- Peak Oil
The people that belie the concept of Peak Oil have only one question to answer. How is it that America was the leading exporter of oil for 100 years and now virtually has none?
Peak Oil has happened, even if the overall perception is that the effects of Peak Oil won’t be seen for another 50 years. The problem is that no new serious oil fields have been found for some 30 years throughout the world, and only the extreme rise in dollars per gallon here in the United States have increased the big oil coffers enough to explore the option to return to old fields where the dollar value of technology development exceeded the ability to easily pull dollars out of the ground.
The problem with the concept of Peak Oil is that our leaders in government should have known about this as the prediction of Peak Oil has been around since the 1930s. And the fact is that it should be obvious to anyone with a brain. If you cut down the edge of a forest, forever clearing land for growing foodstuffs, then at some point you will run out of forest to cut down. And the real likelihood is that you will only be able to cut down so much of the forest because others are cutting down those same forests from different places on the extremities and you’ll all end up somewhere without a forest to cut down.
Now whether you use that wood for purposes of industry, the forest woodlands are indeed finite, as are gold, diamonds, uranium, fish, cattle, or whatever. If the desire to strip a world of its resources exceeds the needs of the people, then the end result is the same.
Another example could easily be seen in the decimation of the buffalo in North America as the whites moved in.
Now I’m not going to say that all of the problems in the world today are because of the whites that moved into "manifest destiny" during the building of America, but I will say that there are points that would seem to indicate certain propensities towards waste in a country that believes the resources are inextinguishable.
So once the people are on board with the concept of having something for next to nothing, it is easy to move into the next subject about how the American government and corporate industries have colluded to deny our children the ability to maintain the same level of life as we. But the problem really comes down to the fact that Americans have been lied to for over 100 years, and here is how.
In 1887 a statement by Supreme Court Justice White, prior to any arguments of a corporation’s rights as people or the denial of their rights as people, gave rise to a Supreme Court designation of corporations as having the rights of a person. I have argued against this designation, and I am adamant about the fact that never was the question raised about a corporation having the rights of a person, but still we have a decision made without argument before the court.
Now what is funny about this (and not funny ha ha) is that no question of the rights of corporations as opposed to a person had ever raised its ugly head in court. What happened that made the question so prevalent that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the rights of people when the question had never been asked?
The wide acceptance of oil and its incorporation into the technologies being developed at the time. America was still expanding and needed lubrication for the mechanisms that allowed stream locomotives to travel from coast to coast, or more appropriately, for commerce to travel from coast to coast.
Oil was far more readily available than whale blubber, so what question needs to be asked about that? Pretty much the rest of the world didn’t even know about oil until our oil company engineers went out into the world exploring. By the First World War oil had already become a matter of contention. 15 years after the treaty of Versailles Hitler was making deals with potentates of the Middle East to provide oil for the Nazi war machine.
I don’t believe that there is a historian alive that wouldn’t have to admit to the technological advancements in that hundred year span in America was based on the cheap production of oil. Nor would they contest the idea that oil became a major player in World War II, although Hitler and his henchmen had some pretty slow reactions to their valuation of oil in the future world, opting rather strongly for hoarding treasure with immediate value, such as gold, property and works of art.
Hitler’s real downfall was his henchmen’s efforts to become immediate members of European aristocracy rather than planning for the long run. Oil made the machines run, but the collusion of international corporations with Nazi Germany paved the way towards property resource grabs, international investment, and secret banking transactions with inroads to the American elite such as Prestcott Bush, current American President George W. Bush’s own grandfather.
And now that I’ve brought up dubya, would somebody tell me please about how a Texas oilman doesn’t understand the concept of Peak Oil, particularly since most Texan oil fields lie unproductive and have for 30 years? Let’s face it, Bush started his life as an oilman when American oil was virtually already gone. Boy does this man have bad luck or what? If there is any politician who should know and understand about Peak Oil it is George W. Bush.
Ultimately he had to resort to borrowing money from Harken’s pension fund to make any money at all and that was buying into a baseball team who’s new stadium was approved by whom? Well, by George W. Bush as Governor of Texas.
Damn it’s a small little world.
