Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Gigantic fortunes were made by the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Astors.  Then labor laws regarding workers' salaries, hours per week, health care, insurance, accident compensation and pensions were enacted.

These needed changes helped families to achieve the much vaunted American dream of workers owning their own homes and their children being able to afford college educations so they could climb up the economic ladder, with each generation improving its life style.

But much of this "American Dream" lifestyle has vanished.

College education, which was once economically available, now costs thousands of dollars a year and students cannot in most cases afford to attend without obtaining loans and putting themselves in debt for years.

Job security has vanished.  This pattern was greatly enhanced when Bill Clinton's globalization policies were enacted by the U.S. government with world free trade agreements signed and implemented during his presidency.

Now big business does have the government off its back.  

Ross Perot warned that U.S. workers could not compete with those living in Bangladesh.  It was recently shown on national television the sight of Cambodian children working long hours for tragically small wages.

Now U.S. stock investors can profit on what amounts to slave labor.  Large manufacturers have in many cases moved to foreign settings.  This has left thousands of U.S. cities without their former manufacturing bases, increasing poverty.

The U.S. lost over 665,000 soldiers in the Civil War to end slavery over a century ago.  It is the height of hypocrisy to claim to be a Christian nation that fought a Civil War to end slavery, and then allow big business to utilize slave labor in other nations and let U.S. citizens obtain wealth from slavery condoned by big business on foreign soil.

Recent outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease have caused Japan to seek withdrawal from trading agreements to accept U.S. beef imports.

A hamburger chain in the state of Washington closed down when approximately 70 individuals became ill, and when a TV show displayed a diseased cow being pulled to the slaughter house, there was a huge outcry that pounds of beef were recalled from supermarkets and from California schools.

Yet when the public demanded federal meat inspectors to check the animals for diseases they could transmit, the beef producers did not want more inspection and the federal meat inspectors agreed with beef producers.

On Saturday, May 10, 2008, a Seattle Post Intelligencer headline read:

FEDS WANT COURT TO BLOCK WIDER TESTING FOR MAD COW (DISEASE)

Sam Hananel of the Associated Press wrote the following:

"Washington - The Bush administration Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for Mad Cow Disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

"The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Kansas-based Creekstone Farms premium beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere.

"Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines."

Bush is following his Republican predecessor Ronald Reagan, "Get the government off our backs!"

Now with 2 ½ million homes facing foreclosure we can witness what the getting government off our backs Republican strategy has accomplished.  

By not having firm governmental control of banking, con artists and fraud specialists swung swiftly into action.

Between former Fed chief Alan Greenspan lowering U.S. interest rates to the lowest figure in 40 years, cheating any investors in U.S. bonds or currency, and fraudulent bank loan officers approving risky loans, the U.S. economy is facing a recession.

When the housing industry has been slowed to a crawl from some suggest 2 years, poverty set in, synchronizing with the soaring of fuel and food prices.

Isn't that Reagan Republican mantra "Get the government off our backs" not only stupidity, but sheer idiocy?

While getting the government off the backs of major corporations many backs of American citizens have been economically broken in the process.