Quote of the Day 
January 12, 2012

'In an era of gross inequality there's both irony and
relevance in Woody Guthrie's song.  That "ribbon of
highway" he made famous?  It's faded and fraying in
disrepair, the nation's infrastructure of roads and
bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles
because fixing them would require spending money,
raising taxes, and pulling together.

'This land is mostly owned not by you and me but by the
winner-take-all super rich who have bought up open
spaces, built mega-mansions, turned vast acres into
private vistas, and distanced themselves as far as they
can from the common lot of working people - the people
Woody wrote and sang about.

'True, Barack Obama asked Bruce Springsteen and Woody
Guthrie's longtime friend Pete Seeger to sing This Land
is Your Land at that big, pre-inaugural concert the
Sunday before he was sworn in. And sing they did, in
the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had
spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric.

'Today, whatever was real about that spirit has been
bludgeoned by severe economic hardship for everyday
Americans and by the cynical expedience of politicians
who wear the red-white-and-blue in their lapels and
sing "America the Beautiful" while serving the
interests of  crony capitalists stuffing SuperPACs with
millions of dollars harvested from the gross inequality
destroying us from within.'

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship 
truthout 
January 12, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/72xnoqz