Corporate coffers are stuffed full. Their piggy banks runneth over. And, as the chart below shows, since the mid-70s all real income growth has happened in the top 10% of earners – top managers, owners and CEOs. Businesses, however, continue to lay off workers. Then they demand more from those 'lucky' enough to keep their jobs (even though US workers already work more and get less time off than the workers of all the other industrialized nations).  

Us? We complain. We post on Facebook and Tweet our anger and dissatisfaction out in 140 character bursts. Some try to organize, but the numbers never materialize in a way that has real impact.

All the while, the fat cats not only get fatter and continue to over stuff their piggy banks, but they use the money they make at our expense to buy off D.C. in order to not only keep the loopholes which allow them to hold on to more of their money than the people who work for them, but to pass laws which make it easier to step on their workers, make themselves richer, and eliminate the very government assistance that would help the people they lay off or massively underpay.

Us? We bask in our staycations and try to forget for a few days that the future is bleak at the hands of our wealthy overlords.  

For me, as a minister, one of the worst parts is that the wealthy do all of this, including stepping on the “least of these,” so they can have even more U.S. currency which ironically proclaims "In God we trust." Then the salt in the wound from my ministerial perspective is how these fat cats convince people who understand themselves to be Christian to support the politicians and policies that will insure the rich get richer and that the “least of these” remain the “least of these”... only more so.  In God we trust?

Us? We argue with our neighbors about which political party is more to blame, completely missing the fact that it is just as much about who suffers as it is about who's to blame. Who suffers? All of us - including the people with which we are arguing on a daily bases.

We are a divide nation, but it isn't as simple as John Edward's “Two Americas.” We are divided in at least four ways. The richest of the rich are in charge. They aren't Republican, they aren't Libertarians... they are Privileged Plutocrats. That's group one. Group two are the poorest of the poor. They aren't Democrats, they aren't Blue-collar Republicans... they are Survivalist. Then there's the rest of us: Democrats, Republican, Independents, and a whole hoard of political movement wanna-bes from The Tea Party to The Green Party.  Ultimately though, all those groups are really just two groups. We've all bought into the narrative the Plutocrats and their hired political henchmen have been selling us. When it comes right down to it we are well divided down the middle, those who like what the current President (Bush, Obama) is doing and those who don't. 

A true governing class: Plutocrats. A class struggling for basic needs: Survivalist. And the divided middle: Us versus Them. Four Americas. Only one group benefits from that structure and not only do they like it that way, they designed it that way.

Us? We need to learn to see it for what it really is. Despite his deplorable morals, Edwards was right; there are “Two Americas.” He just drew the dividing line in the wrong place. There are “Two Americas”: the Plutocrat Overloards and The Rest of Us.

I'm afraid the Two Americas of which Edwards spoke are so divided against each other that we might never see the real divide. It is not political, religious, philosophical, or even ideological... it is economical.

The result of it all is that we've not only substituted real vacations for staycations but we've substituted protesting in the streets  for protesting in 140 character posts. (Ouch. I'm sure that really hits the Plutocrats where it hurts). Worst of all, we've substituted the convenient enemy (those who don't agree with us about the job the President is doing) for the actual enemy, the wealthiest Americans whose lives are more and more so a constant vacation.

It's time to focus our genuine and understandable disdain solely on the real enemy, the wealthy Plutocrats and their political henchmen, and stop taking it out on each other. If we want to actually hit them where it hurts we have to support movements like The Peoples Boycott and stick to our guns even when it means we have to pay a little extra for our bananas and paper plates. We must take to the streets in ever increasing numbers; we must stand for each other even when the issue doesn't effect us personally. When we vote, there must be only one issue that influences our vote: where the candidate's voting record stands on supporting the continued wealth grab by those who already have plenty of it.

It is time to take a stand - to do otherwise is to concede defeat... and that's what they are counting on.

Here's the thing about money, it's not magic. It doesn't poof away in a cloud of smoke. If there is a recession and you are losing money (no longer getting a paycheck, paying too much for every day goods, losing money in stocks, whatever), your money isn't magically disappearing. Although, admittedly, that is exactly what it feels like.

I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, and you might want to be sitting down for this, but when your money is no longer with you, it is with someone else. Oh yeah, they don't call it dirty money for nothing. It no longer likes your meager, substandard, peanut butter and jelly eating lifestyle. It is living it up with someone who can provide it with the standard of living it knows it deserves - champagne wishes and caviar dreams, rather than PBR hangovers and tuna fish sandwiches.

Deny it all you want, the GOP is trying to keep us in a recession. "Nonsense," you say, "why would anyone want to keep us in a recession?" I'm glad you asked. It's trickle up economics. When the middle and lower classes are relegated to a place where they find it increasingly difficult to hold on to their money because they  are unemployed, or because Unions are shut down and can't defend worker's rights, or because of any number of other outcomes connected with financially related policies of the GOP, the super-wealthy benefit.

While money isn't magic, it is remarkably buoyant and has a tendency to float to the top if the middle and lower classes aren't able to, literally, hold on to it for dear life. At that point, it is like shooting fish in a barrel for Momma and Daddy Warbucks. Maybe that's a bad metaphor.... um, it's like bobbing for dollars for the absurdly financially stable? Well, you get the picture. They are stuffing their pockets, purses, bank accounts (on and off-shore), and probably even their mattresses (some of those folk are... well, eccentric) with your money (cue the cheesy 70s porn music).  And your money is loving the change of scenery (not to mention it no longer has to listen to you going on and on about how it doesn't do for you what it used to do for you).

