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Profits of Doom The Actors and the Mole People By Bonnie-Jean Kimball HOW EXCITING! We now belong to the Mole People. What a great gift our government has given us! Some of us have been voting in every election, and now we've learned it's not necessary. They let us vote; they just don't count them! To our politicians we say, "Are you just happy to see us, or is that a judge you have in your pocket?" Ho, ho, ho. With makeup, hair styling, costuming, and PR, these guys we thought wanted to be statesmen are great actors. What a comedy! It's a big sitcom, like health care. Our government and those huge insurance companies see that we receive only minimum care because they want us to stay strong and pay the right people, who pay them. Ross Perot became a multibillionaire the American Way, didn't he, with our Medicare money? These important men sit on one another's boards of trustees controlling prices. Is that why we see so many mergers? The international pharmaceutical companies priced us out of medications first so we could get well on our own or take unregulated herbal products. The media businesses don't get much money from us yet, so they support outfits that buy big advertisements. "That's just business." Don't revolutionaries take over press, radio, and TV in a coup? Lucky us--we're coup-less! And with the merger of grocery companies, they've priced us out of products we don't need, like milk. It's too bad farmers can't get more of that money, but they must not be paying our needy candidates and the one-party system enough. Governments don't want us to have too much water either, because that would put drought-control boards and water-treatment people out of business. Have you noticed lately that they need to raise prices? Since we can't afford housing costs where we work, we travel too much, and that's why the global (whoa--not just Texas!) oil and gasoline people need bigger profits. It puts independent truckers out of business, but their vehicles are the ones that tear up roads that seldom get repaired, so what do we care? We know the government needs our gasoline tax money for other purposes. What are those again? Now at the start of winter the power companies, whose poor investors weren't receiving high enough dividends, are helping us realize we can live without heat or light. Boy! It's better than a horror movie. With help from the media, they've got everybody scared. Of course, old people get pneumonia or fall down, but without medicine, health care, food, water, rent money, gas, or light they can't make it anyway. Haven't politicians reported that Social Security's going broke? But, gee, I hope they don't raise prices on matches and candles, because "if everyone lit just one little candle--" What's the rest of that song? Send your 500-word Rant item to: Northern California Bohemian, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95403, attn: Opinion page editor. [ North Bay | MetroActive Central | Archives ]