Another day that will live in infamy

“...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
-- Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 19, 1863; “The Gettysburg Address.”


It's a good idea, I think, to take out a sizable piece of white paper and write on it in bold, black lettering this date: January 21, 2010. Then, with or without frame, hang it somewhere in your home where you will see it daily.

If you're clever with computers, perhaps you can get yourself a presentable printout to frame. You might want to add a simple elucidation. The piece of printer paper I've pinned temporarily to the wall in my office carries, under the date, the words “Roberts court kills U.S. democracy.”

I was angry and hurried when I did that. The date may be sufficient. The truth is that the court merely injected the final, fatal dose of poison into the veins of a representative democracy that already was critically sick. It will be a lingering death, probably with occasional spurts of what look like potential returns to health.

January 21, 2010.

It is a date as important as any we were required to memorize as school children. It is far more significant than the ubiquitous 9/11. The latter is a political expedient, a rallying cry for demagogues who lead their thoughtless followers by means of fear and lies. January 21, 2010 is a day on which, truly, this country changed drastically for the worse, and probably for the remainder of its existence.

That is not exaggeration, not hyperbole, as I trust Americans are beginning to realize.

Some people, supporters of the power of wealth and the tweedy sort of (figuratively) pipe sucking academics who want always to appear serene and ever so objective, dismiss the importance of the court decision on the grounds that corporations already have so much power a little more won't make much difference.

One answer to that is that, yes, corporations – that is, the highest level of corporate executives – have too much political power. We need to take away some of that power. If members of a gang carrying knives confront us on the street and demand everything we have, we don't immediately go to our government and plead with it to provide the gangsters with guns because they are inadequately armed.

Another answer is that the decision by the Corporate Five on the court is, without question, a signal to those whom they serve that even the thin gloves they wear now can come off. Whatever the corporate leaders choose to do to win and hold decisive power over our government, presumably short of open physical intimidation, this court will support. If representative democracy is to function in this country, we cannot allow that.

If, as I now hope, there is a rebellion – I do hope for a bloodless rebellion – in this country, that date will be the rallying cry. If, as is almost certain, there is no rebellion, it will be the date we will have to point to as the day that signaled that there was no future for government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

The next two articles below deal in more detail with the Extreme Court's decision of Jan. 21, 2010.

Extreme Court wrote law it wanted

On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States handed the members of a tiny, almost exclusively male club the ability to amplify their already too-powerful voices in the country's political arena to the point that they can, at will, drown out all other voices.

Corporations, which is to say top-level executives, have the right to spend unlimited amounts of company money to support candidates of their choice in political campaigns, the court said.

Members of that little club -– membership determined solely by massive wealth -- don't even have to be citizens of the United States.

By acting through businesses incorporated in this country, an oil sheik from Saudi Arabia or the government of China can have more to say about who is elected to run our government than millions of U.S. citizens, as individuals or groups. Money absolutely determines who is elected to office in this country of half-educated, television-benumbed, badly led voters.

Right wing pundits and various Pollyannas to the contrary, that is not hyperbole. It is fact. If you are not one of the elite, but find your glass still half full, the content of that glass is poisoned Kool-Aid.

The decision to allow unfettered campaign spending by corporations was committed by five proud right wing activists among the nine justices.

Make that four proud right wing activists and one man, Thomas, who always votes with them for unfathomable reasons that appear to be rooted in constant rage.

The decision hangs on a legal fiction, the personhood of corporations, that was almost accidentally arrived at in the nineteenth century and gradually and carelessly strengthened over the years. Even so, the doctrine of corporate personhood never until Jan. 21, 2010, meant what the court of Chief Justice John Roberts said it means.

Justice Roberts and the court's other warriors of the right made a carefully calculated move to advance their political and social goals. Legal experts not financially and ideologically attached to right-wing organizations widely agree that the case that was the basis for the decision, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, did not call for such a far-reaching conclusion.

In its ruling, the court overturned roughly a century of precedent -– numerous previous rulings that allowed Congress to establish restrictions on corporate spending on political campaigns.

The majority explained the hurry-up by claiming the situation was a “legal emergency” but offered no serious explanation or evidence to support that claim.

To get to where they wanted to go, Roberts and Co. took a case that, in the eyes of numerous Constitutional law experts I've heard and read, begged to be decided on a quite narrow, technical question. Instead, the court made a sweeping declaration that all restrictions on corporate campaign spending are illegal.

It was in such a rush that, as the New York Times said, it moved “at breakneck speed,” giving lawyers just a month to prepare their briefs on a complex issue -– much less than is usual -– and even held hearings during its vacation period.

Roberts and his group had something it wanted to do, and it's logical and reasonable to conclude from their actions that they knew what that was before they read the briefs or heard the arguments.

The court majority made law, it did not interpret law.

It's members haven't admitted political motivation, of course, nor will they. There simply is no other rational explanation for what occurred.

Look at the players in this tragic farce:

Roberts was known to openly favor the interests of corporations and very wealthy individuals over the interests of ordinary citizens long before his appointment by George W. Bush to the Supreme Court.

