Bad Government

When Ronald Reagan ran for president, one of his famous lines was, “The scariest words are, I am from the federal government and I’m here to help you!” Once elected, we saw the beginning of the end of the government we all had up to then.

 

We have seen since then a dismantling of the very services that government services are supposed to provide. The purpose of government is to protect its citizens. But we have been told by the many, especially on the Conservative side, is that the private sector can do everything better than our government. If that be the case then let’s just privatize everything. Let’s do away with even our local police and fire departments. If your house is on fire and you didn’t make your payment, sorry you’ll just have to watch it burn.

 

As a Capitalist, I know that corporations are in the business of making profits and not providing for the greater good of our society. Richard Nixon even realized this and under his administration he formed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when there were no controls on companies such as General Electric who were dumping PCBs into the Hudson River. After 9/11 we have the former head of the EPA Christie Whitman lying to the heroes working at ground zero telling them the air quality was safe. These heroes are now suffering and dying.

 

Since the 1980’s our regulatory agencies have been gutted or their hands have been tied by their agency heads who are political appointed cronies who in most cases came from the very corporations they are now suppose to oversee. Most remember the Savings and Loan (S&L) collapse which up through the 1970s were highly regulated. During the 1980s regulators found that their hands were being tied, regulations were being relaxed and S&Ls were allowed to venture into speculative loans and investments. When the regulators were cut back, I compare it to having seven football games going on at the same time with only two referees. Tell me someone isn’t going to take an illegal cheap shot?  This fiasco cost the US taxpayers in the neighborhood of $130 Billion with the failure of 747 institutions.

 

We have seen recently the privatization of even our military services such as meals, laundry and supply transportation given to Haliburton and its subsidiary KBR. These services were once provided by our enlisted personnel and when they had to put down the spatula they picked up a rifle when the “stuff hit the fan”. In Iraq security of our diplomats and embassies is now being provided by a corporation called Whitewater, who follow no laws or regulations and are mercenaries. All making billions of profits from no bid contracts paid again by US taxpayers.

 

Currently we have a crisis again with our major financial institutions who have been allowed to go into the subprime mortgage arena unregulated. Merger mania has also gone un-tethered in all areas especially in the financial services area. Now we have a situation where the politicians are bailing them out because they are too big to let fail. So again your tax dollars are bailing out this fiasco because the current and past administrations have allowed this to happen because they are beholden to corporate interests, not the people. Where is President Teddy Roosevelt when you need him? He distrusted wealthy businessmen and saw the monopolies that were being created by a few.  Roosevelt had the average American and the country as his priority and dissolved forty monopolistic corporations and became known as the “trust buster.”

 

Capitalism is good, but unregulated greed will allow corporate leaders to sell out even their own country. We need our government to be the cops on the block. We don’t need children’s toys being imported with lead in them, we don’t need people dying from food poisoning, we don’t need coal miners dying because the Mine and Safety Administrator is a former mine executive who also had safety violations where his miners died and we don’t need unsafe drugs approved because the Food and Drug Administration is in bed with their “clients” the pharmaceutical companies. And the worst from the Bush administration is how FEMA reacted to Hurricane Katrina because their head guy’s background was in Arabian horses, not public safety.

 

I find it funny that those that say they want government out of their corporate lives and leave everything to the private sector say they aren’t socialists! They believe all the profits the CEO makes is their private money, but when they crash and burn their corporations as the financial giant Bear Stearns recently did, these same CEOs have no problem socializing the corporate loses!! Yup, CEOs keep their millions and the taxpayers will pay for the bailout.  Sounds like some type of their own form of convoluted socialism to me.