But all of this brings up the next subject, which is corporate collusion with government to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers and even directly lie to them about the seriousness and consequences of America’s actions in garnering control of the world’s resources.
- Corporate Collusion
The concept of corporate collusion with government isn’t all that distant in America’s history, but was most recently pointed up by Dwight David Eisenhower’s Presidential outgoing speech to America about the perils of the Military-Industrial Complex.
His concern has now become a prevalent problem that threatens to sink the American ship of state as totally as a 100-foot rogue wave will sink an oil tanker.
As I mentioned in the previous section, this bright marriage of corporation and government initially precluded the average American from making anything of their lives, often forcing these into what essentially was indentured servitude, complete with company stores, forced housing and working conditions so barbaric it is a serious blemish on the American way of life. Certainly working in mines for 12 hours a day with only a canary to warn of dangerous circumstances had resulted with hundreds or thousands of death without so much as a thank you to the wives and family of the dead. In fact, without a working individual at the mine, the survivors were further victimized by being thrown out into the streets without income or a place to live.
Live wasn’t brutal for the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilt but it was for all of their employees. The robber barons got that name because they earned it. Virtually all of America’s elite are robber barons, even the Kennedy clan and the Bush family. They all came to wealth via suspicious activities and support for governmental efforts that helped continue their way of life.
There is no American dream. Period. The last fulfillment of the American Dream is Bill Gates and his philanthropy. No one is going to make millions of dollars on a worthwhile idea anymore. They may get bought out for millions of dollars, but the likelihood of actually having the world benefit from their accomplishments is pretty far down the line for the America we see today.
37% of all American children don’t have insurance and won’t receive medical attention when it is necessary. 47 million Americans are so far below the poverty level that they don’t even have the documentation to get state or federal help. And these same people are allowed to vote, but they might just be sidelined in their ability to vote by a Republican administration that supports corporations over the people, the federal courts over the state, and the state courts over the people.
Doesn’t sound much like a government by the people, of the people and for the people to me.
How not? Well, I can’t raise millions of dollars to get my representatives for government elected, so how does my vote count? And if my vote were supposed to count, then why has this administration been supporting corrupt officials and their collusion with defense contractors such as Duke Cunningham? And this barrel hasn’t even been delved into before the administration decides that some U. S. Attorneys have to go.
Why are there billions of dollars of "no bid" contracts with Haliburton and KRB, SAIC, Blackwater and such when the basis of all federal contracting has previously been the ability to support competitiveness based on any and all companies the ability to bid on federal government contracts?
My recollection of the last bid awarded contract was based on the Joint Strike Force fighter jet. I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about this administration offering up contracts for bid in terms of providing personal body armor to our troops nor ramping up production of Striker based protection of our troops in HumVees.
The consequences of our government’s being in bed with our industries is killing our military, not expanding the military abilities. Every step this administration has made is a culmination of 30 years of lobby support for certain outcomes, including the religious right and the military-industrial complex. Marry them together and you get a Lt. General expounding about how our Christian nation has "a stronger god than your god."
But the most prominent factor exposing the government-corporate collusion is the inability of the government to stand up for the American people, leaving us with Medicare Plan D and rising costs to the American people. Or the inability of our people to express through elections that we don’t agree with a sitting President and still have to put up with him doing the same stupid thing over and over again.
These are your sons and daughters. You should be able to decide.
Now that I think about it, there is even on further thing that negates you from obtaining the American dream. And that is corporate influence on their employees. I had previously written that corporate America had two votes for every one of the American people, but now I have to admit that they have three.
They have the ability to influence elections by corporate involvement with those elections, either in dollars or in terms of guaranteeing elections when their company is the deciding factor in vote counting. The have the ability to influence elections by the actions of their shareholders. And the have the ability to influence elections by intimidating their employees to vote for their candidates.
An American citizen can only vote once, but the corporations can focus the vote at three different levels. All without any interference from the federal government.
And yet this administration wishes you to believe that the Justice Department is above partisan chicanery when they are indeed supplying partisan political proponents in positions of authority. Voter Fraud? How about taking a good look at the last two American national elections?
