Desperate people do desperate things

While the TEA Party continues to play into the hands of Wall Street bankers and billionaires with delusions of grandeur the U.S. economy is once again swirling around the drain. If House Speaker John Boehner is successful in his oft stated goal of making President Obama a one term president we can all look forward to further austerity measures which will put the economy into a tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Herbert Hoover was President.

Many Americans were in desperate shape even prior to the Great Depression and once it struck their ranks only grew. Our parents and grandparents often went hungry sometimes for days on end. What is usually glossed over in history classes in this country is that there was quite a bit of civil unrest in this country in the early part of the 20^th century with labor strikes and government troops used by the corporate bosses to break those strikes often using deadly violence.

We’ve already seen pre-cursors to such heavy handed tactics in places like New York and the University of California at Davis where police pepper sprayed peaceful protestors who were sitting on the ground. What the Koch brothers and the Walton family seem to have forgotten is that in this age of improvised explosive devices when people have nothing left to lose they are willing to take measures that they would never have risked with just a little food on their tables and a roof over their heads.