Prairie Fire Journal

Wall Street bank JP Morgan Chase has reported profits of $3.3 billion for the last three months of 2009. That's almost a 400-percent increase in the bank's profits compared to a year ago.

In contrast, American workers saw their inflation-adjusted weekly wages fall 1.6 percent last year--the sharpest deline since 1990. The drop in average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers was the worst yearly performance since a 2.5 percent fall in 1990. Inflation-adjusted pay has sunk in five of the past seven years, underscoring the pressures households felt even before the recession. Over the past 10 years, inflation-adjusted wages grew at the lowest pace since the 1950s.

Workers (consumers) are getting squeezed between low wages and high debt. The Democrats have proven themselves to be utter failures in addressing the structural problems of the economy that got us to this point. The same system that got us into the current depression is still very much in place. The banks are raking in billions of dollars in profits from the massive debt incurred by consumers who are urged to spur on the economy by spending more, while getting paid less money.

The business and banking sectors of the economy are receiving the most help from the government, while the consumers who are the primary driving force of the economy continue to face high unemployment rates, declining wages, and record-high home foreclosures. And, while already buried under a mountain of debt, are being called upon to get the economy moving again. There's something wrong with this picture.

American workers need help. They need help getting through this period of high unemployment. They need help in keeping their homes. But most of all they need jobs that pay wages they can actually live on. But the Democrats have spent the past year shoveling money to the banks and merely tossing American workers a bone. They have been spineless in their approach to the problems American workers are facing.

Here's where America is at today. The bankers and corporations are getting richer. The workers are getting poorer. The stimulus package is a joke. Record home foreclosures continue. High unemployment continues. Credit card companies were given an entire year to raise interest rates to the stratosphere. Regulation of banks and speculators is still dysfunctional. The interests of the insurance companies has been put above the interests of people's health care. Is it any wonder that people are becoming increasingly unhappy with the Democrats?

After over 200 years of oppression and grinding poverty, the people of Haiti have literally been ground into dust as a 7.0 earthquake shattered this already economically-devastated country of 9 million.

A humanitarian crisis of epic proportions is unfolding in Haiti. The nation's dysfunctional government simply hasn't the means to dig tens of thousands of people out from under the rubble in which they are entombed. The hospitals have been destroyed or abandoned and there are no emergency services to speak of. Millions are homeless and without food or water.

America stands as their only hope. We are the only nation that can mount the massive relief effort necessary to save thousands of lives. These are our neigbors and they need our help.

Learn more and how you can help at USAID.gov.

On a more personal level, there's some good info posted in the forum at HaitiXchange.com.

According to the AP, "This is supposedly the year 3-D television becomes the hot new thing: Updated sets and disc players are coming out, and 3-D cable channels are in the works. But it's not clear the idea will reach out and grab mainstream viewers."

Anything to separate consumers from their money. Broadcasters and program production companies are still lagging behind in providing HDTV programming. Most Americans still don't have HDTVs. It seems to me that they should at least catch up with one technology before jumping into something else.

The end of the first decade of the 21st century will arrive at midnight. For the American working class, it has been a decade of economic decline unsurpassed by any decade since the 1930s. In real dollars, American workers today make about 15 cents an hour more than they did in the 1920s. What has increased in the past 80-90 years is the complacency and ignorance of the American working class who are so willing to be exploited and run into the ground by their capitalist masters.

Unfortunately, there's little chance that the next 10 years will be any different. Bankers and big business continue to control both major political parties. The rich get richer, while workers' wages continue to decline and are squeezed by increasing debt. Until the American working class gets a spine and rejects the status quo, they can expect more of the same.

Happy New Year!

A court hearing in Lubbock today concerning Mike Leach's motion for a temporary restraining order abruptly came to an end when Texas Tech announced that it had fired Leach. Supporters of Leach still don't get it. The Adam James incident had less to do with Leach's suspension and subsequent firing than with the fact that Leach acted in an insubordinate manner when he refused to follow university administrators' directives concerning the matter.

Leach was an employee of the university, and, like any other employee, got fired when he didn't follow his bosses orders. End of story. The way I see it, Leach wanted out of his coaching contract with Tech, but in order to walk away with some money in his pocket he needed to get fired by the university. However, Leach badly miscalculated the swiftness with which Tech administrators responded to his insubordinate actions. He likely believed that Tech wouldn't can him until after the Alamo Bowl, allowing him to pick up his $800,000 bonus along with the $1.6 million Tech will have to pay him for the time remaining on his contract.

So, Tech alumni and Leach supporters get your heads out of your asses. Your boy got fired because he was insubordinate. Apparently most of you are too stupid to see that.

