Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Voices, but no action

     The Big Dig is the name of a civil engineering project to help alleviate traffic in Boston, Massachusetts with a side effect of providing a beautification project on the surface by building all major highways through Boston underneath the city. From the beginning it was to take a good number of years and a large price, but we were promised that it would be worth it. On the surface (no pun intended) that appeared to be true. As time went on however, the budget over-runs and delays in construction have not only turned this project into a monster, but the newly built tunnels are already falling apart. Add to that waste of money, the city (read: taxpayers) gave $50 million dollars to purchase a parking lot, didn’t use it and then gave it back to the original owner. The problem is, the taxpayers had no say in giving the $50 million to the parking lot owner, nor did they have any say in giving the parking lot back.

     What really disturbs me is that just like all other reports of our government wasting our money, we will ultimately dismiss this as unimportant in our own personal lives, complain about how stupid the government is and (here comes the important part: ) THEN MOVE ON! Do you see a problem here? If not let me give you two.

     If the government is handing out $50 million for nothing, could I get $20,000 of that? If I and 2,499 of my fellow common people could get $20,000 each, I would use half of that to help the people I know that try so hard to get by, but still have to scrape pennies just to stay alive. The other half I would use to kick my electrical business into high gear and help create jobs and give others an opportunity to learn a trade or put themselves through school to learn some other useful service to society. “But you don’t believe in making money, in fact you rail against the system everyday,“ you protest. You are right my friend, but it is not us little people at the bottom that created and now abuse this system. In fact, not only are we getting stepped on by the people I am fighting against, (Whom I will speak of in a moment) but we spend our time fighting and getting angry with each other about our small share of the money instead of using our power of numbers to throw out the real criminals in this land.

     “Who are the real criminals, the government? You’re an anarchist right?” Why yes I am, but the government only protects the real criminals, while the real enemy creates petty criminals that you and I detest. The real criminals are the men who have nothing but money to help society, but even keep most of that for themselves. The real criminals are men who convince us not only to keep them alive, but give them lives of luxury without having to lend a helping hand by creating, producing, inventing, or discovering anything. The real criminals feed the government officials (not the government budgets, mind you) to pass laws allowing them to get even richer. The real criminals are those government officials who take $50 million of our money and use some fancy maneuvering to give a land owner a fat paycheck. On top of that, the real criminals have us convinced that We, the People are the real government and should allow it to remain because quite simply, if we didn’t like it, we can change it by electing different people in a clear cut election. Oh wait, we tried that (read: last two presidential elections.) Unless you are very rich, you won’t get very high up in the government. And if you do, you will start to become very rich, and your interests will no longer be the same as We, the People.

     Do you see why your life, as easy as it may seem at times is being lived to support these criminals at the top? Wouldn’t your family like to have their own personal military and police forces to allow you to do whatever you want? Oh, “That’s life.” Right? Yeah, I remember when the slaves use to say that. Of course that was in my past life. Now it’s time to make this our past life. Please join me. It doesn’t have to be a violent revolt…a conscientious and just revolt will do. For they have the money, but we have the power.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jay, In this society that we live in there are two classes. Yes , I said two. Once upon a time there were three, but you see the second class is dwilding down to nothing. In time there will be the rich and the poor. There will be no middle class of people .  The rich become richer because they get together and they rule the world.  You don't really believe that the president of any country truly rules his country?? Money rules countries and the ones with the most are the ones that have all the power and they weild it out as they see fit.  "Gifts": are given to congressman and senators and many others to accomplish what the very rich want. They provide the money to help the ones that they want in power and then they sit back and pull the strings of the puppets that get elected. If anyone of these puppets doesnt do as told they find ways to get rid of them.  If all the people knew how much money is wasted on useless and stupid projects every day by our federal , state, county and town governments they would be in shock for years. The problem here Jay is that people don't care. They don't want to get involved. As long as their day to day living isn't bothered and they have all the material things that they feel they are justified in having, why stick their necks out for the ones that don't have anything? Why bother if others are starving and have no place to live, I do care and I do talk about these things that are so stupid that our governments spend our money on, and you know people look at me and say that oh! here she goes again.  They don't care that all this money that could be used for the betterment of society is wasted. They have their piece of the pie and that is all that they care about.

Anonymous said...

continued

Once I had a petition I wanted people to sign for something very worthy , they didn't want to be bothered because it is a small town and if it backfired they would have been on the list and maybe black balled. No strength. Weakness will always be there in the mulitudes of people. They will voice their opinions loudly in front of you , but never when it counts. It is an ungoing battle and it will never end.

Anonymous said...

I wish you could believe that we can change this stuff "brightstar".  You are correct in a lot of ways, but don't for a minute believe that it is hopeless.  You never know how close you are until you give up...