Bye, Howard

R.I.P., Howard Zinn, a great American. He was a bombardier in WWII, and seeing what he had created, he dedicated the rest of his life to the aid of the helpless. He always told the truth, and in these times he will be sorely missed.

Turning Back the Clock

As the various news stories of the week sink in it is becoming apparent that, as depressing as the news from Massachusetts may be, the real thunderclap is the decision by the Supreme Court to allow unlimited campaign contributions by corporations. You may be hearing that they cannot give directly to elected officials, but if they buy the ads themselves, it only serves to cut out the middle man.

This not only has the potential to skew key elections for the foreseeable future, but is riddled with faulty logic to boot. The Court has stated that corporations should have the same free speech rights as individuals. Since when, and why? Everybody should have free speech rights? Where is their compassion federal workers, the armed services or policemen? Who's crying for them? No one, and no one should, because it is a perfectly normal rule of law. Listen to this from Samuel Eliot Morrison on The Gilded Age: "The nation was fabulously rich but its wealth was gravitating rapidly into the hands of a small portion of its population, and the power of wealth threatened to undermine the political integrity of the Republic." Later, in 1957 Justice Frankfurter recalled that there had been a "popular feeling that aggregated capital unduly influenced politics, and influence not stopping short of corruption."

And so it was for corporations for over a century. In 1907 Teddy Roosevelt, as our first progressive president (at least in these things), made it illegal for special interests to control politics. In the previous election wealthy businessmen contributed over $6 million to the Republican candidate, while the Democratic opponent received $400,000. Roosevelt sought to curtail the ever-widening gap of influence between the rich and the not-so-rich. It was good enough for every Supreme Court since, and for every President and Congress, but no Court has been this politicized, this venal, this cavalier towards settled law. You have only to look at the Presidential "election" of 2000 for confirmation.

And who brought this bogus relief to the attention of the Court? None other than Citizens United, the same group of scumbags who brought you "Hillary: The Movie", a piece of poorly made propaganda which they wished to show as an actual documentary. They want to open the floodgates of monetary support for every spurious Riefenstahl-like piece of junk that they can dream up.

Now, you will hear a couple of lies about this in the coming days. The first one is that, since the ruling also mentions unions (who typically support Democratic candidates while national corporations favor Republicans), that things are somehow evened out. Do you think, for even a moment, that union pockets are remotely as deep as America's big corporations? Do you think that they will be operating on a level playing field? Exxon alone reported profits of over $45 billion last year. Could unions hope to compete in a money race with the energy companies, big insurance or Pharma? Not a chance.

The second thing you'll hear is that most companies are already contributing, and are unlikely to pony up more. But they don't have to, only for those campaigns that are of special interest to them, where the issues are most likely to affect them. Then, they can take over the airwaves, and the American people, like the good puppets they can be, will vote for whomever they see the most on TV, or against whomever the most attack ads attack.

Let me be real clear: this decision by the Supreme Court is very political in nature, and even blind justice could see that it favors one party substantially over the other. If this bothers you as much as it should, PLEASE call or write to your representatives, and let them know that you are appalled. Here is a link to a MoveOn petition that will also get the word out:

http://pol.moveon.org/fairelectionsnow/?r_by=18673-17427312-suFRapx&rc=confemail

The Gilded Age was not that cool for most people, really.

Take a Deep Breath

One of the enduring myths of America is the hardiness of the American pioneer against the odds set by attacks of hostiles, fire, flood and famine. They were immigrants, many of them, and they got bad land to work, were shoved into unspeakable ghettoes in foetid tenements, forced by circumstance to work in hazardous jobs with no union to assist them, no cry of conscience in the American press to aid them. They were (and in many cases, still are) the first to enlist, to be sent away in a bad cause, left to waste from disease and neglect, too often forgotten in anonymous graves. Still, they persevered.

And today, what are we? We are a sad collection of chickenshit babies, cringing in fear from a handful of terrorists who can barely muster enough wherewithal to attempt an attack once every decade or so. Okay, I get it, they want to kill us. But other than getting through the one time that we had a president who wouldn’t read his briefings, how have they been doing? What do we think they are: supermen with special powers? I mean, they’ve had years to get together the resources and to fine tune their plan, and what are they able to come up with? A guy with a bomb in his underwear? That’s it? What does this suggest to you?

We’ve been after them hard for over eight years now, and not just by trying to kill them. We have also been attacking their source of funds, and I would say that it has put a serious dent in their terror-making abilities. We’re not dealing with Ming the Merciless here. Large scale attacks may be beyond them now. Yet we’re still panic stricken by the thought that we’re going to try them in NYC. Like, hordes of bloodthirsty, turban wearin’ Arabs are gonna descend on the city bringing Holy War. What are we, six? New York is the perfect pace to have the trials. That’s where they did the crime, stupid! Don’t New Yorkers deserve a front row seat to the show? Fucking Yes.

And while I’m at it, you might as well know, Osama bin Laden is dead. Has been for years. Look, he was a tall motherfucker, like six foot eight or something. Don’t you think we would have spotted him by now? He was also diabetic, and on dialysis. In 2001! How long do you think you can keep that shit up? And in a cave no less? Did you know that the last verified appearance by bin Laden was in 2002? That’s right. I’m talking about really verified, with all of the major senses taking place. What we have had is an occasional tape recording where some guy at CIA says, “Yeah, that sounds like it could be him.” But since 202, we haven’t had a definitive sighting. Draw your conclusions.

In the meantime America, nut up. We can handle a few trials here (there have already been many, only without the fear radio and Republican sound machine giving accompaniment). We can ship the bad guys over here from Gitmo. I mean, has there been some heavy leaking out of maximum security prisons over the last few years of which I am somehow unaware?

Try not to get the vapors. It might help to remember the trials of our pioneer forbears, and for Christ’s sake stop embarrassing yourselves.