At the grocery store today, I could not help but think about the proposed Bluegrass Pipeline project proposed to go straight through my old Kentucky soul.
Why think “hazards liquids” then and there, you ask? It's all economics. New, improved economics.
Well, for one thing, the company says they want to keep things cozy. They like to talk in terms of kitchen-table conversations, so food just follows from that sense, I guess. I‘m just going by what they say, just what I read in the papers. Plus, they like to talk in terms of job creation and jobs are good, and the grocery store has both food and jobs. It’s a business, a private business. In this, it’s a little like the pipeline company except the grocery's probably not an limited liability corporation. There’s a lot of responsibility with food.
But back to the cozy-kitchen atmosphere.
I like to bake bread. So, while I was at the grocery, I looked over the store’s ovens and thought they’d work quite well for what I’d like to do. You see, I have lots of flour and yeast and my hens (situated on that farm that the pipeline company was eyeing like a chicken buzzard in the sky!) are laying eggs like crazy. I’d like to channel these goods to another market---maybe even export! I'd like to be a private company, growing big in exciting times of big opportunity and fortunes to be had. Heaven knows, America needs jobs---and bread! Let's not forget the basics.
But I get ahead of myself. Mostly, I'm just a farm wife and wanted to learn more about private enterprise and how it's really supposed to work in the context of patriotic liberty and by principles of American free enterprise. Never mind that hazards thing. Life is full of hazards. We can't mind them all. Can we? So, set that aside---
You see, if I could convince the grocery store to let me use their nice big ovens, say, one day a week (they would still own the ovens!) for a price I’d offer, then I could take my flour and yeast and eggs and put them through the grocery ovens, into bread and then out to other markets; there’s a growing need for bread. So there's a growing need for me to use those ovens. That much is clear.
But wait! The grocery owns the ovens, you suggest. And I do not? It’s up to the grocery store to decide who puts what and when into their ovens? But I need the ovens more and have big plans, and please don’t forget that they’d still own the ovens. That's such a plus. So, that's where eminent domain comes in. I survey the ovens, tell the government my plans and if my plans are big enough, no store can stop me. But they still own the ovens. We can't lose sight of that.
And think of the jobs! I have business to conduct, and a precious product to convey from A to B. What could be more patriotic than bread---and exports? I’d just come through one day a week, but I’d be creating jobs! Meanwhile, I’d be just like their neighbor. I’d never go away. And when I’m not right there, in the store, monitoring those ovens (that the store still owns!) I’d be monitoring the baking process from my house off in another county. I’m so very proud of my baking safety record.
But what of the jobs I took away, on that day a week the grocery bakery workers had once claimed?
But …I don’t understand…..you see, I have a farm and land, and I work 7 days a week, as is, but along comes the pipeline company to take my land (Because that’s the only way they’ll get it. I guess I’m just “backward” in that way, just like our governor suggested!) so they can create jobs and energy and things for export. And cars. And plastics, all eternal. Nothing as short-lived as a loaf of bread.
I still don't understand that acres to cars conversion, but I'm sure it's big, bigger than the sunrise or my use of land for helping my hens make their daily clutch of eggs! I just thought I’d try to join the workforce vision Gov. Beshear had spoke of in his State of the Commonwealth Address. I'd find myself a bit of private property, someone who has something I would like and go and get it by a series of unrelenting kitchen-table conversations---or just take it if some politician would be kind enough to help me create some jobs with my precious product.
There’s so much bread to bake, and so few ovens that I own.
The eggs, the flour, the yeast---it all has to go somewhere, doesn't it?
Isn’t that how it’s all supposed to work?
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