The Symbol

The Symbol
By David Glenn Cox

The time comes and it overtakes us all, a time when all, which we thought, could never be so, is so. All of the things, which once seemed impossible, have now come to pass. The world as we once knew it is gone; our lives as we once knew them are inverted, contorted and pulled inside out.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, some thirty years ago, any motivation to promote Capitalism as superior economic system to the people has evaporated and ceased to exist. Our prisons are filled to the brim with two million citizens and yet crime flourishes all around us. Today’s criminals offer Payday loans, Car Title loans, Reverse Mortgages, cell phone contracts or predatory credit cards.

On the streets of any American city you can find a near endless supply of dangerous drugs. Theses drugs are made illicitly and smuggled into the United States, billions upon billions of dollars change hands and yet no one, except low level dealers ever winds up in jail. In the malls and strip malls of America, pharmaceutical manufactures peddle new drugs, not to cure disease, but merely to maintain the disease.

Our nation has now been at war for a decade; with no end in sight. The children of this nation have no understanding of a single day of peace in their lives. The children of this nation; do not know a day of a fully funded educational system, and in their youth, they do not know yet understand that their futures are being exported, expropriated and extinguished.

For more than a decade we have witnessed high crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated against the people. We have seen stolen elections, questionable returns capped with court decisions, which invalidate even the appearance of legitimate democracy.
The political process has worked for the exclusive benefit of the few at the expense of the many; there is no respite, no relief and no expectations of relief or respite.

Jesus ain’t coming, and Moses has retired, government no longer feeds us, but feeds off of us. The President will give his third State of the Union Address and in all honesty, who cares? The true state of the union is lousy and getting worse, stagnated and strangled by malicious neglect while I walk these streets of this new town with abject pessimism.

Stereotypes are common; but too easy to fall back upon. However, I have been in Portland for a week now and I have seen dry pavement only once. I know enough, to know, that I don’t know anything about this place yet.

I have learned that I am a flat lander; I am unfamiliar with elevations and with mountains.Portland is picturesque, nestled tightly among the hills and valleys. A city dominated by rivers, punctuated by mountains, which so far, have been completely obscured by rain clouds. I am an Easterner, that is a new identity for me, but I am in the far West and that is also a new identity. It is a time change and a sea change and a change in mindset.

Some things are the same everywhere I go, I have met the unemployed and they are me and they are you. The unemployed are the young veterans and the older guys like myself. This is my third city in a year, I’ve been to the South and to the North and now to the West and it is all the same and what will Obama say tonight? He will say that everything getting better, and then he will take credit for improvement which hasn’t occurred while he ignores the truth.

Number of Americans employed November 2011, 240,441,000
Number of Americans employed December 2011, 240,584,000

No longer in the labor force November 2011, 86,503,000
No longer in the labor force December 2011, 86,697,000

A gain of 143,000 new jobs, while 194,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market, but remember, December was hailed as a great month and yet, in reality, it was a terrible month.

Job losers and persons who completed Temporary jobs
December 2010- 8,995,000
December 2011- 7,691,000

On temporary layoff
December 2010- 1,547,000
December 2011- 1,385,000

Not on temporary layoff
December 2010- 7,448,000
December 2011- 6,306,000

See the improvement? Why at the current rate of improvement, we will have solved the unemployment problem in this country by, well… never!

New entrants to the job market
December 2010- 1,306,000
December 2011- 1,280.000

So 143,000 new jobs per month versus 100,000 new entrants now add in the fact that half of the jobs created in December were temporary jobs, Christmas jobs, and bogus jobs.

Obama will tell us a story tonight, a media fiction. Those loyal will cheer these lies and those on the other side will scowl. Immediately following Obama’s fantasy story hour the Republicans will tell their own pack of lies and yet, it does not matter. There is more knowledge to be gained by grooming your cat.

IRVINE, Calif. – Jan. 12, 2012 – RealtyTrac® , the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its Year-End 2011 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™, which shows a total of 2,698,967 foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,887,777 U.S. properties in 2011, a decrease of 34 percent in total properties from 2010. Foreclosure activity in 2011 was 33 percent below the 2009 total and 19 percent below the 2008 total.

Isn’t that great? There were only 1,887,777 auctions and home foreclosures in America last year, which means that seven and one half million more Americans were put out of their homes. And why were the foreclosure numbers so low last year? Was it due to an improved economy or rising wages? No, the foreclosures were slowed by the legalities of the Robo-signing scandal. How will Obama address that issue tonight, he will announce a new program where mortgage lenders bill the homeowners themselves.

A nation of nonsense, a national dialog which is one hundred percent pure unadulterated bull shit. Obama will beat the drums of war while preaching peace, he will preach of prosperity while millions recoil in poverty. Obama offers us nothing, he preaches and pontificates his way through George W, Bush’s third term.

As I visited the public park here in Portland, where the occupy movement was first camped, I found sections of chain link fence locking out the public. This public park was closed, fenced off, indefinitely; this public park was closed to dissent, permanently. It was fenced off no differently then Zuccotti Park in New York City. That is the true symbol for the state of the American union, fences, unemployed and homeless against a backdrop of smiling Obama speaking to a room filled with millionaires, criminals and tax cheats.

The speech was a show, a spectacle, a constitutionally mandated theater in the round. A clear illustration of big brotherism,

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”