Corporate Pollution

Corporate Pollution:
I like to think that human nature is inherently helpful and cooperative. If someone is up against it, we like to move in and help. If your barn burns down, your neighbors come to build you a new one. If you lose a loved one, people bring food and comfort. If there’s disaster, people rally and stick together. All for one and one for all!
We seem to have extended our human compassion to the corporate world. Unfortunately, they have not reciprocated. . How much profit did that corporation lose? Poor thing, it’s having such a miserable time, and money means so much to it. Let’s give it our money to make it feel better, because if the corporations feel better, everyone feels better.
While thousands of people have been stranded in Europe, hotels doubled their normal rates, the railroads increased their fares, and rental car agencies took advantage of the situation. One hotel in Shang-Hai doubled it’s rates every 15 minutes until the only people who could stay there were people travelling on corporate expense accounts, the same people who sit in comfortable first class airline seats, sipping free cocktails while everyone else is crammed into the back of the plane, paying for pretzels to go with their water.
The atmosphere of greed and fear that’s permeating our lives these days is being cranked out by the television, and funded by the corporations. We don’t thrive in such a negative environment. We get scared and angry and hold on for dear life.
Meanwhile, the corporations are doing well. We hear about it 8 times a day on the news. They’re doing so well that they’re successfully running the country, determining policies that make them even more money. Goldman Sachs is flourishing, the oil companies are making record profits, and the pharmaceutical industry is at the top of it’s game. Over the years, the insurance companies managed to quietly turn healthcare, a basic human need, into a big profitable business. The recent battle was over who owns that business, and the insurance companies won. There is no universal accessible health care in the new plan. There’s no “people before profit” in the new plan. The new plan is insurance, more insurance, mandatory insurance, insurance for everyone. That’s not a health care plan, that’s an insurance plan.
Maybe the government could start an incentive program. Money for Humanity, because it’s clearly money that turns real people into corporate clones, gleefully tossing their compassion and humanity in the landfills conveniently located where the rest stops used to be.