So after class I decided to check out Governor Corbett’s Pa state budget address, and right in the beginning he enlightened me as to the problem at hand. He said, speaking of the U.S., we are “a nation that once produced wealth beyond calculation,” which “has now produced debt beyond reckoning.” Thanks a lot Corbett, I hadn’t realized that. Later he states: “I am here to say that education cannot be the only industry exempt from recession. Our public schools do important work and part of that work must include setting an example. I’m calling on the employees of our public schools -- administrators, teachers, support workers, everyone -- to hold the line. If it means a pay freeze, trust me, you’ll have plenty of company out there to keep you warm.” The audacity! Once again we see the republicans asking the average people to bear the brunt of economic hardship, while they simultaneously grant tax cuts to those who are wealthy beyond belief. It simply makes no sense. On one hand the republicans are claiming that there is no money and that we must all make sacrifices to deal with this problem, and yet, on the other hand, their actions are showing that the rich are seemingly exempt from this supposed sacrifice, which is really just another illicit mugging of the people, as none of us can really afford to forfeit what little wealth we have left, or accommodate the price hikes which will be a direct result of this fiscal plan.
Corbett continues by extending his request for sacrifice, to include not only basic education, but higher education as well, stating: “I am also calling on employees in the State System of Higher Education to consider sacrifice. I ask nothing more of our best educated people than to face up to a hard economic reality. The system in which you have flourished is in trouble. We cannot save it by individual efforts. The sacrifice must be collective…” Yes, we must all stop with our greed and surrender our green. It’s not right for us to make 45,000 dollars a year. That’s just an absurdity, especially when there are those who are only making 30,000 a year, absurd I say, we should all be making 30,000 dollars a year; that would only be fair. But nooo, we’re too greedy for that. “Pennsylvania needs to re-think how best to educate our children. We simply can’t work within a broken system. We need to change the whole system. We need a new set of priorities: child, parent, and teacher -- and in that order. What we have now in too many places are schools that don’t work,” he says. And he’s right, I mean, the system is broken… hello… we might as well get rid of it then.
“But, we can’t just get rid of it altogether!”
“I know, I know, that would be too difficult. Well, let’s at least stop spending so much money on something that’s just not working, I mean, c’mon, that’s just basic economics… isn’t it? Or common business practice, maybe?”
“…”
In the end, it all comes back to this, “I’m announcing a new governor’s task force on privatization. This panel will explore what jobs now performed by government might be better done by the private sector. The task force is not there to eliminate government -- it’s there to eliminate unnecessary government. It’s there to make sure that when government can get out of the way, it does so,” which Governor Corbett uttered near the end of his address. Everything that is going on right now points to this, an attack on the public sector, in an attempt to solidify the privatization of pretty much everything. If they can actually pull this off, and by “they” I mean the politicians/governments, the corporations, and the banking cartels, they will have successfully set up a capitalist wet dream and destroyed democracy once and for all. This separation of government may appear as a good thing, but believe me, I’ve recently read a book called Feed, wherein corporations have taken over every aspect of society, and I assure you, it is not a pretty site. Furthermore, when politicians “make sure that when government can get out of the way, it does so,” we get to witness pretty little events like the BP oil spill.
The real problem here is the concept of profit, which relates to the topic of this blog, as money is a false resource. We’ve created this monetary system, this monster, and now it is running us. We only fund what we consider to be profitable, and at the other extreme we cut anything we think is unprofitable. We cut the arts because we see little profit there. We cut philosophy because we think it no longer serves a profitable purpose. And now we are going to cut education altogether, simply because some jack-ass with a shitty fiscal plan thinks he can save this failed system? Meanwhile, we continue to fund big business through tax cuts! Corporate corruption is the cause of our current financial crisis, but we seem to have conveniently forgotten about that, or rather choose to ignore that fact. Well some of us have not forgotten, and will never forget, so let us reminisce for a second. The corporations take on huge loans from the banks, and then proceed to gamble this money on the stock market. Corruption leads to crooked bets, outright embezzling, and bad decisions… I know… big surprise. Then the corporations demand that the government bail them out, otherwise the economy will collapse. The government, being the benevolent institution that it is, decides to transfer this debt to the tax payers in order to save big business, and wait, it gets better…. Wait for it… THE ECONOMY STILL CRUMBLES! And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, our great government, in all its wisdom, decides to borrow a huge loan from the Federal Reserve to “stimulate the economy.” WTF!!! Seriously, the central problem is that there is too much money in the money supply, which is causing inflation to skyrocket and the dollar to continue its downward slope of devaluation. What we are currently coming to realize is that we cannot afford this massive, let me stress that again, MASSIVE debt. This is the problem, and bullshit fiscal plans will not solve this. It is a self destructive gene that has been inherent in the capitalist system ever since its conception. It has always been destined to destroy itself. Carl Marx called this an “internal contradiction,” and it is the direct result of our lack of foresight and wisdom.
“COMMUNISM! That’s just communist Ideology, COMUNIST I say!”
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