As a judge, Roberts took at least two questionable stands against environmentalists and for corporations accused of polluting the environment and breaking environmental laws. As a lawyer he worked pro bono (taking no fee) to break a Colorado state constitutional amendment protecting gay rights. He was closely involved for some time with the right-wing Federalist Society but during his confirmation hearings denied ever being a member. His decisions and his activities as a lawyer show him as a fighter for the powerful and dismissive of individual rights. Roberts was a legal adviser to Jeb Bush during the election debacle of 2000, helping him to find ways to give the Florida vote to Bush's brother George.

At his confirmation hearings in 2005, the unmistakably smug Roberts repeatedly testified, often sporting his trademark smirk, that he would be “conservative” in deciding matters of law and very, very respectful of precedence. He lied and, given his behavior since joining the bar, it was obvious that he lied. He already personified the “activist” judge. Millions of us were disgusted with Democrats who joined in the 78-22 confirmation vote.

In 2000, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas voted to hand the presidency to George Bush in what was, obviously to almost all of America, a purely political decision. No further detail is needed.

The fifth vote in January to give corporations complete freedom to buy elections was cast by Samuel Alito Jr., a George W. Bush appointee. During his confirmation hearings four years ago, Alito also promised, falsely, to interpret law, not make it, to be respectful of precedence and to be anything but political in his consideration of law. Since joining the court, he has taken an unfailingly right wing approach and brought new energy to the term “activist judge.”

Much has been written about Alito's obvious anger and mouthing of the words “not true” (I lip-read it as “simply not true”) when President Obama criticized the court's January decision during his state of the union speech. I half expected Alito to add “boy” to the sentence.

But in truth, Roberts' reaction was more telling: Roberts sat tall and smirked; he had won for the rich and powerful, those he clearly sees as the country's rightful rulers, and he damned well took pride in that. Watch the video.

Even retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a conservative who has been deeply reluctant to criticize the court, allowed the other day that the Jan. 21 decision was not a good one and that one result is likely to be “an increasing problem for maintaining an independent judiciary,” because big-money interests undoubtedly will greatly influence the elections of judges.

The Roberts majority maintained in its ruling that to keep corporations from unrestrained campaigning for specific candidates is contrary to the First Amendment right of free speech.

That's false on the face of it, because the individuals who make up a corporation -– U.S. citizens, anyway -– have and always have had as much right as anyone else to speak up on behalf of politicians they favor and against those they don't like. Forbidding direct corporate participation in campaigns does not in any way limit the rights of those living, breathing individuals.

I can publicly declare that Minnesota's absentee governor, Tim Pawlenty, is a heartless servant of billionaires and send contributions to any candidate who runs against him. Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, can say that Barack Obama is a revolution-seeking Marxist and can contribute to the campaign of anyone who runs against the president. That was true before this court decision. He and I and you and Aunt Sophie all had those rights and have them still.

Our Supreme Court now says, however, that Moynihan and others of the Corporate Rich Guy Club have rights that go a thousand times beyond your rights and mine and those of Aunt Sophie. They have a right to blare their opinions so loudly that other voices disappear under the din.

Not so incidentally, the Moynihans of the world get to decide who they shout for and against with the corporate loudspeakers. Under the law written by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito, there is no requirement that the super rich guys at the top of big corporations have to consult their employees or even their shareholders on which politicians to back.

Big business is fond of claiming in its advertising that “we are our people” or some such crap. Have any of you who have worked for corporations ever been consulted by the top-tier executives about what political stances the company should take?

Shareholders, including those who hold shares through mutual funds, have real financial stakes in corporations. I've owned corporate shares in small quantities since I was in my early 20s. I've yet to have any executive or representative of any company ask my permission before spending corporate millions to lobby for or against various bills and laws.

The Supreme Court did not explain why top-level corporate executives have a “right” to spend your money and mine to buy politicians they favor, even though we may oppose those politicians.

(That raises some very interesting questions about what corporate stock ownership really means, but don't look for any straight answers anytime in this century.)

Why do corporations have First Amendment rights? the naïve citizen asks.

Because, the Roberts court says, it is established through much law and many decisions that in the United States, a corporation has the legal status of a person.

Only that ain't true.

Supporters of the Jan. 21 decision are disingenuously claiming that the four dissenters to that decision admitted in the dissent that corporations have such “personhood” status. Actually, the minority noted clearly that corporations have a “limited” status as persons. The majority conveniently forgot about the limitations.

The economic royalists also deliberately overlooked another fact pointed out by the court's dissenters: That numerous court decisions going back to the 1880s, but especially since 1908, have affirmed that Congress has the right to bar corporations from many political activities.

In fact, the establishment of the doctrine of corporation as person has a murky and dubious history. The first declaration of that doctrine apparently was made by one Supreme Court justice, Morrison Remick Waite, in 1886.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of corporations, Waite issued his opinion in a lawsuit involve a county and a railroad. The decision was rendered without the court hearing arguments on the case, according to the book “The Post-Corporate World, Life After Capitalism” by David Korten. Other researchers agree.

In fact, Waite's decision, to be found on http://laws.findlaw.com/us/118/394.html states flatly that “the court does not wish to hear argument on the question” of whether corporations are entitled to “equal protection of the laws.” Equal to the protections offered individuals, that is. That decision referred to the Fourteenth Amendment, not the First.

