Whom Does the US Congress Serve: Or How to Destroy Competition

Once more the United States sets itself out as an example to the world in how not to do things wisely. This role of poor example was once a Russian curse, through the last half of Soviet rule and into the 1990s. However, the US, ever competitive, gained much experience in this and has now taken the lead. Be it failing public education, inadequate energy infrastructure, perpetual road construction and falling bridges or failed "Cake Walk" wars.

The new example is how to safe guard children's health by bankrupting small and medium businesses...or as a cynic like myself would say: how to serve your ultra rich oligarch masters. The new law, The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (HR 4040) is aimed at removing all lead and plithalates (used in making plastic more pliable) from items aimed at children 12 years and younger.

On the surface, this sounds like a noble idea and thus law. The problem is, the American Congress has once more shown its total ineptitude to look deeper then the surface and to explore the realm of likely possibilities and out comes. The law goes into effect on 10 Feb 09, but is retrograded to effect all items already on shelves today. Thus all merchandise must be independently tested. True, not every item needs to be tested, only one out of every batch, and here is the problem.

Who benefits?

Well, children might benefit in safety but their parents will pay with their meager savings and salaries, even as pressure is mounting on those meager salaries to get more meager. Most lead comes into the US from Chinese and other Asia production, as American production, just like European production, has been lead free for decades. However, US border controls only checks a mere 2% of the imports. The weight of this ordainence is not on the shoulders of manufacturers but on those of the sellers and thus the obvious catch.

Since only one sample out of a batch needs to be checked, companies that order in giant batches will have to pay but a nominal fee. Thus the Kmarts, Walmarts, Toys"R"Us of America, the oligarch owned firms, will skate by on only a small fee and for a giant benefit and what a benefit it is.

The benefit? Why the forced bankruptcy of all of their small and medium sized competitors. Small companies who have only a few or a few hundred items in their ordered batches can not afford such a high price on a per item basis. As for existing inventory, this of course means the destruction of their present stocks and a higher priced replacement, all at a time of massive salary and spending collapse. This equals only one thing: the destruction of all small competitors to the major oligarchs in the realm of children's commercial items. Small and micro manufacturers in the US will also be driven out of business, especially with a $100,000 fine hanging over their heads. The big oligarchs would never even notice such a fine but a small businessman, well that would more than likely wipe him or her out.

So whom is the American Congress serving? The "people" or their rich sponsors and owners? Why the Oligarchs of course. Consider that the only member of the American House of Representatives to vote against this, was the Honorable Ron Paul, who, I will remind my readers, ran for president and was called, by the oligarch owned media, a radical. What they really meant was: "not bought", which for the corruption that passes as government in the USA, is radical.

Thus, at a time when the West in general and the Anglo-Marxists in particular, are collapsing, a time when monthly employment roll cuts come to 500,000 less jobs over all, February promises to bring the loud sound of the closing of hundreds if not thousands of small business doors, all so the ultra rich can get a little ultra richer.

Yet one more example of how not to run a country.