America’s Workforce Betrayed
Millions are losing their jobs in America’s depressed economy brought on by greedy, immoral corporate executives who have abused their positions, grievously dishonored and betrayed their honorable hard-working employees and investors, and financially raped the entire nation. In so doing they have brought the American workforce to the precipice of another humiliating and degrading great depression.
So we read in Proverbs 1:19 in the KJV:
“So are the ways of everyone that is greedy of gain;
which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.”
Greedy corporate executives have in fact imperiled American lives and rubbed the faces of betrayed, hard-working Americans in the excrement of their monetary gluttony.
And to add insult to injury, under the Bush and Obama administrations government is bailing out with trillions of taxpayer dollars, the very corporate crooks who robbed Americans of their finances and their futures to begin with. Economists tell us that if the trillions of dollars of bail out money to the fat cats were given to the American public, each American citizen would receive $42,000.00 and the economy as well as jobs would explode with new life.
But as it is being done, our government , facing the greatest mortgage crisis this nation has ever seen, is instead mortgaging the lives of generations of our grandchildren by what many are rightly calling “Generational Theft.” As a result our children’s children will be weighed down with scandalous trillions of dollars of national debt requiring higher taxation that they will not have the resources to cope with. A nation that has no conscience in murdering her young apparently has no conscience in robbing them either.
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GM OR IGM
And then what do the corporate money-mongers do with the bail-out billions? They give millions of those same unearned and undeserved dollars in criminal compensations to those who are at the heart of this massive corporate fraud. For crying out loud, whatever happened to no dessert unless you do a good job on your dinner? Rewarding those who have been up to their necks in fraud loans, cooking the books and mark to market accounting! It is all comparable to the husband and wife who due to materialistic addiction, financial recklessness and sheer selfishness, declared and received bankruptcy status and celebrated by going on a shopping spree.
But what do these greedy corporate monsters care anyway, for their mantra is “IGM” – “I GOT MINE! Which also means, “NUTS TO THE REST!” That is what General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have become, metaphors for corporate and executive greed. The big oil companies slaking their unquenchable money thirst at the pump at the consumer’s expense. No matter how quickly we draw the nozzle gun, the oil companies shoot us in the billfolds first. Bang, bang your dead!
Just put “I” before “GM” and you have the symbol for corporate America today, whether it is Exxon, Mobil, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers or AIG etc. The list goes on!
Fraud mortgages being sold by banker flim-flams like popcorn, and millions being forced out of their homes like cattle driven out to pasture. Dear God, in America we once hung horse thieves, but now we reward house thieves with bail-out billions. Perhaps we ought to create new jobs with the sounds of gallows-construction one again.
After receiving 25 billion dollars from the government (from us), the big three asked for 25 billion dollars more. Greed is oblivious to anyone or anything else. Why? Because:
“GREED HAS NO CAPACITY WHATSOEVER TO HOLD ITS LUSTFUL
SELF IN CHECK. IT JUST KEEPS ON COMPOUNDING ITS
THEFT AND DESTRUCTIVENESS.”
Now that General Motor’s CEO Rick Wagoner has stepped down at President Obama’s behest, one can only wonder what his million dollar compensation will be! Many years ago Jill Brand was chosen as the CEO of Mattel Toy Company. She was hired with the idea that she could turn the company around because the company was not doing well. And after two years she had failed in her attempt to infuse new life into Mattel and she was asked to resign. They gave her 50 million dollars in severance pay, which was actually the betrayed workers’ and stockholders’ money, which dollars they would never see a dime of. Greed! IGM!
Corporate greed has sickened America for many decades and now her economy is on the critical list. Greed on Wall Street has and is robbing Main Street. Corporate executives are destroying their own houses which is exactly what Proverbs 15:27 said would happen:
“He that is greedy of gain troubleth his
own house….”
Have we already forgotten Enron Corporation, the fraud trials of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and the sight of the betrayed workers carrying out what remained of their lives in cardboard boxes? The exit parade of betrayed workers had just begun. Little did we know that it was only the beginning of greed’s domino effect in corporate America!
Yes I know, I have earlier called them “corporate crooks” which are very strong words, but somehow “corporate cons” seems not only more appropriate but mandatory and by no means off limits. It is not only Bernie Madoff who made off with 65 billions of dirty money. There are many others who should join him in the slammer.
I do however see some good coming out of it already! Americans are being forced to dig down deep to find their deeper and only real and reliable source in the God Who they have been so blasphemously asking to bless America even as they curse Him. God is always working his higher purposes in everything. (Ephesians 1:11)
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IS THAT ETHICAL?
Come now, are we really that surprised by it all? American companies for years have used sex and women to get the account, and keep it by the same immoral means. Companies who wine and dine and use not only women but liquor to get the account! Companies who use trips to get the account!
You see, in America there is very little if any ethical sense left. Ethics is based on absolutes. Ethics means that there are some things that are always right and there are other things that are always wrong. On that basis conduct and misconduct is judged to be ethical or unethical.
Not anymore! We now live in a society where “Absolutism” has been replaced by “Pragmatism.” Basically pragmatism means simply that if something works, it must be good. Of course, there are many things that work in corporate America that are completely unethical, have no element of goodness and are evil and rotten to the core.
Ethics is no longer taught in American Universities, but rather they are teaching basic Pragmatism. Even the virtue of honesty has been cast in pragmatic terms, as we recall the cliché:
Sheer pragmatism! Honesty is not the best policy because it pays, but because it alone is ethical. As a matter of fact, to base your company on ethical standards may mean that you lose some potentially big pay-offs to other pragmatic and unethical companies who ply their potential clients with wine, women and song. Corporate America is in Hell’s mess because it not only has nothing to say about ethics, but it no longer understands ethical concepts. “Business Ethics” has been replaced by “Business Pragmatism.”
