They tell us that we must let the marketplace work, we must never allow the heavy hand of government to impinge on our freedoms. While the rest of the industrial world has national healthcare, we in America have our freedom. Our freedom and forty-seven million people without healthcare.
The markets must be allowed to work! The marketplace always has the best answer; wasn't that written on the backside of those tablets once handed to Moses? The Republicans, at the zenith of their power, proclaimed that Social Security should be privatized. George Bush and the Republican Congress, including John McCain, gave it the full-court press. Just imagine where millions would find themselves today if the markets had been allowed to work.
You must let the markets work or they will call you a socialist, or even a communist! You will be reviled as a radical with subterranean plots to try and steal my freedom when I'm not looking, clever bastards that you are. If you dare speak against free trade you are xenophobic and an isolationist; we are in a global economy now and you can't fight progress. Those empty steel mills and idle factories are considered progress, letting the marketplace work. Don't you relish your freedom?
As the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee" put it, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," but that's incorrect. We still have even more to lose and the market still has even more to take. The market doesn't care about people, not the children, not the elderly, not the disabled. All the market wants is its money and nothing else is allowed to even be a factor in the equation. So let us revel in our freedom, let us glory in our marketplace, that golden city on the hill. With its great iron gates, armed guards, and barbed wire fencing, and its signs telling the poor to keep moving, there is nothing for you here.
But there is still more to lose. In Detroit on Wednesday night Melvin Turner, aged 5 died, in a house fire along with his two sisters, aged 9 and 11. The cause of the fire was space heaters used after the gas company had shut off their service. The electrical provider had shut off service as well but the power had been illegally restored. Maybe a capital gains tax cut might have saved them, or expanded oil drilling in the arctic?
In Sarasota, Candace Chapas, age 55, died this month in a fire when the candles that she was using to light her home caught it on fire after the power company had shut the Chapas family off. Mrs. Chapas had initially escaped the fire but died when she went back to try and rescue the family dog.
Outside of Lansing, Michigan, a house fire killed a 74-year-old man and severely injured his 81-year-old wife. "We were all thinking that it must be vacant because it was so run down," neighbor Becky Williamson said. "There was a Christmas wreath on the door until about two weeks ago."
Gordon Yoesting had hoped to purchase the Flint, Michigan home where he had been squatting for the past ten months. Yoesting, described by neighbors as a "sweetheart," was also legally blind. Fire fighters determined the cause of the blaze that took his life to be candles used after Yoesting's power has been shut off two weeks ago.
In Pasadena, California, Wanda Dunn, 53, set her childhood home on fire and shot herself in the head rather than face eviction. "She was made aware of Monday's eviction," Pasadena policeman John Dewar alleged. "That may have been what precipitated the arson and death."
"We knew it was going to happen," neighbor Steve Brooks said of the deadly fire. "It was nobody's fault; it was everybody's fault."
The calls just keep coming in, house fire after house fire. This month alone, Savannah Fire has responded to at least five. "We've seen a rash of vacant house fires," said Captain Matt Stanley with Savannah Fire.
"Some we are looking at as possible arsons, we're treating them as such and have investigators looking at it," said Stanley. "The other thing is with the cooler weather what we are finding is people who are relatively homeless looking for a warm place to stay."
Stanley advises neighbors, "Know what's going on, if you have vacant homes around you, if you see people who appear to be in and out or around those homes that aren't suppose to, then call the law and have them chased off."
In Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, firefighter Ron Westmoreland is appealing his suspension for insubordination, malfeasance and dishonesty. The firefighter and rescue diver spoke at a September 15th city council meeting where he complained "that cutbacks in fire department staffing and elimination of a water safety team hampered efforts to save 7-year-old Michael Nesby."
Michael drowned at an unguarded Huntington Beach on Labor Day. Westmoreland said firefighters don't have the right equipment when they respond to drowning calls because the water safety unit was disbanded.
He said divers had the same problem a month earlier when they were unable to rescue a 12-year-old.
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