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Sharon Lerner recently did a great piece for The Intercept Website on a DuPont Corporation armaments factory in southern New Jersey. This location had been contaminating the area around it since the 1880s, meaning that just about every carcinogenic material known to man had been released into the ethers for well over 120 years! They had survived so many investigations ( does ‘ Money Talk’? ) that reading Ms. Lerner’s piece can actually make one sick! What is really troubling is that DuPont, like most callous corporations, never cared about their workers’ or local residents’ well being. Ms. Lerner explains how ” After lead poisoning drew attention to its southern New Jersey plant, a 1936 company report stated that the lead casualties among its workforce were part of ‘ The slow and gradual toll which humanity has always paid, and perhaps must pay, for the conquest of new and dangerous ground.’ I kid you not!
During the Vietnam debacle correspondent Peter Arnett quoted an Army Major after we had just destroyed a small town that was being held by the Viet Cong. Many of its inhabitants, mostly noncombatants, were killed. The Major stated to Arnett:
“We had to destroy the town to save it.”
Fast forward to our excursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, replete with carpet bombings and depleted uranium bombardments of countless civilians. The mantra then was that we were ‘Bringing democracy to those nations’. If only we have democracy here at home, which this ‘Two Party/One Party’ scam would never allow. Is this the reason why about half of eligible voters decide over and over to not even attempt to vote? For years we who do vote have pointed our fingers at this group of Americans, when maybe, just maybe, they know more than we do!
This writer has a mouth full of holes where teeth used to be. The choice was to save a tooth by spending $ 2000+ for a root canal and crown, or $ 175 to pull it out. Dental insurance has too many restrictions etc, unless one gets it through their job… if lucky to even have that privilege anymore.
We all know about the health care scam, whereupon private insurers run it all. Twice, even with Medicare, my ENT doctor’s request for a deviated septum procedure was rejected by my insurer. Twice! Obama ran in 2008 on the premise of getting us all Medicare for All (which still would have the private insurers running things, thus NO ENT procedure for me). The reality was that Obama received over $ 22 million in donations from the health care industry, while McCain only received less than $ 8 million. So, does anyone with half a brain really think that he was going to go ‘all in’ on Medicare for All?
We have libraries throughout our nation in financial dire straits. My county library system is operating on 1/3 less in budgeting for over 10 years now. There used to be two giant walls reserved for new books, one for fiction, one for nonfiction. Now, the areas are as tiny as one could imagine! Roads throughout America are in need of repair. Mass transit is ancient compared to Europe. Medicaid is under assault from the cost cutters. Our public schools are always in need of everything. This writer remembers being told by a Florida teacher how, during the hot spells (which last from May to October in Central Florida), the school had locks put on their AC thermostats, with the temperature dial set too high. This teacher told how teachers would have to go by the thermostat and light a match by it to get the unit to kick in, the heat was too great in the classrooms.
They send our young soldiers overseas to occupy countries we have no business ever being in. Peeling away the ‘onion of truth’ reveals that our military is over there to protect our corporations and our banking cartels, and not for any other reason. So, we kill and get our soldiers killed for no moral purpose but …. keeping this empire empowered! Of course, this all fuels the nourishment of the beast that our Military Corporate Empire has become… whereupon half of our federal taxes goes down that rabbit hole! Is this what Making America great again is all about?
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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].
