With Wall Street and corporate profits at record highs we should be swimming in trickle down goodness right freaking now.

But we are not. Because trickle down is bullcrap.

So the boss gets a raise and you don't. The boss gets a bigger raise than he would have otherwise by not giving you a raise. Scrooge gets to count coins, Cratchet gets a piece of coal, maybe. If he is lucky.

And Tiny Tim? Humbug!

Overpaid CEO's can not be the end-all-be-all of our economy, sneering Mitt Romney types who think you are lazy and want to be dependent on food stamps, because working to death being dependent on the kindness of a heartless millionaire wasn't good enough.

I could understand maybe if NO ONE at McDonald's was getting a raise this year. If they were cutting executive salaries and that sort of thing, but McDonald's isn't, nor is WalMart or the other big box stores that wiped out your local Mom and Pop stores. All those businesses are still chugging out profits and raises for executives, but the workers are ass out in the deal, No raise for you, Cratchet! Because the CEO's of these huge corporations have decided they would rather steal your raise so they can get a bigger raise themselves. That's the only way we get record profits AND growing, record poverty at the same time, the rich are making the poor even poorer for their own profit. It's that simple.

The rich are getting richer by PREVENTING "trickle down" from happening.

And they don't even bother lying to you about how it will "Trickle Down" anymore, do they? It's all austerity all the time now, and if you even mention that it isn't "Trickling Down" conservatives get mad at you for even bringing it up. The say you are engaging in class warfare if you dare mention that the "Trickle Down" isn't working. The Right Wing's plan for the poor is basically "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", meaning the right wing has nothing to offer the poor other than animosity and Republicans would rather you not ask since they don't like to talk about the poor anyway.

So you get pushed into whatever low wage job you can get and you struggle to survive and your measly pay isn't even enough to get by on and here comes your local Republican to make things harder for you if you ever need food assistance or unemployment insurance. We can't have you being dependent on anything other than your credit card, can we? In Republican America paying taxes is slavery and working for poverty wages until you die is freedom so quit complaining.

The next time you hear some meathead tell you that we can't raise the minimum wage or prices will go up ask them if that means ANYBODY should ever get a raise again? I mean, if rising wages means rising prices doesn't that mean that all wage increases are bad, or is that just wage increases for poor people? Does that mean that giving huge pay increases to the already rich might drive up the price of certain things like oh say housing? This logic says that paying poor people more is a bad thing, but paying rich people more is good because "trickle down".

Try as you might to make sense of this you can't. There is no logic to talking points against raising the minimum wage. It is just rooted in poor people = bad/lazy and rich people = Randian Supermen who must be coddled at all times and told how awesome and brilliant they are. The same crap Mitt Romney embodied that the GOP breathes on a daily basis, open hostility towards the poor and working class, is embedded in this notion, that poor people have it too good and should just try harder. Because if poor people aren't kept in constant misery they may get lazy and stop contributing, unlike rich people who shit pure rainbows.

McDonald's can afford to pay their workers better, they just don't want to. They refuse to. McDonald's, WalMart and all of these other big box stores has created a class of poor people stuck in dead end jobs who will always be poor and they call them "Associates". McDonald's and these other corporations will not pay their employees decent wages until they are forced to. The rich will lie and lie and say they can't afford to pay their employees, they will lie and say raising wages will force them to raise prices, it's a lie, a lie to keep you poor so they can continue to make themselves rich.

They will say anything to justify not paying their employees a better wage. And this is the basis for our entire economy. The rich are getting richer BECAUSE they are keeping the poor as poor as they can. Keeping you from getting a raise means my CEO compensation might triple this year. Some businesses like CostCo might do the right thing and pay their workers a good wage, but others will not, and that is why we need laws to set a fair floor for wages so that people don't get trapped having to work until they die just to stay poor. Poor people wouldn't need food stamps if they just got paid better, and if some CEO's weren't as grossly overpaid as they are maybe there would be a little money leftover to pay everyone else a raise.

Justifying greed is what conservatives live for. Hating the poor is just a bonus. The people who nominated Mitt Romney as their Presidential candidate a year ago bristle with hostility whenever you mention the poor. Resentment is a dish best served buffet style at the RNC convention. But at the heart of it is this, when conservatives say they are against raising the minimum wage they are admitting that trickle down is not supposed to help "those people". Conservatives are admitting that helping the poor simply isn't in the trickle down plan. Nope, the plan is bigger tax cuts for the rich. The better to eat you with.

So let's give a big round of applause to the people who are marching against McDonald's and WalMart and all the big box stores that make huge profits by keeping their workers underpaid, and remember, they always have money to give their CEO's a big pay increase each year, so when they say they can't afford to pay better wages they are just lying to you.

My apologies for not having written much lately, getting adjusted to life with my newborn daughter Janis has made it difficult for me to sit down and think, let alone write. I will be on the Ed Schultz show tonight on MSNBC. Hopefully you catch me there.

Peace and love to all,

Cheers