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Indybay Feature

Corporate Takeover of Government

by Janis Schmidt (jlschmidt [at] gondtc.com)
The corporate takeover of America is displacing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, which is why you can expect NO help from the government. Now that you have been foreclosed on, you have become invisible, like a rollling stone. Your voice is not heard, your protests are not allowed. You have become a terrorist if you dare criticize the government, you can then scoop you up and send you off to Guantanamo, no questions asked. What we did to the Indians 100 years ago, has become a reality for homesteaders, all without any say-so or understanding of what is going on. I am writing a fictional autobiography of how American has become a corporate fascist state.
Corporate Government Takeover
Dalrymple Forces Citizens From Their Homes

By

Janis Schmidt

Now, just 100 years later, North Dakotans are fortunate enough to experience firsthand what it is like to be kicked out of their homes, just like they kicked the Indians off their land, and had their way of life ruined forever. We are a civilized people, and we do things in a civilized fashion, so when the oil was discovered in western North Dakota, Governor Hoeven and Governor Dalrymple encouraged Schell, Halliburton, and other oil corporations to develop the oil field by offering them a break on their taxes and other incentives. Just let the corporations run the show. Oil corporations have forced life long residents to move out of their homes to make room for oil employees. They did it through instant inflation, priced the grandchildren of the homesteaders right off their land. Dalrymple let it happen. And he let the oil corps have a free hand in fracking. As a way of regulating the oil corps, Dalrymple had the Secretary of State close his office at 3:00 pm. Have you ever heard of such a stupid thing? In the meantime, prices in Williston and surrounding area are skyrocketing through the roof, no place for people to live, no place for people to live in. Hell, to show what a great guy he is, Governor Dalrymple is proposing that the oil corporations be refunded $125 million dollars from the state treasury to insure that oil corporations will continue drilling and to show that North Dakota is friendly to business, but not one dime to life long residents, who were forced to move to survive.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
Peopled call, say beware doll, you're bound to fall
You thought they were all kiddin you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, miss lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

--Bob Dylan

What Dalrymple and the media has not told you is that thousands of sons and daughters of the pioneers have had to pack up and leave Williston and surrounding area simply because they can no longer afford to live there. Why isn’t Dalrymple proposing to give some of those oil dollars to these poor, old displaced people? Instead of helping the displaced seniors, Dalrymple is giving them a kick on the way out the door by reducing their food stamps. Dalrymple has publicly and proudly announced that he is “holding the line on spending” and he doesn’t want North Dakotans to start expecting anything from the government, which would send the wrong message.



North Dakota is awash in oil dollars, $2 billion in the state treasury. You would think that the citizens of North Dakota have it pretty good. Not so. God forbid that any money be given to the citizens of North Dakota such as the long time residents of Williston, Watford City, and surrounding area who have seen prices of living expenses and necessities skyrocket through the roof, to the point where they can no longer afford to live in the house and community they retired in. Even if they could afford to live in their homes, their community has been turned into an unrecognizable hell hole, designed by Governor Dalrymple and his Congressional cronies, with the fires of the burning of the natural gas lighting up the sky over the badlands. Dalrymple isn’t even going to pay their moving expenses, yet in his State of the State address, Dalymple says he wants to give $125 million dollars back to the biggest tax payers, which, of course, would be the oil corporations. At the same time, Dalrymple and the Republican Congress cannot think to give some help to the displaced lifetime residents.

Dalrymple has sold out the people of North Dakota to the huge multinational oil corporations. He brags that he is holding down spending so that North Dakotans don’t get used to any oil money being spent on them.


Dalymple says that North Dakota is in a unique position, and I agree, but Dalymple and cronies are not doing the right thing. The massive oil discovery ought to raise the question: who owns the oil? Private ownership and the oil corporations to do with whatever they want. Who owns the water and the air? Why, amidst all this money, has not this fundamental question not been asked? A delegation was sent to Norway last summer, who has one of the best oil extraction plans in the world. On an international basis, Norway ranks third among the world's largest oil exporters, and the industry is in the forefront in the areas of technology and environmental protection. Because less than a third of Norway's oil resources have been utilized there will probably be activity on the continental shelf for a long time to come. But Dalymple totally disregarded the advice in favor of moronic, self-centered greed. “Drill! Baby! Drill!” And the media supported Dalymple, to hell with the people.


Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream (1895),

1. In Norway, the oil belongs to the people, not the oil corporations. Oil corps must pay 70% tax in Norway compared to 5% to North Dakota.

