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Health & Fitness

Happy Laborless Day

I'm tired of playground politics.

It’s called spin and the over five hundred members of congress, the senate, the president and vice president use it generously. It comes from slang used during the fifties, as in, to spin a yarn. Its most clear definition is public relations manipulation, and it has become a code word for propaganda.

Everything we are fed, is filtered through the spin machine, there is no way to determine where truth ends and where the spin begins. I guess on Labor Day, we should be glad our politicians have created a few new jobs. Including spin doctors and those on the spin control patrol.

 I’m certainly glad to have a job, but just because I continue to care about those who don’t, does not mean I must leave the country. Does it? I get so sick of those who continue to drink the partisan Kool Aid, saying, if you don’t like it leave it. I love it, I respect it, but it is my duty to change it, not buy every piece of political spin, those running for office, spit out.

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Let’s talk about Labor Day. Do you know the truth behind Labor Day? Labor Day was created to appease the unionists of the late eighteen hundreds. The official decree said it recognized those workers whose efforts contributed to the nation.

The reality, the government sent in thousands of soldiers and US Marshalls, to break up a strike by Pullman workers in 1894, killing many. The national holiday was hurriedly put in place, to pacify those strikers. What were they striking against? The Pullman Company was their employer and their landlord. Wages continued to drop, and the workers could no longer pay the landlords.

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Statistics can be bent and reshaped to support any view. Many are used to justify government activity or more aptly government inactivity. The national rate of unemployment is 8.3 percent. Am I wrong, there are more than 8.3 percent of those I know, out of work?

In fact, Labor Day is mostly a holiday for government employees. Today there will be cook out all across our great land; don’t let it bother you that many will be eating crackers with packets of catsup, mayo, mustard or jelly spread on them. Think of all the jobless. Do you think they understand the true meaning of this holiday? Think of those who actually keep the country running. The average American is working today. I have worked every Labor Day and have always found that ironic. The average American cannot afford to take this day off and jeopardizes his job if he dares to.

Our government continues to pass laws which give tax breaks to our largest companies, who then after taking those tax breaks, move out of the country anyway. Meanwhile, our small business owners do not get those breaks and actually create the most jobs and activity in our economy. They being strangles to death by the large corporations our government continues to support. The crazy part of this, those small business owners continue to support their Kool Aid carrying leaders because they support business. They do, just not small business, small businesses are not on the radar enough to have any effect on the policies that are destroying them.

Corporations continue to lobby successfully to erode our rights, our rights being the only pesky problems that stand in their or our government’s way. With the instituting of, At Will States, which are spreading, companies, can now treat their employees with any degree of maltreatment they see fit. The American worker now has no protection against unfair treatment. There was a time when unions were not needed, when companies treated their workers and families with respect, out of a sense of fairness. That fairness has long ago disappeared. By the way, statistics say that corporate profit margins are at an all time high.

So as you celebrate today, however you can, don’t worry. Those same statistics say that there are only ten homeless people and that most of them are homeless by choice. There are extremely few kids being abused, and most of those are running into the fists of their abusers from pure stupidity. The five children who are beaten to death each day are merely committing suicide by fist. The wars on drugs and terror are working, and the police and the prison systems are there for our protection.

Get over the Kool Aid laced presidential elections, the president makes little difference. Quit fighting about stupid, partisan politics and elect some congressmen and senators who will do their jobs, not live as royalty. If over five hundred of the most educated people in the country, with billions of dollars at their disposal, can’t balance the budget or eliminate the deficit, they don’t want to. Give them a taste of our new employment reality in America, fire them and find someone who can.

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