http://www.truthout.org/two-stories-one-truth59789Monday was one of those days. Two stories jumped off the front page of The New York Times that almost caused me to put my fist through my computer monitor. The first began:
The financial reform legislation making its way through Congress has Wall Street executives privately relieved that the bill does not do more to fundamentally change how the industry does business.
There is a vast, windy gap between the high-flown rhetoric from the White House and the final product that comes once the talking is done. The health care "reform" process was the first great example of this; the talk was about public options and true reform, but the actual legislation had only a few wobbly teeth and included a galactic giveaway to the insurance industry, the very industry at the heart of the problem. We were going to be out of Iraq soon, too, and, now, not so much. And here again, with financial reform, is a lot of big talk, but very little follow-through.
The second story I read on Monday was, impossible as it seems, even more maddening than the first:
In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.
That front page on Monday told me everything I needed to know about how it is in America today. I knew it already, but those two stories were like getting slapped in the face with an oil-murdered fish. We the people have no say, while the worst elements of this society hold total sway. The thieving bankers don't like reform, and so reform gets ravaged. The oil boys want to drill, and so the very exceptions that led to the Gulf disaster keep getting rolled out. We are not citizens, but merely subjects, and all we get for the pain and woe we are made to suffer is a lot of empty talk from a lot of empty suits.
I'm not going to change my morning routine because of the dung-bomb the Times dropped on me (again), but the circles under my eyes are certainly growing in breadth and depth. We have to stay informed, all of us, every day, and that's supposed to be "empowering." All I'm "empowered" with after those two stories is a sense of creeping doom. If those financial people quoted above are correct, and if the Obama administration is stupid enough to let the oil industry run wild even as an entire region sinks into the ooze, well, I may actually wind up punching through my monitor if I hear or read anything about "victories."
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