The Republicans are slaves of Big Oil.
As we enter the final stages of the 2006 elections, we need to hammer one point home over and over again -- the Republican Party is a slave of Big Oil. They have systematically eroded our freedoms, destroyed our way of life, and gutted our system of checks and balances to satisfy their thirst for oil dollars.
The Bush administration has shed blood in an effort to control the world's oil supply. In their way of thinking, Big Oil is a finite resource that can only last so long. Therefore, they must grab as much oil as possible so they can ensure world domination and force the rest of the world to pay their prices for oil. Everything else is subordinate to that aim.
The Bush administration has run up record deficits, shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of people, and permanently destroyed homes and families and communities in order to drink at the trough of Big Oil. There are eight different aspects of this, and eight different talking points for each aspect. Throughout the rest of the election season here, at other blogs, and at my own blog, I will discuss various talking points that people can use with their friends and neighbors and while canvassing for votes.
Yet this is not a referendum on the Bush administration -- he is not on the ballot. This is a referendum on Big Oil and on the failure of the Republican Congress to exercise their Constitutional duty of checks and balances. A vote for the Republicans is a vote for Big Oil. A vote for the Democrats will be a vote to restore the system of checks and balances, a vote for John Conyers as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and a vote to begin the investigations that will lead to the impeachment and removal from office of Bush and Cheney.
Blood for Oil:
The Bush administration has shed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the lives of millions more so they can drink from the trough of Big Oil.
Lancet now estimates we have killed over 300,000 Iraqis since the invasion:
Conditions got far worse following the US illegal aggression beginning in March, 2003. The daily toll of death and destruction from the ongoing endless conflict is unknown precisely, but even honest conservative estimates are appalling and shocking despite efforts by the Pentagon to suppress them. The British Lancet reported in October, 2004 by their "conservative assumptions" an Iraqi toll of about 100,000 "excess deaths" post March, 2003. They then updated their earlier estimate in February, 2006 to a likely 300,000 that seven months later is considerably higher. Other assessments suggest an even greater number, up to 500,000 according to one estimate a few months ago. Whatever the true number, the US inflicted disaster on Iraq and its people is one of epic proportions in all respects.
It's destroyed a once prosperous nation and left in its wake today a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel or most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. It shows up in Baghdad's morgue that can't cope with the number of corpses it gets daily while those still living can't get desperately needed care at hospitals unable to provide it. It's also there in the US-run torture-prisons where anyone can be brutalized in a kind of a ritual foreplay for no reason at all. Thing's aren't improving. They get steadily worse as the occupation grinds on and death squads room at will including the US "Salvador option" ones modeled after the types used in the Reagan era against the leftist guerrilla resistance in El Salvador in the 1980s that murdered many thousands. This is what life in most of Iraq is now like, and it clearly warrants the label genocide. It also makes all US officials at the highest levels responsible for it guilty of egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity. Will they ever be held to account for what they've done? Never, as long as the US occupier lives by the rules of victor's justice that insures none at all for the victims.
Corporate welfare:
The Bush administration has systematicly given out billions of dollars in handouts and payoffs to greedy corporations and has looked the other way as they routinely flout our laws.
And don't believe for a second all that loot helps family farms. Just 10 percent of farmers get 72 percent of it. Somehow, fruit and vegetable growers prosper without a dime in federal subsidies; 93 percent goes to prop up overproduction of corn, cotton, wheat, rice and soybeans. Half of the $26 billion goes to corporate welfare queens such as Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson Foods. Even oil giant Chevron gets handouts under farm programs. But it's not enough for farm state politicians. Congress also maintains tariffs and import quotas that elevate prices for a select few producers. This means consumers pay extra - a staggering $16.2 billion in higher prices at the grocery in 2004. Put another way, each American family donated $146 to corporate farmers.
I live in a farming community, and we do not get very much of this money at all. Most of our farmers borrow tens of thousands of dollars and hope for the cooperation of the weather so they can pay off the bank and have a little left over. Around 50% of the people in my county are low-income.
Attacking our Constitution:
The Bush administration has repeatedly violated every single amendment of the Bill of Rights with the exception of the third. Their goal is to create a police state in which they tell people what to do.
For example, from Richard Clarke:
Richard Clarke, who advised four presidents on issues of national security between 1973 and 2003, drew attention to the Bush administration's use of "alternative interrogation means," a euphemism devised to denote torture. According to Clarke, the administration based its case for war on testimonies of tortured prisoners that were later discredited as desperate attempts to bring the "alternative interrogation" to an end. One such claim alleged that Al-Qaeda members were being trained to deploy weapons of mass destruction. "It turned out to be a lie," Clarke said.
The war against the people:
The Bush administration has declared open warfare against our friends, neighbors, families, and communities by tearing apart towns and cities through cutting funding for programs so they can feed Big Oil.
For example, here is an example of how Bush plays off people against each other:
For many years federal funding for rural schools, roads, community services and law enforcement throughout Oregon and the Western US was linked to logging on public lands. The federal government shared with rural governments the money generated from logging old growth forests. Irresponsible logging companies and cynical politicians used this link to promote reckless logging and the destruction of our children's natural heritage, clean air and clean water.
