Here we go sailing into the new year of 2014 with democracy in the United States of America still in critical condition, with the rich and powerful continuing their assault on the working class, and foreign governments bribing our congress to affect our foreign policy.  Nothing new in this, but let’s take a quick overview of the most pressing crises impacting us at the moment.

For starters, it doesn’t seem to matter whether a democrat or republican holds the White House when it comes to so called “free trade” agreements, nor what the president in office said about free trade before being elected.  The U.S. government’s disastrous trade policies over the past couple of decades have enjoyed support from both houses of congress and all presidents, including the current leader, President Obama.  Once upon a time candidate Obama said that he never supported NAFTA and would not support any NAFTA like agreements, and promised to re-negotiate parts of treaty.  Once in office, not only did he reverse his pledge to re-negotiate it, but he has pushed through similar trade agreements.  Now, there is a huge  free trade deal that he is trying to push through congress called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will open up free trade with more poor countries such as Vietnam.  Apparently, it is becoming too expensive for American companies to run sweatshops in China and Bangladesh, and the corporations have written this new trade deal as part of their effort to ever expand and exploit the slave labor market, as well as circumvent environmental laws.  And, the Obama Administration has tried to have this pushed through congress through a procedure known as “fast track” which in essence tries to pressure congress for an up or down vote, with no amendments allowed, on the trade agreement.  This monstrosity has been in the works for over three years, and like the past sovereignty breaking “free trade” deals, it has been written in secret by corporate lobbyists, and under-reported in the media.

“Free Trade” shouldn’t be a partisan issue either way, it should be a near unanimous agreement against in.  Instead the opposite is true.  Although there has been superficial bickering over the years between the two parties over the various trade deals, in the end, the deals pass against the will of the American people as well as against the will of the citizens of the other countries involved in the agreements.  These agreements, purely and simply, are corporations agreeing on a new set of “international” laws that allow a way around any given country’s labor and environmental laws, for the purpose of exploiting the poorest countries for cheap labor and virtually no regulation of any kind.  For years, so-called mainstream economists and the press have made the false claims that these agreements grow economies by increasing exports and business globally.  In reality, they have done nothing but ship what was once good paying manufacturing jobs overseas where labor can be purchased for pennies on the dollar.  That these false claims are continually made with very little challenge to the complete lack of evidence is testimony to the power of the big business propaganda system.  When NAFTA was being debated under President Clinton, Ross Perot warned that if it passed, we would hear a “giant sucking sound” going south, the sound of American jobs and factories closing up shop in the U.S. and relocating to Mexico.  He was labeled a “protectionist” and “isolationist” at the time by NAFTA proponents.  Two decades later, he has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to have been absolutely correct.  His only miscalculation was that he may have underestimated the negative effects NAFTA would have on Mexico as well, such as the destruction of their traditional agriculture due to  having to compete with the flood of U.S. government subsidized, industrial agriculture.  Almost every citizen who is even remotely aware of NAFTA and other free trade agreements knows that jobs are outsourced because of this.  It is no mystery where the manufacturing jobs have gone and why.  What is less known is how it is not just trans-national corporations that have benefited from these immoral trade deals, but U.S. pharmaceutical industries as well.  They have managed to get poor countries who cannot afford the monopoly pricing of U.S. drugs to stop making generic versions for their citizens on their own, and agree to recognize the pharmaceutical companies’ “intellectual property rights.”  So their citizens must die in greater numbers so that our big pharmaceutical corporations can enrich themselves even further on the scam they already have our citizens enslaved to, and our politicians bribed to uphold.

And here at home, the republicans are adding insult to injury by continuing their war on the working class and the poor.  The emergency federal unemployment benefits that the republicans refused to renew but said they would take it back up after the Christmas break and after the democrats caved to them on the budget, well guess what?  Defeated.  So now those 1.3 million unemployed Americans that have just lost their unemployment benefit check – the really generous one, on average about $258 dollars a week – they are really shit out of luck. The number of unemployed people who are about to lose their benefits will drive this number even higher.  Also shit out of luck are their children that republicans pretend to care so much about before they are born.  But educated idiot, Senator Rand Paul apparently won over enough simple minded and/or stone cold hearts of greed and selfishness in his party on the idea that extending unemployment benefits “:would actually do a disservice to those workers.”  This of course implies that these workers have gotten spoiled living off their generous unemployment check and have become just too lazy to go and get a job.  Again, not to sound like a broken record, but experts still say there are 3 job seekers to every 1 job available.  But according to the tea-baggers, the lazy unemployed are the reason there are no jobs.  Mind blowing, but logic is not needed for a group that has been successfully brainwashed and indoctrinated to idea that the poor are lazy or drug-addicted or stupid and deserve to be poor.

