Nyuk, Nyuk, The Greeks Deserve What They Got

Born liar Evangelos Venizelos, the new non-leader of the PASOK Anti-Socialists, and Democratic Left leader “Uncle” Fotis Kouvelis, who is still learning the game of political prevarication, both recently swore, vow, pledged, promised, wrote in stone, dipped their fingers in blood, and crossed their hearts and hoped to die if they were not telling the truth that there would not be any more so-called “horizontal cuts” – translation: pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions – for Greeks buried under two years of austerity measures.
Those boldfaced lies were barely out of their mouths when the uneasy coalition government in which they are the water carriers for the ruling party of New Democracy Capitalist leader Antonis Samaras let it be known that the only way out of the economic crisis they created is for – you guessed it – horizontal cuts that will saw people in half, none of them politicians, bankers, business executives or the rich.
The Tripartite government is going to lower the boom again on workers, pensioners and the poor to make $14.16 billion in cuts demanded by the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) because the Three Stooges don’t have the guts to go after tax evaders and their rich friends who hide all their money in Swiss banks and offshore accounts, where they meet occasionally when visiting their safe deposit boxes where they have spirited away money they stole from the Greek people.
But what can the Greeks expect? Former PASOK Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos got panned for saying the crisis happened because “We ate it all together,” meaning that workers and politicians were side-by-side chowing down at the public trough and depleting a treasury filled by overtaxing private companies to subsidize the thievery and laziness of others.
For the last 40 years, there’s been an unwritten agreement in Greece: New Democracy and PASOK take turns ruling, and ruining Greece, voted in by people who got jobs in return. That’s the kind of vote-rigging that gets people jailed in actually civilized countries, but since Greece is not a democracy, but a plutocratic oligarchy, politicians and workers didn’t care because they both benefitted.
These Ponzi Schemes always collapse and that’s what’s happening now in Greece, so politicians, who would be the only species besides cockroaches to survive a nuclear bombing, are circling the wagons to protect themselves and are going to sacrifice the workers they hired. And here’s where it gets good: the people who are being screwed like it and are lining up, like the swimmers in Jaws, to be a hot lunch.
YOU ARE OWNED
Greeks kept electing New Democracy and PASOK because they didn’t mind when they were all eating free money together because they thought the gravy train would never stop. Then came austerity in 2010 when then-PASOK leader and Prime Minister George Papandreou, who’d make a swell NGO leader of something like Save the Politicians but was not cut out to be a leader, lied to get elected when he told Greeks that, “The money is there,” and when it wasn’t, went running to the IMF for a bailout. All it wanted in return was for him to impose pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions on his peons and he did it faster than you can say When-I-resign-after-two-years-of-protests-I’m going to teach at Harvard.
The late Jess “Big Daddy” Unruh, who was the legendary Speaker of the California Assembly – a state that now resembles Greece in its economic unraveling – said that, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” and politicians know where the teat is and they’re not about to share it with anyone, especially the hoi-polloi. Sadly, the minority of decent, hard-working Greeks are being caught up in this insanity and are always the ones to be sacrificed.
In Greece’s cradle-to-grave Socialist state, there are hundreds of thousands of deadwood workers clogging up the public payroll, but Papandreou didn’t fire 150,000 of them two years ago when he should have. Instead he whacked everyone who has taxes taken out of their checks, clocking them with big pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, which has miserably failed and worsened a deep recession, putting 1.15 million people out of work and shrinking the economy by 7 percent.
Now Samaras is faced with – you guessed it – firing 150,000 workers, so we’re right back where we started. Maybe Papandreou will teach that at Harvard when he begins his comfy lecturing job there next month, at the same time he’s still a Member of Parliament, yet another privilege for defeated former Premiers so they can keep drawing paychecks for failed symbolism.
After two years of protests, strikes and riots against PASOK, and then a PASOK-New Democracy coalition, voters railed enough to create a stalemated May 6 election but then on June 17 gave New Democracy a victory, but without of the vote to create a government. Samaras promptly formed a coalition with PASOK again and threw in Kouvelis to make it look legitimate.
So what Greeks have done – apart from those who voted for anti-austerity parties, primarily the second-place finishers, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA,) which has since disappeared from the radar screen – is bring back the same two parties who now are going to finish off what’s left of their increasingly meager lives, meaning most Greeks have forfeited the right to protest anymore and deserve what they got.
Too bad there’s no Greek George Carlin, the late American philosopher-comic who knew what he was talking about when it came to politics, even if his aim was against those in America. He knew how to put it: “Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN *you*. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies.”
And Americans – just like Greeks – put them there. As Carlin said, “Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich ***** who don’t give a ***** about you. They don’t give a ***** about you . . . they don’t give a ***** about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on.” The translation is exactly the same in Greek.