~ by Mike Cohen, Guest Author ~
Submitted to Star Banner, May 11, 2001
A lot of harsh words have been spoken and written about Bill Clinton's parting shot pardons, and
while everybody knows that this mess is all about money and that money is the mother's mile of
politics, still that doesn't make the pardons acceptable.
Even the most partisan of us Democrats can't find it in our hearts - or in our debaters' rhetoric -
to defend these Clinton actions.
This is pretty frustrating because just about all politicians traffic quid pro quo with contributors
and most time the peculiar ethics of the politics business let it pass without a blink.
The very rich contribute heavily to a candidate's campaign; the candidate, once elected, votes for
tax breaks for the very rich. A coal mining company contributes heavily to a political campaign;
the candidate, now a congressman or a senator or even a president, allows more emission of
carbon dioxide or other pollutants.
A story on page 6C of the Star-Banner (4/24/01) tells us that the recent 13 cent jump in gasoline
prices "is a purely US gasoline market phenomenon, not crude oil, not OPEC ... Crude oil prices
are little changed for weeks now."
Another story on that same page in that same issue of Star-Banner tells us that Exxon Mobil had a
$5 billion first quarter profit, that last year Exxon Mobil recorded $17.72 billion in profit, "the
highest every by a US corporation."
Now the oil companies want to drill offshore, they want to drill Alaska. The oil they would be
drilling is not theirs, it was put there by nature over millions of years.
It is part of this land, it belong to the people of this land, the citizens of the United States of
America, you and me; us. We are being pressed to give it to Big Oil on the cheap so they can
pump it out and sell it back to us at whatever price their no-operating conscience allows them to
put on it.
Why would we want to let them do this?
Our government today is controlled by oilmen. The Bushes made their fortunes in the oil
business. Vice president Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, a powerhouse in the oil business.
When he moved up to the vice presidency of the US, Halliburton sent him off with a $33 million
golden parachute to remind him who his friends were.
Bush and Cheney ran for President/Vice President with promises of concern for education, health
care, Social Security and Medicare; people issues. But now in office, their actions are directed at
rewarding their principal campaign contributors 0 and doing it with the surpluses built up by eight
years of Clinton/Gore management.
So my question, my fellow citizens, Democrats and Republicans alike, is this: while we are quick
to - correctly - condemn the apparent relationship between hundreds of thousands of collars in
campaign contributions and the Clinton pardons, why do we so blithely accept the relationship
between huge industrialists' political contributions and the billions of dollars worth of government
paybacks?
Are we really that stupid?
Mike Cohen
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