Let me describe a motivational speech given somewhere in Korporate Amerika a few years ago. This motivational speaker steps up to the podium and flashes a slide on the screen behind him. The slide says "Greed is GOOD!!!!!!!!!" Then the light bulb flashed brighter than ever before in the Korporate world. Now that usually only happens in the split second before the lights go out, but this time they started to flash in new neon colors. The message was "restraint of free trade is bad and greed is good". This mantra has been repeated so often that even people who should know better have agreed not to expose its blatant falseness while the good times last. Well folks the good times are over for the great American middle class. They have been over for years for the lower classes; who no longer have factory jobs to keep them out of trouble and in cash sufficient to buy a six pack. Now the white suburban middle class folks are suffering job losses and the future looks less likely to provide new jobs that allow them to maintain their status as consumers in the great American buyathon.

Is corporatizing greed good for the people of this nation? Does this mean that individual greed and governmental greed are passé now that corporations have taken over that function? Is it soon going to be illegal to be greedy outside of the corporate veil? Can we privatize greed so that it will cost us less? Well if the Ominous Omnibus Spending Bill that just passed the House of Reprehensible Behavior is an example we have a long way to go before that will happen. This passionately promulgated, pompously passed passel of pork is greed on a scale worthy of government of the corporation, by the corporation and only for the corporation. It offers us the chance to spend more on pork than at any time in the past and all for programs that do little and nothing for real sweating breathing human beings. The vast majority of the pork will find its way into some corporation's coffers before any human being is allowed to touch it. So perhaps this is a stroke for corporatizing greed after all. Phew, for just a moment there I thought that public greed was becoming dominant over corporate greed but it appears that I was mistaken.

Greed is good if you are corporate and not as good if you are human, that is why taxes are paid by people, not corporations I would guess. Of course if you are in that rare human category of corporate officer your greed can be indulged with the corporate lawyers help and the corporate accountants wink and nod. Do any of us get it that this is not the right direction for this nation unless we want to become a nation of serfs serving the corporate aristocracy? The Priest warned me about greed when he was trying to wring that last quarter out of me on Sunday a long time ago. Now I am about to review that sermon for any clues to how we can overcome all of that propaganda about greed being good. Greed exists, it inhabits most of us some of the time and drives the vast majority of us occasionally.

What is missing in the message "Greed is Good" is the end of the sentence. The whole sentence should read, "greed is good for corporations, but not for people". The greedier a corporation is the richer it seems to become. The greedier a corporation's culture is the less it serves the interests of the people who form it and invest in it and buy its products and breathe the air and drink the water. Corporations are not bothered by little nagging voices that some of us hear when our conscience is trying to break through the propaganda barrage and talk some sense into us. Greed is patently not good for people who are trying to scrape enough together to eat a real meal. Greed is not good when it burns up a huge amount of equity in our homes to keep an economy flowing that cannot provide adequate incomes for people any more. Greed is not good when it creates the conditions that exist in parts of the world where terrorism is bred and born. Greed is not good when it corrupts our political process and diminishes human value everywhere in the world. Greed is not good folks, not for people, not now not ever. God bless and keep you all safe in this time of lies about the virtues of greed.