Fat Cats Cash In and Main Street Pays

I don’t know about most of my friends but I’m in a situation where I’m probably as close to foreclosure on my home as I’ve ever been. My debts continue to mount up as credit cards continue to be the method to buy the essentials like groceries and gas. My “real money” goes to the mortgage and equity loan and paying barely above the minimum on the plastic. And I consider myself very fortunate.

As the disgusting parade of fat cats goes before the bloated and hypocritical Congress to beg for a bail out, people on Main Street are going without hope of any rescue. Main Street is a place all the politicians claim to know but the only time they ever want to be there is to lie and bluster for re-election. These people are clueless about the reality show called “life”.

How are mothers and fathers supposed to feed their kids and themselves with the huge increases in housing, food, gas, electric, water, clothing and heat? The American worker has seen a decade or more of wages either being decreased because of jobs eliminated to be sent off shore or wages staying the same after the minimal cost of living increases. The prices of all the essential items they need have escalated far above those costs of living amounting to 1-3%.

The average wage of an executive of a major corporation is over ten times that of an American worker making decent wages (over 50,000). And that executive has a mission to reduce the number of workers, reduce the costs of doing business and if necessary “gutting” the company. For this he or she gets rewarded with fabulous payoffs. Jack Welch of GE is the epitome of the corporate robber baron. He’s heartless, ruthless and totally without ethics or morality.

Sam Walton and family is the other robber baron that comes to mind. Wal-Mart has never seen a union it wouldn’t like to break. It started out claiming to be an American company with the flag waving in commercials on the tube. Today, it would be more appropriate if Wal-Mart did ads with the Chinese national flag waving in the wind. Wal-Mart’s biggest distribution center is in China. The majority of the products it sells are made in China by “cheap labor”. Cheap labor is a code word for slavery. It means children and impoverished adults are working 12-16 hours each day for a few dollars if the currency were converted to the dollar.

Wal-Mart has invaded Main Street USA and turned it into a ghost town. Local pharmacies, hardware stores, grocers, flower shops, book stores, music stores and opticians are historical artifacts of most small to medium towns and cities in America. Wal-Mart has run the locals out of business with their ruthless tactics of huge inventories being sold at prices a local business could never match. Eventually even the most loyal customer gives in to the low prices.

The American consumer loves Wal-Mart but rues the loss of their downtowns. What were once close communities are now just company towns of Wal-Mart and the big box stores. The employment of Main Street USA is dominated with retail and service industry jobs that aren’t paying enough for a family to live on. The health insurance offered is too expensive for employees to match the employer’s contribution. Parents are put in the position of having enough food and paying bills that keep the heat on or having healthcare for their children.

I knew a small business owner who knew she had a lump in her breast but didn’t feel she could afford a doctor’s appointment and keep her business going. The irony was her business was a medical supply company. When she finally went to the doctor she had advanced breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs, liver and bones. I knew her very well and she had always been thin. She managed to come out to Colorado for a visit and to let her brother try alternative medicine on her because the chemo and radiation had failed. She was left with palliative care until she died in a very short time.

When Marge got off the plane, my wife and I, both RNs, were shocked. She had edema (swelling) over her entire body. She looked like the Michelin man but her condition was real, painful and excruciating to see. She required a wheel-chair to get off the plane from Pennsylvania and we had to assist her in getting in and out of our car. She was very short of breath.

A year earlier, Marge had visited us and been in good spirits and seemed healthy except for a cough she felt she’d gotten from her plane trip. Actually she knew damn well what caused her cough. Her cancer was spreading to her lungs. We had a great visit with her. We took her to see the Avalanche in the playoffs the year they won the Cup. She’d never been to a hockey game but she loved it. She and my wife were a total hoot to watch and listen to. They yelled and screamed at refs and opposing players and cheered for every hit and goal the home team had. They laughed and did cheers. Marge was in her 50’s and my wife in her 40’s but they were having the fun of a child.

The contrast between the two years was startling for us. We took Marge to her brother in Pueblo, CO to be treated with needles, herbs and other treatments he was an expert at. He tried day and night to reverse the course of her illness but she had waited too long. One of the last days she was able to stay out of the hospital we took her to an Irish bar in Pueblo. She sat in her chair with arms and legs taut and sickly white in color but she flirted with the waiter, laughed at our silly attempts to lighten the mood and to bring her what little joy we could.

The next day, her daughter arrived to take her mom to a hospital in Denver. We adjourned to a hospital room as Marge slowly slipped away into death. We had a pizza party the night of her death. We stood watch over her through the night as her breathing became more and more labored. She tried to stay conscious to talk but finally went into a painful sub consciousness. Luckily we had nurses who understood the need for pain medications before it became too extreme.

Around 1 a.m. Marge’s breathing slowed into the final breaths before dying. She would have long gaps of time without breathing before the next shallow breath. And finally she let out a final gasp and her spirit left the hospital room. The group did a circle and prayed, and laughed and cried. We were glad Marge was no longer in pain. We were glad we had been there to see her final breath and to share our love with her.

Marge was my wife’s only sister. She helped raise Pam while her mother worked. They were very close. Marge took care of our kids while we went to school to get our degrees. And she died an unnecessary early death because she couldn’t afford early intervention and didn’t want to leave her family with huge debts from hospitals and doctors.

These are the choices Main Street USA faces. The fat cats of Wall Street play stupid games with the economy while the Congress turns a blind eye and the people like Marge struggle to stay out of debt to the point of killing themselves. Single moms, unemployed parents, latch-key kids and unsupervised teens are just the rabble to the fat cats. Their decision to gut a company to profit on its destruction means nothing to them. The loss of jobs, the misery associated with the closing of a business and the loss to Main Street USA is just part of the Wall Street “game”.

Since Ronald Reagan, the saint of the compassionate conservatives was President the people of Main Street USA were being sacrificed for the greed of Wall Street. The free market economy, with its trickle down, made Ronnie and his gang richer than ever before. Dot.com companies built a house of cards that was bound to crash but no one blinked or cried out the fall was coming.

After Ronnie, came the first Bush and voodoo economics and his answer was a small little war in the Middle East. After incinerating columns of fleeing Iraqis, victory was declared and sanctions imposed. Bill and Hillary followed with big ideas of moving to the center and stripping away welfare and entitlements for the weakest citizens. They overlooked the huge welfare being doled out to corporate America because they knew which side their bread was buttered on. Main Street USA continued to be ignored while the rich got even richer.

And finally, Dubya and Dick with Karl arrived to finish us off. First wars and destruction were started, and then the dismantling of the Constitution and Bill of Rights followed. White was black, day was night, fear, fear, fear and deny, deny, deny. The black hearted Queen had arrived and was going to take all the heads of the minions. The rabbit hole got larger and stranger and stranger. Doublespeak and police state became the norm. It was inevitable the fat cats would be allowed to raid the treasury before the dark evil forces of Bush left office. It was inevitable Main Street would have to sacrifice to keep the fat cats flush and fat. The only question is why is there so much damn surprise?

The fat cats win and folks like Marge continue to lose. That’s the American way.