What About The Rest Of Us?

To my way of thinking, the demographics of the Them v. the Rest Of Us, break down this way:

2% = rich, super rich, and mega-corporations

20%  = so addlebrained that they believe anything that the 2%ers tell them

78%  = the Rest Of Us

The Rest Of Us come from both sides of the political spectrum and the middle. The Rest Of Us want to work and get paid a decent wage for it. We want a safe and secure work environment. We want to be healthy, but don’t think it’s fair for us to go broke, if we get sick. The Rest of Us want some social security when we retire and are still faithfully paying into various pension plans that are about to be raided by the U.S. House, so that the 2%ers can buy more solid gold toilets for their third homes in the Cayman Islands.

The Rest Of Us who have been trying to invest a little extra money for retirement are watching as our nest eggs are tanking. Nervous smaller 401K folks are pulling their money out of stocks, and the market plunges. The big investors (2%ers) pick up the leavings at bargain basement prices and the market rallies…for them only; because the Rest Of Us are now either already out of the market or never were in to begin with. Most of the Rest Of Us (if we still have a job) have been living from paycheck to paycheck, for quite some time.

The Rest Of Us who were lucky enough to finish college and are just starting to pay off our loans have no jobs. If we apply for graduate school, we will find that U.S. House just passed a bill requiring students to pay back these student loans while we are going to school, not after.

The Rest Of Us who might be recently unemployed, (because the mega-corps used the extra cash from their tax breaks to buy up other companies, fired workers by the thousands, to bring up their company’s stock value, and shipped 2.4 million jobs overseas), will find that the U.S. House cut off long-term unemployment benefits.

The Rest Of Us who might want to take a train or a plane anywhere better know that there is no more FAA, because the U.S. House will not fund the agency until the those 75,000-90,000 employees (now out of work anyway) agree to forgo any collective bargaining rights. No more airline/train inspectors; no more rules; great for the corporations…even after a bunch of the Rest Of Us get killed in a plane crash or literally run off the rails.

The Rest Of Us now have to take our chances on tainted meat, pesticide-filled veggies, and chemical-laced water, because the U.S. House cut funding for the FDA and the EPA.  Now they have no way to inspect agribusiness products and keep the water clear of pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and harmful chemical byproducts.

The Rest Of Us, who are not blonde haired and blue eyed, can now expect law enforcement in several states to stop us on the street and demand that we show them papers to prove that we have a right to live in our own country.

In 23 different states, The Rest Of Us, (college students, old people, the working poor, minorities) who may not have a state-issued photo ID, or are using an ID from another state, will be prevented from voting out the bastards who are currently doing all of the above to the Rest Of Us.

But, isn’t 78% more than 2% and more than 20%, or even 22%? Isn’t it time that the Rest Of Us got our noses out of our iCrap and start talking with each other about stuff other than what we had for dinner or Justin Bieber’s haircut? What do you say, folks. The Rest Of Us are already indentured servants, if we are lucky. Want to sit around watching football or Dancing With The Stars on your only day off while it gets worse? Of course you do, but they can and will take that away too and right out from under the La-Z-Boy on which you sit.

The 2%ers are just doing what they can get away with. The 20%ers are waiting for the Apocalypse to make everything right.  Things are getting worse daily because the Rest Of Us are letting it happen. Isn’t it time for the Rest Of Us to start paying attention? Acknowledging our common ground? Forming opinions? Talking with each other about December, maybe? Don’t you think?

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P.S. The Rest Of Us have suffered many, many more major setbacks and indignities than I have listed here, but the above is a rant, not a research paper. Feel free to think about your own personal pet screwage and log on to tell me about it. Or better yet, tell your friends. Might make for a more interesting discussion than Kim Kardasian’s wedding registry. Might not.

JBS