When I was a teenager growing up in southern Ohio, I watched our local Ford Motor plant lay off over 1,400 employees, thus devastating my tiny rust-belt community. Businesses went under, relationships were stressed beyond their limits, and most spent what little money they had searching out answers and hope in the bottom of a bottle. All of this because a new way to make 6-speed transmissions had been innovated. Amidst my community’s reeling turmoil, Ford happily reported at the same time that their earnings for the year went up by 8 cents a share.
This experience taught me three lessons:
- Technology isn’t going to stop progressing.
- Innovative technology can be a great source of profit for companies if they control it.
- And regardless of the above two lessons, corporations care more about profits than people.
These lessons have never felt more important than they do now, as I find myself living under a president who is blocking blue-collar job creation by suppressing new technology—all for the sake of corporate profits, and all while he blatantly lies to and cheats me, the community that raised me, and the rest of my country.
And so, realizing that my country is being sold off to corporations and other countries, I’ve decided to make my plea to both liberals and conservatives, laying out as clearly as possible how Trump and his new cabinet is a threat to ALL of us (not just liberals), and therefore how necessary it is we stop fighting each other (which only distracts and blinds to the crimes they commit against us), and instead unify to take back our government.
Out of Control Technology Now Threatens the Wealth of the Elite
History has shown that when technology can replace a job, it will. And this isn’t going to change. It’s an unstoppable force that started with fire and the wheel, advanced right through guns and steam engines and a multitude of other revolutionary innovations, and brought us into these modern days of abundant electrical power—where each person holds in their hands a sci-fi device that can answer any question they have and show them live video from anywhere on the planet instantaneously. And soon, things like virtual reality, 3D printing, and innovations in material science and biotech will unlock completely new industries, pushing us into an era of health, wealth, and leisure unlike anything we’ve ever known. Who would give up so much power, especially when many of our latest innovations have shown us our potential to cure life-devastating diseases like Alzheimers and cancer?
But instead of promoting technology and science, our government seems to want to stop it. Why?
Well, I believe it’s because Trump and the powerful people who run great swathes of the world made a great deal of their wealth from oil. But now that technology is creating new industries, they’re panicking. They see a threat to the system that has allowed them to get rich off of our hard work for decades. And so, in their attempt to keep us from investing our skills, time, energy, and money in new industries, they’re trying to do everything they can to distract us by chaining us to the dying industries of oil and coal; while behind the scenes they’re ransacking the kind of scientific progress that made us such a successful nation, making deals that could very possibly strip Americans of their freedom and hand our country over to external forces.
Let’s look at how they’re going about it.
The attempt to stop new industries from providing jobs.
In 2014, using loopholes and corruption, these massive corporations combined didn’t contribute ANY money to our country—not to education, healthcare, or infrastructure; instead, they took over 731 MILLION in tax rebates that we paid for. How fair is it that we pay at least 25% of our wages into a system that takes that money and gives it to corporations and CEOs instead of investing it into our country like we’re told it’s supposed to?
But let’s imagine for a moment if we could take that 731 million dollars and invest it in a new kind of industry, perhaps a government initiative that, just for the sake of the argument, we’ll call the “Continually Advancing Tech Retrofitting”, or CATeR, industry, where we could permanently keep laborers (honest blue-collar workers) rehabilitating outdated infrastructure by catering to companies making and implementing new technology.
Okay, so maybe CATeR is a silly acronym, but it represents something that’s already happening and that is bringing in lots of new jobs and money as it saves America’s most famous industry:
American car manufacturers have seen this logic and are joining in on the new technology evolution of hybrid/electric cars: Chevy has been making the Volt and Ford has been making the Fusion. In fact, this new technology is so successful that it even gave America another car manufacturer to add to its portfolio: Tesla Motors. Tesla has actually decided to skip oil altogether—instead focusing on clean electric energy—and they’re being paid handsomely for it as their stock has soared from $27 per share in 2013 to over $230 presently. And on last check, Tesla employs over 25,000 Americans! This isn’t even counting the number of people employed by sub-contracted work. (Now compare that to the 50,000 jobs lost in the coal industry in just 4 years! Why would we invest in this declining industry when there are so many gains to be had elsewhere?)
The benefit of employment by keeping up with technology is further shown by Tesla Motors acquisition of SolarCity, whose solar-powered Gigabyte factory in Nevada is bringing in a massive economic boon to the local and state economy—so much so that their governor, Brian Sandoval, estimated that Nevada would gain $100 billion in economic gains over two decades from the construction and operation of this factory.
And so states like Nevada and industries like the American car manufacturers are realizing the insane amount of money that can be made by embracing (and CATeRing to) new technology; and where there’s lots of money to be made, there are equally as many jobs that have to be created—and in this case, this means A LOT of jobs.
Just imagine for a moment how many jobs could be made in every pocket of America if we committed ourselves to “Continually Advancing Tech Retrofitting”: going throughout the nation—from small towns to big cities—and completely overhauling our broken down infrastructure with new, more efficient technology.
Not only would we gain a ton of jobs from this, but we could finally stop our communities from falling into dangerous and expensive disrepair as well. I don’t know about you, but growing up in the rust belt, I KNOW our cities and towns are in major need of this overhaul. Our roads are full of potholes, our bridges are failing, our water pipes and sewage systems are leaking and breaking from 30-year-old tubing, our electrical and heating wiring is dangerously outdated, our walls have poor insulation, our breezy windows are wasting our money in heating utilities, and we’re living in the derelict husks of that time when America was great—that time before our government was so overly dominated by corporations whose only goal is to suck us dry of our livelihoods.
