March 6, 2008
Philip A Farruggio

There was a major power outage throughout the east coast of Florida the other day, around 1 PM. At our cafe, we were in the midst of a somewhat busy lunch. My son and I were hustling around to service the 5 or 6 tables we had, and then..... pouf! Just like that, the power went. It happened to be one of the warmest days on record for Florida ( 88 degrees ) .

So, when the A/C went, the customers went.

We couldn't grill our famous panini sandwiches...... couldn't accept credit cards..... well, you get my drift. Loss of power. My friend Luigi was sitting outside his pizza place. No power, no customers. Food would be spoiled if the outage continued for too long. We recently received our shipment of Italian ice from NYC. If the juice didn't return soon, we'd be selling Italian water . Well, thank goodness the power returned after a little over two hours.

Imagine what it must have been like in Iraq, in spring of '03. All those smart bombs that so shrewdly knocked out all the power throughout Iraq. No electricity, no A/C; food and drinking water spoiled. Hospitals could not function properly. Farms and livestock destroyed. Now imagine the town you live in , right here in America. Imagine if just one of the tens of thousands of the bombs we released over Iraq was dropped dead center in your town.

My partners and I would see our cafe business ruined by that one bomb hitting Port Orange. No electricity, no traffic lights. Homes destroyed. Businesses ruined, families displaced, few jobs left....... Chaos!

So, here I was, taking in the latest Democratic presidential debate. Sadly, I observed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama shrewdly dancing around the few pertinent questions that the mainstream media co hosts actually dared to ask . When the subject of Iraq came up ( I refuse to use the term Iraq War ), both the moderators and the two candidates focused solely on the subject of troop withdrawal.

They refused to entertain the real core issue of what in the hell are US troops doing there in the first place!? If one were to study the Nuremberg trials and the international accords that followed, one would surmise that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is an illegal act of war! Those who ordered it should be subject to indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Thus, we have politicians and a press that are complicit in legitimizing an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of another sovereign nation. How dare they ignore the utter destruction of not only Iraq and the Iraqi people, but our own nation's soldiers, treasure and reputation?

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The key question that must be asked is ' How much ' ? How much more can we Americans take? We have gasoline prices climbing to three times what they were a few short years ago, while our oil companies are raking in record profits. Yet, where is there a mention of a " Windfall Profits Tax ' by any of the presidential candidates ( or the mainstream media, for that matter)?

Visualize, if you will, what real leadership should look like: The Congress passes a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, then transfers it through a savings for consumers by lowering the federal gasoline tax. By this action, each gallon of gas would be perhaps 50 cents cheaper..... just like that. Let the Oil Lobby finally pay we working folks back for all we've given them at the pump.

Back to Iraq.

Interesting how the only two presidential candidates who showed any vision on US foreign policy were from opposite ends of the political spectrum..... and, both were censored from earlier debates. Ron Paul, a libertarian, and Dennis Kucinich, a progressive, both want the US to close most of the 700 plus military bases we have in hundreds of countries worldwide.

This would not only help win some of the hearts and minds of the populace in those nations, but save our country hundreds of billions of dollars. Plus, it would keep us from having to increase the size of our military, as their primary function would be to protect our borders.

When people ask me " Why is Ralph Nader doing this again? " I just look at them. When will the majority of us who get up and go to work each morning (on this uncertain economic treadmill) finally regain our power?. When will we challenge the two parties when they give us candidates who refuse to talk turkey on issues that matter?

McCain may be a nice guy, same with Huckabee, but politically they are a joke! McCain talks about campaign finance reform, and then takes money from the super rich, the corporate lobbyists, and uses Henry Kissinger as an advisor. The same Kissinger who orchestrated the war that caused McCain to become a shot down flyer wasting away in some jungle prison camp. The same Kissinger who helped plot the ( illegal, by the way) CIA manipulated and funded 1973 coup in Chile. Huckabee, a preacher, seems to forget most of what Jesus of Nazareth preached. He fails to expose the rich who manipulate he and all the other politicians who take their money. Huckabee rails against the income tax, and wants to have consumers fund government by way of a 20 or 30% national sales tax.

Does anyone ask him " How many toaster ovens can a rich guy buy? How many gallons of gas does a rich guy use more than the guy who must drive to work and back each day? " Finally, as a man of God, where is Huckabee's righteous anger at the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians murdered by our bombs and other WMD?

So, there you have it. We have two parties that have failed, repeatedly, to address what really matters to we who do the grunt work that keep the machinery of this nation running. One party flashes the fear card over and over. The other party tells us how much they feel our pain from their million dollar homes and million dollar lives.

Isn't it time for the vast majority of us, the ones they count on to keep them in office, to say ' Enough is enough ! ' They can take away our electricity, our jobs, our homes, but they should never be able to take away our voices and our sense of truth.

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Philip A Farruggio [send him email] is a free lance columnist, small businessman and activist. Since the 2000 elections, he has written over 80 op ed columns- few if any get published or posted. to review some which have been shown, just google his name.