March Newsletter to the
Friends of Concerned Robber Barons (FCRB)
Dear Friends:
This month the FCRB celebrates some terrific news! The Environmental Protection Agency is finally in the hands of a true friend: Scott Pruitt.
We have long known Pruitt to be a faithful friend of all Concerned Robber Barons. His appointment means our long efforts at keeping the rural working people of American out of work will finally be rewarded.
As you know the FCRB was created on the first Earth Day in 1970. On that day the EPA began crushing our businesses. Soon after many rural Americans — loggers, coal miners, fishermen and other natural resource extractors — lost their jobs.
In the ensuing 47 years, our mission has been to advocate for the right of these Americans to remain unemployed. To us, this was never about money but about upholding an American tradition. To the unemployed logger we promised: “We will defend your God-given right to be an out of work logger, just like your father before you.”
Our struggle has not been easy. In recent years, the younger generation’s love of the internet and video games has caused some youthful rural Americans to question our tradition and attempt to learn computer programming.
To the fisherman’s son we said: “Your grandfather was an unemployed salmon fisherman. Your father was an unemployed salmon fisherman. Who are you to spit on the commitment and sacrifice of your forefathers?”
And to the coal miner’s daughter we said: “OK, go ahead and learn computer programming if you want. There is no shame in women doing women’s work.”
While our advocacy work with rural Americans has met with great success in keeping them unemployed, we must share the credit. Our goal of keeping rural Americans out of work has been greatly enhanced by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America — the good people who make opiate pain killers.
Staying unemployed can be a challenge. But thanks to opiate pain killers — and the thousands of doctors in America’s heartland who have written thousands of prescriptions — opiate pain killer addiction has helped thousands of rural Americans excel at remaining unemployed.
But most of the credit goes to the generations of rural Americans who have successfully stayed unemployed. As Scott Pruitt reforms the EPA, these dedicated men are now poised to reclaim their vital roles as America’s natural resource extractors.
With Pruitt in charge, rural Americans WILL have that role for a long time — at least as long as there are fish to catch in the sea, logs to cut down in the forest and coal to dig up out of the mountains. And as concerned Robber Barons, we can begin the work to restore the sense of pride that men who extract natural resources once felt — a pride that has been stripped away by demeaning labor practices such has dorky-looking safety gear, paid sick days, and weekends off.
The glorious spirit of the 1800s is within our reach. We can reclaim the patriotic feeling that America is a country of bounty, that our natural resources are vast — as vast as a herd of bison spreading out across the plains from horizon to horizon!