Some reports and histories say that Waite's solo declaration may then have been amplified by a court reporter, who wrote that the Constitution, “which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations.”

In any case, the “personhood” of a corporation is undeniably a fiction. A corporation cannot serve on a jury, cannot hold public office, cannot be drafted into the military, does not go to jail for crimes committed –- and, in fact, neither do its officers, generally. Murders have been committed on behalf of corporations, but no corporate executive has ever been executed or sentenced to life in prison for those capital crimes.

A corporation cannot have all of the privileges of citizenship if it does not bear all the responsibilities of citizenship.

If the law does not recognize that simple fact, then the law is wrong and must be changed. If the Supreme Court refuses to recognize the reality, then the court should be somehow overturned, through legislation, through an alteration of the Constitution and/or through impeachment of the justices who denied the truth of the law for political reasons.

Up to now, the court has maintained that the rights of corporations are limited and can be further restricted “when there is compelling national interest” in establishing restrictions.

Preservation of the integrity of our electoral system would appear to be a compelling national interest.

But...Don't expect politicians, Democrat or Republican, to act. Certainly they will not move for impeachment. Almost as surely, they will do nothing to reestablish limits on corporate campaign spending; there probably aren't more than 40 members of Congress, both houses, willing to displease corporate funders to that degree.

We sink or swim without the help of politicians.

We'll pay for the court's excess

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of the state and corporate power.”

...Benito Mussolini, founder of Italian fascism.


Government officials and the armies of pundits will not admit it – at least not in public – but the plain truth is that representative democracy in the United States is all but dead.

It will take a bit of time before it turns entirely to dust and collapses, but it is no more than a decaying zombie. By late this year, the advancing mortification will be unmistakable to anyone with clear eyes. By the middle of 2012, even the boobs will be able to see what's going on, if they care.

Mouthpieces for corporations and the economic elite are out and about now, cool and smiling, telling Americans that the widespread concern and anger over the U.S. Supreme Court's Jan. 21 decision that allows corporations to spend without restraint on political campaigns is greatly exaggerated.

Haughty and dismissive of critics, they sneer at the supposedly gaga liberals who say the decision is a disaster for democracy.

Given the fawning respect right-wing spokesmen get from todays faux reporters, and given the corporate-owned “news” media's disdain for liberals, the public undoubtedly will come rapidly to accept their message for a time, even as our governmental system disintegrates.

Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or the beautifully dressed, handsome, smooth talkers on television?

Americans choose television every time; that's part of how we got here.

Attack ads work. Unanswered and inadequately answered attack ads work absolutely. A massive campaign advertising a vicious darling of the right as a sweet fellow who has only your interests at heart also works, though not quite so well.

The Supreme Court has told the world's corporations that they may spend whatever it takes to overwhelm the voices of liberalism, that they are free to buy and control government in this country.

In fact, the consequences of the court's poisonous decision inevitably will be far broader and far worse than acknowledged by any of the politicians and pundits whose comments I've seen or heard.

* Many people are predicting a flood of corporate-financed attack ads against any politician who stands against anything any major business interest favors.

Of course they are right, though the flood may not be quite as bad this year as it surely will be in following years. It's a fair guess that many and perhaps most giant corporations, completely unleashed for the first time in the modern media era, will test the water this year, and refrain from a total assault across the country.

They'll want to figure out whether there will be a consumer backlash if they go too far – and figure out what is “too far.” They'll want to know how much honest reporting the vestiges of news operations will do on their activities and how much they can keep from the public. They'll want to conduct polls and other research to calculate finely just how far they can go.

And, probably, some executives will simply be intimidated at first by the freedom, uncertain of how to use it, like hormone-driven teenagers together in a safely private place for the first time. Learned inhibitions will hold back natural desire for awhile, but probably not for long.

Many millions of corporate dollars will be spent on the 2010 campaign, but they may be only a fraction of what will be poured into the elections of 2012 and thereafter, at least until the corporate hold on government is so complete as to be dent proof. After that, the political frontmen will have to work harder for a smaller share of the wealth, I'd guess.

* An inevitable result of the court's obviously political decision is one I've yet to hear anyone speak of: The disdain and, in truth, contempt it brings on the court itself.

Throughout my longish life, Americans have revered the Supreme Court even when we haven't agreed with its decisions. We have accepted it as the final arbiter of what our government can and cannot do, what we as citizens may and may not do. The 2000 decision to give the presidency to George W. Bush even though he did not win election did much harm to the court's standing with the public.

In the end, though, we accepted that patently partisan decision in the expectation that the court eventually would return to operating for and under law.

In fact, it has become even more politically motivated – remember how Republicans used to rail about “activist judges?” -- and millions of us hold the “justices” who participated in the Jan. 21 fraud in utter contempt. Three of the justices who handed the presidency to Bush also voted with the majority in the Jan. 21 travesty, thus demonstrating their fealty to ideology over law. We are justified in our contempt.

Reverence for the court? Not again for decades, if ever. It is just another right wing political body. When it screws us over, we must try to fight back, and if that means greatly reducing the court's power, so be it. If it takes altering the Constitution, let's try to do it. The court deserves no more referential treatment than any other piece of Republican party machinery.

This may well weaken the rule of law in this country. It is not our fault, but the doing of the court itself.

