Enough is enough By Ed Martin

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ed_marti_080408_enough_is_enough.htm



Two articles in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram bring home the point that enough is enough. I agree with Jane Stillwater, I don't want impeachment, I want revenge. I want Bush, Cheney and their right-wing ideologues to be locked down, wearing orange jumpsuits and flip-flops and eating off of metal trays for the rest of their miserable lives. Anything less would not be justice.

One of the articles, Does America Still Need Unions? is a tirade against people who work for a living organizing to counteract the power the corporations have to make them work for minimum wage. In the article, the author, James Sherk, of, you might have guessed, the Heritage Foundation, states the bald faced lie that, "Deregulation and free trade have increased competition, and they benefit both consumers and the economy." This, in the face of the fact that the figures show that deregulation of the electric power companies has increased the cost of electricity. Remember California and Enron? Sherk sure doesn't. He can say this with a straight face in spite of the fact that lack of regulation of the financial industry has caused the biggest crash since the great depression.

The title of the other article is, Beat up on Big Oil? It does little good. The title is right, but for the wrong reasons. It does little good to try to get control of the oil companies as long as there are Republicans protecting them. The article is a tribute to how wonderful the oil companies are and how the poor things are suffering for being blamed for making billions of dollars of profits from the high price of oil. In the article, the author, Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union, an organization devoted, ironically, to not paying taxes and eliminating all government except, maybe for a right-wing Republican president, makes the astounding statement, "Economics 101 tells us that when you tax something, you get less of it."....Oh, I see. That explains the higher unemployment rate. When you tax work, people are going to stop working so they won't have to pay taxes. And, you get less of it. Work, that is. Moylan doesn't understand that people are going to keep working in spite of taxes because they want to live. It's not discretionary.

The economists tell us that supply and demand is what controls the price of commodities, such as gasoline, electricity and natural gas. Well, the price of those have gone up and up and up, and from my own experience there hasn't been insufficient supply to meet the demand. How come I can buy all the gasoline I want at the price the oil companies set and I can buy all the electricity I want at the price the electric companies set and I can buy all the natural gas to heat my home that I want at the price the gas companies set? There is no shortage in the supply of these things. If there were, I'd have a hard time getting them, and I don't. So, supply and demand do not set prices, the monopolies that control them do. That's economics 101...





Authors Bio: Ed Martin is an unindicted curmudgeon. He is not a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, deist, atheist, or a member of any -ism.