As we see daily, the terms and phraseology that is used to "debate" issues is often more important than the content of the arguments. I have written a length about such legislative schemes before, but several examples have come and gone over the years that bear repeating. One of the first that I noticed was the Clean Water Act, which despite having a great name only codified levels of pollution that were acceptable or permissible. Even though we know that toxic and carcinogenic materials are still flowing into the nation's waters, virtually nothing is being done to stem the flow. The public was all for regulations and the wealthy elites that controlled the means of production of goods and services, our legislatures and the media were intransigent. They were adamant that any limits on their effluent would cripple their ability to fatten their wallets and have us pay for it with poisoned water. They were comfortable abusing us, so why would they want to change? The same scenario took place during debate on the Clean Air Act. Think of the wily child (industry) faced with his/her first roadblock to unbridled behavior (public opinion). Of course they would not want to have to do anything differently. Some remain obstinate, even though it has been shown that economic benefits can accrue from running a tighter ship that loses less toxic compounds to the environment, leading to increased profitability. I understand that there was some resistance to having their freedom to pollute curtailed, but the tactics that were used assured that little progress would be made in the foreseeable future and that every opportunity for avoiding regulation would be tried, from re-defining the terms of the debate to outright refusal to comply. The lawyers had a heyday and the news was all too willing to play the part of mouthpiece for industry. It was plain to see on TV that the majority of those calling for an end to using the air and water as garbage dumps for industry were naive, idealistic hippies and yippies, ne'er do wells and those with too much time on their hands. I remember quite clearly because I was accused of being all sorts of vehemently spat out derogatory words. A favorite of mine was "do-gooder", as if that was a bad thing.
This says nothing about the scientifically proven hazardous products that remain on the market simply because the corporate elites that run our nation claim that said products are fun or necessary or "our right" to "enjoy". Coca-Cola comes to mind immediately.It isn't bad enough that pure, clear water, produced by the fine people at corporate headquarters is priced higher than their sugar-laden poison swill, but when the negative health affects of their drink are pointed out, there is always a new multi-million dollar advertizing campaign in the works to tell us how we cannot live without it. Every time the public gets an inkling to invest in shutting them down, and stock prices tumble, millions of investors turn tail and flee, leaving more shares available at bargain basement prices for our wealthy overlords to swoop in and pick up the pieces after our nervous desperation. In the stock market, unlike poker, our opponents don't even need a "tell", they see right through the rhetoric of public opinion, because many times they have manufactured it.
During the fights for clean air and water, regulators were left, like toothless dogs, nipping at the heels of industrialists. In the end, as often happens, the simplest and easiest (read cheapest) things were done to mask the deeper problems of toxic chemical contamination and we still have not addressed them in any meaningful way. What all of the insults, degradation and rhetoric are designed to do is make those who believe in the right to clean air and water (world class education for our children, healthcare or whatever the public wants) out to be socialists, communists or whatever colloquial term stands in for "people who do not matter". I remember, I was part of those other fights too.
When listing the hundreds of pieces of legislation that have come down the pike, not including the budgets laden with pork and add on rules that fly in the face of good sense, it is hard not to see the machinations of billionaires at work behind the scenes, the echoes and traces of capital guiding the debate, as well as the votes and pens of our "representatives" is in evidence. Wisconsin's Governor and legislature has gone as far as letting a minor player in the mining industry, one with a list of ecological atrocities as long as your arm, write the legislation that will guide state regulators who, try as they might, will no longer be able to reign in the assaults of toxic contamination wrought by that industry. In addition, frack-sand mining is completely un-regulated and requires no remediation because sand is not considered a mineral under Wisconsin's regulatory scheme. Anyone who has seen the scars left behind when removing subsoil knows that it will take hundreds of years to heal those kinds of wounds to the ecosystem.
The Patriot Act was one of these poor excuses for a law that we have become accustomed to. While undermining our freedoms, stripping away rights and spending billions that could never do anyone any good, or create anything worth having, our ruling elite assured that our lives would be thoroughly constrained and that nothing would/could be done about it. The stories we hear about terror plots being foiled from time to time, upon closer inspection, are most often entrapment schemes in which Federal Agents offer to provide a tiny slice of the lunatic fringe not only resources that were unavailable to them, or critical planning expertise so that pipe dreams seem to be coming to fruition. Then, the agents and their cohort of "law enforcement" friends swarm in and protect us from what? Some big talkers who had no resources, or even the hope of a plan, before the government's inside man started offering them explosives and expertise? It is a ruse of the highest caliber. Patriots would never have stood for exempting the federal government from so many checks and balances. The people who fought and died in battle to supposedly "save" America from all foes domestic and foreign would roll over in their graves if they saw what we have allowed our government to do to us.