* Approximately 85 percent of all judges in America are elected. A majority of even the voting public ignore judicial races, and either don't vote or simply vote on the basis of name recognition. Incumbents always win unless they have achieved public attention through some egregiously bad behavior. But judicial campaigns still cost money.

It is henceforth amazingly easy, and pretty cheap, comparatively, for the corporate elite to buy our judges on all levels. Despite false protest from the right, it's extremely difficult now for individual citizens or even groups of citizens to win a legal fight against a large corporation. The businesses can afford to drag things out, to use the best legal help money can buy, to overwhelm the lowly citizen.

You can see how much easier that will be when the corporations have purchased the benches for those who sit upon them. Prepare your farewells to any vestiges of an honest judicial system.

* An obvious corollary to the point above is that businesses will be more eager to challenge citizens in court, and to challenge any regulatory law or, say, laws protecting employees or consumers from corporate wrongdoing. The likelihood of a corporate win in any such case will rise dramatically as soon as the hired judges are in place.

* In every story about the court decision, the corporate media equates “corporations and unions” as though they are equal players on the political field. Even the nuttiest of the teabaggers probably doesn't believe that, but it goes on. Labor unions can't raise one twentieth of the money that corporations can, and the unions are becoming weaker by the day as the right presses attacks against them.

Soon we'll see more stories equating MoreOn and other Internet-based liberal organizations with corporations and their trade organizations. The great majority of the public also will see that fiction for what it is. Labor unions and all of the money-raising liberal organizations together cannot raise half of what just one of the lobbying industries can spend on a campaign. To insinuate that they can play dollar for dollar against the combined powers of the pharmaceuticals, insurers, war industries, mining industry, lumber industry, and all the rest is wildly absurd.

But that's how the corporate press plays it; it must work for them to some degree.

* Although I've been avoiding most other comments on the Jan. 21 decision until I complete this piece, I am aware that while recognition was a little slow, a number of people now have pointed out that the Supreme Court – Justice Anthony Alito's insolence to the contrary – has opened the door to heavy foreign involvement in our electoral process. Hell, it blew away the door and the wall it hung in.

Aramco, the American subsidiary of Saudi Oil, is now free to play in our elections; it is a duly-registered American corporation. Several American corporations are owned by the government of China, and that country has pieces of many others. Bin Laden Construction operates legally (and as far as I know legitimately) in this country. So does an oil company in which the Bush family and the bin Laden family share ownership. Yes, really. The list is extremely long.

As Greg Palast of Greg Palast.com put it Jan. 22, “There is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.”

Heavy spending by foreign interests, including foreign governments, to elect people who are favorable to them, or can be paid to be favorable to them, is certain. It will happen.

* Let's lump these: The essential facts are the same from a political standpoint. Among things that will not happen in Congress – or that will be reversed – because of massively increased corporate control of elections are these: Passage or enforcement of laws governing health and safety of workers; employee rights in labor organizing; laws requiring overtime pay; laws governing discrimination in employment because of sex, race, religious affiliation and sexual orientation; meaningful regulation of financial institutions; genuine health care reform; laws allowing reimportation of prescription drugs; serious regulation of insurance companies; meaningful improvement in laws governing the environment, clean air, clean water, preservation of wildlife habitat; protection of wilderness areas from lumbering and mining, and any other protections of natural resources against exploitation by corporations.

There will be some things done for show, and some existing laws will be enforced at their present levels for a while, but as corporate power grows, even those things will be pushed aside as unnecessary.

Some people do and will doubt that corporations would move forcefully in the mentioned areas. I do not understand that doubt. They are all situations on which corporations and their industrial associations have spent millions of dollars for lobbying. Why would they not press forward now that their advantage is greatly increased?

* The corporate world, often in alliance with the religious right, has been shoving its nose farther and farther into the tent of public education for decades. Look for that to accelerate. The corporate elite, as the brilliant comedic social commentator George Carlin long ago pointed out, does not want an educated American public. They want a trained workforce, able to run the machines that remain in this country, and to keep the books and stock the shelves; the last thing they want is millions of citizens capable of critical thought. Involvement in education will accelerate.

Even before the Jan. 21 decision, the religious anti-intellectuals of Texas had a big and growing effect on the contents of textbooks used throughout this country. The religious right controls the Texas Board of Education and Texas has a unified textbook purchasing system. If Texas wants science out and statements favorable to the religious right in a book, it often gets in or the publisher loses sales to all of Texas. In most areas, local school boards make book-buying decisions; a publisher will sell to all of Texas, even if it loses sales to local districts here and there. And the creationists are pushing again, even in places such as my native, generally educationally liberal Minnesota.

Corporations are happy to ally with the religious right if both get the kind of teaching they want. The children of the corporate elite do not go to public schools.

* Eventually, the relationship of the corporate elite and the religious right will change, but the shift probably will take a long time. The corporate hierarchy – highly educated, for the most part, and arrogant beyond measure – are, in private, extremely contemptuous of the spitting, shouting preachers and their bumpkin followers. The religious nuts are useful to the corporatists yet, but as the latter grow in open power, they'll undoubtedly get tired of catering in any way to people they see as hugely inferior. But we may be talking decades before an open split occurs.