One shouldn’t discount the CEO of Diebold guaranteeing the Ohio election to George Bush in early 2004 either. Perhaps the elite should keep their mouths shut, but like the terrorists that George Bush is supposedly fighting right now, the corporate shills cannot keep their mouths shut. That is, supposing that they aren’t tortured.
Pride is hard to conceal.
And if you think there were no corporate collusions in 2000 or 2004, I’d suggest you look at the banks of Republican lawyers used in contesting vote counts. Even with a bank of lawyers on call for the 2004 election John Kerry didn’t call them into action. Was John Kerry a pussy? I don’t think so. I think he understood the concept of the American dream. Only history will tell us if John Kerry understood such a concept, but one thing is true.
If you believe in your hearts that George W. Bush won a second term then look at his face on the tapes during the election. Bush obviously knew something was going wrong. George W. Bush won the election in the wee hours of the night in a state that was one hour behind those of us on the East Coast. How is it that it took until the last minute at 2 AM for Bush to be declared the winner? Perhaps because most people were asleep and didn’t question the election results like they did after the Florida fiasco in 2000 in the light of a conscious America.
And one has to wonder just how Fox News became the bearer of the news that Bush had won Florida in 2000 when Gore had already been declared by the rest of the media. Fox News? The bastion of Republican Party policy? Jeez, just how did that work?
- Resource Conflict
There are resource conflicts throughout American history, but the most prominent are those of modern days. And truthfully these conflicts don’t always include Americans either personal or governmental.
Conflict diamonds come to mind, but that becomes the same level of foreword thinking I attached to the Nazis in their efforts to establish a new European aristocracy. Most countries with valuable resources will end up with resource conflicts, whether it is gold, diamonds, oil or water.
In case you didn’t know, fresh water has become a valuable resource, possibly far ahead of its time because of the bottled water syndrome, but the fact is that any resource can easily become a reason for conflict.
China has a problem with fresh water because of their industrialized over-exuberance, but North Korea is so low on the industrialized totem pole that they can’t even light a city after dark. How long before China realizes that their only close source of viable drinking water comes from their communist neighbor?
Another aspect is global warming. How long before countries become entangled in wars based on the ability to feed their people if global warming isn’t brought to its knees soon? Countries, including the United States, are already betting on global warming and are vying for their claims from their borders to the North Pole, which actually works out to Russia having the most exploitable area in the northern hemisphere. Canada has the second most vast area of expansion, but the United States only has the small area above Alaska to demand control over.
When governments are already betting on global warming by making contingencies means that they aren’t making decisions that benefit the people, but decisions that benefit those who would benefit from the exploitation and sales of said areas.
- End Game
The end game of all of these shenanigans is that the American people have allowed a schism to develop between those who claim others are "elite" and those making the claims, who are really the "elite".
How could anyone forget Barbara Bush’s statement that most of the people in the Houston Astrodome were "better off being there" than having the opportunities to be in their homes in New Orleans after Katrina. The smirking laugh after the statement really tells the tale.
For any that continue to believe that the Republican chant of liberal elitism please pay attention. The majority of the people you back for office in the federal government are well to do, have no compunctions about bashing the opposition, and are not willing to answer for their actions.
If one cannot see that by now then I hold very little hope for you as a person of compassion or hope. If what you want is a continuation of the above then continue what you have been doing, but believe me, Rome will have lasted 4 times as long as America if the best we can do is bend to the will of the true elite.
Truth be told once again, there are no welfare queens, and if there are to be they’d probably be your parents trying to make ends meet in their old age without jobs to bolster their own well-being.
Truth be told, your government isn’t working for you if they are working for corporations unless you hold massive amounts of stock in those corporations.
Truth be told, you will not see the Rapture because it isn’t anything even closely associated with the New Testament.
Truth be told, you don’t have the knowledge to home school your children and give them any type of advantage in the world. If you can, more power to you but then you should be a school teacher and try to make a living on $30k a year.
Truth be told, the end game is that there is no end game. After all of this Bush administration stuff passes, at some point along the way the negatives will be negated and positives put in their place.
Or they won’t and your world will die just like the rest of us, held down, unable to have our votes count by political and corporate malfeasance, and the best you can do is kiss your grandchildren goodbye, because you certainly didn’t leave them anything to work with.
