AMERICA CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS

Affordable Necessities or Speculation & “Big Bucks” ?

It’s absolutely more apparent every day in America that a lot of voraciously greedy Americans really are trying to have it both ways: They continue to try to promote the myth that they can allow speculation in the necessities for human life, in order to generate profit, but still keep the cost of these life-giving necessities at an affordable price. No rational person would have a problem with the high cost of any item, be it goods or services, provided the item in question resides in the “want” category and not the “need” category. The distinction is even more stark when the “need” category has to do with human life. Right? Other industrialized countries on earth have no problem with this logic.

But in America, it appears to be the conventional wisdom that you have the right to speculate on the stock performance of a life-giving service, and as long as you and other speculators make “big bucks” on the trading, it doesn’t matter who the resultant pricing hurts. What about the rights of those who are hurt by this activity? Does not their right equal yours? What really is at work here is greed, and a total departure from the origins of America’s morals and ethics. So far, there has been no outrage voiced or presented against the obscenity of electricity deregulation.

Let’s consider electricity. Could you live without it for one day? How about a
week? A month? Of course not. Or water? There have been some efforts
of recent years to privatize normal water delivery for consumers like you and me
but they have met with almost instant reality. Using the Margaret Thatcher
paradigm in Wales, the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco privatized the
water delivery in Cochabamba, Bolivia a few years ago. That predictably very
quickly met with outrage and mayhem.

Then, more recently in Atlanta (incredible that relatively sophisticated Americans
would fall for it) the effort was made again. The same kind of Thatcher M.O. occurred – the water “company” offered millions to the City Council of Atlanta to obtain the contract, and once the deal was signed, the water company delivered brown water at times and no water at times, repaired no old pipes, and drastically cut the personnel needed. In that case, the two sides settled without a big court fight, but just barely. (See my Blog on this one: WARNING: PRIVATIZATION OF YOUR WATER SUPPLY, March 19, 2008 at inegales.blogspot.com)

So these two necessities of life had been saddled with the burden of added profit, and with water it turned out very badly. But the privatization outrage with electricity continues to this day. This head-in-the-sand method of dealing with corporations continues. We shouldn’t be saddled with sky high pricing for electricity in 2008, because 75 years ago - in 1933 - Franklin Roosevelt handled the identical problem (sky high pricing – gouging, for a necessity of life) and he handled it to the envy of the whole world. He passed a law that would regulate electricity pricing. He also very astutely made it a crime to speculate in electricity on the stock market, and made it a crime for electricity providers to give money to Congresspersons and Senators. AND - as all of you know, for some 70 years the American utility system was the envy of the world.

The operating mechanism in the 1935 law, called The Public Utility Holding Company Act - was that this very humane legislation made it conventional wisdom in this hyper-active capitalist society, that you can’t make a profit off of life’s necessities. You can charge for all your raw materials, your personnel, your upkeep, your cost of production, your repairs, etc. but you can’t charge for PROFIT. There are plenty of other business opportunities to buy shares and make profit. Franklin Roosevelt recognized this very minimal logic in 1933, but today’s power brokers just can’t handle it.

Thus for 70 years we didn’t have any 30 million dollar CEOs at our Utilities.

Then, as is well known, in July of 2005, the great price leveler, and price gouging preventer was overturned, and of course we now have electricity bills so high for families that a lot of them have to choose between paying the electric bill and food. (There are so many documented cases of it that no attribution is necessary.) Deregulation of electricity has produced a lot of income dollars for those who buy stock in electricity providers, to be sure. It has made some of them “big bucks.” But on whose shoulders are the speculators riding? What we now have - we should be adult enough to recognize - is an electricity system that is little more than a playground for power-industry predators, aided and abetted by money-crazy Congress persons. Let’s face it: to be perfectly honest, adult and free of the millennium tool known as SPIN, you will admit that if you as a Congressman accept large amounts of money donations from an industry, you are sure as hell going to vote FOR the industry regardless of any other factor. Aren’t you? Don’t let any apologist for this activity tell you any different. They will try it by euphemism and spin – just ask for Proof. We all agree that spin is the new euphemism for lie.

Okay – that’s electricity and water.

