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Multi-nationals lower our standard of living

Posted 4/8/11

To the Editor: There was a cartoon in a recent issue of the “Chattanooga Times Free Press” showing a “cutish” rat holding a sign saying “Support the Fat Cats” and on his t-shirt it says, …

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Multi-nationals lower our standard of living

Posted

To the Editor:

There was a cartoon in a recent issue of the “Chattanooga Times Free Press” showing a “cutish” rat holding a sign saying “Support the Fat Cats” and on his t-shirt it says, “tea-party.” I suppose if you looked real close, one could see that the sign and tee shirt were provided to the rat courtesy of the Koch brothers.

Then we have the followers of Fox News who do so without realizing that Saudi Arabian Prince Alaweed bin Tolal is the second-largest shareholder and the rest is controlled by super wealthy Australian Rupert Murdoch. There are citizens who are gullible enough to believe that liberal institutions run our media, without realizing that it is rich, powerful, conservative multinational corporations and banks that control 95 percent of the media of this New World Order.

Oil prices too high? Are the speculators on Wall Street robbing America again? Realize that our military consumes 1/3 of our oil supplies in our long occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Realize that by occupying Iraq, we sit on one of the largest proven reserves of light, sweet crude oil in the world and it is not coming to market.

In 2001, Saddam Hussein was planning on selling Iraqi oil in Eurodollars. That would have flooded the world markets with oil at a time when OPEC was getting about $15 a barrel. The Saudis and OPEC would have found themselves broke. They came to Crawford, Texas, held hands with President Bush, and miracle of miracles, we invaded Iraq, even though, strangely enough, it was Saudi Arabians who committed the terror of 9/11. And we give tax breaks to the oil corporations.

The multi-national corporations and banks owe no allegiance to the American flag or the American people. They will take your job and ship it off to a land where the people will work 14-hour days, seven days a week, in crappy, dangerous environments -- no OSHA there -- and go home to shanties surrounded by open ditches and piles of waste from the factory where they are lucky enough to work for 25 cents an hour.

Goods can be purchased at the company store using company script and children as young as 10 are always welcome on the assembly line. Oh, and these same corporations get tax breaks from the American workers. Is that our way of saying thank you for our cleaner air and water now that we no longer have numerous foundries, refineries, mills and factories dumping in our backyards?

Now, if only New York State could offer these mega rich multi-corporations such a deal. The tea-party believes apparently that we don’t need a strong middle-class making demands on corporations to do things the right way, the clean way, an honest way, and a way where even the lowest paid worker can afford a decent living. The American way.

There is little doubt that we’d see jobs aplenty around these parts if we went back to the days of 1890. Or better yet, let’s all work towards lowering our standard of living to that of our global neighbors who have inherited our factories. After all, we must compete in this new global marketplace.

Frank J. Thies, Potsdam