julianpenrod
Joined: 07 Mar 2002
Posts: 303
Location: west caldwell, new jersey, united states |
"privatization" apparently used to erase the Const
 Sat Jul 02, 2005 2:00 am
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Julian Penrod
4 Fairfield Avenue
West Caldwell, New Jersey 07006
(973) 220-160
julianpenrod@comcast.net
June 30, 2005
Letters to the Editor
Dear sirs:
As critical as it is to oppose the unethical and malignant, it is just as valuable to be able to recognize them, when you see them.
When talking about the apparently perpetually eminent threat of corrupt politicians seeking to enslave America, to fatten their wallets and those of their criminal corporate cronies, suggestions run along the lines of, for example, everything from propaganda to virtual mind control. Deception of the public, hiding profitable ventures of politicians and their friends in public spending bills, all come into discussion. A point that isn't often raised is the concept of the out-and-out erasing of Constitutional rights, freedoms and guarantees! When you can obliterate the rights of the public to things like free speech and assembly, you have laid most of the groundwork for turning the country into an absolute slave state!
And, in fact, that seems to be precisely what is being done today!
To be sure, it's not being undertaken under the direct aegis of altering citizens' rights, it's being done subversively. Because it requires the interaction of government's apparent co-conspirator in dissolving the Constitution and raping the public, big business, it is through them that the actions to suspend Constitutional rights are being carried out.
And, it can be frightening to hear, it has already succeeded, to a large degree!
In fact, Constitutional rights extend to only about 15% of the total area of the country!
Because most of the provisions of "inalienable rights" are guaranteed only on government land! In municipal, state and federal buildings, they are universally permitted. In state parks, they are allowed. On public streets, they are not abridged. Everywhere else, they are largely at the convenience of the owner of the property! And, since most of the owners of land on which others can be expected to encroach, on a regular basis, is big business, that means that, for most people, for much of their lives, their exercise of a number of freedoms is, actually, at the behest of the rich and unprincipled! Businesses, for example, are allowed to restrict freedom of speech during working hours, and on company property! In much the same way, freedom of assembly is similarly permitted to be controlled, or even disallowed, "on company time"!
That leaves, among other things, one's time at home, but, even there, the corporations have begun to attempt to exercise literal un-American, anti-American dictatorial control! Weyco, for example, was recently in the news for threatening to fire workers who smoked during their off hours, in their homes! They didn't have to smoke in the workplace to be fired; Weyco sought to unethically extend its influence over workers' lives into the privacy of their houses! Of course, they had an "excuse", that they were "keeping insurance costs down"! Workers who smoked, they insisted, cost the company money in maintaining their coverage, and they needed to lower costs "to stay competitive". Never mind, though, that the money put toward insurance was money the workers earned, even though they never saw it; when you're going to lie about one thing, might as well lie about everything!
As patently inimical as this policy was to what the United States is supposed to be about, it was never suspended, because government never acted. And for what seems a terrifyingly firm reason.
That the government seems to exist solely for the benefit of the rich and influential! Government maintains the defense of the nation, only to allow the rich thugs in charge of industry to keep what they stole from getting into the hands of someone who might run it right! Whenever the country goes to war, it's to allow the corporations to expand their territory into other nations, or to bolster their flagging numbers with artificially inflated "wartime spending", or both! The police are around mostly to protect the property of the rich from being stolen! When government awards contracts, it's only to politically connected contractors, who have managed to hide their connection with the politicos who awarded them the contracts, or powerful companies that politicians have managed to disguise their financial interests in! When a contractor decides they need or want more money, for heroin and whores, they apparently just whistle up one of the politicos on their leash, and the politico lies to the public about how much they need a project tossed to the contractor! The FDA might pull drugs like Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra, but only after their manufacturers made millions, and the drugs ruined many people's health! As O.J. Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson have amply demonstrated, even the judges seem for sale. Even Martha Stewart's lessening of the charges against her seem motivated by a judge who was paid to make things go as light as possible on her; which is testimony to how deep her criminality really seems to have been! Government seems to see its only loyalty as being to big business, to making sure that it prospers, no matter what, and that no one is allowed to get in the way; the "rank and file" exist only to purchase the garbage the companies churn out, and to pay the taxes, fees and fines gratuitously levied on them by politicians who want to afford their own heroin and whores!
As is so often the case, though, the literal carte blanche afforded big business seems to have resulted in their having run amok, and literally "befouled the nest" with their uncontrolled greed and lack of conscience! Across the country, apparent official conspiracy with developers has resulted in immense tracts of valuable green land having been carved up and replaced with asphalt and concrete! The public, evidently unwisely placing their confidence in government, have clamored for action, Government's answer was to levy new taxes, to provide a fund to purchase land, to keep it from being developed! They could just as well have ordered a moratorium on all development, but that would interfere with the developers making money! And that's evidently not what the developers bribed the politicians to do! Never mind that it is despoiling the view and ruining the environment! Big businesses have to be left completely alone, to do whatever they want! And, if they cause any damage, the "beasts of burden", the taxpayers, have to foot the bill! Not that government doesn't have the power to order a cease and desist! If it was an individual causing as much ruin to quality of life as the developers are - and creating as much of an apparently catastrophic economic bubble to form - government would think nothing of stepping in, declaring them a "threat to society", and lowering the boom!