Now ask yourself if you can live without gasoline. All the food you eat is delivered to your neighborhood with gasoline. Fully 99% of us get to work with gasoline. Everything you wear, or cook with, or mow with, or repairs to your house, etc. ad infinitum got to you with gasoline. This one has never been regulated. I frankly think that if the US Congress were to try to regulate the price of gasoline, their bosses (the corporations) would tell them to sit down and shut up. And they’d tell them in no uncertain terms !!

So regulation there is apparently not even going to be discussed. Just thinking about it, however, you can add up the record-breaking profit of the oil companies, and the record bonuses of the CEO and his underlings, and you can arrive at what the price of a gallon of gasoline would be without the burden of these individuals – probably on the order of 20 cents or so per gallon. There is at least one lone Washington insider who seems to have summoned the courage to speak out: On May 1, Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, cited the role of “speculators” on commodities. Then Senate Democrats proposed legislation that would impose higher margin requirements on oil speculators in an effort to dampen the speculation spiral. But watch closely and you will read why these efforts will be soundly defeated, say in a year or less. Mark my word!

Finally, what about insurance? We all know you can NOT drive to work without insurance. If you try, very quickly you will be stripped of your license to drive, or you will not be given a car license plate, without proof of coverage. You are required by law to carry at least liability insurance on your car, so if you DO get into some terrible crash that injures some one, or worse, your insurance coverage can pay for the other party’s damages.

But wait – the law stipulates you must have insurance – but it doesn’t stipulate that it must be affordable. So how does that work? The insurance industry is loaded with profit, like all corporations. We hear about the retiring CEO who is given a golden bonus of $300 million. Really, guys, can we continue to bask in the pipe dream that we can have it both ways?

This will probably cause the repetition crowd to invoke their rote euphemisms. They will brand the idea of eliminating profit from insurance as something awful, and they will use the drumbeat words they’ve had pounded into their skulls. Most especially the republicans. You know what they will say. You know the words they will use.

I offer the strongest answer to them in advance. In the 1930s a group of psychologists finally realized the power of the spoken word, especially the perceived effect on us if delivered with disgust, or official-ese, or threat, and made the most revealing psychological experiment ever made, in my humble opinion. This experiment showed graphically how vulnerable we are to the spoken word, unless we learn how to recognize it, and how to be strong enough to expose it and resist it.

The psychologists took some 3 to 5 year olds, and allowed them to play at recess. When recess was over, they cornered one boy and one girl and accused them of hesitating in the schoolyard, out of sight of the others. The accusations were delivered with an air of disgust, practically a sneer, and it really made an impression on the little ones. At first each one said simply “no” to the accusations, but the accusers continued to ask, making the entire exercise very, very important in appearance to the youngsters. The accusation of doing this apparently heinous act “…out of sight of the others” lent a certain credibility to its wrongful, probably ugly, or nasty connotation. The kids finally broke down and cried from guilt.

Finally, when the elapsed time of the interrogation really began to take its toll on the little ones – it was suggested that if they would “confess” they would be forgiven this time, and both did. Think about it: the sophistication index of these babies was not formed yet, so they couldn’t ask “…What is hesitating?” – in other words they couldn’t demand their normal habeas corpus rights – to know what they were charged with. Are you going to continue to be as innocent as a 3 year-old, in dealing with this government and big business ??? Or are you going to ask (demand) for some proof of their promises and spoken words, and excuses and spins … ?

Here are just a few modern forms of “Have you been hesitating in the back yard?” These are the tools of the repetitive crowd. If they say these things enough times, with the proper officialdom, whether it’s a sneer, or with fear in the voice, history has proven people will accept them, and acquiesce:

“The smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
“The cost of electricity has gone up due to the increase in the cost of natural gas.”
”Market forces control the cost of liability insurance.”
“The private sector can do it much more efficiently than government can.”
“Buying oil futures is everyone’s right”
“Speculating in commodities is just business”
“Fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here.”
“He was killed in action defending America, 7 thousand miles from here”
“We have to be the first military in outer space”
“He wasn’t counted as killed in Iraq cause he was killed in a truck accident”
“We show this ugly, porn-ridden filth on TV because the public demands it”
“Health care for all Americans is socialism, and socialism is bad”
“Control of pricing is socialism, and socialism is bad”
“Republicans are better at keeping you safe than Democrats”
“Democrats are soft on Defense” (What about FDR & Kennedy?)
“The huge price of Oil is due to supply and demand” (Analysts report huge inventories)
“Campaign finance donating is just free speech”
“Yes, I accepted $10,000 from Big Oil, but I always vote my conscience”

It’s simple to nullify all these, and the millions of others, by just demanding proof. Think of each one of these, and demand proof, and try to visualize how the perps would prove the statements. You know they couldn’t get it done.

