Montana Maven's
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Blogger Willy Loman aka Scott Creighton had a very interesting diary over at his site and cross posted on Firedoglake.com on Friday, Januay 29, 2010.    "Obama's $8 Billion Dollar NAFTA Upgrade."

Seems like we the taxpayers should read the fine print of Obama's proposal to upgrade our rail system by developing high speed rail.  Willy Loman points out that from the AP news story we get this little nugget  “… they expect much of the expertise and equipment to be supplied by foreign companies.” 

OK, so foreign companies will supply the equipment and Americans will supply the slave labor and taxpayer money to upgrade private companies' property.  We help shipping companies increase their profits without the benefit of permanent high paying jobs.  Willy Loman's example is priceless:

Imagine owning a small cabinet shop and you want to expand to abigger building and buy all new equipment. You have to factor in howlong it will take to pay back the loans for the expansion while stillgenerating enough revenues to keep the doors open, not to mention alittle profit to feed your family with (that is if you could get asmall business loan from the banks who created this recession, whichyou can’t).

Now imagine that you have a sleazy friend who runs a nursing homeand he’s going to extort all the money you need to complete yourupgrade from his residents straight from their Social Security checkssince they are directly deposited to him. No loans, no repayment, allthe equipment purchased will be yours… and best of all,you’ll be able to charge those same elderly residents for theservices you provide them in the future with equipment they unwittinglypaid for.

That would be a pretty sweet deal wouldn’t It? Especially inthe middle of the worst economic recession in 60 years. Well, that isthe deal the shipping industry is getting.

Loman/Creighton explains that this is not an "Eisenhower type highway bill".  It is politely called "Public/Private Partnership", another feel good phrase meant to soothe the American citizens aka simmering frogs in the increasingly hot pot.  But it is yet another example that we are experiencing what Naomi Klein calls "The Shock Doctrine" whose three principles are deregulation of business, privatization of all public entities from power to water to parks to health care to natural resources, and then the dismantling of any social services.

Does this look like shock therapy is just being used on foreign countries like Chile and Russia?  Or can we clearly see that it has been happening here for 30 years and now is being put into high gear by this administration?

After Notes:     And wasn't it "smart" of Warren Buffett to buy Burlington Northern. 

                        Make sure you check out the logo for the Dept of Transportation at Willy Loman's site.  

"Attention must be paid" is a line from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" uttered by Willy Loman's wife Linda to her sons.

    

    

    

         

    

 

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