* The “two party system” will continue. It's a handy fiction that keeps much of the great uninformed public relatively happy. Liberals will be almost entirely out, however. Not a huge change, since the billions of dollars in corporate lobbying money has long given the edge to right-leaning politicians. Now, however, we'll see the start of more and more openly dismissive treatment of genuine liberals who want public office. Give us exactly what we want or forget being elected to anything, the corporations will say, and they will be served. Liberals, already scarce, will become an almost extinct breed in the world of elected office.

* Let's not forget one of the biggest and worst of certainties resulting from the ability of corporations to buy elections: Settle down to perpetual war, people. War is immensely profitable, and profit is why we've been in Iraq for so long, and why we'll be there for some years yet and why we'll be in Afghanistan for many years yet and why we are almost certain to get into yet another unwinnable, perpetual war if and as the Iraq killing winds down. It's incredibly easy in this day of Fox Nooz and bent politicians and right wing preachers to drum up public support for yet another holy war, and with Congress bought and paid for, there's no stopping it. “We have always been at war with East Asia.”

The only thing George Orwell got wrong in “1984” was the year.

* There is a flood of ideas pouring out now from many irate liberal commentators, organizations and a few politicians. There are several small pushes now for Constitutional amendments. The public won't get behind any of them in meaningful numbers. The American public is past caring about much except taxes and, in a substantial minority, guns and Gawd.

Several bills have been suggested, some of them very sensible. Alan Grayson, the rich liberal from Florida, has introduced five bills, all of which would alleviate the situation to some degree. They won't pass, almost certainly won't even get hearings. Members of Congress are looking at who will contribute to their re-election campaigns and who might pour in millions against them.

Fageddaboudit.

* Speaking of corporate spending and legislative attempts at blocking corporate power in campaigns, one noble attempt looks like it should work, if it gets enough coverage from the corporate media. That is an attempt to bar corporations that have federal contracts from using their money to support political candidates. It is a supremely rational and righteous plan, and should run through Congress...maybe even with the support of two or three Republicans. Except...

The Roberts court still sits at the top of the pile. Given their history, there seems little to no chance that the five pimps would allow such a law to stand. If it comes to a test, they will do what they did on Jan. 21 – decide their course in advance and in favor of corporations over citizens and then create law to cover their decision.

* There already is a major rush from liberal organizations to raise money to fight the corporate takeover of elections and to combat right-wing candidates. Do what you like on that. I'm going to save my money to be used as best we can for the survival of my family. MoveOn, TruthOut, Progressive Democrats of America, Credo and all the rest, taken together, can't put as much money into a campaign as any two of the biggest insurance companies and one pharma. Goldman Sachs alone can outspend any six of the liberal organizations and not even have to reduce its executive bonuses.

Some people, not all of them corporate toadies, say now that the Jan. 21 decision to allow corporations to run free in the field of electoral politics won't bring much of a change from what we have now, because corporate money, dispersed by lobbyists, already pretty much runs Congress.

Yes, it does to a disgusting degree. But there have been some restraints. Now and then overreaching lobbyists and even some of the people they've bribed, have gone to jail or lost their Congressional or statehouse sinecures.

The new situation means that the corporations and their lobbyists don't have to risk illegal activity or worry about possible opposition. They can simply buy Congressional seats, and state legislative seats and judgeships.

This is Benito Mussolini's dream come true. In fact, it goes beyond his realistic dreams. And it's done without a drop of blood being shed or any need to face the anger of the leaders of the world. Quiet and clean, like a good mob hit.

Dems really are that dumb

It finally became clear – a fact so obvious that I kept looking past it for other explanations for why Barack Obama and the Congressional Dumbocrats have accomplished so little of what the majority of Americans want.

Big campaign contributions aside, they didn't understand. In fact, they lacked and still lack even the beginnings of understanding of why they were elected.

Locked into the circular nonsense support system within the Beltway, and within the party hierarchy, they didn't even begin to grasp that America wanted real change, not just the promise of change.

They thought it was as it has been for decades: People like or dislike your campaign promises and style, but they don't actually think things will be substantially different after an election. In fact, the pols hold, we, the people, don't want anything but the color of the paint to change.

Now the White House and the Dumbocrats are flailing helplessly, at a total loss as to why they have dropped so far so fast. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they are trying desperately to continue in the belief that only the far left wanted big shifts in policy and practice.

They didn't believe we really wanted the wars to end. They didn't believe we wanted the bankers and Wall Street truly brought to heel, and that dainty wrist slaps wouldn't begin to satisfy an angry public. They didn't think we were even aware of the continuing loss of civil liberties, loss of things such as habeas corpus, let alone believing that we wanted rights restored. They didn't take seriously demands for equal treatment of gays. They certainly didn't believe that we, the great majority, wanted big money out of the lawmaking process.

They were absolutely certain that if they went on as usual, the liberals would line up again and yet again to vote for them because, as Rahm Emanuel said, “Where else are they going to go?”

I'm sure most of the people who read this thing understood all that long ago. I didn't really get my head around it until, after an exchange of emails with my excellent state representative, I went downstairs to fix myself some lunch a couple of days ago. Sitting at the kitchen table I had one of those forehead slapping moments.

My God! They really didn't understand and still don't!

