The 99% And The Politics Of Hope

The 99% And The Politics Of Hope
By Marc D. Goldfinger

I remember when I was young and we had an insulated metal box out in front of our house for the milkman. He would come about every other day, take the empty bottles to be sterilized and refilled and drop off fresh milk topped with cream; it was delicious. It was the ultimate in recycling as well. We didn’t have throwaway lighters.

We had metal Zippo lighters for our cigarettes and we refilled them with lighter fluid. Of course, not as many people smoke nowadays; I’ve quit myself. I didn’t quit because of fear of cancer—I quit because I feel better, have more energy and didn’t want to give those corporate pigs my money at the expense of my well-being.

I remember the old days when we had a diaper service or washed the diapers out ourselves instead of wrapping synthetic diapers up and filling the dumps with them. It was a little more work but it was the ultimate in recycling.

I worked in a supermarket when I was young and one of my jobs was to collate all the soda bottles into the proper racks, so that when the soda truck came to unload all the fresh soda, we would help stack the used bottles back into the truck. The soda truck took them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and reused.

I think that beats our present system of returning, crushing, and remaking containers. It saved energy and was the ultimate in recycling. What do you think?

If you’ve noticed, when you click your remote for the TV, it goes on instantly. In the old days, it would take about one minute to warm up. The difference is, even while it is off, there is a unit in the TV that is always on and using electricity. When I walk through my house I notice all the instant-on devices and I have them connected to power strips, so that I can turn them off to save energy.

Back in the old days, we drank tap water. If anyone had said, in the 1950s, that one day we would be paying for water in plastic bottles, bottles made from petroleum, and they would be piling up in dumps all over the world, we would have thought they were crazy.

Also, in today’s world, our congressmen and women can’t even come to an agreement on a balanced budget. What are we paying them for? Obviously, they are totally incompetent, otherwise we would have a balanced budget. If our war machine wasn’t so gigantic we would have a surplus of money.

Mitt Romney, one of our current candidates for president, who happens to be one of the 1 percent, wants to boost our war machine money and cut Medicare and Medicaid. Why is it that the rich, who don’t need the money, want to take the services from the poor, who desperately need those services? Mitt Romney, in my opinion, is a greedy money- and power- addicted man who has no place in our government. Step away, pretty boy, and let people who care about people run for the presidency.

I can’t believe that Newt Gingrich is back running for president. His policies just 20 years ago almost destroyed our country and he was laughed into the background. He should have gone underground and stayed there, instead of surfacing and trying to be a vampire to our Social Security system.

Democrats have asked the richest 2 percent of Americans to step up to the plate and have their tax cuts created during the W. Bush era come to an end, for the good of our country. They don’t want to do it.

Many of us think that the Bush tax cuts should come to an end, which would pump $4 trillion into the U.S. Department of the Treasury over the next decade. That figure would more than meet the deficit supercommittee’s goals.

The way things look right now is that this committee that was supposed to straighten things out is failing miserably. This does not bode well for our country. That’s why I support Occupy Wall Street/Boston, etc.

Right now, the deficit committee is failing at their job totally on purpose, to make Barack Obama look bad. The last thing the 1 percent want is for Obama to serve another term, where his hands won’t be as tied as they are now.

Mitt Romney, at the debate on Nov. 22, 2011, was extremely critical of the Obama White House. It’s easy to stand outside the door and point epithets into the room at those who are trying to do the work. Mitt Romney is a specialist at that.

Let the 99 percent remember that Mitt doesn’t give a damn about us. He wants the presidency so bad that you can see him drooling when he thinks about it. Now Romney’s new thing is messed up hair because he wants to look like us.

But his bank account doesn’t look like ours. He’ll never need Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. He just wants a strong military. I mean, come on, we have the most powerful military in the world. We spend more arming ourselves and others, even people we fight, than any other country.

What we spend on the military in eight days could run all our schools at their current rate for a year. And our schools need money thrown their way. My daughter works in another country as a teacher because they made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. When she’s done working there, she’ll be fairly well-off but she’ll still be one of the 99 percent.

Our states, cities and towns should have the money to re-make our entire educational system. Cut the military by at least one-third and educate our children, our future. Or is it that people like Mitt Romney don’t care about the future—they just want it now—and they want it all.

For them the trickle-down theory works great—they are urinating on all of the 99 percent. I can’t even talk about the pepper spray incident at the college in California. Those are our children the police are brutalizing—and all they want is a better world for all of us to live in.

The Occupiers pay a great price. It’s not easy to camp out at the feet of the rich to wake a sleeping giant—I’ve been to the camps, read poetry at the camps, shed tears at Occupy Boston, read their newspaper. I’m proud that these people care so much about the world that they are enduring hardships to make their point.

Funny thing: Due to weather conditions this season, there are hardly any acorns coming down from the trees to feed the wildlife we share the cities and suburbs with. I’ve read that squirrels and chipmunks face dire consequences this winter because of a lack of food. It’s almost ironic. That’s us.

You’ll never see Mitt Romney at a food pantry unless he needs a sound bite — not food. I’m writing this before Thanksgiving and you will read it before Christmas, Chanukah, and New Year’s. Let’s work together folks and make this a better world. We can’t afford to build guns when we desperately need books and butter.

Marc D. Goldfinger is a formerly homeless vendor who is now housed. He can be reached at junkietroll@yahoo.com. Marc also has books on www.smashwords.net that can be downloaded for $2.99.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder