Mariahxxx
Official Checked Star Member
I am no scientist nor do I claim to be one. I am neither a Sociologist or an Economist or an expert on anything other than giving a blow job. However I am an American tax payer, a business owner, a home owner, an investor and a parent. That qualifies me to speak about the problems in our country that affect the people like me. I do not speak for anyone other than myself, but my point is one I think many people would identify with, if not agree with. We'll see.
The US has been around a few hundred years now. We are a collection of peoples from all over and a very diverse population concentrated in larger cities while the rural areas and suburbs are mostly white.
The American Dream has become something of urban legend. If you happen to be born in one of those concentrated areas of ethnic diversity then your chances at the American Dream are far less than the white kid of the same financial status in the suburbs. It is considered a long shot at the very least. This isn't reverse racism or propaganda, this is a simple fact. We are evolving slowly, but the problem is that as we take our sweet time to evolve that population continues to grow at rates much faster than any other demographic, which freaks the white folks out because by the year 2020 they will no longer be the majority in America. The chances are that the power will not change greatly due to the voting laws and the concentration of these people allowing the sections of the country to remain heavily white or white controlled.
The economy of the united states is in serious trouble for most Americans. More than 80% of Americans are a paycheck away from being shit outta luck. Nearly half of Americans receive some form of social service or government assistance. And of that 50% 42% of them are employed. So the working poor are becoming our fastest growing group and that only benefits one group: the wealthy. When you control the wealth you control the people. The wealthy demand tax cuts while people work two jobs and still can't pay their bills. The wealthy have the luxury of buying justice when they are in trouble while the poor get overworked legal aid and public defenders who strike deals for them to take the felony with probation or send them off to prison. And as we all know, once you have a felony, you can no longer vote, which in almost all cases benefits the upper class and protects their interests.
A brown-skinned person selling weed is 100 times more likely to do prison time than a white kids in the suburbs who is selling ecstasy which has federal mandates and is a class A felony under federal statutes. That isn't an opinion, it's a fact. And who do brown-skinned people overwhelmingly vote for? Democrats right? This takes an entire group of people out of the voting pool and keeps them poor with few job possibilities due to the criminal record. Prisons are now for profit corporations so rehabilitation is no longer a goal of prisons. People returning to prison is good business for them as prisoners are now customers. Unfortunately in 2003 I spent 3 weeks in LA County jail for possession of a narcotic. In those 3 weeks I was woken up at 4 am every weekday and put on a bus to go to court, even though I didn't have court. They filled the bus every day and while some inmates actually had court, everyone else sat in a holding cell for 10 hours and then were bused back to the jail. I asked a guard why I kept being taken to court when I didn't have court and she explained to me that they got $222 for every prisoner moved by bus from the state. So moving me every day made them $222.
I was in jail for possession to use, not to sell and could have easily ended up with a criminal record. But it was my first time around and I had a family friend who is a famous criminal defense attorney in LA who represented me for free as a favor to my grandfather. I was given probation and after 3 years my case was expunged. But I was lucky. I could have easily been another statistic.
To see people so dismissive of people who are born with the world stacked against them is heartbreaking and pisses me the fuck off. Not everyone who is a success was born with it in their genetics, I know that. Many people busted their ass to make their lives worthwhile and I applaud them. I happened to have been born with a certain amount of looks that got me paid. I had the misfortune of having a family member take the specialness of sex away from me when I was a kid and so sex on camera meant little to me. I went from making $6 an hour answering phones at an office and hostessing at a mexican restaurant in the mall to suddenly making $20,000 a month doing what I was already doing for free. I didn't realize the long term affects because I was an 18 year old high school drop out with a 1 year old child. I moved from downtown LA to a nice apartment in West Hills in the valley. I bought a car that didn't break down and my son had every thing he could ever want or need. I was on state welfare and headed down a hopeless road and then making more money than I could spend. But what if I had been ugly and didn't get that opportunity? Where would my life be today?
So when you dismiss people you dismiss possibility. It's like throwing all your mail in the trash before you look at it. What if there is a check in there? What if you won the publisher's clearing house sweepstakes? You just threw away something / someone that might have become something special or important.
So this myth that the American Dream is out there for all of us is a big fat fucking lie. The reality is that there is a group of people who don't want the American Dream for very many people. That would impose on their agenda. That would slice the pie into too many pieces.
