Disaster... Serendipity... It's all in your point of view.
You can bet that the Cheap Labor Conservatives, currently in power, are howling. They're howling in glee.
Nope, they didn't cause the damned hurricane. But here are scads of opportunities to empty the Treasury on emergency relief projects, which will buy them all kinds of Brownie points that they can spend in the next election cycle. Never mind that they might have spent the same money, or less, on flood control projects over the last five years -- and didn't. Despite pleas from Louisiana's Senators and Representatives that they do so. No one will be allowed to remember that part -- or talk about it out loud.
In the aftermath, though, the Federal government will be that much deeper in debt (which the Investor Class is financing, with guaranteed tax-free interest going right into their pockets) and that much less able to maintain the social safety net that "Tax'n'Spend Libruls" have built over the past 70 years. As unemployment rates grow, the Cheap Labor Conservatives will buy slaves hire people for whatever pittance they care to pay. And the workers will take it, because it's better than starving.
Don't believe me? Okay then, start watching. How long will it be before the first rumblings start up on The Hill about repealing the federal minimum wage? You can bet that the talk will be all about the "good of the American worker", what with this artificially high minimum wage making Americans non-competitive with foreign workers... and we Cheap Labor Conservatives have no choice but to hire foreigners instead of Americans since, well, it's just good business, don't you understand?
Still don't believe me? Okay then... they didn't believe Cassandra either.
(Link thanks to technoshaman and beckyzoole.)
Nope, they didn't cause the damned hurricane. But here are scads of opportunities to empty the Treasury on emergency relief projects, which will buy them all kinds of Brownie points that they can spend in the next election cycle. Never mind that they might have spent the same money, or less, on flood control projects over the last five years -- and didn't. Despite pleas from Louisiana's Senators and Representatives that they do so. No one will be allowed to remember that part -- or talk about it out loud.
In the aftermath, though, the Federal government will be that much deeper in debt (which the Investor Class is financing, with guaranteed tax-free interest going right into their pockets) and that much less able to maintain the social safety net that "Tax'n'Spend Libruls" have built over the past 70 years. As unemployment rates grow, the Cheap Labor Conservatives will buy slaves hire people for whatever pittance they care to pay. And the workers will take it, because it's better than starving.
Don't believe me? Okay then, start watching. How long will it be before the first rumblings start up on The Hill about repealing the federal minimum wage? You can bet that the talk will be all about the "good of the American worker", what with this artificially high minimum wage making Americans non-competitive with foreign workers... and we Cheap Labor Conservatives have no choice but to hire foreigners instead of Americans since, well, it's just good business, don't you understand?
Still don't believe me? Okay then... they didn't believe Cassandra either.
(Link thanks to technoshaman and beckyzoole.)