Occupying Thoughts

It's not often I find myself agreeing with Toby Keith.

But there I was last week, nodding along with the "Boot in Your Ass" singer while he was on The Colbert Report. It boiled down the essence to why we're talking about the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent:

Globalization.

The second it became cheaper to have people half-way across the world answer phones and deal with your tech questions, it happened. And corporations and their Wall Street backers raked in the profits, leaving the rest of the country behind.

And they did it because it was the smart thing to do for the bottom line. It was the capitalist thing to do. And it left numerous Americans holding pink slips.

So, the corporations became richer and richer. And once you get that crazy rich, well, crazy bonuses are paid out. And expectations to continue making that kind of crazy money grows.

As does their lobbying for ways to make sure they're going to keep making that crazy money. Don't close the loopholes that allow us to hide money here, there and everywhere. Don't make it so we have to care for our employees and their health. And so on.

Of course, the job creators - and their supporters - are now playing the "Tax-me-and-I'll-take-my-ball-and-go" card. Only problem is, they - and their corporations -already have taken their ball and gone to places such as India, Mexico and anywhere else they can exploit cheap labor and lax regulations.

Ah, yes ... regulations. We can't do business here because of the regulations. You know, the regulations that make for safer work environments, the ones that call for safe disposal of waste and make sure that your children's toys are not covered in lead paint.

Why would we want those types of regulations?

I'm not saying that it's not hard to do business in this state or country due to taxes and regulations. But the arguments I keep hearing make me think that the only way they'll be happy and bring the overseas jobs back is if we go back to the way things were in the 1800s - you know things like child labor and 14-hour work days in smoky rooms lined with asbestos for pennies an hour.

OK, nobody really wants that. But why does it feel like that one has to go to that type of extreme to get someone's attention? Why are the sides - who in reality have the same goal, just different thoughts on how to get there - having to resort to tactics like name-calling and belittling?

Really? Are we children? Do we have to have Tea Partiers flinging mud at members of the Occupy Redlands because only 30 people showed up to a protest that was only organized with a week's notice - especially when comparing it to a regularly scheduled monthly meeting that has been planned for months (Hi, John!).

Same goes for the members of Occupy movement who'd rather insult Tea Partiers than listen to their ideas. Or the ones who'd rather incite violence - or do stupid things like relieve themselves on a police car - in the name of the betterment of our nation.

Of course, while all this is going on across the country, it seems like the only place nothing is happening is Washington. And that's more frustrating than anything else.

These are the people we elected to lead? Both sides are acting like petulant children who are upset the other got the last piece of Halloween candy.

Or worse - they're all paralyzed with fear that election season is nearing, and no one wants to hang their political butts out to dry over ... anything, especially when there's someone back in their home state looking for things to exploit. Not jobs, not taxes, not fixing essential services ... nothing.

Because Tea Partiers will rise up against any Republican member who shows even the smallest iota of cooperating with the Obama Administration. And Democrats already have a tough enough time explaining why they couldn't get anything done while they were in charge, and helping a Republican certainly isn't going to make inroads to the more liberal in the party.

OK, so I've kind of hit on a lot of points here. Maybe it's because I'm frustrated. A bunch more of my former co-workers were given pink slips this week. That was the second round of layoffs in five months, all in the name of satisfying shareholders and corporate leaders - including the CEO's, who had his salary tripled the year after the entire company had pay cuts forced upon them (and no, the rest of the employees did not have their salaries tripled - or their pay cuts returned). Oh, and the layoffs came after the parent company announced a 6 cent dividend payment to stockholders.

Yep, job creators all.