While congress fiddles and hums and comes up with ever more ways of wasting money and time, and taking away more of our constitutional protections, not one of those jackasses has made any relevant effort to clamp down either on Wall Street or (god forbid!) the oil companies. While American taxpayers get raped at the pump, the oil companies.....the corporate whores that they are....are raking in billions in profits while also availing themselves of unneeded and unnecessary tax credits and subsidies. Congress, acting like a collection of submissive pimps, just can't find the spine to slap them down.
While MSM sings the tale of woe about how those damned enviromentalists are the cause of high gas prices, and clueless right wing hacks sing the praises of globalism and free trade, American consumers whether left or right are paying the price. Maybe at some future date when gas prices approach $5.00 per gallon, and food is unaffordable it will dawn on those remaining individuals out here that free trade amounts to a free ride for corporations and the wealthy. For you and me, free trade is a one way ticket to economic hell.
I have to ask this:
With another 450,000 jobs lost just in June due to outsourcing, offshoring, business downsizing or closings......and rising gas and food prices along with almost every other item that affects our daily lives......do you still think that unregulated free trade is a good deal? How many of us have to lose our homes, our jobs, our health coverage and everything WE have worked for before it occurs to us that this method of operation is killing us off?
Free trade has one objective; the economic destruction of virtually every economy in the world. The current inflated price of oil, even as supplies have remained steady should have been the proverbial slap to the head for those who still cling to the idea that somehow, regulating trade to protect our economy and our future as a nation is a bad idea. How badly do you have to be squeezed before you can admit supply side economics is a national disaster?
Just today on MSM there were reports of test programs that allow people to "lock in" gas prices at the current level by paying in advance. IF the prices go up which I can assure you they will, this could be a good deal. If they go down...not so much. Here's the clinker in this which seemed to pass by the reporters altogether: If gas prices can be locked in at a specific price......why can't gas be capped at a certain price? After all, if the oil companies can afford to allow advanced purchasing of gas at what might be a price lower than that at the pump...wouldn't that indicate that all the price hikes are actually cases of price rigging? And not necessarily due to whether or not they can drill in someplace other than the 68 million acres they already have access to, known to have deposits?
It's bad enough that there are still people out here who, even when faced with the impending economic collapse of our country, still beat the free trader drum. The incessant ramblings of paid political hacks who masquerade as "broadcasters" while pumping the public full of misinformation and propaganda seems to never end, most likely because they still find people gullible enough to buy into the false notion that free trade is benefiting anyone other than the elite.
Congress, while voting to fund the bailout of corrupt mortgage companies, voting to give immunity to telecoms and the Bush administration, voting time after time to pass amnesty against the wishes of the majority of Americans, voting to continue funding the war in Iraq, voting for anything and everything except protecting what is left of the middle class and taxpayers, doesn't seem to realize that if we go down, we will have no use for them. There won't be a congress.
Frankly, I believe we have reached the point where congress has become such an enemy of the people that it should be done away with altogether. It no longer functions as it was intended, and no longer represents the American people.
We have to realize that if we are to survive as a nation, as a viable economic force in the world, we cannot continue to allow corporate free trade to pillage our country.
Many corporate spinners disparage "protectionism" but it seems to me that if we do not engage in protectionism we will cease to exist as a nation. At some point we have to circle the wagons and decide to protect ourselves. We can't allow trade deficits, or the artificial creation of windfall profits for multinational corporations just because so many of us have been suckered into thinking that regulation is not conducive to capitalism.
With all the free trading that has gone on in the last seven years and the devastation it has brought nationwide, including the growing recession, how can anyone still support this malignant line of thinking? Think about that when you pull up to another gas pump and pay through the nose for enough gas to get you to work while subsidizing the oil cartels and while congress fiddles and hums.
Marti Oakley (c) 2008
