By Paul Krza
In the Wyoming coal mining town where my grandparents and parents lived and where I grew up, my mother often related a story about my grandfather, a blacksmith. One day, he was helping out at the Nash garage service station where a woman stopped to have her car’s oil checked. After that, and in his characteristic thick Slovenian accent, he then asked her, “How’s your gas, lady?” Good question, but in Slovene, “g” is pronounced like an “h,” which is what the “lady” heard, which gave a whole new meaning to the question.
We all laughed, and I still do, when I re-tell the story. But besides the joke, what else stuck in my mind as a child was that my mother also mentioned that my grandfather was part-owner of the garage. Part owner? Gosh, I thought, that’s cool. All I knew about as a kid was that my father worked for somebody else, as a coal miner, for the only company in town, the great big Union Pacific. But to own, even part of, a business? Now that was impressive.
Turns out, as I learned later, that my grandfather, an 1890s-immigrant, was an enterprising guy. Not only did he own his blacksmith shop, he also had interests in the garage and a saloon. He was a small businessman.
Yep, with emphasis on “small.” That’s the kind of endeavor where one sees the rewards up close and personal. Folks know the hard work and just plain sweat that goes into the enterprise and are willing to pay for what they get out of it. The enterprise usually also means employment for a few other persons.
As opposed to “big.” That’s where I get worried about direct connections to people and quality of service or products delivered by a bulky organization. Even more uneasy when the behemoth controls such things like electricity, oil, drugs … or health care. Should someone be making a profit, a startlingly huge one at that, from commodities that have a shared public interest?
Let’s take electricity, for example. A lucrative business, even with the recession. Oh, sure, PNM of New Mexico isn’t doing as well these days, but it wasn’t long ago the company was wheeling and dealing, buying other companies, selling surplus power and racking up big profits.
Or oil. Aside from sticker-shock pricing at the pumps, let’s also point out that the (mostly) mammoth, multinational corporations who control the flow are in the U.S. sucking out a product that can’t be renewed, largely under public (translation: owned by you and me) lands. Now, after smash-and-grabbing our collective wallets, they have trotted out actors posing as regular people to say, gee, this is really a bad time to raise taxes on oil companies.
Here in the enchanted lands, you may have seen full-page newspaper ads or TV spots run by an industry group called “Energy Advances New Mexico” pushing their anti-tax message. Their website pumps the same message: Oil and gas taxes pay for our schools, highways and other stuff.
First, they should be paying taxes, just like you and me. Secondly, they have rightfully been assessed for something we own and dwindles away, what is called a severance tax. These are legitimate levies, and we shouldn’t be made to feel guilty or somehow beholden to the oil guys for them. And if this is a bad time to raise the taxes even higher, when is the good time? Ever seen these folks run ads saying that things are flush, and we should be paying more? Yeah, right.
And when it comes to our health, you can of course count on the big insurance companies to put us first, ahead of profits, correct? That seems to be message pushed by folks who oppose President Obama’s laudable efforts to “reform” health care delivery – that it will lead to socialized medicine, government control, blah, blah, blah.
In reality, it’s the great big health corporations that put somebody between you and your doctor, not the government. And where’s all that money going we pay for insurance? Here’s an example: United Healthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, pays its CEO about $100,000 a minute! No moms or pops in this operation, just folks getting wealthy and healthy on our backs. Oh – and if you really have some serious health concerns, well, no thanks, we’re not interested in insuring you, they say.
Ditto on drug conglomerates. Doesn’t take many trips to the pharmacy to learn that medicines don’t come cheap.
So how to level the health-care playing field? With that government option, that’s how. Perhaps the big guys are afraid of competition. Holy cow! Will the world end or just get better if folks find that the best deal is with the government company? Let’s find out. And, at least, everyone will get some kind of coverage.
As for small business, this is all really good news. Legitimate smaller enterprises will have an option for their employees. And, of course, if more people have access to health insurance, we are all better off in the long run.
My grandfather never did parlay his enterprises into a chain of blacksmith shops, service stations or saloons. As I recall, he was mostly just a really nice guy who loved what he did.
Oh, another thing. Many years later, I uncovered some materials when the local Slovenian lodge was being dismantled. Turned out that my grandfather’s brother and other assorted relatives all belonged to something called the “South Slavic Socialist Organization.” Side-by-side, free enterprise and collective ideas thrived back in Wyoming. We have, as they say, nothing to fear about this health-care reform except – fear, itself.
Paul Krza is a former longtime reporter and editor turned freelance writer, alive and well and living in Socorro. His opinions do not necessarily represent the Mountain Mail
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