Good Christian white rich men rejoice! With
heart and
soul and voice! If
Calvin was right and the
Prosperity Gospel is true, then you are on your way to
heaven. Only, you may not want to stay long as
your Jesus will be hanging out with the poor people who's rights, benefits, and livelihoods you've crushed.
You say it's the middle class and public employees that are bankrupting America, especially those money-hoarding teachers, power-hungry nurses, and lazy road-construction workers. You hypocrites! You forget, that we are the poor souls are paying your salaries.
- Public employee Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin (Republican/Baptist), who with his Republican congress broke Wisconsin state open-meeting law to strip workers of their right to unionize, receives a state-provided salary: $137,092 (This was also his starting salary.) Those greedy public school teachers that you, good Baptist Walker, accuse of being overpaid, what do they make? The starting salary for a school teacher in Wisconsin is $25,222. The average salary of a Wisconsin public school teacher is $52,644. Why are you complaining, Walker? That's a deal, as the teachers and other public workers aren't provided with the same benefits as you, like a governor's mansion. If you really want equality, then every public employee of Wisconsin should have his/her housing paid for, like you. Hypocrite. (For more fun salary statistics see the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
- Speaker of the House John Boehner (Roman Catholic), who is fighting like a saint to cut programs that serve the poor and middle class, while extending and expanding tax cuts to large corporations and the upper class, is paid a salary of $223,500 of those middle and lower class' tax dollars. Boehner's left hand, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Baptist), makes $193,400; his right hand, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Jewish--Okay, so they're not all Christian hypocrites), $193,400. The current salary for "rank and file members" of the U.S. legislature is a measly $174,000. But you, six-figure politicians, demonize snowplow drivers, waterworks employees, firefighters, postal workers, and police officers for draining the nation's resources. (And let's not forget, that we tax payers are buying you anti-government-provided-healthcare Republicans the best government-supplied healthcare our tax dollars can buy, even though many of us don't have jobs that provide us with health insurance benefits.) Speaker Boehner, next time you get teary eyed talking about how horrendous the recession has been on the American people, I will personally bite my thumb at you and your Bush-Obama tax breaks for the wealthy, you members of congress, who during the first year of the recession saw your median personal fortunes rise from $785,515 to $911,510. Yes, you really do know what it's like to walk in my middle class shoes.
So, why don't all of you Tea Party/Republican politicians put your money where your mouth is and lower your wages, benefits, and expense accounts to the average made by your fellow public workers?
In Wisconsin, you would drop to a salary of $50,774; in Michigan, $58,801; and in Washington, DC, $82,607 (which is only $457 more than DC's private sector workers. Hmm. I wonder if the immense cluster of elected public officials and their six-figure salaries have anything to do with DC leading the nation's average public-sector salary?). Or better yet, you should all work for free. When you each average nearly a million dollars in personal wealth, why should we be paying you?
But the public money that the Scott Walkers and John Boeners of the world are being paid is peanuts compared to the billions their benevolent benefactors are making thanks to unprecedented tax cuts, courtesy of the political lobbying and campaign donations bought and paid for by
multi-billionaire heir David Koch (
Roman Catholic) and the like.
Mister Koch--Or shall we refer to you as "Master"?--you might want to catch up on the social ethics of your
own precious Holy (Dysfunctional) Mother Church, who has supported the right of workers to join unions and collectively bargain, not to mention a just wages,
universal healthcare,
taxation of the rich, and service to the poor, alien, and ill. Of course, Mother Church is still giving you and your Speaker Boehner communion, which makes her a hypocrite, as well.
Oh, America, when did you become so ungrateful? Oh, Middle Class, when did you become so ignorant, so easily duped? When will you wake up and see that the problem is not that public workers are paid too much but that private workers, whose corporate overlords are stuffing their pockets via tax loopholes they've bought and secured with your votes, are paid too little! You are fighting over the difference of a few thousand dollars, while the upper class of our nation, Wall Street thieves, and corporate hoarders are transferring wealth from the middle class to the upper 2% at unprecedented proportions.
The Forbes 400, the richest 400 individuals in the nation, have no amassed more wealth than a combined 155 million Americans.
Yes,
0.0001% of the American public holds 50% of the nation's wealth. Don't believe me, take it up with
Forbes and simple math (although I had to get out my old scientific calculator to divide 400 by 310,964,000). Trickle down economics--the warrior's cry of the Republican politicians of my youth--has shed it's grace on thee, upper 0.0001%.
But still, the GOP wants to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the poor and middle class. This chart from the
Center for American Progress says it all:
If faced with such an immoral disparity, what would Jesus do?
Apparently, the Jesus of the United States of America would take back the loaves and fishes he'd given to the middle class of Wisconsin, shake the snow from his sandals, and walk across the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to Wichita so he could hand-feed David Koch.
I've heard the middle and lower classes despairing on Facebook and in the streets, "What can we do?" "We're helpless." "We don't have the money to influence politicians like the corporations and billionaires do." Well still have the votes,
although the upper class is working pretty hard to take those away from us too. We have the numbers. It's time to STRIKE! If every public employee in this nation stopped working for one or two days, the nation would come to a standstill. And even David Koch couldn't save the upper class then.
Postscript: In my years as a Catholic school student, seminarian, and priest, I never once heard a private sector/Catholic school teacher or parish employee, who was making between twenty and forty thousand dollars while trying to feed a
natural-family-planning family of four or five children, ever say, "You know, I'm making just the right amount of money for what I do." So, let's not blame the state for being too generous to school teachers, when it's the private sector who refuses pay its workers a just wage.
Hug a teacher!