In 2000 Congress adopted a new program that reformed this practice. Known as "County Payments" it de-linked money for rural schools and other important services from the boom and bust cycles of the logging industry. Over the last six years the program has helped build good will and cooperation between rural governments, educators and conservationists. ONRC has repeatedly asked Congress to renew this important program.
Until recently, the Bush administration hedged on their support for the County Payments program, preferring instead to re-link education money to logging. This week they unveiled their 2007 federal budget and a cynical scheme to use the program to divide communities.
Bush's plan calls for halving the amount of money going to rural communities under the County Payments program, and re-linking the money to logging on public lands. Worse, the Bush proposal calls for selling off approximately $800 million worth of America's forestlands-lands that were set aside as a legacy for our children and grandchildren.
Destruction of our way of life:
The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic pattern of destruction of our national treasures, communities, jobs, and sense of security.
For example, Ted Stevens will spare no expense to defeat opponents of drilling; here is his puppet in Washington:
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a prominent Republican backer of McGavick, co-hosted the Anchorage fundraiser after Cantwell helped torpedo legislation opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and Stevens vowed revenge. McGavick favors ANWR drilling.
Scaremongering and class warfare:
The Bush administration, in order to distract people from the real problem in Big Oil, has engaged in a systematic pattern of class warfare and scaremongering as well as pitting group against group.
Want to know why Republicans leaflet church parking lots with flyers saying Democrats are going to hell for being pro-choice? Want to know why Santorum says proponents of gay rights support beastiality? Want to know why Tom Tancredo wants to build the Berlin Wall II across the Mexican Border? Want to know why Bush issues all these phony terror alerts, makes phony terror arrests, and launches phony military offensives?
Not out of any real concern about the morality or safety of this country. All of this is a smokescreen from the real problem -- Republican reliance on Big Oil. So, the next time you hear a hysterical Republican talking about "morality," see how much money he takes from Big Oil.
And Bush, aided and abetted by the GOP Congress, takes this scaremongering to an extreme -- in a way similar to Bin Laden:
There is that similar thread that runs through the ideology of Bush and bin-Laden alike; that of religious-based rhetoric that accompanies their violent acts; waged either out of defense or to serve their own narrow interests. Both seek to shackle their followers to their deadly political pieties, in which religion is used to rationalize and justify the violence they employ to achieve their political objectives. Bush has his 'war on terror' which he fancies himself doing God's work as he wields the awesome force of our nations military. Bin-Laden has his war on infidels which he wages in the name of Allah with the lives of his followers.
"Faith shows us the reality of good, and the reality of evil," President Bush said at a prayer breakfast shortly after the 9-11 attacks. "Some acts and choices in this world have eternal consequences. It is always, and everywhere, wrong to target and kill the innocent. It is always, and everywhere, wrong to be cruel and hateful, to enslave and oppress."
Of course, in Bush's book, morality is always for the other person, designed to keep them down. It is never meant for him.
Cheap Labor:
The Bush administration has sought to create a massive pool of cheap labor around the world so that abusive corporations can locate to the country where they can pay the lowest possible wages.
From Congressional candidate Jerry McNerney:
Data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that inflation-adjusted median household income remains below where it was in 2000. For families headed by someone under age 65, annual income fell by $275 between 2004 and 2005.
Speaking to supporters in Dublin, Jerry McNerney, Democratic candidate for Congress in the 11 th district, said, "As we've all suspected, only the wealthy have seen their income rise since the last economic peak. While income for top-earning households rose in the last five years, everybody else fell-from about 3 to 5 percent. This uneven recovery hits hardest at those on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder."
In "The Not-So-Good Times," Heather Boushey, a senior economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, notes that, while gross domestic product has been increasing "at a healthy rate," wages are not keeping pace, saying, "there are 3.9 million Americans not at work today who would be if the employment rate had rebounded to where it was in 2000."
In contrast, corporate profits after taxes rose 14.8 percent in the first three months of the year. As McNerney observes, "It's just that most of us aren't seeing much of it."
Price Gouging:
The Bush administration has looked the other way as providers of essential services gouge people who can least afford it in order to pay out millions of dollars worth of bonuses to their CEO's.
You know about the oil companies gouging consumers at the pump. But here is an example of a health insurance provider gouging sick and dying patients so their execs can take home millions of dollars in salaries:
On the heels of U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearings on not-for-profit hospitals and excessive executive compensation, Consejo de Latinos Unidos, the leading national advocacy group that fights hospital price gouging of the uninsured, called on the IRS to review the compensation package of Catholic Healthcare West's CEO and President Lloyd H. Dean who earned an extra $1.8 million in one year, for a total one-year compensation of $5.8 million ending June 30, 2005, according to public IRS information.
"We are dispatching a letter to the Dallas office of the IRS, which monitors the behavior of not-for-profit entities, about Mr. Dean's excessive compensation," said K.B. Forbes, Executive Director of the Consejo. "Catholic Healthcare West's leadership appears to be more concerned about excessive compensation than community needs. Dean's obscene pay appears to go against established guidelines for not-for-profit entities."
In all these things, the GOP Congress has failed in their duty of oversight. Furthermore, it is not just a question of competence. It is a matter of the failure of conservatism as an ideology -- the mentality of Washington, DC is that government can't solve problems anyway, so why should we care when George Bush siphons away our tax dollars to Big Oil?
Obamathon
