Gas gouging and body bags

Two million “refugees” and thousands dead from Katrina’s wrath.

Washington spends hundreds of billions of dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to benefit the same oil and gas companies and Wall Street speculators that are now extorting working and poor people by jacking up gas and heating oil prices to the highest levels ever seen in this country.

The progressive government of Venezuela, because it has nationalized oil production, sells gasoline to its people at 12 cents a gallon. The U.S. government, on behalf of the “robber baron” oil and gas companies and Wall Street speculators, has twice tried to overthrow the elected Chavez government. Wanna guess why they want him out?

When people here are unable to heat their homes this winter, what will the U.S. government do? When working people can’t afford to fill up their cars to get to work, what will it do? The government will protect the oil and gas companies and Wall Street speculators.

Should there be blame for the levee failures in New Orleans? Of course. Is it possible that the government was unaware that the levee system was designed for only a category-3 hurricane and that New Orleans was below sea level? Of course not.

But spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and the wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq for the benefit of the oil and gas companies and Wall Street speculators while concurrently slashing funds to maintain the country’s infrastructure is “a higher priority”! Cutting taxes on the wealthy while slashing funds for the city infrastructure became the “mantra” in Washington as high-priced corporate lobbyists paid off politicians for their votes.

Now the corporate bought-and-paid-for politicians and big-business media are screaming about looters. Not the real looters and price gougers of the board rooms of the oil and gas companies and Wall Street who are jacking up oil and gas prices, but poor people in the midst of this tragedy who are just trying to survive.

Possibly millions of working people and the poor have lost everything. Who will care for them once the TV crews leave? They will be simply abandoned to their fates. But will they “go quietly into the night”?

Anger was already building up as body bag after body bag returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. How high will that anger rise as 2 million refugees swamp the miserly “social net” while workers and poor all across the country are robbed at the pumps and as they heat their homes?

—Mike Gimbel
Executive Board member
Local 375, DC 37, AFSCME
New York