60 minutes on Sunday reported about the "possibility" that it was wall street and oil company fraud, market manipulation, price gouging that accounted for the billions of dollars that were stolen from American working people and transferred to the rich during the run-up of oil and gas prices in this country. Why have those prices now fallen? Because the public finally stopped buying as much gas, already broke and busted, and the economy is on the edge of collapse.
http://www.truthout.org/011209K
Why has our country failed to develop green technology so we could get "off" of oil, not be involved in the middle east, not be responsible for destroying the earth by burning fuel? Because too many of our politicians work for the oil industry (Bush -- all the Bushes -- well, not Grandpa Bush, he worked with the Nazis but not necessarily with the oil companies -- but Daddy Bush is a Saudi man, baby Bush George, Condi Rice, Cheney indirectly since Halliburton is a support company and works for oil companies, Rumsfeld -- they all do). The oil companies want the U.S. to keep using oil, so they do things to turn the public away from public transportation systems and green technology. And they've almost destroyed us and the entire earth in the process. All for the love of money.
The big 5 oil companies in the U.S. made $123 billion in "profits" (that is the result of price gouging and market manipulation) in the U.S. in 2007. Taxpayers were forced, by the Republicans, to "subsidize" the same oil companies to the tune of $40 billion per year as another Congressional give-away to the corporate elite. I want my money back. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15222
Here's the thing. When it's "just" the common folk, the little people whose money is stolen, people who are neither rich nor famous nor powerful, people who do not summer in the Hamptons, people who do not rub elbows with the elite, just the working people, then the government does nothing to help us. If I'd had enough money to invest with Bernie Madoff, on the other hand, Congress would stop everything to hold "special" hearings about my losses, to kiss my butt. But since I'm not rich, they could care less. But I still want my money back. Every penny and then some. With interest. And punitive damages. Maybe jail time for the CEOs. I want my politicians to get off their lazy corrupt asses and go get my money back. Please.
Remember when the states all got together and decided to sue the tobacco companies? Do you know why they sued? Because the people who were going to get the money from the lawsuits were rich, powerful constituents with lobbyists who give money to politicians. Kick-backs, in other words. The states sued the tobacco companies for murdering millions of Americans with their deadly products. The dead people did not receive a penny. Nor did their dependents, spouses, those who grieved, those who cared for them in their homes as they lay dying, wasting away with cancer. Not one penny for the common folk.
Nope. The money went to the doctors, most of whom are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, many of whom make well over a million dollars every year. The assumption was that the doctors, among the richest group of people in the country, were somehow the "injured" party from the tobacco cancer cases. Lots of dead people filling the cemeteries, but the states and politicians decided that the "real" victims were the mercedes-driving summer-home renting bribe-paying doctors. Like they might have made two million dollars if the dead-beat smokers paid their bills. And the hospitals also got lots of the money. And a big chunk was kicked back to the politicians. Note: the nurses, who do most of the work, got nothing.
So I ask this question: why aren't the states going after the oil corporations who have stolen my money? Why aren't they going after Wall Street, which has stolen my money? Why is it always okay for corporations to steal money from the American working people, and nobody in political power ever raises a finger to help us?
Monday, January 12, 2009
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