Ken O'Brien
Thirty years of the dominance of the Reagan reactionary movement has reduced Americans to sniveling serfs hoping that crumbs will drop to their feet from the bountiful tables of their "betters". That is the legacy of trickle down economics, endless foreign military adventurism that matches anything envisioned by George Orwell, and the ascendancy of the rights of corporations over those of individuals.
Americans no longer dream big dreams.
The American dream is no longer a home with a picket fence and a dog in the yard.
The American dream has become the American nightmare of foreclosure on our home and our children and grandchildren growing up hostage to a diminished future burdened by debt. . We have ceded dreams of going to the moon to China.
While the "greatest generation" built an interstate highway network, provided rural electrification, extended participation in society to previously disenfranchised social and racial groups, took us to the moon, created a society and economy envied and emulated around the world, provided a standard of living unrivalled in human history and paid their fair share of taxes just as they were willing to risk and , if necessary, sacrifice their lives, the "Reagan generation" has killed the American spirit and hope for a better future and subjugated the vast majority of Americans to indentured servitude to a new aristocracy
This has gone beyond a left/right issue in many respects. Just because you are a Democrat, you are not exempted from a failure to realize that many, if not most, of those in elected office who claim that label are nothing more than wolves in sheep's clothing.
Now, I could go on at great length providing charts and graphs illustrating this point, like these;
Or this one:
Rather, I'm going to address the extent to which we have become victims of fear, economic subservience and self destruction to serve the interests of one of the largest of the new corporate overlords.
At the end of the old year it was reported that during 2011 the largest U.S. export was fuel.
Congressional Republicans have held an extension of payroll tax reductions for most Americans hostage, contrary to their previous fervor for any tax reductions, to an approval of the keystone oil pipeline and opposition to a retirement of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Certainly we cannot impose taxes on the wealthiest Americans . They are the "job creators".
Their argument hinges upon the widely accepted myth that such a pipeline would foster American energy independence. How much energy independence would result if the capitalist imperatives of refiners would compel them to continue to export the end product overseas while maintaining high prices at home?
All of this preoccupation with energy independence has relentlessly focused upon carbon-based fuels.
Any effort to develop renewable energy resources, which are geocentric in nature, resulting only in exportable technology and not natural resources, have been met with virulent opposition.
Take for example the outrage over Solyndra.
How do you compare the cost of that failure with the lives that were lost in the course of the U. S. space program that resulted in the technologies that have powered the revolution in electronic communications and home computers?
We are a definite loser when it comes to a realization of the future consequences of our enslavement to corporate interests perpetuating an oil-based economy.
Furthermore, our current trajectory totally ignores firmly established principles of production economics. The concept of the variously termed experience curve, learning curve or production progress function, established as far back as 1945 during world war II, militates in favor of investments in renewables. This phenomenon has been addressed quite convincingly.
But the final straw in the perpetuation of knee-bending to the carbon fuel corporatists is the extent to which they are willing to embark upon programs that endanger the health, welfare and survival of expendable human lives in pursuit of greed.
This reached a climax this very weekend with a 4.0 earthquake in Ohio. It has been attributed by many reputable sources to the use of a process called "frakking" in the pursuit of natural gas deposits.
Frakking has already been implicated in generating minor inconveniences like flammable tap water.
But now the process of frakking has caused many to maintain that it can cause disruptions in the geological substructure resulting in seismic disturbances, i.e. earthquakes
Just how far are we going to stoop to corporate propaganda that merely distorts reality (i.e. BP in the Gulf of Mexico) because we have been reduced to a nation of hungry sheep impoverished by neo-conservative economic policies where all we can hope for is a way to pay the tax man and tomorrow's price of survival while subscribing to patriotic propaganda.
America was founded in revolution against tyranny and an economic aristocracy. Are the 99% going to remain true to the American ideal or succumb to the fears of the 99% of 1939 Germany?
Flammable tap water?
ReplyDeleteKen, please don't give Chrissy, Cathy and Denise any more ideas on how to raise water rates.
"Our water in Southbridge can also cook your food...if you don't like it, move"!
- Princess Charmingless
There was an article in the New York Times yesterday that natural gas exploration companies are looking to begin frakking in sub-saharan Africa. Frakking uses millions of gallons of water and they want to use the process in one of the driest places on Earth. They'll displace millions of people so they can take their drinking water to get to natural gas deposits. Does that seem moral?
ReplyDeleteYou pointed out in your own article yesterday US Fuel Exports and the Cost of Gas ( http://notestoleicester.blogspot.com/2011/12/us-fuel-exports-and-cost-of-gas.html ) on your blog Notes To Leicester that, "This is capitalism and capitalism isn't patriotic. Capitalism is about turning a profit." If capitalism isn't patriotic, it certainly isn't moral.
ReplyDeleteaka Jester
ReplyDeleteYes, "WATER IS UNDER ATTACK" Our water may not be ours much longer either!
Sponsor: Sen. Russell Feingold [D-WI]
Status: Senate/House Vote: (Did Not Occur)
S. 787: Clean Water Restoration Act
111th Congress: 2009-2010
A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the jurisdiction of the United States over waters of the United States.
4/2/2009--Introduced.
Clean Water Restoration Act - Amends the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act) to replace the term "navigable waters" that are subject to such Act with the term "waters of the United States," defined to mean all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting them, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution. Declares that nothing in such Act affects the authority of the Secretary of the Army or the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the provisions of the Clean Water Act related to discharges: (1) composed entirely of return flows from irrigated agriculture; (2) of storm water runoff from certain oil, gas, and mining operations composed entirely of flows from precipitation runoff conveyances, which are not contaminated by or in contact with specified materials; (3) of dredged or fill materials resulting from normal farming, silviculture, and ranching activities, from upland soil and water conservation practices, or from activities with respect to which a state has an approved water quality regulatory program; or (4) of dredged or fill materials for the maintenance of currently serviceable structures, the construction or maintenance of farm or stock ponds, irrigation ditches and maintenance of drainage ditches, or farm, forest, or temporary roads for moving mining equipment in accordance with best management practices, or the construction of temporary sedimentation basins on construction sites for which discharges do not include placement of fill material into the waters of the United States.
aka Jester
ReplyDeleteGee Whiz, and I thought our Nations #1 Export was its “National Debt” w/ “Trash” (Mainly: Plastics) running a close 2nd.
There is a commercial that declares, "We make money the old-fashioned way..." Well, the old-fashioned way is to steal it. The American corporate ethic has become a form of cannibalism.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
- Aesop
"Definition of the upper crust: A bunch of crumbs held together by dough."
- Anonymous
"It isn't enough for you to love money - it's also necessary that money should love you."
- Baron Rothschild
They say that "History Repeats Itself" - If so, then you'll delight in researching this:
Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. revealed the Bankers Manifesto of 1892 to the U.S. Congress somewhere between 1907 and 1917.
In response to Jester's suggestion:
ReplyDeleteCongressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. revealed the Bankers Manifesto of 1892 to the U.S. Congress somewhere between 1907 and 1917.
The Bankers' Manifesto of 1892
We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion.
Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.
Organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.
At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome.
This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation.
The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.
When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.
People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.
The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.
By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished.
(From: http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2008/11/bankers-manifesto-of-1892.html )