So now an obviously bewildered Barack Obama has summoned his campaign staff to return and begin selling him again to the American public. And Congressional Democrats already are putting themselves into position to lie down under the wheels of the very-minority right wing machine. Surrender is their first response to the slightest hint of adversity.

Meanwhile, the White House still is full of revolving-door Wall Streeters, and Obama is still – still, for heaven's sake! -- talking nonsense about bipartisanship and cooperation with the Dirty Dogs.

Meanwhile, the public is enormously angry and growing daily more angry but, in its ignorance of how things work, aiming its anger mostly in the wrong direction and supporting the very people who intend them the most harm.

Folks, there is little chance for a cure of idiocy on this level.

Given the Jan. 21 decision of the five warriors for the oligarchy on the Supreme Court, make that no chance.

_______________

Given the state of things, please consider taking the action recommended in the short essay immediately below this one. It is one of the very few actions you can take that could actually weaken the power elite to at least a small degree. Close your accounts with any of the giant banks; dump their credit cards and get some from smaller issuers. Please.

Take a little bite out of big banks

A group of people that includes Arianna Huffington has begun what appears to be a genuine grassroots movement to cut the “too big to fail” banks down to a more reasonable size.

Huffington isn't promoting herself on this campaign, at least not in a big way. She's apparently letting the thing build on its own, among anonymous citizens who see the logic and act, and pass the word to their friends.

Soon after I discovered the existence of the movement, a friend mentioned in an email that he and his partner are moving all of their funds from one of the giant robber banks with which they done business for many years to a credit union. That gives strength to the sense that this is a movement that may catch on; the friend had only just heard of the wider movement of which I speak.

It's a lovely idea. The required actions are cost-free and would take the average person very little time. That doesn't mean that average, almost terminally lazy American will do it, of course, but I'd like to think enough people will act to bite a few million dollars from the incomes of the made men of banking.

Simply withdraw any funds you have in the big banks and move the money to smaller institutions, and replace credit cards from the big banks with others issued by smaller organizations. There are many smaller banks, community banks and credit unions that can use your business and will better use your money.

You're fully protected by federal deposit insurance from losses up to $250,000 in a small bank just as you are in a big one

Credit unions and many community banks still are lending to consumers and to small businesses, while the big banks are hoarding their resources and slipping much of the money into the pockets of their executives.

It really is easy. Aside from big-bank credit cards, I did it more than two decades ago. Almost all of my banking is done through my credit union. I was lazy about the credit cards, but I'll have dumped the big-bank cards within the next seven days, and it's taken less effort than a walk around the block.

Top executives of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America appeared before a Congressional committee Jan. 13, 2010, and recited their bland, we-don't-really-mean-it mea culpas. Most people didn't see their tightly scripted appearances because increasingly feeble television news operations can do only one news story at a time, and – rightfully, if they can do only one – the story of the week was Haiti. That saved the bankers from another explosion of public anger.

To make action easier, Huffington and the other people who started this thing -– they describe themselves as a group of friends who came up with the plan during a dinner conversation -- have created Moveyourmoney.info, an apparently amateur-made Web site.

If you don't know of a credit union for which you are eligible for membership, or don't know how to find a community bank, the Web site has a place to type in your zip code. Then click, and you'll get a list of community banks in your area. There is no charge.

I'd add a caution, though:

The people who created the site obviously can't know the country community-by-community. When I tried out the list of banks for my area, several of the names that came up were branches of TCF Bank. No one who cares about honest politics or social justice would do business with a TCF Bank. The organization is the feudal playground of an extreme right winger who was for a time chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party and who often spouts Cheney-like pronouncements through the local media.

But several alternatives were offered, fortunately. Do check out the banks on theMoveyourmoney.info list, before moving your money. That takes only minutes.

Do it.

Teaching how not to think

The biggest laugh of my week came from the front page of the New York Times Sunday (1/10) business section.

No kidding.

At the bottom of the page was the beginning of a rather long story about how some business schools are beginning to change their curricula to incorporate – prepare yourself for this – lessons in critical thinking!

Times writer Lane Wallace began with a breathless description of how a decade ago Roger Martin, then the new dean of Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, had a “Eureka moment” when he realized that the highly successful principal of a local elementary school and a hotshot lawyer tied to investment banking used essentially the same thought process in their jobs.

They both “thrived by thinking through clashing priorities and potential options, rather than hewing to any pre-planned strategy,” Wallace gushed.

The great moment led Martin to a conclusion that was, at the time, a revolutionary concept in the world of educating the world's future corporate leaders.

That conclusion, getting serious broader attention only since the dumbest guys in the room (my phrasing, not the admiring Mr. Wallace's) brought us to the brink of economic collapse, is “a feeling that people need to sharpen their thinking skills, whether it's questioning assumptions or looking at problems from multiple points of view,” in the words of David A. Garvin, a Harvard Business School professor who co-wrote a book on “Rethinking the M.B.A.: Business Education at a Crossroads.”

So help me, I'm not making this up. You can find it in the gray pages of the mighty New York Times.

The article went on to say that some business educators are seriously considering that elements of a liberal arts education might be good for their students – notably the parts of such an education that lead people to think about the situations with which they are faced and consider a variety of possibilities for explaining and dealing with those situations. Why, it is suggested, one might even question the usual, clear corporate roadmap for dealing with every and any question.

