A Raw Deal

The last thing we need in the Tri-State area is another nor'easter, and yet that is just what is forecast for Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning.

Right now the forecast is for rain and wind on the coast, snow inland.

One of the models is now showing snow for the coast as well, although that is far from a certain thing.

Regardless, it is turning into a hard winter already - and it's only November 5.

It's turning into a hard few years.

I remember learning about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression when I was in grammar school.

Those years seem to be hard ones for the people living through them.

In the past few years, we have had the Great Recession, a horrible drought in the Midwest and now a devastating storm in the East.

Starting to feel a little bit like The Grapes of Wrath around here.

Only there ain't no New Deal this time around.

Just a raw deal for the vast majority of people in this country.

Witness what is happening in Staten Island, Coney Island, the Rockaways, Broad Channel, Manhattan Beach and the like.

I met a woman tonight on the way home who showed me pictures of what things look like in Far Rockaway.

She said it's a lot worse out there than the media has been showing.

I asked her why she thought the media wasn't showing the real deal about the storm aftermath.

She said "I don't know. Maybe they want to save face for New York."

Maybe that's true. 

Or maybe they just want to save face for the mayor.

Regardless they ought to be showing the truth.

But they aren't - they're sugarcoating things, making it palatable for prime time viewing.

And that, too, is a raw deal.

It feels like so much is breaking apart these days - the country, the economy, the government, nature.

We need to know how bad these things are so we can face the reality.

But instead they sugarcoat stuff and get us right back onto a steady diet of infotainment. and bread and circuses.

A raw deal.

Occupy tried to deal with this raw deal last year at this very time.

Michael Bloomberg gave them a raw deal one night in November.

But the problems they were pointing out remain with us and have been amplified by things like Sandy.

Marathons for billionaires, the shaft for everybody else.

Another raw deal.

I hope people are waking up to the raw deal they're getting from corporate criminals like Bloomberg.

Maybe they'll stop electing these rich assholes who don't give a shit about anybody but their wealthy Wall Street cronies.

But the truth is, tomorrow's election is a non-choice between two corporatists who will do nothing to help the working and middle class people of this country.

Whether Romney or Obama wins, we're still heading to neo-feudalism.

Romney may bring us there faster, but make no mistake, Obama is bringing us there too.

Again, a raw deal.

I am voting for Jill Stein tomorrow because I am sick of getting a raw deal and I no longer will vote for a politician who consistently tries to screw my profession and my class.

She won't win, of course, or even come close, which is itself a raw deal, but at least I can hold my head up in defeat.

Still, in the end, everything feels...broken.