Gas gouging and body bags
Published Sep 10, 2005 11:57 AM
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
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