Lobbying for Power 04/13/2004

So, yeah... whoever Trina Barcus aka Station Wagon is... while I can appreciate the entry you left in my guestbook, I'm not quite sure why you left it... so drop me an email and let me know who the fuck you are... thanks.

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Okay... rant time. Another attempt to blast through the apathy of America, I'm warning you. If you'd like to remain in a blind apathetic state, or aren't in the mood to hear it today, go somewhere else.

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Hope this doesn't shock anyone, but America is not a democracy. You know, a government by the people, for the people... where decisions are made by the voted opinions of the majority.
We're not even a Republic... which would be a group of elected officials, creating a Senate (and House) which acts independently of its constituents, yet creates policy in the best interests of its constituents.

I'm not sure what you'd call us. All I know is that our government, which rules over us, kowtows to money, and makes laws based on how much our government is paid.

Consider the meat industry. In 2001, after some heavy lobbying (which is a friendlier way of saying that you're giving the government money to get them to agree with your point of view), they actually convinced the Bush administration to end mandatory testing for salmonella in hamburger meat served in federal school lunch programs.

Even though public outrage and indignation was loud enough to reverse the decision in a mere 24 hours, the fact that it was even considered by the government is almost unbelievable.

Oh wait, not really. The fact that our government would kill this policy, even though it saw a 50% drop in salmonella contamination in the ten months before Bush decided to reverse it, follows a pattern of thinking totally in line with this administration's attitude towards all environmental and public health regulations: that it interferes with the free market.

How about the auto industry?
Dick Cheney's energy task force has been promoting an energy plan that does little but promote building new plants, and has been remarkably, even arrogantly, indifferent to the idea of conservation. The single most effective step we can take to conserve energy - increasing the fuel-efficiency standards in automobiles - has gone almost completely unaddressed by this task force.

Could it be that they are blinded by money given to them by carmakers and autoworker unions?
In 2002, Senator John Kerry (yup, that guy running for president) and Senator John McCain came up with a plan to gradually increase fuel-efficiency standards over the next 13 years. The White House, along with 62 of our Senators, killed the plan after heavy lobbying from the auto industry.

Their justification was that it would be bad for business... Of course, if the plan had passed it would have saved a mere 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, which is only roughly what the United States imports from the entire Middle East.

"What's that?" you ask. "We could be completely free of a dependency on foreign oil in 13 years?" Not anymore. But really, are you surprised?

The American public has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to all this, preferring to believe that maybe those in charge know what they are doing.
And they do know. They know that the apathy of America has allowed them to get rich off of handouts from lobbyists and corporations.

Remember that televised speech Bush Jr. made a while ago, announcing $85 million in grants to encourage the development of renewable-energy technologies? What most people don't remember is that all he was doing was restoring the $85 million in funding he'd just cut from renewable-energy technology research.
It also is nothing compared to the $1 billion in tax incentives, credits, and other deductions he's handed out to the oil, coal, nuclear, and gas industries.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious where his interests lie.

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A friend of mine doesn't know why I bother doing all this research and putting it online. He doesn't believe that any of it will do a bit of good in shaking people out of their apathy, and getting them to hold our government responsible for its actions.
Maybe he's right. But giving up is not a question I can consider.
I can't sit back, not make waves, not think for myself, not question authority. I can't do it.
To do so would be committing intellectual suicide, and I'm not ready to give up yet.