The Humble Farmer Speaks

     Uncle Jack has a friend named Robert Skoglund who lives up in Maine and calls himself The Humble Farmer when he is doing his radio show or his TV show or giving speeches or writing his "Whine and Snivel Newsletter".  Humble and Uncle Jack are in complete agreement about most matters political and economic and every once in a while he writes something that expresses Uncle Jack's views better than he could do it himself.  He did it this morning in his Newsletter so Uncle Jack thought he would pass it along.  He and Mrs. U.J. are leaving tomorrow morning for a week in Nags Head so he will have some pictures---maybe even a sunrise----later this week.

                                           Humble Explains How it Works

We read in the newspaper about a No Labels political organization that describes itself as a grassroots group that aims to convince politicians to put aside their party affiliations and, instead, work together to address the country’s problems. Ho ho ho, thinks I.  To begin with, in every country in every age there have really only been two political parties. One party, whatever it is called, is a collection of people who have banded together to support the financial interests of the wealthy merchant class. Back in the good old days, they bought slaves. Today it is only by keeping wages as low as possible that they can keep profits as high as possible. The other party, whatever it is called, consists of the millions of people who work for wages and the folks who work 18 hours a day to try to keep their little mom and pop stores afloat. These people have the same goals as the wealthy --- they also want their income to be as high as possible.  So there is an inherent conflict of interest between these two groups when it comes to the bottom line, which is --- how do we divide up the amount of money that came into our collective till on this working day?   The wealthy merchants have always had an advantage when it comes to getting more than their share of the money in the till because there are many ways to keep wages as low as possible. War is a sure-fire means of sucking the lifeblood out of the most prosperous society. Nothing makes the rich richer like a good meaningless war to “protect our freedom.” You can also create a recession and lots of unemployment. Unemployed people are more than willing to work for whatever scraps they can get. Because men are trying to feed hungry families, there is likely to be an increase in crime --- another win-win for the rich who own and service the privatized prisons.   About the only way the working class can negotiate for better wages and working conditions is to band together into an organization which, in English, is called a union. Unfortunately for working people everywhere, management has whispered in the ears of millions of its employees, “If you have to work for me for three dollars an hour, why should your friends across the street be getting four?” How can management lose, when it can get 75 percent of an uninformed labor force to write letters to the editor that cry out for lower wages? “I work as hard as they do. Why should they get more than me? These are hard times. We all have to sacrifice.” When it is possible to get millions of working people in any country to honestly believe that they deserve lower wages, that country is in grave danger.    

But back to the No Labels organization. When I read of any organization, the first thing I do is to Google around to find out who is behind that organization. In other words, which of the two so clearly delineated classes of people in any society is behind that particular organization: Who is going to get the money?   Would you believe that the page that came up on Google belonged to Rush Limbaugh? And in the middle of that page is a big circle. And in the middle of that circle it says --- in capital letters, “No Brains. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.”

(And so it goes)

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