Wow!

A few of the educators are even talking about “understanding cultural contexts,” said reporter Wallace. Well, that is, the folks at Stanford's graduate business school are talking about that. Some.

A bit more than half way through his report, however, Wallace admitted that such thoughts “are far from universal” among business educators. The sturdy people at the University of Chicago, for example, ain't havin' any of that there touchy-feely stuff; they're sticking to the straight and narrow: crunch the numbers and act according to corporate guidelines and never mind about putting things in context and examining potentially different ways of acting.

Wallace then quoted a couple of sources who suggested that no more than 25 percent of accredited business schools actually are considering different ways of looking at business, themselves and the world. And from further descriptions, it appears that there's something of a hitch in the thinking of those in the minority of schools actually making or proposing some changes.

The writer of the article didn't describe it as a hitch, however. I do. And it is this: Rather than actually trying to increase the critical thinking skills of their students, the schools “open to change” are trying to devise a new formula to replace the present ones. They call it “design thinking” and they've begun classes in it.

It's hysterical. You gotta laugh. No other way to avoid crying.

Beginning more than 35 years ago, while I was a full-time business and economics writer, dealing daily with the top levels of American corporate management and often with the supposedly great thinkers among America's economists, I began to complain to my colleagues about the terrible intellectual rigidity and lack of moral base I regularly encountered among the growing number of corporate leaders who held advanced business degrees.

It wasn't long before I started predicting that MBA programs – beginning with that of Harvard, the model for all the others in this country – would bring this country and it's economy to ruin or to a new form of corporate-led facism, or both.

My colleagues responded that while they also saw problems brewing, I was exaggerating the dangers. They didn't see what I thought I saw: a major cultural shift toward absolute amorality in business.

That shift should now be apparent to everyone. Don't try to hold your breath until the corporate world begins to move back toward some level of ethical behavior.

The new Reid flap: Pure B.S.

This country is drowning in bullshit.

Please forgive the crudeness, but no other term quite conveys the necessary level of contempt for deliberate, nonsensical phoniness.

The hottest “news” story at the moment is an absurd flap over comments made two years ago by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his new apology for stating some simple, obvious facts at that time.

Reid suddenly was pilloried in the corporate media a couple of days ago for statements made during the early stages of the presidential campaign to the effect that Barack Obama might become the USA's first black president in part because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” The stories continue to run; see the New York Times, page one, on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010, and any network or cable news show at any time, day or night.

Use of the long-outdated word Negro was pretty dumb, but other than that Reid's observations were unmistakably accurate.

We're told that Obama and Reid got together and the senator apologized to the president for his remarks and the president accepted the apology because he knows Harry is a good guy and not a racist.

If we could get a transcript of that conversation, I'm guessing that they shook their heads together over the reaction to the comments and that Obama chided Reid a little for being silly enough to say something that could be twisted by the scandal mongers, Republicans and the dimwits of the press into being racist.

It's simply, sadly fact: In this country, a really dark-skinned black man could not have been elected president. It is equally fact that Obama has no touch of black dialect unless he chooses to, and then he injects it subtly and beautifully into his speech.

I hope someone brings out a video, but it almost certainly won't happen: Some time after his election, Obama spoke to an almost entirely black audience at some large event. May have been an NAACP meeting, may have been a convention of another mostly black group. I wish I could remember the specifics, but cannot.

At any event, the speech was televised. As Obama spoke, I said to my wife: “Hey, listen. He's talking black.” Her attention had been elsewhere; she stopped, listened for just a minute and said, “Yes, he is.” And he was. The rhythm of his sentences was different, pronunciations were slightly altered, certain sounds were stretched. It was fairly subtle, but unmistakable.

For the record: I do not say these things as insult to the president. On the contrary, I rather admired how well and how easily he changed his speech, and it made perfect sense to me as one who knows quite a lot about politics – as much sense as his dropping those black-community cadences when speaking to a bunch of white guys in $5,000 suits.

Beyond that, judging from my own fairly broad circle of acquaintances and friends, and knowledge of others who are selectively flexible in their speech, I'd lay very big bucks that millions of middle class black Americans can and do exactly the same thing with their speech, depending on locale and present company at any given time.

Reid simply made a quick, clear, honest observation. That it has become a big hoohaw is pure bullshit. But then, so is about 95 percent of political discourse in this country, at least as reported in the corporate media.

Even the underpants bomber was wearing out as a point of fixation for the talking models on television “news,” and they needed something else that would help them avoid real journalism for a few days.
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One other observation: Throughout my youth, in my part of the country, “Negro” was a word that acknowledged ethnicity without carrying negative connotations. It may have been used differently elsewhere, but here in the north central part of the country it was a respectful word, and so it also was on radio, television and in newspapers.

Though I have no problem with black people shifting their preference to other terms, and have shifted along with them, I think some of the complaints from younger blacks about the word Negro stem from lack of historical perspective and, frankly, from the arrogance of youth which crosses all ethnic borders: Anything of an earlier generation which is not the same as their usage and taste is stupid, ugly, etc., etc.

The routine of government lies

We, the public, cannot trust our government to tell us the truth about any major event affecting our lives.

