Shrub and the Second Louisiana Purchase

[Hardrada]

Listening to NPR this morning, my blood is beginning to boil again. There's a story on about the situation in Louisiana, which has laws preventing gouging and profiteering from disaster situations. But said laws don't extend to "real estate." The insurance companies will only pay for damage caused by wind, not water, and all water-damaged structures are going to have to be torn down. To take advantage of this devastation, "out of state investors" are lining up to acquire big blocks of disaster properties at a huge discount with an eye towards reselling them when rebuilding starts. @$#%^&& am I getting sick of people using real estate to enrich themselves. These shitheads with bucks buy properties cheap and sell them high, and in the meanwhile they haven't done one iota of anything to improve anything, produce anything, create anything. The SOLE thing they've done is buy low and sell high, which drives prices up and lines their pocket. It's causing the average working Joe (or Marylou) to be unable to own a home, forcing him/her to live in rental properties -- which, natch, are going through the roof, too, because the rental properties also owned by "investors."
Meanwhile, arch-Rightwinger and ultra-corrupt Texas Congresman Tom DeLay declared yesterday that he won't allow the soaring deficit (paying for the Iraqi war, paying for the Katrina disaster) to cause taxes on the rich go "go up." Those congressmen still living on planet Earth have been saying that there's no way the tax cut for the super-rich should be instituted, given the enormity of the present problems we're facing in Iraq and Louisiana, but ol' DeLay said yesterday that since the cut has already been proposed, to deny the rich their cut would be tantamount to raising taxes, and by god, he won't stand for tax raises, period, doing that would be "disastrous." What a sleezoid toady for the ultra-wealthy (his constituency) -- pretending to take a moral stand by demanding tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of the population. And meanwhile all the poor shits getting most screwed by this arrangement can't wait to get in line to vote him back into office.
NPR also did a short piece on Bolinas, California this morning. As a way to cope with the out-of-control urban sprawl that's been eating them alive, the Bolinas city council passed an ordinance banning new water connections for 30 years. No new water connections = no new development. But no, wait! -- there's one more water connection available, connected to a condemned structure that's slated to be torn down. So that water connection was put up for auction. To date, bids for it have exceeded half a million dollars -- and that's just for the bleeping water connection! -- it doesn't include the property or any house or structure. I slap my forehead in utter disbelief. What planet are Californians from?
This country is barreling headlong into a two-tiered society of Haves and Have Nots, with the Haves firmly in control and making laws that blatantly benefit and further enrich the Haves at the expense of the Have Nots. The Have Nots, which include the working poor -- those who work full time (teachers, say), but don't get paid enough to afford half a million dollars for a water connection, or who can't afford to enrich themselves in the wake of hurricane devastation by buying properties at a song with an eye towards reselling them for every goddam penny they can get -- will be increasingly screwed. Every law, every regulation, every program designed to help and benefit the working poor (and/or middle class) is being gutted to finance further tax cuts and to implement programs designed to further benefit the already-affluent Haves. It's in this spirit that the Haves are portraying teachers and nurses as greedy, self-serving "special interest groups." It's in this spirit that DeLay insists it would be immoral to deny the upper-echelon wealthy their tax cut. And you can kiss unions goodbye -- they benefit only the Have Not workers; they're the bane of the Have bosses (and investors) yammering for further tax cuts, further deregulation, further gutting of environmental laws, further opportunities to enrich themselves even further without barriers or limits. The middle class is a myth, like the Unicorn. Who outside of Haleburton, et. al., benefits from the war in Iraq? Nowadays only the Haves can send their kids to Santa Cruz, Occidental, Stanford, UCLA, Princeton, Notre Dame, Duke. The Have Notters -- if they go at all -- attend University of Southern North Dakota Junior College at Hoople (downtown extension) in part-time evening and weekend programs designed to service those with full-time jobs (and taught by instructors who teach one or two classes on the side as a way to supplement their "day job" salaries). Two guesses which set of graduates will get the quality of education and degrees that lead to the kind of jobs (careers) that allow them to be "out of state investors," the recipient of Bush's tax cuts, afford the average cost of a home (half a million bucks and up in California). But come election day, you can bet the Have Nots push the Haves out of the way in their rush to be first in line to vote for Bush and Delay. Trailer park Republicans.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.7/112 - Release Date: 9/26/2005