Monday, June 12, 2006

 

Economic Gaslighting: "That's Not Rain On My Leg!"

As the callers' reactions to a recent Minnesota Public Radio show touting the "strength" of our economy show, Americans know full well that most of them are decidedly worse off than they were before Bush took office. Ironically, a recent story in the Minneapolis StarTribune gives the lie to the economic happy-talk gaslighting:

Food shelves in Twin Cities suburbs -- even affluent ones -- are suddenly busier than they've ever been, according to a report to be released this morning. A state study that is undertaken only twice each decade will reveal a huge jump in visits in places such as Eden Prairie, Minnetonka and Golden Valley, according to Hunger Solutions Minnesota, the organization that coordinates the work of the shelves. In Eden Prairie, it says, the number of visits for free food soared from slightly more than 1,500 in 2000 to nearly 10,000 last year. "Hunger is not an issue that just affects homeless people on downtown streets," said Colleen Moriarty, executive director of Hunger Solutions. "They also live next door." Beneath the numbers, experts say, lie a number of intriguing messages, including a rise in affordable apartments in many suburbs long considered bastions of wealth [PW notes: This is bull -- the 'burbs experiencing the biggest rise in food-shelf visits simply don't allow affordable apartments], and a widening gap between wages, on the one hand, and rents and mortgage payments on the other. The report comes weeks after one from suburban Dakota County, whose board of commissioners learned last month of a sudden increase in poverty after decades of low and stable rates. The most notable increases in the food shelf study, however, occurred in Eden Prairie and other cities in neighboring Hennepin County, suggesting a wider suburban phenomenon. By comparison, use of food shelves in Minneapolis, in the same stretch, barely budged...
We're still seven million jobs short of where we should be to have the level of employment we had when Bush took office. The GOP/Media Complex's gaslighting isn't working any more. People know they're being screwed. Some of them are even figuring out who's screwing them.


Comments:
When are people going to wake up...when they have to walk around people asking for help? Or are they going to accept that as "just the way things are" in the "greatest country" in the world?
 
People ARE waking up, Anonymous. They're realizing that something is wrong. The big question is: Will they blame the right people?
 
You're right. People know there is something wrong but it is mind boggling to me that there are still those (too many) who haven't come to the realization that lunatics are in charge, have done this to our country & that the media is not liberal, instead it has failed us miserably. It's probably too shocking for people, even now, to comprehend that this could happen in the US..they can't imagine that we are not impervious to this level of corruption & incompentence..that our so-called leaders are actually capable of such criminal behavior. The better question is are they going to hold the right people responsible.
 
All we can do is talk to our friends, family, and neighbors, Anon. We don't control the media which keeps spreading lies about how wonderful it all is. We don't control the government, which is increasingly printing outright lies. But truth is on our side.
 
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