Tag Archives: government

Irresponsible Democrats and Republicans need a bill in order to keep the USG "operating" Past this Weekend

Posted on 2011/12/15 14:29 pm by thepete

What a state the USA is in. I grabbed this screencap from Google News in the middle of the night last night. When I went back to Google News just now, ten hours(ish) later, the top story was how CNN's iReport was letting USGIs coming back from Iraq tell their stories. Even Google News' algorithm is biased against important news! >_< Anyway, so here's where we are in America today. Partisan bickering means the USG may shut down in three days. I doubt it will, but the fact is, unless they print more money, it appears that they'll be out of it. What the hell are our leaders doing to let America fall into such a state? We spend over a trillion on wars chasing a tiny threat while our country faces bigger threats domestically, from crumbling infrastructure, to health care problems and an economy that is not doing it's job of supporting all (or even most) Americans.

While our leaders are bickering about keeping the government operating, the country it's supposed to protect is falling to pieces. Lovely. You know what? I'd be curious to what difference it would make if they DID shut down on Monday. I wonder if things would really be better or worse.

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Taxpayers Subsidizing Junk Food?

Posted on 2011/09/25 14:26 pm by thepete

Taxpayers Subsidizing Junk Food?

natalia-saves-the-world:

“From 1995 to 2010, the government handed $16.9 billion in farm subsidies to people involved in making four common junk food ingredients: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils. Over the same time period, $262 million went to subsidizing apples. ”

“CALPIRG did some math: “If these agricultural subsidies went directly to consumers to allow them to purchase food, each of America’s 144 million taxpayers would be given $7.36 to spend on junk food and 11 cents with which to buy apples each year,” CALPIRG said in its statement. That’s “enough to buy 19 Twinkies but less than a quarter of one Red Delicious apple.”

Yet another one to file under “No Shit, Sherlock.”

And we subsidize these assholes directly by buying this unhealthy food.

I’m so happy to see a slow but definite emergence of a kind of “common sense.”  We’ve still got a long way to go, but perhaps one day we’ll all be able to understand how any system taken to the extreme (like capitalism) is a bad thing (sure, you and I know how obvious this is, but most folks? CLUELESS).  For years I’ve been hearing about how companies have a right to do what ever they want because they’ve got to earn a living.  

“Hey, the government is giving handouts to farmers? They should take ‘em! I’d take ‘em!”

“Outsourcing jobs and salaries to other countries? Good for them! Companies need to make as much money and save as much money as possible!”

“Companies can give as much as they want to political campaigns?  Why not? They’ve got as much a right to representation as we do!”

I could go on, but I really really don’t want to. :(

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Sad Reality #1: Corporations ARE Government and Government is made of the Corporations

Posted on 2010/05/30 10:58 am by thepete

Obama Won’t Want To Read This (via underpaidgenius):

Bob Herbert, An Unnatural Disaster

The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.

President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the “cozy relationship” between the oil companies and the federal government. It’s not just a cozy relationship. It’s an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.

Forget BP for a moment. When is the United States going to get its act together? Will we learn anything from this disaster or will we simply express our collective dismay, ignore the inevitable commission reports (no one pays attention to study commissions), and bury our heads back in the oily sand?

President Obama said on Thursday that his administration was “moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.” Well, he can’t ensure anything of the kind. And, in fact, his corporate-friendly policy of opening up new regions for offshore drilling (that policy is only temporarily halted) will all but guarantee future disastrous spills.

The U.S. will never get its act together until we develop the courage and the will to crack down hard on these giant corporations. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of the American people.

The catch? Our government IS the corporations.  Thanks to the way politicians and government appointees just rotate in and out of their positions and back again, we forget that the what we’re asking is for the very people we want to be regulated to regulate themselves.  Think about Dick Cheney moving from the Reagan/Bush admin to Halliburton and then back to the Bush/Cheney admin.  Think about how Treasury Sec under Bush, Hank Paulson, just before becoming the Treasury Sec, WAS THE CEO OF GOLDMAN SACHS.

How the hell do we let this go on?  Because the reality is, we don’t have a democracy.  If the big corps want something done they either buy lawmakers or swap them out with their own people.  This is the major problem with our system—We The People aren’t understanding that everything we are told are lies—deliberate obfuscations meant to trick us into thinking things are being done when they aren’t and have no hope of being done because the system is rigged.

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