But government will never do anything to stop any bug business from doing whatever makes them big money! They don't have that kind of compulsion with citizens! After all, government seems to see the citizens as being of no worth whatsoever! Only as the "cattle" to make the money, that government and big business will then rob them of! That's their only purpose to politicians and CEO's!
Big business does whatever it wants, and the "rank and file" are called on to clean up their dirt! The atmosphere has apparently already been enormously, even disastrously, denatured. And only part of that seems to be from "greenhouse gases"; the removal of trees and laying of asphalt seems to raise temperatures 5 to 10 degrees in areas already! Rather than order a stop of development and control of industrial gases, instead, it is being proposed that between $950 billion and $12 trillion be spent in placing a ring of material in orbit around the earth to cut off light that could cause "global warming"! Never mind that the light being shed on the earth is exactly the same intensity that was always needed to keep plants growing and keep people physically and psychologically healthy; it's big business! Never mind that it isn't the light that's at fault, but greedy CEO's! Rob from the people even more, to set up a system that tries to control the problem by cutting off something that's needed, rather than going after those who are perverting that precious commodity, for their filthy, petty ends!
Bank of America is announcing a plan to merge with MBNA. It is indicated that this will cost thousands of workers' jobs. This will be on top of the hundreds of thousands of jobs taken away from workers in mergers and mega-mergers going back twenty years or more! It's okay for business to take jobs away from the "beasts of burden"! But, let the "beasts of burden" rise up and declare a strike, refusing their services themselves, such as employees of airlines are suggesting, and it isn't long before it's declared to be "possibly illegal"! In the case of the air traffic controllers under Ronald Reagan, they were summarily all dismissed - one of the first acts in the new totalitarianism, making sure workers knew how little power and how few rights they really had! - or, in the case of the teachers in Middletown, they were jailed! Another evident case of judges being bribed to do as their masters in big business told them to do! If a “rank and file” individual funneled as much money out of the country as the “outsourcing” corporations do, the government would clamp down on them fast and hard! Anything big business wants, government gives them; if "the little guy" wants something, government appears not to think twice about spitting in their face!
And that seems to extend even to big business wanting what "the little guy" owns! Just this past week, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that gave eminent domain all but unlimited scope! Previously, it was ruled that local government could take an individual's property - usually defined just as "real estate" - against the owner's wishes, for what was conveniently defined as "the public good". This recently began to see expression almost exclusively in the form of politicos, responding to bribes, giving their constituents' land to developers, so the developers could build expensive malls and townhouse communities on them! It was "explained" that this would improve the municipalities, by providing more taxes and attractiveness! They always failed miserably, by the "excuse" continued to be bleated by apparently unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians! A sign of just how corrupt and conniving this entire process was is the fact that not once was the property owned by a politician or CEO ever targeted for seizure, "for the public good"!
But, then, the corrupt and malignant always exempt themselves from the abuse and mistreatment they visit on others! To find a case of someone demanding that others put up with something unpleasant that they refuse to undergo is one of the most reliable signs, in fact, of unethicality at work!
But, again, when left to their own devices, the foul and trenchant only succeed in becoming more and more so! Permitting the profit of big business to be summarily defined as de facto a benefit for the community eventually perverted into establishing that whatever big business wanted had to be considered "good for everyone involved"! Establishing even a spurious "benefit" for the community no longer seemed to be required in allowing the corporations free exercise of their will! And this is the essence of the new ruling vomited out of the Bush Supreme Court, namely that, if big business wants an individual's property, even if it won't provide for the general public good, local government must pretend like it will "benefit the community", and grant them immediate ownership! There are no two ways about it! Anything that big business wants, even if just out of petty greed, jealousy or sheer spite, they can order local government to demand that you forward to them! And, because "property" technically means anything and everything that a person owns, that covers everything in your house! The "rank and file" literally own nothing! At the whim of big business, it can all be taken away from them, by order of the Supreme Court! "For the good of the community"!
But, then, that seems to express the sentiments of government perfectly! All that is of interest to them is big business and money! The only thing of value is that the rich keep getting richer! They devote every molecule of their action to that! That is "the good of the community" in their apparently depraved, perverted minds, that the wealthy rape those who are not wealthy!
No wonder, then, that government never stepped in when Weyco apparently illegally extended their power into the living room! Weyco has big money - enough to apparently pay all the lawmakers bribes! - their employees don't! No wonder, too, that, when employers expanded their attempted obliteration of the Constitution even further, government just sat back and counted their bribe money! Companies began ordering that employees who drank, even responsibly, and at home, could be fired; they demanded that employees exercise daily; and that they refrain from speaking critically about even patent infractions of the law, on the part of their employer!
