PureX
Well-known member
Sad to say, Bybee, but it's not just at the highest levels. It's at the lowest and in-between levels, too. Our state governments are no better than the fed, and most of our local governments are no better than the state. The name of the game in business in America, now, is 'bigger profits through government control'.More and more I feel that there is only one party operating in America at the highest levels. That party is called "Greed"! And its objective is to serve itself!
In my town, the local developers and construction people (the bigger ones, of course) routinely choose from among their own who they want to run for key public offices, and then they put their considerable money and influence behind that candidate. And that candidate usually wins because people vote based on their own economic well-being, and a lot of people depend on these developers and their construction projects for work and related income.
So having installed their own people in the key decision-making positions in the local government, they begin pushing for certain big development projects that will direct millions of tax-payer dollars into the developer's and the construction company's pockets. And the result is that instead of building things the city really needs, we keep rebuilding big-dollar things that the city doesn't really need. Like convention centers that no one comes to, and city arenas that can't pay for themselves. And this has been going on here since the early 1970s, and probably before.
And at the state level it's much the same thing, only the developers and construction companies become corporate CEOs and bank presidents in the state's major cities. And the tax dollars get funneled to them not so much through needless construction projects, but through laws that direct municipalities all across the state to favor those big corporations and banks. There is one big insurance company in my state that has been buying up all the hospitals, doctor's offices and practices, and using them to 'lock out' other insurance providers. So that in my town now, the hospitals and the doctors are owned by one of two insurance companies. And whichever insurance I buy will soon dictate which doctor and hospital I can use. And this is a medium size town. All around the rest of the state there are smaller towns that have only one hospital. When the insurance company buys that hospital, everyone living there will have to buy their health insurance to access their approved doctors and use that hospital.
Clearly, this should be illegal, and may be deemed so, eventually, by the supreme court. But in the meantime, this insurance company will have an absolute monopoly on the health care of people all across the state, and will use it to force them to pay whatever they want. And they'll do it for years until the lawyers and courts finally put a stop to it. That is if they are unable to bribe or otherwise influence the highest judges. Which is becoming more and more possible every day.
And this has all happened because this insurance company controls enough of the state legislature through legalized bribery and campaign contributions to get them to write the laws that support this behavior.
Our whole country is being governed by greed. All the decisions that effect the quality of our lives, both in business and in government, are being made by people who are doing so based on their own economic increase, and not on the well-being of the nation or it's citizens.
We have not elected a president in many decades that was not pre-aproved by the corporate CEOs and big bankers who will be paying for his/her election campaigns. After all, when they're paying for the dance, they get to chose the dance partner. And they do that before we citizens get any say in it at all. So the people we get to vote for are ALL pre-chosen for us by the people who control the money. And this is just as true state and locally as it is nationally. Because the system is the same, and the system is all and only about the money. The primary purpose of nearly every politician in this country, now, is to funnel tax dollars into the pockets of the people who got them elected. And to write laws that will funnel everyone else's money toward them as well.
And we as a people need to wake the hell up, and face this very ugly fact of our current reality, soon. Because it's going to destroy us as a nation if we don't.
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