Extra
fees cover what?
Karl
Kalman
The
other day I went to pay my extra tuition
fee at Brotman Hall. As I was waiting in
line, I wondered where all the money would
go. With the overcrowding at our school
I hoped they would widen the halls to ease
the flow of traffic. Maybe we're just paying
for our state's gas and electricity futures
that somebody screwed up. Then I remembered
Bush's speech on Sept. 7 about the "cost
of war." I believe the extra cost was
in the neighborhood of $87 billion.
The
thing that Republicans fear the most is
taxes. They send their kids to private schools,
they can afford private security, and they
don't need things like welfare, Medicaid
or food stamps. Why would Bush ask the people
to pay more for public services such as
these while giving tax cuts to the rich?
Well, where would our society be if we didn't
have blue-collar workers. Now it's going
to cost more for poor people to send their
kids to school while the rich people can
buy their kids an extra luxury car.
Everybody
wants to be Republican though. They're rich,
slick and sleazy. It's really a sad thing
to still see non-luxury cars that have 2000
election "Bush Cheney" bumper
stickers. If you were a real Republican,
you would have had a brand new car by now.
It
is not a coincidence that the Enron scandal
and the California Energy Crisis all happened
at the time Davis got re-elected. Getting
re-elected probably means that he was doing
a good job until the Bush administration
strategically started attacking California.
Most
people wouldn't know who Thomas White is.
He was the main causes behind the California
Energy Crisis and he did it all without
stepping foot in California. Thomas White
had been an high-ranking Enron executive
for 11 years and was the head of Enron Energy
Investigators
believe he rigged California's energy market
and cooked the books to inflate profits
and cheat investors. That was only the beginning.
After the Bush administration did nothing
to help, California sought new deals for
energy and invested in natural gas. Shortly
after, the price of natural gas tumbled
worldwide, leaving Californians with bloated
contracts, forcing them to pay for gas and
electricity well above the market price.
The
reason the gas prices plummeted was that
Saudi Arabia had just made a deal with the
"big seven" American oil companies,
plus Enron, which specialized in liquid
natural gas and would quickly introduce
large quantities of the gas all over the
world. Pipelines, serving both oil and gas,
were already available, going to the Saudi
port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. The Iraqis
had built and owned the pipelines because
of a threat to Persian Gulf oil during the
1980-88 war with Iran, but they never used
them. They were just waiting to be used
by Enron, and Gov. Davis didn't know about
them. If Davis had been a Republican, Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham might have warned
him about the futures. But after Bush did
so badly in California during the 2000 election,
thanks to Davis and the AFL-CIO, the Republicans
were in no mood to help.
What
happened to Thomas White you might ask.
Well, instead of holding him accountable
for the things he did to us in California,
Bush assigned him a position as Secretary
of the Army.
Many
people on campus would probably not ask
"how" or "why" California
is in the state that it's in. It is extremely
important that people do their homework
before voting. California did nothing wrong
when the majority of people voted for Al
Gore. Most students on campus probably come
from working-class families that can't afford
private schooling or families that probably
wouldn't have survived without financial
aid from the government. The next time a
Republican advocates cutting taxes, remember
all the money he will save compared to all
the money you will lose from financial aid.
After
Bush asked Congress for more money, the
London based Economist magazine reported
"it would push America's already-record
budget deficit next year to well above $500
billion." As of this writing, no foreign
country besides Great Britain has opened
its pocketbook to help. What does rebuilding
Iraq have to do with the war on terrorism
if they don't have any "weapons of
mass destruction" and if they didn't
fund the attacks on Sept. 11.
This
is only the tip of the iceberg. The start
of this century is starting to look like
the start of the 20th century, unregulated
business and Republican leaders. If so,
by 2029, get ready for another Great Depression.
Karl
Kalman is a business finance major and a
student at Cal State Long Beach.
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