The problem with now-suspended Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach is that his ego is bigger than his coaching abilities. He's an arrogant little tyrant who truly believes that he can say and do whatever outrageous thing he wants to and will be allowed to get away with it. And, so far, Lubbock has let him do just that.

Leach, with the blessings of Texas Tech administrators, has been highly secretive about injuries to Tech football players, and arrogantly snobbish to any media requests for player injury reports. Tech has been using bogus privacy claims to shield athlete injuries from public scrutiny. These are young adults over the age of eighteen we're talking about here, not children.

If public universities are going to engage in quasi-professional football operations (which is what college football really is), then the public has a right to know what injuries are being inflicted on the players. And that means on the practice field as well as the playing field. What kind of physical toll is being exacted from college athletes? The public has a right to know and should be outraged that universities want to keep this information secret.

The latest incident concerning Adam James is just another act in Mike Leach's long-running play, My Ego! According to the latest information, Tech had given Leach an opportunity to try and peacefully resolve the issue concerning his alleged mistreatment of James. Late last week Leach postponed a meeting related to the injury inquiry. He also refused to sign a letter saying "no one injured would be returned to work without doctors' permission."

And if that wasn't brazen enough, Leach also failed to provide a letter of apology requested by Tech. That's when Tech officials decided Leach needed some chastening and suspended him. In response, Leach filed suit in court asking for a restraining order so he can coach the Alamo Bowl game and collect his bonus. Leach claims that he "would never intentionally harm or endanger a player" and that he has been "forced into this situation without being afforded any process."

Leach was given the opportunity to attend a meeting concerning the Adam's incident and issue an apology, but his big fat ego led him to this latest act of buffoonery. Mr. Big Head wasn't going to apologize to nobody. Tech should just pay Leach the $400,000 a year for the remainder of his contract and send him down the road. Tech's current administration should follow right behind him.

The Buffoon.

For those of you in Texas who are wondering about your unemployment benefits going into 2010, here's what I understand the situation to be:

If you are currently eligible for unemployment benefits and your current benefits are exhausted by December 26, 2009, then you will be eligible to collect the next tier of emergency unemployment benefits that you qualify for. Benefits may be paid through May 29, 2010.

However, until Congress renews the emergency unemployment benefits law for 2010, you will not be able to collect any further benefits beyond the tier you become eligible for on or before December 26.

Hopefully this makes sense to you. I've tried to keep it simple. Texas Workforce Commission has a pdf chart that might better illustrate the current benefit situation. Click here to view it.

UPDATE 12-31-09: Congress has extended the above cutoff dates by approximately 2 months. The December 26 deadline has been moved forward to February 27, 2010 and benefits will be paid through July 31, 2010. The new dates are reflected in the TWC pdf chart referenced and linked to above.

Religious teleshyster Oral Roberts apparently did not meet the 2009 Kingdom of Heaven fundraising goal and has been recalled by the Omnipotent One.

A few years ago I began to wonder why many merchants and salespeople quit saying "Merry Christmas" to their customers during the Christmas season. At first I thought that maybe they were simply a bunch of Scrooges who didn't have any holiday spirit. Then I discovered that businesses were actually instructing their employees not to say "Merry Christmas" so as not to offend their non-Christian customers.

Without getting into a debate about the origin of the Christmas holiday, suffice it to say that in America it has long been recognized as a secular holiday. Even if some people don't cotton much to the religious aspects of the holiday, it has always been celebrated by the majority of Americans as Christmas. A time of year for giving and receiving gifts, for warm family get-togethers, and a wide variety of joyous celebrations.

That being said, if you're so sensitive that you become offended when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, then I would suggest you hibernate until after December 25th. Take a vacation to Saudi Arabia or Iran, where they don't do much Christmas celebrating. Go hide in a cave or crawl under a rock, I really don't give a shit. It's time to knock off the politically-correct bullshit. After all, it's Christmas time. Merry Christmas!

From the get-go of the healthcare legislation debate, Democrats have waffled and wavered, compromised and kow-towed, and basically proven themselves to be incapable of delivering any substantive healthcare reform. The current senate bill is nothing less than a complete sellout to the insurance companies.

If the Democrats really stood for change, they would have from the very beginning had the balls to introduce single-payer Medicare-style healthcare that eliminated the insurance companies altogether from the primary health insurance field. Instead they thought they could compromise with and appease the opponents of healthcare reform. But each compromise has been met with yet another objection from the opposition. Why? Because the opposition doesn't want the system changed. Period. The Democrats took the bait and it's been all downhill since then.

It's very possible that the Democrats' inept handling of healthcare reform legislation will signal the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party. That might just be the thing we need to kickstart a new party that will stand up for working-class Americans.