I know this will not sit well with some of you but the republican party is part of that group that doesn't want the pie sliced too much. They are already losing their base, but they will never lose the wealthy as long as the wealthy controls all of the money. To do that the war on drugs needs to continue so we can keep giving the poor and minorities felonies so they can't vote and can't succeed. They need the corporations to keep their freedom and limit or eliminate regulations to continue to impose their power on the people who work for them.
My step father has worked for AT&T since 1973. A company that was busted up for anti-trust violations in the mid 1980s and reformed again in 2005. He is turning 63 in December. AT&T decided in 2011 that they couldn't pay pensions any longer and they literally took more than half of his pension. Along with the market crash his 401k went from $280,000 to $119,000. The value of his house went from $640,000 to $230,000. He owes $390,000 on it. AT&T took his pension but still pay $50 million to have the stadium the Giants play in named after them. They contribute money to political campaigns and lobby against propositions like gay marriage.
He had half of his pension just taken away so they could pay for:
Contributions to candidates: $3,522,688
Contributions to Leadership PACs: $755,000
Contributions to parties: $600,477
Contributions to 527 committees: $2,156,675
Contributions to outside spending groups: $8,820
Republican Governors Assn $607,500
Democratic Governors Assn $553,375
Republican State Leadership Cmte $332,298
Democratic Legislative Campaign Cmte $275,000
Romney, Mitt $246,224
Obama, Barack $221,713
Republican National Cmte $165,746
Boehner, John $163,250
Democratic Attorneys General Assn $155,000
National Republican Senatorial Cmte $123,050
So you can look at their contributions and see that they hedge their bets, but they lean towards on side more than the other. They can throw this money around yet the people that work for them lose their pensions? There are no longer early retirement buy outs for employees, even the ones like my step father who have worked for them for 40 years. He will actually be penalized for retiring early even though he's had both knees replaced and has to have back surgery. He climbed poles and crawled around in underground tunnels for them his entire career.
This is the America we live in now. Big business today is NOT big business of yesteryear. Companies like AIG who get tax payer money to help them survive get to pay their CEO $50 million dollars yet layoff 2500 people.
So you can dismiss the poor people and you can blame rappers for ghetto drive by shootings and you can say that the republicans want to help everyone. But you are only fast tracking this country to 3rd world status faster. Sure we have running water. For now. We have A/C and electricity. For now. Mitt Romney said "I'm not concerned about the poor. There are programs setup to take care of them" what if there weren't? If you are very rich, you will be fine. You'll build a wall around your house and hire body guards. You'll live like a cartel king pin but you'll be living that way here in the US. If you think the political system is fixed now, wait another 10 years.
The US has been around a few hundred years now. We are a collection of peoples from all over and a very diverse population concentrated in larger cities while the rural areas and suburbs are mostly white.
The American Dream has become something of urban legend. If you happen to be born in one of those concentrated areas of ethnic diversity then your chances at the American Dream are far less than the white kid of the same financial status in the suburbs. It is considered a long shot at the very least. This isn't reverse racism or propaganda, this is a simple fact. We are evolving slowly, but the problem is that as we take our sweet time to evolve that population continues to grow at rates much faster than any other demographic, which freaks the white folks out because by the year 2020 they will no longer be the majority in America. The chances are that the power will not change greatly due to the voting laws and the concentration of these people allowing the sections of the country to remain heavily white or white controlled.
The economy of the united states is in serious trouble for most Americans. More than 80% of Americans are a paycheck away from being shit outta luck. Nearly half of Americans receive some form of social service or government assistance. And of that 50% 42% of them are employed. So the working poor are becoming our fastest growing group and that only benefits one group: the wealthy. When you control the wealth you control the people. The wealthy demand tax cuts while people work two jobs and still can't pay their bills. The wealthy have the luxury of buying justice when they are in trouble while the poor get overworked legal aid and public defenders who strike deals for them to take the felony with probation or send them off to prison. And as we all know, once you have a felony, you can no longer vote, which in almost all cases benefits the upper class and protects their interests.
A brown-skinned person selling weed is 100 times more likely to do prison time than a white kids in the suburbs who is selling ecstasy which has federal mandates and is a class A felony under federal statutes. That isn't an opinion, it's a fact. And who do brown-skinned people overwhelmingly vote for? Democrats right? This takes an entire group of people out of the voting pool and keeps them poor with few job possibilities due to the criminal record. Prisons are now for profit corporations so rehabilitation is no longer a goal of prisons. People returning to prison is good business for them as prisoners are now customers. Unfortunately in 2003 I spent 3 weeks in LA County jail for possession of a narcotic. In those 3 weeks I was woken up at 4 am every weekday and put on a bus to go to court, even though I didn't have court. They filled the bus every day and while some inmates actually had court, everyone else sat in a holding cell for 10 hours and then were bused back to the jail. I asked a guard why I kept being taken to court when I didn't have court and she explained to me that they got $222 for every prisoner moved by bus from the state. So moving me every day made them $222.
