Reply
Sun 8 Jun, 2003 10:10 pm
http://www.jimhightower.com/air/read.asp?id=11110
Quote:Bush's New Senior Death Discount
By Jim Hightower
In case you thought Washington couldn't get one whit weirder, meet John Graham.
He's been installed by George W as the Czar of Federal Regulations, and his unstated assignment is to weaken or kill any rule designed to protect your and my health and well-being; if that rule is deemed by big corporations to be too strong, too inconvenient...or worst of all, too effective.
Graham is a notorious, right-wing, laissez-faire nutball who has made a career fronting for corporations that want to escape our nation's health, labor, environmental, and other laws. Through a corporate-funded outfit he calls the Harvard Institute of Risk Assessment, he has given raw corporate greed quasi-academic cover by issuing studies claiming that, say, an anti-pollution rule protecting people's health has to be "balanced" against a polluting corporation's need for profit.
How nutty is this guy? Graham recently engineered a Bush change in America's environmental policy, decreeing that henceforth any regulation to limit pollution should consider the relative monetary value of people's lives based on their age. For example, instead of basing clean air enforcement on the assumption that all lives saved by clean air are worth the same, Graham wants to rig the rules so that older people's lives are discounted in value. He's even got a price tag for you: if you're under 70, you're worth $3.7 million, but if you're older than that, he knocks down your value by a third, to only $2.3 million.
This new Bush policy has been dubbed the "senior death discount," and it is so unprincipled and nutty that the head of the EPA has publicly disowned it, saying: "EPA will not, I repeat, not use an age-adjusted analysis in decision making." Graham, however, says that while the "senior death discount" will not be applied now, he still will push it as official Bush policy.
To help stop this kook, check out the National Resources Defense Council at nrdc.org.
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/030401a.asp
Nutty ... yet powerful. Graham has more influence than you or I.
Is there any doubt that corporate citizens have a much
larger vote and higher standing than human citizens?
I don't even bother voting in the elections anymore because that's not the way things get done. I simply do it the corporate way, and vote with my checkbook. One check is 2000 times more powerful than any silly old-time election ballot.
Sounds inhuman, but it all comes down to numbers doesn't it?
We The People need to realize that.
That's just weird -- and even more reason to get active in the next elections.
CodeBorg
Quote:I don't even bother voting in the elections anymore because that's not the way things get done. I simply do it the corporate way, and vote with my checkbook. One check is 2000 times more powerful than any silly old-time election ballot.
If enough people thought as you do all the checks in the world would not help. How can you expect things to change if you and others like you do not vote? That is conceding to the opposition without even a whimper.
Get these bums out of the White House -- and do it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they are everything I expected them to be -- and then some.
au1929 wrote:CodeBorg
Quote:I don't even bother voting in the elections anymore because that's not the way things get done. I simply do it the corporate way, and vote with my checkbook. One check is 2000 times more powerful than any silly old-time election ballot.
If enough people thought as you do all the checks in the world would not help. How can you expect things to change if you and others like you do not vote? That is conceding to the opposition without even a whimper.
I'm not sure how you think this ... I vote 2000 times, so surely that's better than just once.
Given that most of the population will always be uninformed of the details, they simply vote the way they are told. I'd rather be the one telling, than the one voting.
I'm more interested in effecting change, than adding to a false sense of democracy.
CodeBorg
From what you've said you do not register a vote. The only vote anyone can be sure of is their own.
If you were a presidential campaign manager, would you honestly believe that "the only vote anyone can be sure of is their own?" So all you do is vote? There are hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds that would disagree, and the process is down to a science.
The last I heard if someone wants a petition passed in a local election, signatures costs about 17-30 cents each. You simply hire a company whose purpose is to walk around collecting signatures. That's what they charge. For $5000 you can force anything onto the ballot.
Similar thing with votes. Campaigns are scientifically organized, monitored, calculated and calibrated, so the manager knows exactly how much each vote is costing, where it comes from, and where they should focus their funds for the best voting value. It's no different from the standard ad and marketting campaigns that any company lives by.
So there's no gaurentee I could sell somebody even a can of soda. Who knows? I can't be sure of what anyone will do. But it does happen, on a massive scale, often enough to keep Coke and Pepsi in the billions!
Overall it's statistically certain that each vote costs a certain dollar amount. Money talks and that's why corporations are running the show here, with very deliberate campaigns, while disorganized scattered individuals are allowed to believe they live in a democracy.
I won't complain about it. Rather, I'll join in and do it too. In the time it would take me to register to vote, look on a map, and go to the polls, I can earn enough money to buy 50 votes. It's just a matter of numbers.
Plus, the options we have for voting though nonprofits and political action committees are far more detailed and specific than the options available in a simplistic election booth. I have far more control of what my vote is applied to and actually accomplishes!
This is America. If you want something, you're gonna have to pay extra.
I have heard some strange reasons for not voting but this one takes the cake.
It seems odd that you, as you claim are busily buying votes, yet the one you can't buy is your own.
Yup.
Unless you do something about it, other people will keep on taking your cake.
Frank Apisa wrote:Get these bums out of the White House -- and do it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they are everything I expected them to be -- and then some.
I agree, but I think they are far worse than I expected.
GWBush established a whole new definiton to "survival of the fittest." c.i.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace