Best of The Zombieslayer

The Best of The Zombieslayer

America's dirty secret

September 12, 2005

My buddy "Norbert" is a big white guy who loves to party. He loves to party so much that he leaves the country and goes to places like Jamaica and Thailand where you can really let it out.

One day, he was waiting in line to get a motel room when he overheard the guy in front of him speaking in Thai about the room. They gave him one price, and then they gave Norbert, a big white American guy, a higher price. Little did they know, Norbert spoke Thai fluently. "Wait a minute," he said in Thai, "you gave him a cheaper price than you gave me."

"Oh," the motel dude answered in Thai. "That's because we take care of our own."

They take care of their own. You'll never see that in America. Instead, you'll see America take care of everyone else and take care of Americans last.

Case in point. Norbert, me, and a bunch of other people got our jobs outsourced to India simply because they could pay them less. We were white, black, yellow, brown, red, freckled, sunburnt, men, women, all Americans. All laid off in favor of cheaper labor overseas. Back in the old days, your job was guaranteed for life. Not anymore. I've never had job security. Ever.

Back in the 70s, my father was telling me that this outsourcing of manufacturing jobs would really hurt America. Nobody believed him. Now I'm seeing he's right.

The extent of third world poverty in the richest country in the world is America's dirty secret. It's not simply racism. If you travel the deep south, you'll see both blacks and whites flat broke, living in shacks that get destroyed about once every two decades by a flood or a hurricane. I'd talk to people about how bad the poverty was and nobody believed me. "You're exaggerating Zombieslayer. America doesn't have that level of poverty."

Now that you've seen the images of Hurricane Katrina, you know I'm not exaggerating. We do have that level of poverty, and we've never addressed it. LBJ said he was going to address it but got us in 'Nam instead. Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr all said they'd address it, but they're all in favor of oursourcing and globalism, which we all know where that leads to - making CEOs richer and leaving the common American employee without any job security.

Did you know that both Molokai and Lousiana have active leper colonies? The sad thing is, it's easily treatable and you or I could never get it, because you have to be malnourished to get leprosy. America still to this day has over one hundred lepers. It's because too many Americans live in a state of poverty that is not acceptable.

During Hurricane Katrina, being in Santa Barbara, I've heard a lot of upper class people say "why couldn't they just leave?" They're completely clueless to know for one thing, a lot of people had nowhere to go. Even if they had somewhere to go, they're assuming they have a working automobile. Even if they had a working automobile, a lot of Americans do not have the money for gas and wouldn't last a week in a motel. They know that. They know they don't have the money. So all they could do is wait and pray that it's not as bad as they heard it might be.

We can solve this problem. It's not that hard.

Have you ever talked to a McDonalds manager in an American ghetto? It's amazing how many applications these guys get. One myth about ghettos is that nobody wants to work. Sure, you have lazy folks who don't deserve getting welfare, but you also have a tremendous amount of people who would work if they could. So let's bring back the manufacturing jobs to America, you know, the ones we exported overseas. Let's start taking care of Americans for once.

Everyone talks about tax cuts for corporations as a reward. Screw that. I used to have a Berkshire Hathaway share, Warren Buffet's company (a B one, I'm not rich yet). If you have extra money, I'd highly recommend it. Made me 15% in six months. While having it, I got the annual shareholders booklet. In it, Warren Buffett blabs on and on. It's about the only fascinating economic rant I ever read.

He discussed how Berkshire Hathaway paid 16% of all American corporate income tax. The Berkshire Hathaway corporation didn't come even close to making 16% of all American corporate income. Why so high a tax? Because he's honest, and doesn't do crap like export jobs to save money and ask Congress to give him tax breaks to export American jobs overseas. And, he said that guess who will end up picking up the tab for that lost corporate tax? That's right, us American human taxpayers.

Let's start having tax penalties for corporations that export jobs. Heavy ones. Ones that are heavy enough to bring the jobs back to the states. And if corporations absolutely positively have to have a job outside America, let's give those jobs to Mexico. Mexico is our neighbor and they don't have nukes pointed at us like China does. In fact, during the Hurricane Katrina, they helped out more than any other nation.

Everyone pays for poverty, not just the ones impoverished. After Katrina, thousands of homeless families moved to other parts of the countries. My parents would have taken in a kid, but they got a foster kid a few weeks before the hurricane started. Their little town however has dozens of hurricane families. The elementary school my little brother went to in Houston had seven new families from the hurricane applying their kids there. Not only that, helping out these folks who lost everything will come out of our tax money (which I actually am glad for). If these people had decent jobs, they would have had enough money to flee the hurricane.

So let's bring these jobs back to America, and we can fix our dirty secret of poverty instead of trying to sweep it under the rug.

Shootin' Political Correctness in the head since May 2005. If you're soft skinned or weak at heart, you might want to try elsewhere.