Oh – yeah – and my favorite of all ?

“It’s all perfectly legal.”

This publication is not just a complaint vehicle. Or some smart-ass rambling. It really IS time for us to start thinking of taking back our country from the ever-increasing death grip of big business, legislators owned by big business, drumbeat euphemisms designed to convince the unwary, and the unconscionable expansion of the U.S. military, military thinking, and war as a debate tactic. The fact that 95% of the country’s wealth is owned by 1 or 2% of the people is obscene. Add to that the fact that 94% of all American media (TV, newspapers, radio, movies) is owned by SIX companies, and you can see how truly efficient they have become at mass manipulation by euphemisms & lies.

Ask for proof. Here’s a small example. I gave my son my car, to help him get started. It was a Chevrolet Lumina. On the state transfer document at ”Sale Price” I typed $1. I didn’t intend to allow the State to charge me TAX on a car transfer within my own family. When the clerk saw the $1 sale price, she said the state would therefore assign sme a “Presumptive Value” of the car, and tax me on that figure. I asked her who would be doing the “presuming” as to value. She said the State would. I corrected her, saying the State is a non-human, abstract entity that only exists in the mind, and therefore couldn’t presume anything. She went to Plan B and answered “… someone in the Tax department.“ I asked if he was the world’s recognized foremost authority on used car values and she said no. I told her I happened to know he had worked in Real Estate for several years before his job with the State, and added that his “presumption” would amount to NO MORE THAN an opinion, and therefore my own opinion would have to be equally considered, in order to be in compliance with the 14th Amendment. I added that my opinion would obviously be viewed by any third party as much more cogent than his, since I know the car, and he hasn’t even seen it.

She finally relented, and we went forward with the $1 sale price.

I added this minor episode to show how deep-seated the verbal hood winking of the American population has actually become.

This nation (probably like others, actually) has discovered that it’s perfectly OK to take advantage of your fellow man verbally, if you can. Honesty and fair play have nothing to do with it, if you can convince your fellow American that 36% interest on a loan is OK, then it’s good to go. And if you can make some “big bucks” buying stock in a provider of electricity, and un-regulated pricing, coupled with trading in shares doubles or triples the price to the consumer, that’s perfectly OK too. Just as long as you make some “big bucks.” That’s your right, it says here.

Finally, there is this undisguised penchant for War in America. Some in Europe and elsewhere worldwide have called America a modern day bully. It must be hell to be a bully. The bully always has to be ready – always on guard – to show how tough he is, always ready to do battle, regardless of what other plans he may have had for that time. Bullies that I have known always picked on a smaller target, so as to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. But, as history has a habit of doing, things don’t always work out like they are supposed to – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq - ???

Among the drumbeats we hear from the repetitive crowd is that term “enemy.” You could check it out - it will appear many times in the media every single day.

“We have to be prepared for the enemy”
“For God’s sake don’t talk to the enemy”
“We have to take the fight to the enemy”
“The enemy hates us cause we’re free.” (This one will make you throw up !!)

Why in the world do we not have a Cabinet level entity devoted to peace, negotiation, discussion, comparing each others’ goals and differences, trade, exchange of Orchestras, etc.? If we devoted the exact same amounts of time and dollars to peace and harmony that we devote to war and “enemy” talk, would that change anything? I think the answer is academic. Why doesn’t Germany, England, France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt, etc. etc. spend the same huge amounts of money and time concentrating on the “enemy” as the United States does? Why do we have so many enemies? (Because, they will tell you – ha ha – they hate us ha ha - because – ha ha – we are FREE.) Anyone who swallows this cocaine-induced, megalomaniacal, perverted trial balloon statement really needs to pay attention more, at the very least.

At the risk of repeating myself – we need to start ASKING FOR PROOF.

I remain concerned that some day, somewhere, when America least expects it, some country just may …….

Faithfully, in the interest of the American people
Swungnotes – inegales.blogspot.com