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Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet
Hank Kalet 
Unfortunately both candidates propose more gooferment interference in the free market. Along with heavy doses of centralized planning. That worked so well in the former Soviet Union, we should try it here. One has to admit that the energy problem begins and ends in Washington. No nukes, no drilling, no new refineries, NIMBY, no way never. Please, stop the insanity. Both candidates want to use the guns of gooferment to solve \”problems\” that the gooferment creates. Doesn\’t anyone detect the pattern here?
Dear sweet Jaysus, it\’s the gooferment BS nonsense again. So do you want anarchy? The anarchy of rich corporations controlling everything and virtually running the government or what\’s left of it. You want a weak ineffective government but giant sized powerful corporations? An almost non-existent government that allows corporations to rape the environment and run roughshod over the people? You want us to return to the gilded age when workers were treated like dirt? In 1980 there were about 500 lobbyists now there are about 30,000 lobbyists. Lobbyists are largely and overwhelmingly agents for rich companies many of them international companies and many wholly owned foreign companies. Corporations are not angelic entities with the best interests of the people at heart.Nuclear energy exists and can only exist with our tax dollars, it is a corporate basket case, corporate welfare at its worst. Not to mention there is the problem of nuclear waste, not to mention all the accidents that have occurred in the nuke industry from mining the uranium to processing it to the nuclear power plant. These accidents are kept out of the news unless it is a huge one. Does anyone remember the partial meltdown of the Fermi 1 nuclear plant in 1966? They were seriously considering the evacuation of nearby Detroit. Since you hate government so much how can you be for nuclear power which is a creation of government, which depends on our tax dollars to such a large degree. We the tax payer are stuck with the problem of nuclear waste. Wall Street does not want to touch nuclear power because of the tremendous cost, the risk and the next big accident.PSI AM NOT A SOCIALIST AND I AM NOT FOR BANNING CORPORATIONS. I am for effective efficient government with strong regulations on capitalists. I am talking about the big boy capitalists with companies worth hundreds of billions.
From Bob Herbert\’s column:\”Theodore Roosevelt believed passionately in regulating industry and curbing the excesses of the great corporations. He favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and fought his party’s increasing tendency to cater to the very wealthy. And, of course, he was a ferocious protector of the environment.Roosevelt was known as the “trust-buster,” but it was in the area of environmental conservation that he really made his mark. Mr. Brinkley, in a draft preface to the biography, tells how a number of bird species in the U.S. were headed for extinction as the 20th century approached, in large part because of the popularity of feathered hats for women.\” Was TR a socialist? I guess you will claim that Herbert is a socialist? It\’s just so easy to bandy the word socialist around in an attempt to invalidate anyone who disagrees with you, Mr. Goofyerment person. In the libertarian \”utopia,\” there would be no regulations of corporations and the government would be so weak and ineffective that the corporations would walk all over the government, (oh sorry, gooferment) and walk all over the people of Libertariastan.