Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire Book

Good Grief! I was amazed by this book (unfortunately everything that surprised me was bad). The Bush administration has taken what used to be a government "by the people, for the people" and turned it into a government that is by corporate America, for corporate America. It's disgusting what contempt the government has for any regulation that protects the common assets, like our collective environment. (Reading Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal really helps to understand where the administration is coming from.) In an absolutely free market, corporations would have no regulations and there would be no public property, only private. This is the direction the Bush administration has moved. Unfortunately, stripping governmental pollution regulations doesn't just affect corporations, but it affects everyone. Does the polluted air around an outmoded coal-fired power plant, that the Bush administration removed cleaning requirements from, stay around the dirty plant, or does it move to the inner-city poor and the rural poor and cause their children athsma atacks? Is the mercury it belches into the atmosphere consumed by only the plant's owners, who bring home the profit from the plant, or does it pollute out waters and make everyone's water unsafe to drink and everyone's fish unsafe to eat? Does the polluted water that drains from filthy commercial feedlots stay near the feedlot or does it make us all sick? Our government has stripped regulations placed to save the entire population from damage in order to give a tiny, miniscule, fraction of people much more money. How's that for serving The People?

I used to think of the result of pollution as global warming, which it is, but, as terrible as that is, there is so much more. There is so much more damage caused the citizens of America and the earth that will harm us even before global warming does. Our government needs to take care of its entire people, not just the pocketbooks of the one's that own businesses.

America doesn't need to suffer financially from having clean practices. If we join with the international community, which is waiting for us, and work together to clean up our earth, then we can also work together to encourage any dirty stragglers to adopt cleaner policies. We can renegotiate trade agreements so that all parties are required to have clean production standards in order to have free trade. This way clean nations don't suffer financially because of the cheaper production costs of dirty countries.

There is no reason to continue our polluting ways. With the proper incentives by our government, technological advances will be made that allow us to slash our pollution and to be a global leader (and financial benefiter, as American technologies would be sold worldwide to clean industries) of tomorrows worldwide green economies. Just like the Clinton administration invested in research and recognized the financial potential of the internet, and so DEVELOPED (not invented like people mischaracterized Gore's words, but developed - like Gore actually said) the internet, a forward-looking administration today could recognize the huge financial opportunities of a future green economy. Being the forerunners in green technology could be America's next financial boom, if we only have an administration that will help pull corporate America out of its antiquated ways and focus it on development.

We have made terrible environmental mistakes, but we can make enormous environmental advances that will not only not damage our economy, but will stimulate huge growth. It's imperative that we move in this direction if we care at all about the conditions our children will live in.