But rather than get all of these incredible, long-lasting jobs that could rebuild and polish our entire country, those same companies that are manipulating our government for tax breaks are blocking these innovative companies, making sure these startups won’t earn enough money to compete with their governmental manipulation, making sure people don’t realize there are other options besides oil. And if these corporations are already ripping off you and our government so horrendously in taxes, do you think they care about ruthlessly stopping any competitors, regardless of how many jobs they might provide? No, of course they don’t. Exxon for example, who made 30.46 billion dollars in 2010, were somehow able to get a tax rebate based on a reported income of: NEGATIVE 156 million dollars. And what did they use all that taxpayer money for? To create more jobs? Nope, not at all(they actually laid off several thousand). Instead, in 2012, they spent approximately 16.5 million lobbying against climate science and carbon emission control policies—with the goal of stopping the burgeoning electric car industry that’s providing thousands upon thousands of jobs to hardworking Americans. And then in 2016, as electric cars became even more popular, Exxon’s lobbying cost jumped up to a staggering 27 million. And as dad used to say: if you want to find the corruption, follow the money.
And so who does Exxon’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, now work for?
Donald Trump, and supposedly for you, the American people, as the Secretary of State.
But if we keep following the money we see who he really works for…
Trump Betrays Blue-collar America To Help Big Oil and Russia
See, the problem is that Trump isn’t draining the swamp, he’s simply cutting out the middle-man. The reason we’ve been cheated for all these years is because the corporations have had so much power over our politicians. These corrupting businessmen and women(like DeVos and Tillerson) are the true swamp, and the politicians have always been mere puppets. All Trump has done is gotten rid of the puppet politicians and put the the corporate elite directly into power; which isn’t all that surprising, since he, himself, is a corporate elite. We are now being run directly by the swamp, and as we look deeper into the other rich and powerful people Trump has appointed to lead our country, we start to see how little our president and his cabinet actually care about helping the common American.
Take Ex-Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, our new secretary of state, for example: he has NEVER worked for another company aside from Exxon in his entire life. He is more committed to that company than to anyone else in the world.
Now, you might remember Exxon as being the richest and most powerful company ON THE PLANET for many, many years. Well, that changed around 2013 once Putin jailed the heads of Russian oil companies so that he could consolidate them into the government-owned company: Rosneft; in effect, this dictator-like move made Putin the owner of the biggest oil company in the world.
And as the two largest energy companies on the planet, Rosneft then joined up with Exxon to do a joint-exploration deal. This deal was valued at 500$ billion dollars (for perspective, this is more money than all of Apple is worth) and was so important to Russia that it actually earned Rex Tillerson the highest award Russia gives to non-Russian citizens—which Putin personally gave Tillerson as a thank you.
But then, in 2013, right before Exxon and Russia started cashing in on one of the biggest commercial deals the world had ever seen, they were stopped by sanctions from the Obama administration.
Then, soon after we see the US government stop Putin/Russia and Tillerson/Exxon from making this insane amount of money that would have given them major influence over America and the future of the planet, we suddenly see Donald Trump running for president. And interestingly, his campaign was managed by Steve Bannon, who is now his acting Chief Counselor and who openly proclaimed: “I’m a Leninist,” referring obviously to Russian revolutionary Lenin who was the champion of the very communism that we fought against in the 50s and in the cold war—the very same political theory that is described as “the achievement of a dictatorship over the working class”. Bannon also proudly admitted that he is working with foreign countries (including Russia) to fulfill the wishes of his idol. “Lenin,” Bannon has said, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down.”
So now we have a lover of Russia who wants to destroy America as Trump’s right-hand man, and our Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is in the role in the White House dedicated to setting foreign policies—the single best position in the world to be in if you wanted to undo the Obama sanctions on the 500 billion dollar oil deal. And with Tillerson’s 150 million dollars worth of shares in Exxon, he has a very, very large conflict of interest in seeing the trade deal go through. Considering how much Exxon and Trump have cheated the American people out of tax money, and how deeply Trump’s cabinet is tied to Russia, what is the likelihood our government is actually working in our interest? I’d guess slim to none. Even worse, we know Putin and Trump have some kind of close and trusting relationship, since Trump’s daughter was vacationing in Europe with Putin’s girlfriend during the election. This shows very obviously how these rich and powerful people are working together to orchestrate deals that speak more to their shared interests than to the rights of their citizens.
So in summary, what is Trump doing right now:
He’s increasing Russia’s power while building secret ties to their government through business deals and through his family’s relationships with Putin’s girlfriend.
He’s empowering Exxon Mobil who will continue to bait us with small amounts of jobs on oil rigs and ships that take us away from our families, when there are an abundance of jobs that could allow hardworking Americans to stay with their families in rural America overhauling our infrastructure. And they’re trying to hide this from us by letting Big Oil run our government and by silencing scientist and new industries.
He’s spending the $20 billion that could be used on building new jobs in infrastructure for all Americans to build a wall that we already statistically know won’t stop 50% of immigrants (because they just fly in on legal visas and then choose not to leave), will cost American’s 6 million lost jobs, and will also increase our cost for goods (like cars and groceries) from our 3rd biggest trade partner, Mexico.
So it sounds like his inauguration speech was indeed a lie: it is NOT America first.
It’s Trump, Big Oil, and Russia first, and our hard-working blue-collared workers, our military, and our infrastructure come in a very, very distant second.