The role of the travel agent in this indecent little tale is being played by the GOP... technically, it is more like they are being played, like puppets (which is a whole different level of dirty). They are being played by wealthy corporations and the abundantly rich. These corporations and high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) own the GOP as well as an unfortunately large chunk of what used to be a system of government of, for and by the people. That's why they want a double dip recession. Yes, it also would give them something to throw at the man who was Commander in Chief when his forces took down our nation's most diabolical enemy in decades as he runs for what is likely to be a second term in office, but the real strength of doing it is making money for HNWIs. 

As it turns out, they can make plenty of money with a democratic President in place as long as the recession continues. Having a Republican President is just icing on the cake. Just check out  Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management's "World Wealth Report 2011" and you'll see how true it is. While the rest of us were lucky if our income stayed stable, let alone increased any, the HNWIs of the world thrived growing more than 10% last year alone and experiencing growth during the previous years of recession even when there was a democratic President. Let none of us believe that we are equally sharing the burden of the recession. We are not.

You want your money back? Stop sitting around moping about how it left you. Tell it you want it back. That you are sorry for ignoring it. That you won't let Big Corporations and HNWIs jerk it around any more. If you have to pick a fight with the people who took it, so be it. Tell it that you really do value it. Tell it by voting out the GOP. Tell it by insisting on laws that protect the middle and lower classes and their money rather than ones that play into the hand of the super rich. Tell it you care by investing it in companies that give back to the community and to those in need. Because I can tell you this, until we stand up for it and for the middle and lower classes,our money is going to be sleeping at our wealthy "friends" home and sooner or later it will get so comfortable that it may never come home.

Related Posts:
An Open Letter To the New House Majority
Repubs To The Least of These, "Get Your Own"
Why Republicans Don't Want a Christian President

I continue to be beyond frustrated with the “leadership” in Congress.  Ultimately, the failure to do anything but help the rich and pat the poor on the head with programs designed to appease them much more than to provide any meaningful assistance, can be blamed on both sides.  The Democrats can be blamed for sometimes being complicit in the actions and other times simply not having enough political backbone to stand up the the Republicans.  The Republicans can be blamed for consistently favoring their rich benefactors over the majority of their supporters and constituents who fall into the working class which continues to become (thanks in part to Congress) a poorer and poorer class.

You have to admire the Republicans (in a perverse “hate what you do but admire how well you do it” sort of way) for how consistently they have pulled off their game.  They are running both the short and the long con.  For decades now, they have been working diligently to wedge the classes further apart.  At first I thought they we doing it by decreasing the size of the middle class, increasing the size of the lower class and strengthening both the resolve and power of the upper class via  rules and regulations (or lack thereof) designed to achieve said results.

More recently, I've begun to think I completely missed the boat.  While it is true that in the US the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the most important statistic is that the gap between the top 1%, in terms of wealth, and the rest of us is as bad as it is has been in 90 years.  The top 1% of the US have almost 39% of the wealth in the US.  And a full 50% of our population own only 2.5% of the over all wealth.  (All data above and below is from The Institute on Policy Study).

Change the measurement to stocks, bonds and mutual funds and that percent shifts to a whopping 51% of the wealth being owned by the top 1%.  Expand that 1% to the top 10% and 90% (no, that is no a typo) of what I'll call the “Wall Street Wealth” is owned by them.  Anyone still wondering why there was a Wall Street bailout and not a Main Street bailout?

It's not that the Republicans are trying to decrease the size of the middle class.  They are trying to widen the gap between the wealthy and the middle class effectively reducing the middle class to a working class poor by comparison to the wealthy.  I might add that they are rather successfully doing so. 

While the top 1% have seen their share of capital income increase by nearly 20% over the last twenty years, the bottom 80% have seen theirs fall by almost 15%.  CEO's income has risen 300% in that time.  Corporate profits have increased by 106%... and worker's pay has increased a measly 4.3%.  You have to hand it to the Republicans – they are good at this.

What is surprising is how well they play the working middle class.  A surprisingly high number of that group of people are some of the stanchest supporters of Republicans.  The Republicans are playing a long con here, making promises and appearing one way while working as hard as they know how to achieve results that rip off their strongest supporters.  All the while, their actions tell the tale saying to those not in the top 10%, “get your own.”

Recent battles on the hill should be more than enough to pull the curtain back to reveal congressional Republican's real motivation, as they work hard to stop Obamacare, stop extending unemployment checks and, at the same time, extend tax cuts to the wealthiest 1%.  While they do, they wrap themselves in the flag, shout things like “down with socialism” and “no taxes,”  in an attempt to endear themselves to middle class America.  All the while, they are working to install a plutocracy operating under the false front of a democracy in America... and they are doing it in God's name.

And that's where we should ultimately see thorough their ruse most clearly.  Adopting Christian precepts to support stepping on the least of these, to intentionally marginalize part of a society, to relegate a particular segment of a population to a place where they struggle to maintain good health, shelter and food while a small percentage of the elite dine of the backs of the least of these... well, that should be a con that just won't sell.

My question is, when is the Church going to do something about it?  My question is, when are you, when am I, when are we going to do something about it?  We have the numbers, just not the money.  We still live in a democracy (for now).  When are we going to do something about it?

(UPDATE: More on this from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) - Bravo Sen. Sanders!!)