Great George Carlin video I ran across while reading Marco Arment’s blog post about a photographer being harassed by the police at the request of BP. 

I’m currently reading “A Social History of Economic Decline” by John T. Cumbler. The book outlines the rise and fall of Trenton, NJ as a manufacturing power who’s tagline was “Trenton makes, the world takes.” A major takeaway from this book is the struggle between “Labor” and the “Elites” of Trenton, and how the Elites would do whatever they could to maintain power and subvert the labor movement.

For many years prior to World War I this struggle was relatively civil, but once the Labor movement had finally elected a mayor who wasn’t in the pocket of Business and was sympathetic to the working man, the Elites pushed for changing the charter and for redistricting. They appealed to the public on the grounds of modernizing government. The Labor Movement couldn’t opposed modernizing government, but what the movement actually did was gerrymander districts and make it impossible for a mayor sympathetic to labor be elected again for many years to come.

It is a fact of life that those in power will do everything they can to maintain power, it’s a survival instinct. And while they dangle the promise of the chance for the middle class to climb the ladder, it won’t happen. It is a way to maintain the status quo. Just like George Carlin says