The same disdain for the poor is displayed in the republicans’ contemptuous treatment of the hungry as well, even if they are employed but making poverty wages.  The spine-less Senate democrats had already agreed 4 billion dollars in cuts to the food stamp program (SNAP) over the next ten years, but the House of Clown republicans rolled over on the House Wet floor mat democrats and got that cut up to 9 billion.  But there is a laughable excuse being given the narrative of the press, even the supposedly liberal New York Times, that the 9 billion dollar cut to the already inadequate SNAP budget is still a lot less than 40 billion dollars the House Clowns had wanted.  We are to be grateful that we didn’t get screwed over and pissed on as badly as republicans wanted.  That overly generous, slightly over $4 dollars a day on average of food stamp benefits that has repeated scene cuts over the years to the point where we have more food insecurity in this country now than we did years ago, was just burning the ass of republicans and conservative assholes like Bill O’Reilly who’d rather led a kid go hungry before he’d give one penny to the father of the kid if one penny might buy booze or drugs (refer to previous Rant on Christmas).

Here’s the real kick in the ass to all this:  a clear majority of Americans favor extending unemployment benefits, and a clear majority do not think we should cut food stamps.  The democrats have the White House, and the Senate.  The tea-bag caucus in the House of Clowns, and the still allowed to fillibuster, sad sack of republican shits in the Senate (because Harry Reid still hasn’t manned up and ended that abuse entirely) have  gotten their way on almost all this, against the majority of the voters and against the majority in government.  That is dysfunctional democracy at its finest.

On foreign policy, it was seeming like there were some breaks of light through all the dark clouds, with U.S. bombing of Syria seemingly dropped from the plans for now, and with the historical talks and temporary agreement with the Iranians, led by the Obama Administration and Secretary of State John Kerry.  But, just as we now enter what is anticipated to be an even more challenging and dicey six months of intense negotiations with Iran regarding their nuclear program, members of congress – democrats and republicans – are attempting to sabotage the entire progress and process.  There is a push in the Senate to add more sanctions onto Iran now, which would kill the temporary deal negotiated with not just the U.S. but our Western allied countries as well.  According to the opposition in congress over the Iranian negotiations so far, Iran is the Big Bad Wolf that can’t be trusted and is menacing Israel with nuclear weapons to wipe them off the face of the earth.  Therefore, more economic warfare against its innocent citizens, which is what the sanctions amount to, should be increased, not negotiated away.  Of course, this is just regurgitated rhetoric from the neo-cons like Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu, but apparently Israel’s war-mongering hawks donate a lot of money to Washington politicians, and AIPAC and other high powered Israeli lobbyists have been working overtime to bend U.S. foreign policy towards doing their bidding, fighting their wars, and supporting their oppressive and murderous policies towards the Palestinians.    We already have a system of legalized bribery know as campaign finance laws – or we should say lack of laws, thanks to the Supreme Court.  It adds insult to injury that not only are our politicians bought out by the big banks and financial industry, the big oil industry, the big pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, and the trans-national corporations, but we also know for a fact that the foreign government of Israel has high powered Washington lobbyist donating lots of money to our political system, for the benefit of their foreign policy, not ours.  Often times mention of this gets a person quickly labeled as “anti-semetic” which is just a strong arm tactic designed to quell debate and dissension from what the Israeli warmongers want, and all to often, they succeed.  This current sabotage of the Iranian negotiations is unfortunately another one of the few bi-partisan agreements which our congress can conspire in unison on.

Our democracy is broken, and we will continue to see disappointment as the popular will of the American people is undermined by the true rulers of our country, the concentrated and heartless wealth of the super rich and their narrow interests.

Let’s not go down without a fight and a voice.

This music video seems fitting for all the greedy and their brainwashed, tea-bagging masses:

http://youtu.be/8gZEox8Crwc