I have taken all week to process the statement made by Mitt
Romney on the 47% who need some help from the government. I have listened to
the Republicans try and spin his comments. These were kind of funny. I have
listened to the Democrats discuss all the corporate welfare and tax breaks that
the wealthy receive pale in comparison.
Instead of commenting on these points I thought I would like to look at
this issue from my own life experiences.
I have often said that if I counted my two paper routes I
have held 17 jobs in my life. I worked
in high school and even held part time jobs while in the service. Some were
easy and some were hard. There are two
that are at the bottom of the list.
One of these jobs was a four year stint in the foundry at a
local pump manufacture. I started working in the Core Room where I had to bake
sand cores in huge furnaces on the night shift. It was hot work. The sand often
got in my eyes and the oil used to hold the sand together always stuck to your
skin. The noise was deafening. When I would leave work at night and the quiet
of the night hit my ears I would almost faint. One of my brothers worked with
me and he had the job of working on the swing table. This table was elevated
and when the hot metal was poured around the sand cores it was his job to use a
jack hammer and blast the hard sand from the pump casings. He did this all
night long and the vibrations almost killed him. Not too many men lasted too
long on that job. Hours before work he would start to get sick just thinking of
the shift he was about to work.
The second job that I remember, with dread, was a job at the
local meat packing plant. Trucks would come in from Chicago, Texas, or other
slaughter houses, with beef cattle cut up into four 250-300 pound pieces. They were really ¼ of a cow. I took a year
off of college because I needed transportation and money does not grow on
trees. My job, along with a crew of six men, was to done two smocks and heavy
gloves. These were to keep the blood off your cloths. The quarter sides of beef
were hanging from the truck on large hooks. My job was to place two hands under
the beef and raise my legs and toes up to unhook the beef. The beef would press
against my chest and I would shuffle my feet to the end of the truck where a
man with another hook attached to an overhead rail system awaited me. I had to
bend my knees push forward and release the meat in order to hook it on his
hook. I did this all summer and our crew usually did 6-8 trucks a day. We had
to change of smocks and gloves every truck because the meat was bloody and
slippery.
I ended each day with big blood blisters on my chest from
the pressure. Luckily I was able to bid on another job as a selector loader.
The damage to my body had been done though. The veins in my left leg started to
hurt and are really bad today. If I had to do this kind of work my whole life I
would have be in a wheel chair 10 years ago.
I had the GI Bill to fall back on and was able to go to
school. Many people do not have these options and do hard work their whole
lives. I often watch the helper on a garbage truck holding on the back as the
truck rumbles down the road in the dead of winter. These kinds of men are
heroes to me. Much like my father many are just trying to pay the bills and
raise a family.
Not everyone reaches the age of 62 in the same physical shape. Many
have had a hard life and deserve health care, disability, and a decent
retirement program like Social Security. This is the reason I support the
Affordable Care Act and President Obama. This is the reason I will vote for
Democrats and against snobs and wealthy men who do not realize their luck in
life but think their shit smells like roses.
I am proud of the majority of the 47% Mr. Romney speaks about. I look at
him and a man like Newt Gingrich and see two men who never have worked a day in
their lives, served their country, and generally look down their noses at the
rest of us. Of all the decent people I have met in my life very few have had
great wealth or had huge bank accounts. People like my Uncle Jack, my dad, George
Andres, and my brother Steve are the real assets and backbones of this country not people
like Mitt and his country club pals. They are just users mooching off of the
hard work of others. They are not
special but the real users and cheaters in our country.
Sure there are people who are lazy and cheat the system and
most of them are from the wealthy class. Remember this wealthy class of old money profited off the free labor of the backs of slaves for almost 400 years. These workers were used and thrown aside. If we don't demand better treatment or let men like Romney speak to us that way we will get the same treatment.
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