Energy Swill

So now there’s an energy bill. Another big “victory” for Bush to chalk up and don’t say the scribe didn’t warn you that, despite many prognostications to the contrary, these guys don’t lose much.

The night before a “free trade” agreement with Central American countries was passed. Tom DeLay held the voting open into the wee hours while the White House bullied (r)epublicans, against sending American jobs to countries where the environment and labor rights don’t count, into being "for" it.

You will remember how just a few months ago DeLay’s head was on the chopping block for being a crook, but this is what happens when a sleepy, decadent, and disengaged people hand over all power to a deceptive, criminal, corporate political party.

Remember Karl Rove? The guy who sold a CIA operative down the river for political purposes? Well, as John Kerry noted in an e-mail blast two nights ago, he was off to a fund raising event instead of packing his bags for a departure in disgrace. As background music you had the enormous (r)epublican noise machine demanding his opponents apologize to the warm worm.

But we were talking about the energy bill, which is really a tax bill covering energy companies. There is little or only token talk of conservation. There is no mapping out of a future plan for the country, no signposts, goals, or rationalized purpose. Just a big boat load of tax breaks designed to further weaken the government’s ability to perform services that benefit us all. Tax breaks given under the tired reasoning that, if we give these economic monoliths more wealth, they’ll become vibrant entrepreneurial players whose dynamic research and development efforts will lead to breakthroughs and lower prices.

Bullshit.

They don't want lower prices. The money will mostly line the pockets of CEOs who already make up a class of rich unparalleled since the Golden Age of the trusts.

Fascism, as technically defined, is nothing more than a convergence of corporate, military, and government resources for the purposes of enriching the enriched. The last of these three is the only one empowered to force a different, more equitable, arrangement.

A whorehouse, a satrapy, that’s what these people have turned our beautiful democracy into.

Those who bought their flag-draped cant deserve to suffer the consequences. Those of us who didn’t, don’t (but will).

Energy swill.