"I Hate The Company Bosses."

Below is music ("Come On All You Coal Miners") by Sarah Ogan Gunning, 1910 - 1983, daughter of the Kentucky coal mines, who lost two children to starvation and her husband to TB. She began singing and writing songs to try to help organize her neighbors to join the union and stand up to the oppression of the coal miners.

Listen to this music after you watch today's Company Bosses/CEOs whining in front of Congress ("Please sir -- could I have more") for more money to be stolen from already-desperate and impoverished workers and given to the bosses. Making their request to the same politicians they have so handsomely "supported" by contributions, corruption, back-room deals and bribes. Promising Congress that if they're given the money, they'll throw thousands more Americans out of work and bust the unions. "We promise."

Does anyone remember Congress ever holding a hearing to invite normal people -- those of who do not have wheelbarrows full of money to tithe to the Lords of the Senate -- to ask us what we need, or what our problems and concerns might be? Of course not. We're the audience, the suckers. This whole thing is a charade. It has been true for decades that the U.S. auto industry is taking jobs to third world countries so they can use slave labor, throwing Americans out of work and paying millions to the insiders. The billions they now seek will just let them keep doing more of the same. Eventually, when enough Americans are out of work, we'll all work for pennies and be glad for the job.

They have failed to invest in R&D, failed to even try to be competitive, increased the already grossly unfair salaries of upper management while bitterly complaining that they have to pay healthcare and pensions for the retirees -- which, as an aside, should have been funded separately throughout each retired person's working career. They build big, crappy defective vehicles that break down, run poorly, and fall apart in years, and then complain that some foreign auto-maker gets more sales and has a better reputation. Of course they'll get the money, just like the Company Bosses from Wall Street did.

For anyone who supports this insipid propaganda by the Milton Friedman crowd, the neocons, the "free trade" folks who claim that there is no greater good on earth than for capital to roam freely from nation to nation with no restraints or restrictions -- move the plant, shut it down, throw people out of work, dump the poison into the air and water then move on -- that there is heavenly good that comes from this rapacious swarm of the elite, the spread of this infection of greed to all corners -- maybe we need to remember that things used to be exactly that way in this country. Exactly. No restrictions on the industrialists, no protections or rights for the workers. And the industrialists got obscenely wealthy while the workers starved and died.

Not so long ago, we had most working people in this country living like dogs, with the wealthy stealing every penny they had, leaving them to rot, starve, and die young, as long as the Company Bosses kept getting more money. The neocons want to return to those long-ago days. They're working hard to accomplish that. Looting the treasury is part of the plan, because when the government has decades of debt and no money, it will never be able to stand up to the international business syndicates regardless of who is in the white house.

This is Sarah Ogan Gunning, "Come All You Coal Miners":


Here are lyrics to another one of Sarah Ogan Gunning's songs, "I Hate The Company Bosses."

"I Hate The Company Bosses"

I hate the company bosses, I'll tell you the reason why
They cause me so much suffering And my dearest friends to die.
Oh yes, I guess you wonder What they have done to me.
I'm goin' to tell you, Mister, My husband had TB.

Brought on by hard work and low wages, An' not enough to eat,
Goin' naked an' hungry No shoes on his feet.
I guess you'll say he's lazy, An' did not want to work.
But I must say you're crazy, For work he did not shirk.

My husband was a coal miner, He worked an' risked his life,
To try to support three children, Himself, his mother and wife.
I had a blue-eyed baby, The darlin' of my heart.
But from my little darlin' Her mother had to part.

These mighty company bosses, They dress in jewels an' silk.
But my darlin' blue-eyed baby, She starved to death for milk.
I had a darlin' mother, For her I often cry.
But with them rotten conditions My mother had to die.

Well, what killed your mother? I hear these bosses say.
Dead of hard work an' starvation, My mother had to pay.
Well, what killed your mother? Oh tell us if you please.
Excuse me, it was pellagry, That starvation disease.

They call this the land of plenty, To them I guess it's true.
But that's to the company bosses, Not workers like me an' you.
Well, what can I do about it To these men of power an' might?
I tell you company bosses I'm goin' to fight, fight, fight.

What can we do about it To right this dreadful wrong?
We're all goin' to join the union, For the union makes us strong.

For more about the life and music of Sarah Ogan Gunning, see http://www.folkstreams.net/context,284