THINK WE CAN .com

It’s been an exciting election season.  With the republican, VP candidate’s surprise entry into the fray, even greater thrills and chills are turning this into a real horse race.

This column, however, is not about the entertainment aspect of the election, for we need to be well aware of the seriousness of the choices we are about to make.

The U.S. is in the early stages of our deepest financial troubles since the great depression.  This dangerous situation was caused primarily by the “privatization” of major portions of our economy.  If we fail to correct this mistake, depression will once again describe the lives of many more millions of our citizens.

The premise of privatization was simple:  Congress turned over control and operations of critical segments of our economy to private corporations--huge, multi-national corporations in most cases.  And when I say critical segments of our economy, think energy, health care, defense and banking for starters.

For privatization to function, Congress had to allow CEO’s of certain corporations to pretty much make up their own rules as they went along, since they can be trusted to do what is best for U.S. citizens.

If your first reaction to that blind, faith-based initiative is to question the collective, business judgment of Congress, well, you’re right on the money.

Privatization, while seeming to work at first, has proven to be one of the most disastrous economic concepts ever foisted on the middle class and poor of the world.  Although proposed and implemented by some of America’s most prominent economists, privatization has turned into a long term tragedy of staggering proportions.

Let’s call it like it is--corporate American made chumps out of Congress.

I wonder that I dare make such damning statements concerning ideas that popped out of some of our most educated people.  But Google the phrase “privatization of America” for a mere 2.9 million hits, and read a few and weep.

Our economic situation is so bad our Government Accountability Office, U.S. GAO, purchased new calculators that handle more zeros in order to tally up the monstrously ugly future of our privatized economy.  If you think I’m exaggerating, let me spell out the numbers in a way that better demonstrates those zeros:

The Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac debacle could cost us five hundred thousand million dollars;  Corporate Health Care America will soon be wasting or stealing two thousand thousand million dollars annually; Big Banking’s bailout may run to 700 thousand million dollars; Big Pharma will tag us for twenty thousand million dollars annually if they attain their goal of drugging 50% of American children; Big Oil just gouged some ten thousand million dollars of excess profits; We haven't got a clue about the future costs for Big Privatized Defense; And we have corporate America’s manipulations of societies’ insurance programs--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—with a long term cost estimated at sixty-seven thousand thousand million dollars! 

If I had one of those new, GAO calculators I would add all that up for you.  But to summarize, the destruction of our way of life as we know it is now guaranteed by the four horsemen of our economic apocalypse--Big Health Care, Big Defense, Big Oil and Big Finance.  Unless we quickly set about removing their greasy, greedy hands from our throats, they will choke the very life out of millions of our citizens.

Never in the history of mankind have the results of grotesque greed and power been hammered home with such ferocity as shown by the excesses of U.S. privatization.  The gleeful squeals of the pigs at this trough are drowned out only by the agonized groans of our needy, helpless and downtrodden.

Our presidential election is our best, if not last, hope to remedy this calamity.  Although our leadership has been taken in by corporate America, we the voters can watch and listen closely, and choose those people who actually recognize the damage that privatization has caused.  We need to get this vote right, particularly those of us who are not wealthy.

Forget party affiliations, we must not vote for further chump change.