallpox-infected blankets with which the Europeans, particularly the English, fatally weakened the First Nations peoples. Then reflect on the fact that as Abrahamic religion evolved from patriarchy, so did capitalism evolve directly from Abrahamic religion -- and so did fascism evolve directly from capitalism. By functional analysis of the resultant conditions -- hierarchy, private property, the notion of a favored class (men, the chosen, the saved, the successful) and a despised class (women, the poor, the disabled, the elderly) -- the kinship of patriarchy, Abrahamic religion, capitalism and fascism becomes undeniable.

Though most people dismiss these realities with the claim "it was ever thus," archaeology suggests otherwise. The matrifocal, probably matriarchal civilization we know as Minoan, for example, successfully evacuated the entire island we call Thera in advance of the volcanic debacle of 1600 BCE (Google "evacuation of thera," no quotes). The evacuation was total: not just all humans, but all pets, livestock, all movable goods. This suggests the correct answer to the lengthy dispute between capitalist-minded archaeologists, who identify the large Minoan government complexes as "palaces," and socialist-minded archaeologists, who identify these same structures as "administrative centers." Obviously to organize an event the size of the Theran evacuation -- at least 25,000 people and possibly many times more -- a vast and efficient administration was required. Contrast this to the abandonment of New Orleans to Katrina and you'll understand why a growing number, archaeologists included, regard Minoan civilization as representing the true apex of human achievement -- that we've literally been on a downward spiral since the sack of Knossos.

Be that as it may, the question before us today -- and it is my failure I did not make this clear in my original post -- is not only (false) hope versus (true) hopelessness. It is equally whether one has a moral obligation to resist even when one knows resistance is doomed. I will write and photograph as long as I am able. But I cannot answer for others. The best I can do is cite Jean-Paul Sarte:

...Resistance was a true democracy: for the soldier as for the commander, the same danger, the same forsakenness, the same total responsibility, the same absolute liberty within discipline. Thus, in darkness and in blood, a Republic was established, the strongest of Republics. Each of its citizens knew that he owed himself to all and that he could count only on himself alone. Each of them, in complete isolation, fulfilled his responsibility and his role in history. Each of them, standing against the oppressors, undertook to be himself, freely and irrevocably. And by choosing for himself in liberty, he chose the liberty of all... (from "Republic of Silence," pgs. 498-500, for which Google).