I know most of you have seen this email. It's an old one, but apparently it's making the rounds again as a tea bagger call to arms.
Here it is, with my response, below the fold...
THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different...
Two Different Versions...
Two Different Morals
______________________________
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances
and plays the summer away..
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the
cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
______________________________
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer
long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances
and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference
and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well
fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home
with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and
everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where
the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Then Rev.
Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the
grasshopper's sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush for
the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry
King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and
both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair
share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper
Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of
green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his
home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the
grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading
friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the
government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the
ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't
maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and
the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who
terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful,
neighborhood..
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world
with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
My Response:
V 3.0 :
The Ant and the Grasshopper :
The ant is born into the family of the top one percent richest ants. He goes to an Ivy League school, gets the right job, and inherits millions. He makes money gaming the system and sending good jobs away to China.
The grasshopper is born into a middle class family. He works one job, but that job goes to China and he gets laid off. He gets another job, but loses that one too. And then a third, and a fourth. Pretty soon, there are less jobs available than there were ten years ago because the ants are sending them all overseas so that they can make more money (only decade in history to see ZERO net job growth - Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers ), and the grasshopper’s family is making less too (avg median income is currently LESS than in 1999, when adj. for inflation).
The ant has made some risky investments while gaming the system, but the ants own everything (even though they’re only 1% of Americans) so they can’t fail. The grasshopper’s family, already broke, bails out the ant. But the ant doesn’t create new jobs, or reinvest the money in the economy. The ant gives himself a big fat bonus.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Just because someone doesn’t have a job doesn’t mean they’re lazy and worthless. The vast majority of people want to work and want to be self-sufficient. But our economic system is making that increasingly more difficult. Our wealth has been slowly siphoned away from the middle class to the top over the last 30 years. Deregulation on Wall St, NAFTA and elimination of tariffs are all partly to blame.
Yes, pay attention to how you vote in 2010 – just make sure you’re voting for folks on our side – not the side of the billionaire corporatists. Get this ancient false image of the “Cadillac Welfare Queen” out of your head – that is not reality and is certainly NOT the problem – but the corporatists sure would like you to believe it. Wall Street and the CEO’s don’t give a RAT’S ASS about you – why do so many people insist on blindly kissing their asses?
We need GOOD JOBS to come back to America. We need to make things. We need money injected into the economy to build schools, repair infrastructure. We can be strong again, but we have to take our country back for the middle class – for all of us – not just the top one percent.
Thank you ;)