Government is big business' quisling lap dog, and the "rank and file" are just the dirt underneath government's feet! Government will do nothing to protect the public's right, against assault by the corporations. Because, apparently, government is just a collaborator with big business in erasing the Constitution and raping the people!
Of course, it apparently would still be too dangerous to make their motivations so baldly plain! For that reason, a clandestine plan, involving big business, is needed to eliminate the Constitution!
And that plan appears to hinge on the fact that supposedly Constitutional guarantees and freedom are suspended on private property, or, more precisely, the workplace. If it could be arranged that even the about 15% of the country that is still covered by the Constitution, because it is government land, could be transferred over to corporate ownership and operation, all freedoms would be eliminated there, too!
And that is the apparent purpose behind "privatization"!
Engaging in an apparent policy of deliberate criminal mismanagement of operations, the government seems to have arranged for suggestions that "business be allowed to do it better"! Steadily, entire sections of government have been allowed to be consumed by "private enterprise". The "excuse" offered is that "it improves efficiency and cost-effectiveness"; the reality is that, bit by bit, the areas of the country where the "rank and file" have guaranteed rights under the law are diminishing! The Post Office was one of the major apparent inroads of the corrupt into what is supposed to be the province of the public! George Bush's private account "solution" to Social Security seems geared not so much toward "fixing" the system's finances as it is toward arranging yet another area in which corporate control will be allowed to eradicate government obligations to the people! Among other things, and carefully hidden, was the fact that, if someone's private account actually outpaced Social Security, and, maybe, even gave them, say, five or ten times what their Social Security, the "privatized" system would not be obligated to give them the extra profits they earned! They would only be forwarded what Social Security already would have provided them!
A bill currently before Congress, and expected to pass, would give private corporations permission to construct and privately operate their own highways and toll roads!
If you want to see something truly frightening, look at www.privatization.org! Apparently completely devoted to the prospect of covering the entire country to corporate domination and enslavement, the site is a mix of articles based on only two premises, the transcendent value of whittling operating costs down to the bone, even if the employee suffers in the process, and the utter inability of government to run anything well, must less profitably! In support of privatizing roads, it's being complained that federal funding, tolls and gas taxes are not enough to keep the road system of the country operating. Well, where do they expect private industry to find the money to keep it running? What source will they have of funds? Aside from, apparently, criminally jacking up tolls, big business, as indicated on www.privatization.org, will evidently be allowed to engage in brutalization of employees that government could never get away with, in slavish subservience to squeezing out just a few more pennies! It's the people's blood that will finance the privatized roads, it appears!
And imagine how much less protection from indiscriminate seizure of your property you will have when municipal operations are run by the same corporate entities who seek to steal your possessions!
But some points should be acknowledged.
Among other things, if the greed of the unscrupulous was all there was to it, they would have seized all power already! Even though they seem determined to convince the public that it has no real power, there does seem to be some power still in the hands of the people, something that still, for the moment at least, can forestall wholesale destruction of rights and complete dictatorial control by Wall Street! But that must be used, or it will evaporate, too!
There must be provisions made for a government that will protect the welfare of the public from the depredations of big business. Among other things, the public must push for a leveling of power! Government must be required to act to stop big business from anything that a plurality of the public take exception to! The profiting of corporations must not be allowed to be the sole object of government machinations! Business must be made accountable to the public! And not in the apparently unreliable person of "governmental representatives", but to the members of the "rank and file" themselves! Business must explain why it should be allowed to do something to the people, and the people must be the ones to decide if it will be allowed to! Businesses must submit recommendations for firing to a panel of “rank and file” individuals, each of whom make less than two-thirds what those suggested for firing make. There must be universal public mandate on all government projects, and on who the contracts will be issued to! And, if any group conspires to sabotage the system, to give the impression that the people making the decisions will only cause catastrophe, they must be removed from power, or position, immediately; all their possessions and holdings should be distributed among the populace; and they, and their next five generations, must be banned from holding any political office or business position!
To force this to come about, the public have to take action.
They must enact a universal boycott of all major industries! They must not buy a home! They must make their cars last them as long as possible! They must grow their own food! They must make their own clothes! They must refuse the stultifying trash that passes for an ersatz of entertainment, these days, that includes movies, concerts and sports!
The public must deluge editors' desks, over and over again, at newspapers, news magazines, and radio and television stations, with letters and emails, telling them they know the criminality that is being engaged in!
They must flood politicians' desks, over and over again, at every level of government, with letters and emails demanding that they take action!
They must boycott every election until action is taken that the people universally approve of, and, in that way, provide a humiliating "vote of no confidence" for the cadre of criminals that appear in power now!
And, among the most important things, they have to involve themselves, deeply and determinedly, in government and the machinations of big business, and always be ready to denounce any demonstration of corruption or connivery!
Julian Penrod |
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