All of this happened before....(Redux)

... Does It Have To Happen Again?

A few months ago, I highlighted Bill Moyers' look at The Secret Government and wondered if we can avoid the future our history would seem to project.

Well, as is my wont, I recently ran across a wonderful quote. Try to guess when it was said.

"Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street ... Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags ... the politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction when 10,000 little children ... starve to death every year in the U.S. and over 100,000 shop girls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for bread...
There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one and one-half billion dollars. There are half a million looking for work ... We want money, land and transportation. We want abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out ... We will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the Government pays its debts to us.
The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware."

Did you guess 1890? A Kansan Populist named Mary Ellen Lease spoke these words at a time, admittedly worse than our own times, when the anger at wealth and backlash against elite privilege was rapidly rising.

And although the Populist Party was unable to "crack" the lock on elections held by the GOP and Democrats, much of the their strength, organization and platform was coopted and adopted int he following decades.

Hopefully we will not have to wait decades.



(Quote found in Zinn's A People's History of the United States, a book that every citizen should read and digest.)

Love Him or Hate Him...

... but Mike Moore stands for the Citizen

From the first time I saw Roger & Me, I've been a Micheal Moore fan. Yes, he's bombastic. He's over the top. He's been known to distort. And without question, he's a polarizing rabble rouser.

In his heart though, Mike Moore loves the average American. And he's struggled mightily for decades now to show the rest of us what we often do not want to see. What exactly it means to our fellow citizens when their jobs are shipped off to foreign shores. How the myth meets reality when it comes to recruiting for our volunteer military. Why the middle class is disappearing and what it portends for us all.

Moore was interviewed by WAMU's Diane Rehm earlier this week. The entire interview is worth a listen. Do yourself a favor, just click the link and the "LISTEN" button in the upper left. And enjoy one of the few progressive voices allowed out there on the free airwaves we've given our nation's broadcasters.

Michael Moore | The Diane Rehm Show

Lamenting the "Late, Great Press"

Chris Hedges recently published a wonderful column over at TruthDig that is well worth your time if you "hate today's Media." In this, Hedges absolutely nails the dysfunction in our Versailles on the Potomac:

"When reporting depends heavily on access it becomes very difficult to challenge those who grant or deny that access. This craven desire for access has turned huge sections of the Washington press, along with most business reporters, into courtiers. The need to be included in press briefings and background interviews with government or business officials, as well as the desire for leaks and early access to official documents, obliterates journalistic autonomy."

And with this, Hedges rightly identifies why (and how) it is so easy to mislead the Citizens in today's USA:

"Or is the public, as Walter Lippmann wrote, now so deeply uninformed and divorced from the inner workings of power and diplomacy as to make it a clean slate on which our armies of skilled propagandists can, often through the press, leave a message? "

As they say, read it all.

If Corporations Are "Persons"...

... Why Don't They Pay Federal Income Taxes Like Citizens?

Not so long ago, I highlighted what I consider a fundamental misreading of our Constitution, namely the century-long assertion by the Supreme Court that business corporations are entitled to constitutional protections as living citizens are. In that post, I mentioned that the SCOTUS was expected to rule on corporate free speech in relation to federal election campaigns. (Curiously, this was one of the more trafficked posts in what is a very scarcely read blog.)

Well today, the SCOTUS ruled -- and not unexpectedly -- in a 5-4 decision that reinforces the principle that "corporations" are "persons" in the eyes of our Constitution and laws. (Of course, "enemy combatants," real living humans who probably engaged in real crimes against our Citizens, remain "non-persons" not entitled to any protections given in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. But, I digress.) Naturally, opinions are as divided as our "apolitical" SCOTUS, with many of our more expressive authoritarian leaning citizens expressing glee that no one can be silenced, not even corporations! On the other side, citizen advocacy groups bemoan this decision as the end of any real representation in elections as now even greater amounts of BIG MONEY will flow into the electoral process, lining the pockets of the infotainment ad delivery companies, airing even more campaign ads (at least they will displace the erectile dysfuntion pitches) and further distracting-bamboozling-and stupefying the voters who bother to do their civic duty.