For God’s sake America, look at yourself and shriek! What ever happened to the America where dirty was dirty and clean was clean? Whatever happened to the “Good Guys” – “Bad Guys” distinction? You know, the white hats and the black hats! Let’s cut loose the hard nosed, no-nonsense, ethical sheriffs on Wall Street and do what good sheriff-men just gotta do! No more a slobbering reading of rights to those who have done obvious and disgusting wrong. God bring back the America where swift justice no longer has anti-social connotations.
But in the misfit meantime, what is happening in corporate America is happening on every level of society. From time to time you can read articles in the New York Times or USA Today about studies made by the American Medical Association or some other professional medical group. They will state that perhaps 1/3 or more of all hysterectomies performed in the United States are unnecessary according to their research. Everything today is measured by dollars and cents, not by right and wrong.
This all has led to America’s undoing, as we read the well known words of Proverbs 14:34,
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach
to any people.”
Reproach means that the mightiest and wealthiest nation on earth is being disgraced and shamed.
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A HOPELESS ROAD TO NOWHERE
But in it all the time-honored fact remains true:
“NO ONE CAN MAKE A LIFE WITHOUT MAKING A LIVING.”
God’s Word puts it in down-to-earth blue collar words in II Thessalonians 3:10,
“…if anyone will not work, neither let him eat.”
By far Americans are able and willing workers, and I might add in too many instances overly-willing eaters. But the American work ethic has been one of America’s greatest strengths as a nation. It has given Americans to a great degree the honor, dignity and identity that they possess as citizens of historically the greatest nation on earth. And there is everything right about that!
It was Booker T. Washington who once said:
“CHARACTER IS THE SUM OF ALL WE HAVE
STRUGGLED AGAINST.”
I agree! But I would add:
“CHARACTER IS ALSO THE SUM OF ALL WE HAVE
HONESTLY AND ARDUOULSY WORKED FOR.”
The honesty, diligence and excellence of the American character are seen on the retailers’ shelves, on the showroom floors and in the shopkeepers’ windows. But now all of the best of the American character has been dishonored and betrayed in corporate board rooms and vaults.
I am sensing a growing hopelessness in the blue-collar grass roots. Whether it is that road at the beginning of the day between home and work, or at the end of the day between work and home, it is indeed that road of hope which leads us from where we are and keeps us going to where we want and need to be.
There is now in America that missing complimentary effect that the home and workplace have on each other, and it is becoming more and more palpable. True, each place has a wearing effect as all people-contact places do. But taken together, going to the workplace makes the home feel secure, safe and provided for, while going home from work makes the workplace meaningful, purposeful and even treasured. They compliment each other as two major parts of life., liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Together they give the American worker a good feeling that really cannot be found in any other combination. But there is a terribly bad feeling when there are growing empty workstations and mushrooming empty houses.
True, in all of life, there is far more routine than rapture, and at times far more agony than ecstasy. So much work once it has been mastered becomes routine, but to lose the routine suddenly makes the same job look rapturous. There is no greater agony than being forced into doing nothing on the road to nowhere. The road to nowhere is an agonizing and futile trip.
Even those who felt like they were in the wrong job would now consider themselves supremely blessed just to be able to get back into it again. While before it may have been viewed as an unpleasant have-to, now their hearts long for it as an obsessive want-to and a super-pressing need-to! Now they want nothing else! Instead they face every day as another “Unlabor Day” with little purpose or destiny. If they could only go to work, they would never do so in a halfhearted and poky manner ever again.
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WHERE ARE THE AMERICANS?
A Russian arrived in New York City as a new immigrant to the United States. He stopped the first person he saw walking down the street and said to him, “Thank you Mr. American for letting me into this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care and free education.” The passerby looked at him and said, “You are mistaken, I am a Mexican.” The Russian immigrant moved on and encountered another passerby and said to him, “Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America and welcoming me into it.” The person replied, “I not American, I Vietnamese.”
The new arrival from Russia decided to walk farther, and then decided to stop another person he saw coming. He reached out and shook the stranger’s hands and said to him, “Thank you for wonderful America.” The surprised stranger pulled his hand away, put it up in denial and said, “I am from the Middle East. I am not American.”
The new immigrant saw a nice, friendly looking lady and said to her, “Are you an American?” She said, “No, I am from Africa.” Puzzled the immigrant asked her, “Where are all of the Americans?” She looked at her watch and said to him, “Probably at work!”
May it be true again soon! On the job! At work! The greatest and most industrious workforce in the world back where it belongs! Please God grant it! Please deal with the crooks as You must, but have mercy on the backbone of this nation, the great but painfully betrayed American workforce.
I think of and pray for the state of Michigan particularly, because I live here, and it is my home state. One northeast county, Iasco County near and on Lake Huron, has an unemployment rate of 18%. The statewide jobless rate as of February 2009 was 12%. Suddenly Appalachian poverty and Kentucky hillbillies don’t seem so far away or pathetic down-and-out others. Everyone’s roof seems to be sagging a little now! Economic recession/depression has a way of more and more leveling the playing field.
That is perhaps the good that will come out of this, realizing that we are all the same and each one needs the other. But above all, every American needs the Lord and must turn back to Him. That is the message I try to take wherever I go. No waitress in a restaurant, no driver of a delivery truck, no nurse in a doctor’s office can cross my path without being confronted with the claims of God on their lives. That is where it all begins, for it has been our turning against Him that has brought us down, and only turning back to Him again will lift us up. And when I pray with them right there on the spot, I always thank God for them and the work they are doing to bless God and America. In so doing, I want them to know that God has not betrayed them and neither have I. They are greatly loved and appreciated – the incomparable and unequaled American Workforce.