I have written at length about No Child Left Behind, the laws that impose more testing (which never taught anyone anything) on an already staggering educational system. After the sustained assault of regulators on our educational system, the crippling effects of thirty years of meddling, it is amazing that any students learn anything. Now we have voucher schools in which teachers do not even have to have a degree to teach, yet we are willing to fund them just like public schools. With your tax dollars! The same public schools which are constrained in every respect by laws that have been passed over the years that dictate and mandate everything from how teachers are required to teach, how much of their time should be spent babysitting for the worst actors and what they need to do if they suspect any number of crimes have been committed by or against their students. Anyone who has followed the last thirty years of educational history in America has seen the slow erosion of quality that has come directly from teachers being overburdened with more and more requirements and regulations. The charter school subsidization has been both imagined and conjured up by well-heeled interests who still believe that separate is equal and that their children do not need to be mainstreamed with "those people". That is why the teaches had to be demonized, ridiculed and stripped of their rights to organize.
People who have enjoyed every sort of privilege have always sought to maintain their status, but in these times we have seen this become pathological. It is not that the tools of oppression, that have existed for generations, are not as lucrative as they once were. The appetite for cash and power that comes with it is insatiable. In our system, the whims and desires of the 1% have never been sated by having enough. The uberwealthy have believed for years, and perhaps they will continue to believe, that the rest of us are sub-human and deserve their exploitation and the rhetoric that they control proves the fallacy. Recent work to bring the wealthy to heel has met rhetoric that labels the wealthiest corporate welfare whores as "makers" and the rest of us as "takers". The elderly, crippled, handicapped, destitute, disenfranchised and children, yeah, they are just out to bankrupt the bastions of industry, banking and information. WAKE THE FUCK UP! The richest people, worldwide, are the ones siphoning off potential earnings that could go to those people who slave their entire lives away making it possible for the wealthy to live in luxury.
Do I have to point out the fact that without the maids, the wait staff, the dry cleaners, the auto detailers and flight attendants, without the maintenance staff, the grocers and cops, without the teachers and military services to defend their wealth, these top dogs would have to get their own bones, clean up after themselves and make their own beds in the morning. We are the real makers and all the uber-wealthy seem to know how to do is take and guide the discussion away from how they might pay their fair share.
New Yorkers are finally getting behind a true patriot that is standing up to the uber-wealthy, asking for them to pay their fair share and it is making waves across the nation. I only hope that, in time, we will come to realize that giving them everything they want, all the time is just as bad for us as it is for them. Anyone who has raised a child knows that giving in always has unintended consequences. No one deserves to be ruled by a demanding child and that is exactly what the 1% have become. It is time to force them to grow up and develop a bit of compassion for the rest of us.
This says nothing about the scientifically proven hazardous products that remain on the market simply because the corporate elites that run our nation claim that said products are fun or necessary or "our right" to "enjoy". Coca-Cola comes to mind immediately.It isn't bad enough that pure, clear water, produced by the fine people at corporate headquarters is priced higher than their sugar-laden poison swill, but when the negative health affects of their drink are pointed out, there is always a new multi-million dollar advertizing campaign in the works to tell us how we cannot live without it. Every time the public gets an inkling to invest in shutting them down, and stock prices tumble, millions of investors turn tail and flee, leaving more shares available at bargain basement prices for our wealthy overlords to swoop in and pick up the pieces after our nervous desperation. In the stock market, unlike poker, our opponents don't even need a "tell", they see right through the rhetoric of public opinion, because many times they have manufactured it.
During the fights for clean air and water, regulators were left, like toothless dogs, nipping at the heels of industrialists. In the end, as often happens, the simplest and easiest (read cheapest) things were done to mask the deeper problems of toxic chemical contamination and we still have not addressed them in any meaningful way. What all of the insults, degradation and rhetoric are designed to do is make those who believe in the right to clean air and water (world class education for our children, healthcare or whatever the public wants) out to be socialists, communists or whatever colloquial term stands in for "people who do not matter". I remember, I was part of those other fights too.
