Tag Archives: Privatization

Cuban doctors vs Bush’s US floating militaristic showtime

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The bankruptcy of US foreign politcy in Latin America will become highlighted later this week when Bush deploy’s himself into Latin America with a Navy ‘floating hospital’ in tow. What the world will see is Top Gun military doctor Dubya diplomat in action, and it is assured ahead of time, to underwhelm rather than ‘shock and awe’.

The gigantic US navy war vessel accompanying the donkey is to perform surgeries at high cost to the US taxpayer, and minimal real long term medical value (if any) to the chronically malnourished and ill of Latin America.

Meanwhile, Cuban doctors quietly and with little fanfare continue to run medical clinics in country after country when allowed to do so, and Hugo Chavez continues to offer low cost fuel supplies to the not so well off, in addition. The main tool the dumbest ass neo-con gringo rulers have to provide in response, is an creased militarization everywhere in the region using the drug war as excuse. Cops, soldiers, prisons, death squads, and neo-liberal imperialist inforced privatization is DC’s way to winning ‘hearts and minds’! What a formula for success!

Eventually Washington’s war on many fronts will turn into defeat on many fronts. Nowhere is that day nearing faster than in Latin America. Imagine the ridicule that this Pentagon ‘floating hospital’ will arouse. The US is widely known as providing inadequate medical care to its own population(to children in Texas, for just one example), let alone to other nations. While the Pentagon is most noted for its constant ‘collateral damage’ to innocents, not being any angel of mercy.

Latin America will watch as Bush hobnobs with ruling elites that the mass of people despise rather than considering them as potential saviours from their economic insecurity. People need help, and America offers up a clown and a media circus. What a contrast to the Cuban doctors doing real work. US elite intellectual bankruptcy at its finest.

New Iraqi oil laws made in USA

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There is since the days of legal slavery, probably no worse example of theft written into law than the proposed new Iraqi oil laws will be when passed. Written first in English by the US oil companies and their US government co-conspirators, they were recently re-translated back into our home tongue from Arabic by an Iraqi blogger, Raed Jarrar. Key word here is PRIVATIZATION, and it won’t be for the benefit of any minuscule Iraqi companies still in existence.

To the hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars already robbed from the US treasury for the benefit of the US armament crowd, like CS homey company Lockheed et al, now will be added hundreds of billions of dollars to be robbed by corporations like Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil from the decimated people of Iraq. A perfect picture of modern predatory capitalism in action. Sick. See Democracy Now- New Iraqi Oil Law to Open Iraq’s Oil Reserves to Western Companies

The underwhelming Barack Obama

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The media is already pushing the delusion to liberal Democratic Party voters, that Barack Obama is their Great Black Hope in 2008. And today he announced he was a candidate for President. They are trying to pass him off as the antiwar candidate, same as Howard Dean was similarly imaged in that manner in 2004.

Not only is he not that, but his positions on almost everything are not liberal, neither. As Colin and Condo are to Dubya and Dick, Barack and Jesse are to Bill and Hillary. Yuck.

I encourage everybody to go to Obama’s website to get a glimpse of his mealy mouthed political approach. He is for education, but not a mention of supporting public schools versus privatization. He is for health care, but nothing about keeping abortion legal, nor anything about supporting a single payer comprehensive national health care system, where all are covered. He speaks out on immigration, but says not a word in opposition to the Border Wall being built. He says not a word about maintaining Social Security, but talks of ‘modernizing’ it. Hell with him. We know what ‘modernizing’ really means. It means cutting SS, that’s what.

Similarly, he blabs on about National Defense, supporting the police, being against sex offenders, crime, and meth. Bullshit is what it is. Pure bullshit. He is for a ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq, but not a word about Afghanistan. And what is a ‘phased withdrawal’ to this sort? Over 3 months, or over 10 years? Or over forever? Not a word about cutting our excessive military spending. Why not? This is no liberal speaking, but a mealy mouthed duplicitous worm. Yet another one the Democratic party has spun out.

In the weeks and months ahead, all of America will be encouraged to put their hopes in this man. He was already being touted as the only genuine antiwar candidate tonight on the national news. Lies, lies, lies/ liars, liars, liars. About all the Democrats are hashing up with Barack Obama, is a man to help neutralize the possibility of Condoleeza Rice starting a run for the presidency. That’s about all.

Obama at best would be a return to Clintonism, but this time with a black face in office playing the role of the Slick Willie. Liberals need a better vision than that to offer America, otherwise the slide down hill will continue. And most of all, liberals need a better political party than the Democratic Party. Stuck in that Yu-don’t-go of a vehicle, we will get a wreck of America.

What a demoralized America we have now, minus a genuine third, and anti-corporate, party.

Privatizing the loo

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John out-house rip offPrivatization is nothing but a scam to lower wages and pocket the difference.
 
A few years ago our city Republicans decided to pull a porta-potty switcheroo. First they convinced the citizens it was too expensive to maintain public facilities in the city parks. To save money they leased portable outhouses from Republican businessmen. Thus the city workers who normally cleaned the bathrooms lost those jobs, union jobs of course. The contractors who supply the Port-a-lets hire day laborers to hose the plastic units down, making for a tremendous savings in labor cost. Every dollar that would have gone for a living wage, benefits, retirement, etc, goes right into stinky Mr. Port-a-let’s pocket.

Might I add there’s a stretch of Highway 24 on the west side of Colorado Springs where, if you have your window rolled down, you can smell a back yard where they service Port-a-lets.

Meanwhile city park patrons are left with the plastic Port-a-let experience, instead of the brick facilities they once paid for thirty or so years ago, unveiled at a ribbon cutting ceremony, when local politicians were not so visionary with their greed.

Highway shoulder felons

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Adopt-a-RoadA close friend of mine wants to give more visibility to his grassroots political group by adopting a highway. In exchange for a small sign giving credit to the West End Democrats, we plan to don safety vests and one morning every month be mistaken for roadside chain labor.

Although “mistaken” might be a misnomer.

What an incredible abuse of the local resident! Adopt-A-Road. They’ve been doing it for ten years already because “it is not possible to keep up with the trash that thoughtless people…” Slash the budget for highway cleanup, then sell little signs on the side of the road in exchange for the priviledge of doing the cleaning up. That’s privatization, shift the burden to the citizen, no one to complain but the public.

And what a time to shift the responsibility! Half the brochure about the Highway Cleanup Program details the further complication of Meth-lab refuse. Amateur Meth-amphetamine laboratory rats know better than to throw their tell-tale byproducts into their dumpster. The only option for discrete waste disposal is out the car window while driving where no one sees you, on the highway. The Meth-Lab explosion has produced a highway litter epidemic. It’s less that the discarded chemicals are needed by the police for evidence, It’s more that they are toxic and endanger the garbage handlers, in this case volunteers in day-glo safety jackets trying to do a good deed.

It used to be there was a budget for these tasks. We built the highways and intended to maintain them. Somewhere along the line, between tax-cutting and graft, the public was handed back the shovel.
The highway cleanup scam looks to me like it shares the purpose of latrine duty. Do the work of untouchables and be seen doing it.

A good thing for the visibility of the West End Dems?