BEING CLASSIFIED

BEING CLASSIFIED: Back in the dark ages of our youth the grainy black and white pictures of Appalachia that accompanied the announcement of the War on Poverty on the evening TV news seemed impossibly remote to an overweight adolescent in the northeast megalopolis.

But for a view of the current War on the Poverty Stricken we needn’t do more than open our eyes and look around.

Two articles depicting Hawaii as especially cruel way appeared today, one telling the horrific details of homelessness in Honolulu in the lead-up to the APEC conference and another regarding how Hawaii is apparently a leader in the oppressive practice of making workers accept "independent contractor" status, forcing them to forgo any medical, vacation or unemployment benefits and pay their own excise and payroll taxes in full.

But the worst part is that when someone dares to ask those who are keeping the poverty stricken in their place at the bottom of society to pay more in taxes, they start screaming about a burgeoning "class war."

If only.

The fact is there has been an escalating class war going on for the last 200 plus year in America. It's called the free enterprise system and it has reached its inevitable tipping point where the only question is how much longer can the working class slide down the razor blade of life before the stealing class has it all.

Though the 21st century robber barons simply turn up the volume on Fox News to drown out the cries of those who are quickly discovering that they let go of their grasp on "middle class" status many years ago and are currently in free fall, their cries of "class war" are all the more ironic given that they've been long-engaged in one of their own that has brought most Americans to their economic knees.

A recent survey said that "only" two people out of ten believe that they will become millionaires in the next 10 years. Given the fact that "only" two in 88 have that much in assets, it means that there are an awful lot of delusional poor people out there who have been convinced they have a reason- assuming self-interest is a good one- to work hard so those millionaires can become billionaires.

Only in America could those who have accumulated almost all of the wealth have the gall to perpetrate a war on the poor and then claim that the potential for a modern day storming of the Bastille is reason enough to not just keep their absurdly low rate of taxation where it is, but to lower it further still rather than help provide food and shelter for those they've made homeless and starving.

We now return you to your current state of self-destructive, delusional apathy which is already in progress.