OLEAN -- Christmas is but a week away, and soon 2008 will be upon us like a hungry wolf. I dread it. I ritually try to be optimistic this time of year about the nation's future, but recent ones have brought little but worsening of existing problems and the introduction of intractable new ones.
Now I've become a Scrinch -- a combination of Scrooge and the Grinch -- when it comes to looking into a news crystal ball.
About the only positive thing we have to look forward to is the reasonable surety that Somebody Else besides President Dubya will take office when 2009 rolls around, and even that's not a mortal lock, given his behavior so far. Thank God for the 22nd Amendment and the 41 states (New York was one) that ratified it.
And no, I'm not going to rant about Iraq. That gets a bunch of coverage, so much so that other dire situations normally making Page One headlines go begging for news coverage and the attention of the American people.
Here are some other things you don't get to hear about every day -- things we should all be screaming bloody murder about. Start fretting, then do something. Call your person in Congress. Raise unshirted hell with him or her. That actually works once in a while.
You Deserve a Break Today -- I went through most of my life, like many Americans, believing we solved the contaminated food problem more than a century ago. What's to worry about? Don't huge federal cabinet agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture still protect us as a matter of routine against consuming spoiled and diseased food?
Hahahahahahha. Don't make me laugh. The USDA under this Bush administration has evolved into one of those failing agencies fallen under the spell of Big Business influence.
Remember all those E. coli scares in recent years, including 2007? Expect a new one soon. According to former Texas agricultural commissioner Jim Hightower -- who can attest firsthand to Dubya's pronounced lack of interest in any sort of government regulation -- the USDA is once again, after many years of proscription, allowing huge corporate slaughterhouses and Big Beef meat companies to market beef that has been found to have E. coli0157:H71 in it.
Yes, the very bacteria that lives in cow intestines and cow manure, and that causes cramps from hell, kidney failure and sometimes death in those who consume it. The big meatpackers are allowed to conduct their own safety tests, and until recently had to discard and destroy batches found contaminated with E. coli -- but now they can flip it into a bin labeled "cook only" and sell it for eventual production of pre-cooked hamburgers, taco meat, pizza toppings and such.
According to Hightower's watchdog newsletter "The Lowdown," contaminated meat is thus "turned into a profit center for the industry, so processors are under no pressure to clean up their sloppy, low-cost, rush procedures."
Sure, as the government and fast-food industry stress, proper cooking kills the deadly bacteria.
But the USDA can't even tell you how much beef is now reliant upon proper temperatures, time and training to stop a microbe that should have been dealt with and destroyed at the outset of the whole slaughter-pack-sell-consume chain. Enjoy your next chomp on that holiday taco or hamburger patty.
Globalization Nation -- We keep hearing how much all these free trade agreements help Americans and our economy, and keep prices down and actually create jobs here. In some instances, yes, but I don't buy it as the corporate religion Dubya's Big Business friends have made it.
The Wall Streeters who actually run our economy -- and who've successfully converted it to almost total reliance upon the dodgy crapshoot we call the "stock market" -- naturally love globalization because it removes part of the big fiscal game from all those bothersome federal and state regulations and makes union problems evaporate, but more importantly because it provides them huge leverage of profits and economies of scale, all at the expense of the middle-class American worker, and of the foreign peasants who will work for the pittance that stands between them and starvation. The fat cats can actually control by mere whim how many billions they make each year -- it has nothing to do with the so-called "rules" of the marketplace.
What it does have to do with is a paradigm shift of economic power that is already out of our control and holds exceedingly ugly and dangerous implications for our future as a nation. As Hightower presciently asks: "How does it help our economy to shift America's manufacturing to China? Our middle-class jobs are disappearing and our country is falling deeper into debt, while China has the fastest growing economy in the world and now owns a huge chunk of our debt."
Huge indeed. When Dubya hosted China's leader Hu Jintao last year, British papers in their wry fashion quipped that George W. Bush, the leader of "the most powerful country on earth, today met Hu Jintao, his banker." China holds more than $800 billion of our national debt -- more than half of that in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds -- and we are addicted to that fiscal narcotic. If China stopped purchasing our debt paper, we'd be hammered by major and crippling inflation so fast our government couldn't react effectively. If China -- until recently a sworn enemy and a nation few Americans understand -- decides for whatever reason to call all that paper in at once, it's ballgame for our economy. This, of course, is to say nothing of everyday worries about brushing our teeth with anti-freeze and watching our toddlers devour toxic lead paint from their toys.
About the only place you can find American-made toys these days is in small shops or on the Internet. Try toysmadeinamerica.com or usmadetoys.com to track down gifts made at home.
And you can't trust the Democrats you just elected to Congress in all this mess. As recently as last month, the House leadership and 108 Democrats did the bidding of corporate rulers who quietly helped pass "yet another trade scam," as Hightower puts it, this one with Peru along NAFTA-type lines.
Dubya and his father before him are dyed-in-the-wool "free traders" and will never change, so we have to put our chips on Congress, right? Dubya is a lost cause and doesn't give a rip anymore because he's a lame duck and has a cellar-dwelling 24 percent approval rating with the public. Guess what? Congress only has an 11 percent job approval rating in the latest Zogby Poll. Maybe its members don't care, either.
Mother Russia -- Speaking of former enemies, here's one to brighten your outlook on 2008 ... Not!
Without much fanfare here, Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this month tightened his vice-like grip on power in that important nation to such an extent he announced his "moral authority" to keep wielding it even after he's supposed to step down next year.
Not that the Russians are bitching much. Putin's United Russia Party and its allies won 400 of the Russian Duma's 450 seats. Look for Putin to quickly amend the democratic constitution Russians have experimented with after the Soviet Union fell apart almost two decades ago.
Look for the abolition of term limits. Look for Putin to install himself as near-czar and begin the Cold War all over again. The few western critics who noted the recent election didn't seem all that up-and-up (Putin had jailed some opponents and intimidated others) were greeted with his reaction that outsiders should stop "poking their snotty noses" into Russian affairs.
American presidents (see Carter, Reagan, etc.) used to react strongly to such observations, but Dubya won't. One, Putin is immensely popular in his order-loving homeland. Two, there's all that oil, don't you know. Three, Dubya can tell Putin is trustworthy just by looking into his eyes. It must be so. The president said as much.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 18 2007 |