Thursday, May 27, 2010

America for Sale

Ron Ault
Memorial Day, 2010

Are you paying attention to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatens the entire Gulf, all of Florida and even the East Coast?  Republicans are saying this is Obama’s Katrina!  What is the Federal Government doing about the oil spill? Why hasn’t Obama taken over and plugged the leak?

Duh! What is wrong with this picture?  Has everyone in America eaten a stupid pill? Dumbass is somewhat contagious, but this is pure stupidity on a grand scale!

How can the federal government be responsible for what the private sector does to us?  If our food is poisonous, is it the fault of the federal government?  If the medicines we take cause cancer, is it the fault of the federal government?

Didn’t we sell yours and mine mineral rights on our public lands to energy companies?   Yes, we did. We voted to do it .…You and I agreed to give millions of dollars worth of public mineral rights to millions of acres of public land for just pennies an acre mineral lease rights to these companies.  And then we agreed to deregulate these very same industries so they didn’t have to invest any money in safeguards against neglect and unsafe mining and drilling techniques that kill workers and poison our air and water. YES, we did, don’t deny it!

And we are still demanding more – look at the “Tea Party” demonstrations. What do they demand: smaller government; no taxes; “take back our government;” deregulate; no rules; free markets… stop “socialism!”

Well, Gulf Coast residents, welcome to the returns on the investment that the “Free Market” oil industry brings you! Foreign ownership, foreign built rigs, foreign technology, all used to drill and then when all hell breaks loose and millions of barrels of crude oil is spilling into the US coastal waters, it is the United States federal government that is supposed to jump in and bail out BP and the foreign governments who own these companies?

Remember what the eminent Grover Nordquist said would be the ultimate in conservative government: Make it small enough to drown in a bathtub. Now, the bathtub is full of oil, and we’re drowning in it!

Didn’t we vote for the Contract for America when Newt Gingrich and his Republicans pledged to roll back regulations, make government smaller less intrusive that would free up investments and be more business friendly?  Didn’t we vote for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?  Didn’t we go to war in the Middle East in Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom to keep the oil flowing? Didn’t we support those politicians who deregulated the coal mining and oil exploration industry? Didn’t we vote to re-elect these same Senators and Congressmen and women term after term, rewarding them for their votes? Meanwhile, these lawmakers de-regulated, dismantled and removed federal safeguards from the banks and energy companies that are harming us today. 

Free enterprise isn’t free for you and me. It is free from regulation – free from federal inspectors checking up on cheats and unscrupulous businesses; free from mine inspections and meat inspectors; free from DOL Wage and Hour inspectors, free from CDC scientists working on new vaccines that only affect a few thousand Americans (so it isn’t profitable for drug companies to do); free from border patrol and law officers; free from public school teachers and fire fighters; unburdened of all those federally-supported services that our taxes provide. Wall Street is lobbying our Congress so they don’t have to pay the same taxes as you and I pay. And, 36 lawmakers lined up to support Wall Street over you and me…including some Blue Dog Democrats who should be voted out of office, like Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. 

But I digress…America is for sale. Private industry has waged an expensive decades-old public relations campaign to brainwash the general public into believing that any government regulation is bad and only totally free enterprise, free trade is good. Kinda like saying sin is great and virtue is bad. Say it loud enough and repeat it often enough on every TV channel and soon it is no longer an ad, or just an opinion – it is the truth….it is the Golden Rule: Those with the gold rule.

Don’t you get it? America is being sold to foreign interests every day of the week. We are a third world country being mined by foreign national governments for our raw materials. Huge tracts of American farms are foreign government-owned and the crops harvested in the USA go directly to those nations…Same story for our forests. Raw logs are loaded in ships and shipped directly overseas for raw materials; not as a finished, valued-added product. Why should we be surprised that crude oil is being drilled in the deep water US coastal Gulf by foreign government owned businesses like BP, the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, the United Arab Emirates, China Development Fund, etc? As Sarah says: Drill, Baby, Drill!

Almost nothing that has benefitted Main Street America in our entire history is from private enterprise.  Required reading in every school in America should be Jeff Madrick’s “Case for Big Government,” a book written in layman’s language, (so that even an old country Boy from Arkansas like me can understand it) that details his conclusion that a public relations campaign has been systematically waged against America so we vote against our own interests and with greedy corporations who, with our help, legally steal money from the general public (that’s us).    

Jeff Madrick is the editor of “Challenge” magazine and senior fellow at the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He creates a fact-filled, “connect the dots” road map for every day citizens to understand the complexities of economics in plain language. After reading this book, you will clearly see the lies and deception heaped upon America by the greedy and unscrupulous mining and energy corporations who use public lands to make billions of dollars of pure profits that belong to you and me, and then avoid paying anything for the land and avoiding taxes on their profits. Incredible! 

So shut up America. You asked for this. You paid for it. You voted for this, and you continue to support the system that is dumping millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf. You made the deal; so live with it!
                                                                                               

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