GOP irrationality off the charts
The first of a three-part story in the March 19 Observer-Reporter, “Chesapeake Energy’s $5 billion shuffle,” is a Republican success story, a fossil-fuel company saving itself by reducing royalties as much as 94 percent, part of an industry-wide pattern. Dirty energy consumers are also paying through the nose.
Gregory Zuckerman’s book, “The Frackers,” celebrates American capitalism’s greedy gas and oilmen, despite the system’s”unfortunate income divide” and deep economic downturn. As for the environment and other political problems, Zuckerman is for the middle ground and the greater good exemplified by fossil fuel wildcatters realizing the American dream. The reality of too much carbon in the atmosphere and the public interest is not found in Republican propaganda or “The Frackers.”
Democrats are not much better, as their anti-Russian campaign and opposition to 21st century socialism in Latin America, particularly Venezuela, reveals. Reading’s socialist government was defeated in 1931 by fusion candidates of Republicans and Democrats, but the best-known Pennsylvania Socialist was retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler, winner of two Congressional Medals of Honor in the Banana Wars as a self-described capitalist gangster. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, Butler was approached by American capitalists to lead a coup.
It seems safe to assume that American socialist history is not part of the national tests Peters Township students recently aced. Still, their achievements speak well for their abilities and public education when it is adequately funded, but the heavily Republican district’s governor reduced education funding, the uninteresting downside of the story. Their congressman’s Murphycare for the psychologically impaired would not be so crazy if he supported Obamacare, but the GOP position on health care and the environment is even more hostile than their position on education. Republican irrationality is off the charts.
Jim Greenwood
Washington