The answer appears to be “yes” among many aggrieved Americans.
Some have legitimate gripes. Corporate America has been exporting jobs and treasure overseas for decades. Director Michael Moore warned us in his 1989 magnum opus “Roger and Me.”
For our nation’s entire history, the name of the game has always been to keep the lower classes fighting each other for crumbs that fall off the banquet tables of the megabucks moguls. If you’re starving, you’ll concentrate on the leavings rather than look up at the fat cats gorging at your expense.
So here we are. Nevada’s all-time champion corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk, has just turned Twitter into his own plaything. Coming soon: Trump2, the Sequel. Most robber barons have gotten that way by slopping at the public trough while fostering an image of rugged individualism.
H. Ross Perot made his billion by processing (and mishandling) welfare claims. The Wall Street Journal called him America’s first welfare billionaire.
Now comes President Joe threatening a windfall profits tax on BigOil. The last prez to propose that is now retired in Plains, Georgia. He learned a lesson best stated by Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau: Don’t screw with the oil companies.
Their top executives just met for a love fest in Riyadh, BinLadenLand last week. They praised how the murderous Saudi dictator cooperated with Czar Putin to cut oil production.
For decades, I’ve documented how BigOil fixes retail gas prices. They engage in cut throat competition to freeze out discount retailers who have a choice of joining the cartel or going out of business. Most of the west coast indies have disappeared. A precious few are allowed to remain as a defense against anti-trust actions, none of which have happened for years. As I’ve oft stated, oil companies have more and better lawyers than governments.
The west has the highest oil prices in the country when we should have the lowest. Remember when BigOil got drilling in Alaska expanded? The new resources were supposed to protect against west coast shortages. In a few years, they started exporting Alaskan crude to Japan.
A couple of weeks ago, I predicted that gasoline prices would start to fall right after next week’s election. It’s been in BigOil’s interest to buoy up and buy up a fresh crop of elected minions. The price of gas is shorthand for the economy in the minds of short attention span Americans.
“There is no other consumer good or service with price tags that are visible from the street all the time,” a learned professor stated, documenting the obvious.
As the late iconoclastic author Gore Vidal once noted, “America has always been a conservative country.” The bad guys have been trying to unwind Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal for 75 years. Starting with the election of King Ronald the Vague over the Georgia peanut farmer/nuclear physicist, they’ve done a helluva job.
Republicans are now openly talking about cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and paying no political price for it. Many of us lower class types are too busy scrambling under those banquet tables.
Czar Donaldov played to that desperation in 2016 when he promised to deliver everything you’ve ever dreamed of. “I alone can fix it.” He was great at fixes. Elections are next.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown put it best: Republicans offer only tax cuts.
Mostly for the wealthy. And conservative judges as a sop to domestic ayatollahs.
The fix is in and it’s coming to your neighborhood.
BEADLESMANIA. The California rich man who couldn’t be a big fish in a big pond has slithered over here. Robert Beadles is scary-close to having a moonhowler majority on the Washoe County Commission. If incumbent Jeanne Herman gets re-elected and newbies Denise Myer and Mike Clark (the disgraced Washoe property assessor) prevail, the swing county in the swing state can be swung wide for Putin’s favorite groupie.
The county commission controls policy and budgets for the election process. Fake election fraud Valhalla. A county of Washoe’s size would require thousands of by-hand ballot counters who would never be able to bring in a final result before the certification deadline. So Nevada’s votes for president in 2024 could not be certified and thus would not count. Multiply that by seven or so states and “Trump2 — Revenge is Mine” premieres nationwide.
A recent worldwide study found that it takes an average of nine years for a backsliding democracy like ours to become a dictatorship. We’re basically in year two. Be very afraid.
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN. Beadles put out a “newspaper” filled with bigotry, hatred and red scare. Them dirty commies is a’comin’ fer us.
The moonhowlers also stand within striking distance of owning the school board if Melanie Sutton, Graeme Reid and Colleen Westlake win. All have been anointed by Beadlesjuice.
Now that overt racist Assemblymember Jim Wheeler, R-Confederacy, has been defeated in his quest to move up to the state senate, my pick to click for most execrable wannabe is Republican state assembly candidate Sam Kumar. Running in a safe southwest Reno GOP district, he’s Ms. Sutton’s wildest dream.
She told the Reno newspaper that schools are “sexualizing” our children and thus making them vulnerable to molesters. Kumar wants sex ed eliminated from the schools altogether.
That’s the equivalent of yayhoo Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who promised to eliminate all rape, thus making abortion unnecessary.
I’ll give Kumar this: At least it’s an idea. His longrunning Reno Gazette-Journal column never showed an original one, just regurgitated Republican talking points.
Note to Ms. Sutton: Children are born sexualized.
Don’t succumb to those who would prove you weak by responding in fear. We are the biggest, baddest, richest country the world has ever known.
Onward and upward. Vote proud.
Stay safe and pray for Ukraine and 53 other currently war-torn lands.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
Leave a Reply