Zodiac Times

I was watching a sad Russian movie yesterday about WWII and thought how truly traumatic were the first 50 years of the last century:
In 1905, there was an on-going Russian Japanese war that have lead to the first Russian revolution, and 20,000 people perished in the earth quake in India.
Then there was a Balkan war that grew into WWI, and lead to the second Russian revolution in 1917and millions upon millions people perished all over the world from war, hardship, hunger and influenza before 1920s
1920s were the tiny period of respite, and then in 1930s the decimation of humanity renewed in earnest. Where there was no war, there was Great Depression or other calamities. Europe and North America would not see peace and prosperity until 1950s.
Of course, the wars and revolutions did not disappear then. But they became localized enough and relegated mainly to the “Third World”, so those of us, born in Russia, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand in the second half of the 20th century thought of peace and prosperity as something akin to an entitlement.

Welcome to the 21st century! The 9/11 of 2001 brought in a new era of an amorphous globalized war where no one is safe anywhere, The Great Financial Crisis in “The First World” and some kind of endless economic decline.
Globalization, welcomed during prosperous 1990s, brought in wage deflation and price inflation.
This in not official news just yet, but we all feel it (except for the tiny percentage of truly rich). Middle class is being systematically outpriced into oblivion.
2011 began with uprisings in Middle-East and Middle of America. Please, don’t think that Wisconsin and Ohio protests are much different from the spark in Tunisia that inflamed the Arab world. Since it happened less then 2 months ago, you must remember that the whole thing started there after a poor street vendor in Tunisia put himself on fire after a new license requirement that made it impossible for him and his kind to eke a living any longer.
Wisconsin governor, by taking away the power of unions to bargain collectively, has put that state on Tunisia path. Unions are the last remaining stronghold of the middle class. Taking away their ability to bargain collectively makes them toothless and leads to wage decline.
But the rest of the states is not far behind.

I am not part of any union. Instead, I am a small business owner who since 2008 is struggling to pay rent!
Formerly a member of the dwindling middle class, I am now watching my pennies. I went to a store another day to buy ingredients for chicken soup (a cheaper meal alternative) and was flabbergasted that it came to whooping $13.31! (This means that each bowl of that soup came to $2). With food, transit, cable, insurance, phone and rent prices going up so fast, I am being squeezed out of comfortable living faster than I can type these words!
I am sure that all my readers feel the same pain. And the aweful truth is that it is bound to get much worse.
While the Arab world is likely now to put Islamic extremist in power (watch the price of oil to sky-rocket), I really blame the American media for the problems of the past 2 years. Why?

Well, here’s why:
The times when we used to get real news from TV were so long ago, that I am not even sure there was such a thing.
Everyday they get fluffier and fluffier. Last week, I turned on channel 7 to watch World News with Diane Sawyer and watched nothing but fluff public announcements like statistics of obesity, church going, etc.
Since when statistics qualify as news? Don’t we have world news like uprisings and stuff?

But that is not the real killer. The real killer that most of the news nowadays is about opinions, sensations and side taking. What happened to investigative journalism? It is long gone, thanks to the cost cutting. And cost cutting is what we hear day after day in the “news”. This kind of “opinion news” is what gave the power to such fringe elements in politics like Tea Party people.
But most of the people in America still think that whatever they hear on the “news” is kind of official truth.
Unfortunately, most people in America are not educated enough (read my http://underzodiacclock.com/2010/10/05/american-education-reform/) to discern the stupidity of this opinion which “the news” made so popular. So Tea Buggers got elected to Congress, and now wield the real power to cut whatever jobs we have left in this country.
PLEASE, realize that whenever they scream “Cut the cost”, it is a job somewhere that is being cut!
Everytime a job is being cut, WE ALL COLLECTIVELY BECOME POORER! A person with a job pays rent, enriching a landlord, buys groceries and lunches, enriching food makers and sellers and restauranters and waiters, keeps up appearance, enriching barbers and clothiers and buys stuff with discretional income, enriching manufacturers and importers. If the job pays enough, a job holder travels, enriching travel industry. The more job holders there are, the more jobs are generated everywhere – and vice versa.
With 9% unemployment, we cannot afford to cut costs (i.e. jobs)!
Tea buggers also want to cut so called entitlements (Social security, medicaid, medicare). What this mean to you, that you would have to pick up those costs and pay more for medical insurance and taking care of your elderly relatives.
Tea buggers don’t want to cut oil companies subsidies or big farm subsidies, and they don’t want to raise taxes on the truly rich to the level of 1990s when jobs were actually created.
In other words, they don’t want to raise revenue to help decrease deficit. They think they can reduce it by cutting jobs or at the very least cutting salaries (how else would you cut costs in the bare bones world of today?).
But that only leads to decreasing revenues (every job/ salary cut means less $ collected in taxes).
The unemployed and underpaid would then go on government rolls to collect unemployment benefits, foodstamps, etc., further burdening the remaining tax payers and financially strangling the government out of existence (which is perhaps what they ultimately want). After all, they scream for smaller government and total deregulation of business. I am still waiting on them to legislate in slave labour – as a business owner I can certainly use that!!!
What we don’t hear much on “the news” is that it is the stupid tax cuts implemented by Bush and the Republican party, as well as deregulation of business and the stupid Iraq war is what brought the American economy to its knees in the first place. But for the news to trace the problems down to their roots would be something akin investigative journalism and they don’t do it anymore.
So Americans forget the actual facts and adopt the announced opinions fed to them as facts by the media in the “news”.
So I have news for you:
There are going to be more uprisings in America. Because all uprisings start when population in general can no longer eke out a living.
CUT THE TEA PARTY!!!!