2. In Norway, oil corporations are heavily regulated. Not so in North Dakota. Anyone who can sink a well in North Dakota is permitted to do so without any concern for the environment, people, water and air quality.

3. In Norway, the oil corporations must pay for any damages and use the drilling produces. In North Dakota, damages are simply not reported.

4. Against the backdrop of the 1972 Norwegian referendum to not join the European Union. The Norwegian Ministry of Industry headed by Ola Skjak Braek moved quickly to establish a national energy policy. Norway decided to stay out of OPEC, keep its own energy prices in line with world markets, and spend the revenue—known as the "currency gift"—in the Government Pension Fund of Norway. The Norwegian government established its own oil company, Statoil, and awarded drilling and production rights to Norsk Hydro and the newly formed Saga Petroleum. North Dakota opposes refiners and is against state owned drilling rigs. North Dakota refuses to claim oil as a natural resource belonging to the people.

5. Norway is to double carbon tax on its North Sea oil industry and set up a £1bn fund to help combat the damaging impacts of climate change in the developing world. North Dakota allows oil corps to burn natural gas to the point it looks like the fires of hell from the air.

6. In one of the most radical climate programmes yet by an oil-producing nation, the Norwegian government has proposed increasing its carbon tax on offshore oil companies by £21 to £45 (Nkr410) per tonne of CO2 and a £5.50 (Nkr50) per tonne CO2 tax on its fishing industry. Governor Dalrymple is proposing to give back $125 million dollars to the big polluting oil corps.

7. Norway will also plough an extra £1bn (Nkr10bn) into its funds for climate change mitigation, renewable energy, food security in developing countries and conversion to low-carbon energy sources, Environmental Finance reported. Bush and the Republicans pushed for a provision in the US Energy Policy Act of 2005, chemicals and fluids used in hydraulic fracturing are exempt from regulations of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which means oil corps such as Halliburton can pollute the ground water at will, no questions asked. In Killdeer on the Ft. Berthold Reservation, the water is not drinkable. But who gives a damn about a bunch of Indians? That provision is known as the "Halliburton loophole", due to the fact that oil giant Halliburton, one of the largest providers of hydraulic fracturing services, was one of the main companies lobbying for exemption. A recent investigation by Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce found that oil and gas companies injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel into wells in 19 states between 2005 and 2009 – over 3 million of those gallons were in North Dakota.

8. Norway will step up spending on new projects to combat deforestation in developing countries to £44m, taking up its spending overall on forestry programmes to £327m. Previous forestry projects have involved Brazil, Indonesia and Ethiopia. In North Dakota by the end of this year alone, Fort Berthold expects to have tripled the number of wells on the reservation. That’s because Governor Dalrymple refuses to regulate the number of permits for drilling.

9. The Oslo government is also to spend following up on the climate, to help offset its emissions, force through new building regulations to make all new homes carbon-neutral by 2015 and increase efforts to heavily cut emissions from cars, switching to electric vehicles.

` That’s what the government did back in 1862. The government gave over 10,000,000 million acres of land to the railroad in Dakota Territory alone, So the railroads and lords of industry distributed hand bills throughout Europe, advertising land, free for the taking, and 25 million ignorant immigrants came to the United States between 1865 and 1910. The Homestead Act gave 160 acres to settlers if they lived on the land for 5 years, built a home, ripped up sod and planted crops. Hundreds of thousands of European immigrants poured into America, including my great grandparents. They mistakenly thought they had come to the land of opportunity, freedom and democracy. The land was all here for the taking, but no American in their right mind wanted to come out to the Great Plains, where there were no trees, no rain, but plenty of Sioux Indians, who very mistakenly thought they possessed the land. Since the Indians couldn’t be dislodged by force or stealth, immigrants were needed to clear the land and help America solve its Indian problem. Instead of calling for a bunch of immigrants, the government is allowing corporations to call for thousands of oil workers, having advertised those high wages with the whole country awash in unemployment. Thousands of desperate unemployed people are pouring into North Dakota, only to find no jobs. So they sleep in their cars and are pushed out of Wal-Mart’s parking lot, and any other place. Traffic is bumper to bumper truck traffic. Those lucky enough to have found work in the oil patch, live in “man camps” provided by the likes of Halliburton. Man camps are cubicles or barracks that house 1200 men provided by oil corps.

Oil corporations run the show. They regulate themselves, provide jobs, provide housing, regulate the housing so as to eliminate the need for police. Any rowdy is simply eliminated. The oil corp decides how a person will live, what he will do, how his life is arranged. In short, the corporations are now governing America, the people, the world. But they don’t govern Norwegians.
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