Do powerful interests already greatly influence our elections? Yep. Do they really need more ability to influence elections? Apparently so. (Don't believe me? Take a few minutes watching David Corn and Kevin Drum on a recent episode of Bill Moyers Journal.)

Does today's decision make our elected representatives more responsive to their constituents? Nope. But does anyone really care anymore? Based on the ill-informed punditry screaming the same BS talking points all over the media tonight ("Now Unions can spend unlimited!" "Small Business can get into the elections YAY!" "Middle class candidates have a shot against multi-millionaire, self-financing incumbents!"), it seems that the level of delusion is high and that by next week, many will be convinced that this is the best thing to happen to elections since Bush v. Gore equally protected all ballots (except for the ones not counted).

How many will be so informed as to know that the plaintiff in this case is a criminal, wingnut election fraudster backed by the very corporations so happy to be able to throw their money around unfettered? My guess, only that "angry left" -- you know, the same cabal of people who are so all powerful that Scott Brown pretty much walked away in the Massachusetts special election!

Well friends. We do live in a Republic. That is, if we can keep it.

A Corporate Solution?

... or a Solution to Corporations?

Not so long ago, I read John Michael Greer's book, The Long Descent, and found it to be an excellent, thought-provoking exposition on our shared future in the declining resource world. Greer's fundamental thesis is that despite the cresting of the cheap energy era, our chances of complete, Hobbesian collapse and chaos are much less likely than a slow, steady roll into a de-industrialized future. If you've read James Kunstler's The Long Emergency, and then feared for your future, then The Long Descent may be for you.

After reading his book, I traveled over to Greer's blog - The Archdruid Report (yep, he's a druid). And right off the bat, I found another interesting location in the intertubes to read and ponder. In a post this week, Greer lays out some thoughts on the difficulties powerful special interests and corporations are wreaking on our polity and our attempts to respond the the dynamic world around us. Its an interesting post, but what really caught my eye was Greer's thoughts about how to deal with the "personhood" corporations have long enjoyed in the United States. (Yep, in many ways, corporations in this country have all the rights of a living citizen.... you can think a 19th Century Supreme Court ruling for that!). Greer suggests that if corporations are indeed "persons," then perhaps they should also suffer for the felony crimes they commit:

"My more perceptive readers may be wondering at this point whether I’m seriously proposing that corporations should be thrown in jail or put to death. Yes, that’s what I’m proposing, with the adjustments needed to account for the differences between corporate persons and natural persons. What’s the essential nature of imprisonment for a crime, after all? The criminal ceases to be a free person; for a specified period of time, he is a chattel of society, and society has the right to profit from his labor during that period. And capital punishment? The criminal, having proven that he isn’t willing to abide by even the most minimal standards of social existence, ceases to exist by act of society. Both of these can be applied to corporations easily enough."

An interesting thought, no? Personally, I'd rather see the corporations stripped of their "rights" as persons in the eyes of the law. But, this would seem an appropriate remedy and fair treatment of all "persons" (living and corporate) under the laws.

Greer is far more optimistic than I amthat such taming of our out-of-control corporation could actually occur. Nevertheless, I do agree with him that "the power of corporate interests might more usefully be seen as a response to the general weakness of all other parties." If and when these "other parties" (labor, main street business, disaffected minorities, etc) learn (and re-learn) how to focus their political power, then we might just see an end to corporate personhood, or failing that, adoption of corporate sentancing outlined above. After all, are we Melians, bound to suffer "what we must?"

No. I think not.

Updated 1-10-09: Here is a short video from McClatchey and the Real News Network discussing the upcoming SCOTUS ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision, which is due soon, portends to lighten existing regulation of corporate "persons" and put even more of their money into our political election process. Take a look: