A look back at my 38 years of experiencing the joy and wonder of toiling endlessly for my daily bread (when I have been lucky enough employed), I can count on one hand the number of actual Labor Day holidays that I have not had to work. It strikes me as odd that corporate management, banks, federal buildings and most state and municipal offices are closed, except perhaps for the janitorial staff -- the folks who probably really could use a day off to put their feet up. Even in small businesses, the boss takes off to go to his lake house and the secretary who earns eght bucks an hour opens up early on Monday morning.
The Angry White Mom thinks something is wrong here. I thought Labor Day was supposed to celebrate
labor and laborers and laboring. But the upshot of it all is that the real laborers, the ones that really "git it done" would be docked in pay if they took the day off. Restaurant servers and cooks, any fast food worker, hotel clerks, grocery store workers, gas station attendants, retail clerks -- anyone who earns an hourly wage risks losing a whole day's pay if they don't report for work -- on Labor Day.
I was talking to my uncle the other day. By most standards, he is a Rich White Guy. He too is an American Dream Come True, A Small-Town Boy Makes Good -- a classic example of the conservative icon. A pretty decent guy, for all that, although I am admittedly biased -- he is my mother's brother. Anyway, he asked me if i had noticed that all of President Obama's economic advisors were from academia or bureaucrats --not one, he said, had actually run a business. He seemed disturbed by the notion, and that really started me thinking. I puzzled over it all day, reviewing my own disasterous attempts at trying to run a business (well, a few businesses) during the last decade, all of which tanked for a wide range of unforseeable reasons, despite my hard work and college degree.
I have come to the conclusion that no, it does not bother me one bit.
Afterall, we were led by the nose into Iraq by four losers who never served a day in the military, never
went to war, never saw combat or lost a friend to enemy fire. I am of course talking about the infamous
Gang of Four -- Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, who in my mind are war criminals for their lies and endorsement of torture. They had absolutely no clue about intelligence or military matters. At all. And the whole country (well except for a few of us, Barack Obama included) followed these arrogant chickenhawks down the garden path to the graves of more than 4,500 American men and women.
In terms of the economy, it was the leadership named above that led us into the worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression -- which a lot of these elderly misinformed Tea Partiers survived and you would think they ought to know the signs by now -- and yet Obama is blamed because it is taking a bit longer than expected to yank our butts out of the economic toilet left us by Wall Street and years of conservative-backed deregulation.
And yet these morons had plenty of business experience, Uncle. George Bush had run several businesses into the ground, and was only the "Managing Partner" for the Rangers for his name/face value --- the real controlling partners were smart enough to not give him anything important to do...Cheney served on the boards of lots of oil and gas companies just like George, but not for his management skills, but for the contacts he had over the years he had spent in Washington snarking out a bureaucratic career. Wolfowitz was tapped from the World Bank, where he consistently supported corporations dedicated to raping the Earth's natural resources in Brazil and in third world countries. Rumsfeld -- what can I say. I read "All the President's Men" years ago and remember clearly that Nixon's staff referred to him as "Rummy the Dummy."
"Nuf said.
On the other hand, I have seen that problems arise that elude even the most successful, the most experienced. And it is always the smart guy that figures out how to solve them. Look at that Dyson guy. This guy is on to something more than just better vacuum cleaners. He is revolutionizing the way we think of air and air currents and the implications for future travel is mind-boggling. So for me, I put my trust in the smart guy.
Sometimes smart guys are hard to find.They are not necessarily white, or affluent, formally educated,or even employed. Sometimes the smart guy is the quiet one at the back. Sometimes the rowdy class clown. Usually the smart guy is not the one in charge, but sometimes, you can get lucky.
Like Don, the manager of the Kwik Kar lube where i take my car to get its regular maintenance. Don is almost always there, except when he suffered a heart attack back a while ago. When all the bays are full
and his team is busy, Don has no trouble climbing down into the pit to service the next one in line. And he is smart, well-read, thoughtful and practices to be a good Christian man. Even though he is technically in charge, he has to straddle that line between labor and management. I can almost guarantee he doesn't get Labor Day off either.
And Barack Obama is the smartest guy in the White House in quite a while, no doubt about it. And he has really surrounded himself with other smart people. Some may be jerks but no one is perfect, after all. And
it has been this circle of smart people, even the unlikeable ones, that have reclaimed our country from
an economic cesspool. And they have done it without any help at all from the Republicans, the so-called
experienced businesspeople. -- the ones who claim to be experts on the economy, on small business, on taxes, etc.
It's not just the same ol' blind partisan stonewalling of any economic proposal offered by the White House. It's that they have nothing to offer except the same old tired tax breaks for the Rich and Near Rich and whining about the deficit. The truth about the work the Obama Administration --on its own -- has accomplished came out just in time for Labor Day. THE TRUTH IS: fewer jobs were lost in July than previously reported, and fewer jobs were lost than expected in August (just watch the Stock Markets jump on that news alone). THE TRUTH IS: that more outlets are reporting in, so small business establishments are on the increase again. THE TRUTH IS: that the recovery is slower than expected because the BANKS which were bailed out under Bushie and Republican legislation, are not lending to anyone's business, large or small, and so it is the BANKS, NOT OBAMA's policies, responsible for stifling our economic growth.THE TRUTH IS: that the administration proposed a small business tax credit bill before the Labor Day recess that bypasses this tight-fisted crap, but it wasn't passed and it remains before the Senate. THE TRUTH IS: this bill is paid for, none of it will add to the deficit. The bill is designed to stimulate job growth by increasing
proposes tax credits for small businesses for hiring more people and for capital gains free physical expansion.
Hey Capital Gains reduction. Isn't that another one of those conservative rally cries? Sounds good to me. Now if we could just get those Republicans off their butts and back to work on Monday. Uh, oh yeah. Tuesday.
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