Treason in Plutocracy

Day 590, 17:56 • Published in USA USA • by Robert Bayer

The old adage says that "silence is golden". While I, too, like my peace and quiet, silence sometimes is the most deafening, debilitating roar that could fill one's ears. Sometimes the silence makes me run in a screaming panic into the street, to soothe myself with unfiltered cigarettes, RPG's, yoo-hoos, swiss rolls, and women who listen to the Decemberists.

You could hear a pin drop in the aisles of the Senate yesterday evening as a near-unanimous vote was pushed through with little to no debate and even less consideration. Let's all get up to speed, shall we?

Nine months ago, under the administration of President Justinious McWalburgson III, our congress voted after a teeth-gnashing, potty-mouthed debate ending in a vote of 12 to 5, to reduce our international iron trade tariffs from 45% to 1%. This reduction was in response to the eUS's virtually non-existent iron ore deposits, and was an attempt at flirting with international iron tycoons who scoffed at our admittedly all-too-high tariff. Our businesses were suffering, our skilled workers were out of a job, and our state-of-the-art weapons industry was at a virtual stand-still.

But instead, of lowering our tariff to a responsible, reasonable rate, we decided to adopt a "free trade" stance, which admittedly, helped our industry get back on the right track, with plenty of raw materials for proto-types, research and development, and a boom in our weapons manufacturing capability.

Like most "free traders", instead of implementing this as a temporary measure to get the markets back on track and to mitigate market scarcity, decided to keep ourselves cheap and easy, with our proverbial legs spread for every international iron tycoon out there. As our domestic iron miners scrambled to make a living, extracting enough iron ore in the process to keep our prices somewhat stable, there was a beast lurking: The Hungarian iron tycoon. These adept financiers plotted the eUS weapons and iron industry's demise as they saw this fatal flaw of our own congress and calculated how best to exploit it.

And like any shrewd investor, exploit it they did, flooding our markets with cheap Hungarian iron. These same corporations our irresponsible eUS Congress invited into our markets, were only a shade better than inviting PEACE soldiers into our living rooms. Our miners, manufacturers were not only put out of work, but the value of their very products, they worked so hard to invent and build, were rendered worthless in the international market due to "overproduction".

Yesterday, our Senate had the opportunity to acknowledge that these "free trade" policies were, in retrospect, a gaping hole in eUS National Security. These policies did, and continue to put our entire economy at risk. Treason for profit. No one is safe, not our children, who depend on their parents who work in all sectors, private and public, for their food, Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls. Not the workers, who depend on our nation's leaders to enact responsible fiscal plans, so that they may buy homes, eat q2 or better, and invest in our nation. And rendered most unsafe: our patriotic, duty-driven soldiers, pilots, and Marines, who depend on all of us not to profit from policies that essentially undermine them, their efforts overseas and at home, to keep us safe. These Hungarian iron financiers might as well be dressed in olive-drab fatigues, camo-paint, and toting bayonets, with which to run through our wives, and pierce our children as they sleep.

Instead of admitting the mistake, and taking measures to mitigate the effects, our favorite panel of pompous windbags voted to keep these treasonous policies in place, putting our paychecks, our livelihoods, our way of life, and yes, our entire national security at risk. The course of action, proposed by the Chief Windbag himself, and echoed in his party's latest nominee's platform, that:

"We can use the embargo to rule out nations which don't subscribe to this theory and to prevent the dumping cheap goods on our market." ~Harrison Richardson

I pose to you, citizens, that to embargo nations, to go to war with nations, and to choose war instead of responsible financial planning and strategy is a blunder at best, and a large step down the road to fascism at worst. We must come out against the current administration, against his hand-picked successor, and against the eUS Senate for undermining our markets in the name of quick profits.

Our nation's babies wail and starve in the streets, their parents' one-time paychecks going to fund PEACE and their aggression against our European allies. Is this how our eGovernment works for us?

~Daniel Jacob Asher, AAP Democratic Ambassador, Independent news underwriter