I was in jail for possession to use, not to sell and could have easily ended up with a criminal record. But it was my first time around and I had a family friend who is a famous criminal defense attorney in LA who represented me for free as a favor to my grandfather. I was given probation and after 3 years my case was expunged. But I was lucky. I could have easily been another statistic.
To see people so dismissive of people who are born with the world stacked against them is heartbreaking and pisses me the fuck off. Not everyone who is a success was born with it in their genetics, I know that. Many people busted their ass to make their lives worthwhile and I applaud them. I happened to have been born with a certain amount of looks that got me paid. I had the misfortune of having a family member take the specialness of sex away from me when I was a kid and so sex on camera meant little to me. I went from making $6 an hour answering phones at an office and hostessing at a mexican restaurant in the mall to suddenly making $20,000 a month doing what I was already doing for free. I didn't realize the long term affects because I was an 18 year old high school drop out with a 1 year old child. I moved from downtown LA to a nice apartment in West Hills in the valley. I bought a car that didn't break down and my son had every thing he could ever want or need. I was on state welfare and headed down a hopeless road and then making more money than I could spend. But what if I had been ugly and didn't get that opportunity? Where would my life be today?
So when you dismiss people you dismiss possibility. It's like throwing all your mail in the trash before you look at it. What if there is a check in there? What if you won the publisher's clearing house sweepstakes? You just threw away something / someone that might have become something special or important.
So this myth that the American Dream is out there for all of us is a big fat fucking lie. The reality is that there is a group of people who don't want the American Dream for very many people. That would impose on their agenda. That would slice the pie into too many pieces.
I know this will not sit well with some of you but the republican party is part of that group that doesn't want the pie sliced too much. They are already losing their base, but they will never lose the wealthy as long as the wealthy controls all of the money. To do that the war on drugs needs to continue so we can keep giving the poor and minorities felonies so they can't vote and can't succeed. They need the corporations to keep their freedom and limit or eliminate regulations to continue to impose their power on the people who work for them.
My step father has worked for AT&T since 1973. A company that was busted up for anti-trust violations in the mid 1980s and reformed again in 2005. He is turning 63 in December. AT&T decided in 2011 that they couldn't pay pensions any longer and they literally took more than half of his pension. Along with the market crash his 401k went from $280,000 to $119,000. The value of his house went from $640,000 to $230,000. He owes $390,000 on it. AT&T took his pension but still pay $50 million to have the stadium the Giants play in named after them. They contribute money to political campaigns and lobby against propositions like gay marriage.
He had half of his pension just taken away so they could pay for:
Contributions to candidates: $3,522,688
Contributions to Leadership PACs: $755,000
Contributions to parties: $600,477
Contributions to 527 committees: $2,156,675
Contributions to outside spending groups: $8,820
Republican Governors Assn $607,500
Democratic Governors Assn $553,375
Republican State Leadership Cmte $332,298
Democratic Legislative Campaign Cmte $275,000
Romney, Mitt $246,224
Obama, Barack $221,713
Republican National Cmte $165,746
Boehner, John $163,250
Democratic Attorneys General Assn $155,000
National Republican Senatorial Cmte $123,050
So you can look at their contributions and see that they hedge their bets, but they lean towards on side more than the other. They can throw this money around yet the people that work for them lose their pensions? There are no longer early retirement buy outs for employees, even the ones like my step father who have worked for them for 40 years. He will actually be penalized for retiring early even though he's had both knees replaced and has to have back surgery. He climbed poles and crawled around in underground tunnels for them his entire career.
This is the America we live in now. Big business today is NOT big business of yesteryear. Companies like AIG who get tax payer money to help them survive get to pay their CEO $50 million dollars yet layoff 2500 people.
So you can dismiss the poor people and you can blame rappers for ghetto drive by shootings and you can say that the republicans want to help everyone. But you are only fast tracking this country to 3rd world status faster. Sure we have running water. For now. We have A/C and electricity. For now. Mitt Romney said "I'm not concerned about the poor. There are programs setup to take care of them" what if there weren't? If you are very rich, you will be fine. You'll build a wall around your house and hire body guards. You'll live like a cartel king pin but you'll be living that way here in the US. If you think the political system is fixed now, wait another 10 years.