When listing the hundreds of pieces of legislation that have come down the pike, not including the budgets laden with pork and add on rules that fly in the face of good sense, it is hard not to see the machinations of billionaires at work behind the scenes, the echoes and traces of capital guiding the debate, as well as the votes and pens of our "representatives" is in evidence. Wisconsin's Governor and legislature has gone as far as letting a minor player in the mining industry, one with a list of ecological atrocities as long as your arm, write the legislation that will guide state regulators who, try as they might, will no longer be able to reign in the assaults of toxic contamination wrought by that industry. In addition, frack-sand mining is completely un-regulated and requires no remediation because sand is not considered a mineral under Wisconsin's regulatory scheme. Anyone who has seen the scars left behind when removing subsoil knows that it will take hundreds of years to heal those kinds of wounds to the ecosystem.
The Patriot Act was one of these poor excuses for a law that we have become accustomed to. While undermining our freedoms, stripping away rights and spending billions that could never do anyone any good, or create anything worth having, our ruling elite assured that our lives would be thoroughly constrained and that nothing would/could be done about it. The stories we hear about terror plots being foiled from time to time, upon closer inspection, are most often entrapment schemes in which Federal Agents offer to provide a tiny slice of the lunatic fringe not only resources that were unavailable to them, or critical planning expertise so that pipe dreams seem to be coming to fruition. Then, the agents and their cohort of "law enforcement" friends swarm in and protect us from what? Some big talkers who had no resources, or even the hope of a plan, before the government's inside man started offering them explosives and expertise? It is a ruse of the highest caliber. Patriots would never have stood for exempting the federal government from so many checks and balances. The people who fought and died in battle to supposedly "save" America from all foes domestic and foreign would roll over in their graves if they saw what we have allowed our government to do to us.
I have written at length about No Child Left Behind, the laws that impose more testing (which never taught anyone anything) on an already staggering educational system. After the sustained assault of regulators on our educational system, the crippling effects of thirty years of meddling, it is amazing that any students learn anything. Now we have voucher schools in which teachers do not even have to have a degree to teach, yet we are willing to fund them just like public schools. With your tax dollars! The same public schools which are constrained in every respect by laws that have been passed over the years that dictate and mandate everything from how teachers are required to teach, how much of their time should be spent babysitting for the worst actors and what they need to do if they suspect any number of crimes have been committed by or against their students. Anyone who has followed the last thirty years of educational history in America has seen the slow erosion of quality that has come directly from teachers being overburdened with more and more requirements and regulations. The charter school subsidization has been both imagined and conjured up by well-heeled interests who still believe that separate is equal and that their children do not need to be mainstreamed with "those people". That is why the teaches had to be demonized, ridiculed and stripped of their rights to organize.
People who have enjoyed every sort of privilege have always sought to maintain their status, but in these times we have seen this become pathological. It is not that the tools of oppression, that have existed for generations, are not as lucrative as they once were. The appetite for cash and power that comes with it is insatiable. In our system, the whims and desires of the 1% have never been sated by having enough. The uberwealthy have believed for years, and perhaps they will continue to believe, that the rest of us are sub-human and deserve their exploitation and the rhetoric that they control proves the fallacy. Recent work to bring the wealthy to heel has met rhetoric that labels the wealthiest corporate welfare whores as "makers" and the rest of us as "takers". The elderly, crippled, handicapped, destitute, disenfranchised and children, yeah, they are just out to bankrupt the bastions of industry, banking and information. WAKE THE FUCK UP! The richest people, worldwide, are the ones siphoning off potential earnings that could go to those people who slave their entire lives away making it possible for the wealthy to live in luxury.
Do I have to point out the fact that without the maids, the wait staff, the dry cleaners, the auto detailers and flight attendants, without the maintenance staff, the grocers and cops, without the teachers and military services to defend their wealth, these top dogs would have to get their own bones, clean up after themselves and make their own beds in the morning. We are the real makers and all the uber-wealthy seem to know how to do is take and guide the discussion away from how they might pay their fair share.
New Yorkers are finally getting behind a true patriot that is standing up to the uber-wealthy, asking for them to pay their fair share and it is making waves across the nation. I only hope that, in time, we will come to realize that giving them everything they want, all the time is just as bad for us as it is for them. Anyone who has raised a child knows that giving in always has unintended consequences. No one deserves to be ruled by a demanding child and that is exactly what the 1% have become. It is time to force them to grow up and develop a bit of compassion for the rest of us.