Let me qualify that. Some government agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office, that have thus far remained largely nonpartisan, routinely tell truth, even uncomfortable truth. The White House, Congress and its members and all the agencies controlled by the military, “intelligence” outfits and other self-serving bodies, such as “Homeland Security,” routinely lie to the public.

The greater the importance of an event to the public, the more certain it is that we will be fed lies.

Almost everyone knows that, though we seldom state it so bluntly, or even face it so openly in our own minds. It's one hell of a frightening fact: Our government lies to us, often outrageously, more often than it tells us the truth. The bigger the event, the more likely that government will offer us monstrous lies.

“America does not torture.” Yeah, right.

(Yes, we expect that of modern American politicians, but it's still hard to face when we're talking about The Government.)

We recognize that only the hopelessly naive believe the entire official stories of the murder of John F. Kennedy, the events that got us into Vietnam in a big way, the absurd Cheney/Bush story of our reasons for invading Iraq, and countless other events big and small.

I don't mean that the Kennedy assassination was engineered by the Pentagon, or that the FBI killed Martin Luther King. I don't mean that Dick Cheney and his evil cohort engineered the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001; I do defy you to find reason to believe the official stories are accurate and real. “Faith” doesn't count.

What I mean, simply, is that the lies and coverups are so numerous and in many cases so obvious that we who value truth simply must recognize that we don't know and probably never will know what happened in event after event.

Often the coverups obviously are created simply to save some bumbling fool's ass, or hide the gross incompetence of a group of politicians or crony appointees. (Heckuva job, Brownie.) Usually, we're denied certain knowledge of some stupid error, rather than knowledge of a deliberate crime, although it would be unrealistic to suggest that the lies never cover real crimes, even capital crimes.

All of which is by way of leading up to what seems to me very probably another government lie that the great majority of Americans have accepted without quibble.

I don't think we know, nor do I think we'll ever know, what really happened at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009.

Quickly: No, I do not believe the shootings of military personnel and civilians was part of a terrorist attack plotted by some group in Iran or Pakistan. I do not believe that Major Nidal Hasan had accomplices. It seems quite clear that the man was desperately mentally ill, that he started the thing by himself, and probably with little planning beyond some wild imaginings within his fevered brain.

It's also obvious that the Army should have recognized the depth of Hasan's illness and done something about him, and it, long before he began shooting. The Army's feeble excuses – akin, as numerous people have noted, to the Catholic Church's weak excuses for not stopping child abusers within the ranks of its clergy – hardly are strong enough to be taken seriously as coverup.

However, there are big problems with the official story of Nov. 5.

Hasan, a psychiatrist, a doctor, is not a known marksman with a handgun or any other weapon. As a medical man, he probably spent very little time – as in almost none – on weapons ranges honing his shooting skills. Sketchy stories of his early life give no indication that he grew up with guns or used them regularly, if at all, during his youth.

Our “news” media, always ready to swallow the official take on any story, has never asked about that, so far as I can tell. I can find no evidence that they've sought Hasan's military weapons records – which by now could easily be falsified in any case, though questions immediately after the shooting might well have produced records we could trust. I've not heard nor seen a single reference to anyone checking to see if Hasan was known at private shooting ranges.

But, the official story is that this doctor, this unpracticed shooter, walked into a building on Fort Hood and within the space of approximately 10 minutes shot and killed 13 people and wounded another 30.
Reports said he carried two handguns, but later reports by several agencies quoting military sources suggested that he used only one of the two pistols.

As someone who did grow up with guns, who fired shotguns and rifles and sometimes handguns from the time I was 9 or 10 until my early 20s, my first reaction was “Ain't no way.”

My present take is exactly the same.

Even assuming the man was a cold, calm shooter and not the emotional and mental wreck all the reports show him to be, that is a very unlikely, though not quite impossible, outcome. Even if that cold, calm shooter was highly practiced, an absolute ace with handguns, 13 dead and 30 wounded in not quite 10 minutes is an unlikely result. Rambo movies are not reality, or anything close to it, people.

Say that the emotional and mental wreck we know Hasan to have been used just one gun and 43 dead and wounded becomes what I would say is a practical impossibility, though others certainly will disagree.

We can presume that the people who were shot, and those who avoided being shot, were not standing calmly, facing Hasan and awaiting their turns to be slaughtered. They were running, ducking, hiding, probably yelling and rolling and generally making a hell of a terrified fuss. And remember that he would have been distracted by at least a couple of attempts to take him down.

Immediately after the shootings there were some suggestions in television reports that some of the victims were or may have been shot by military people and/or police officers trying to get Hasan. Very quickly, however, those suggestions simply stopped. The curtain dropped with a thud. No one mentioned the possibility again after a surprisingly short time – a matter of hours.

So far as I've been able to find, no one has even hinted at the possibility of “friendly fire” deaths or injuries since then.

It seems very likely to me that some of the dead and/or wounded were shot accidentally by people other than Hasan. In fact, under the circumstances that have been presented to us, I can't believe anything else. Some military people or police or both – scared, confused, probably panicked – shot carelessly or stupidly and hit innocent people.

As coverups go, this is very far from being the worst. If what I think happened is correct, the official story has been doctored almost certainly to protect well-meaning people who were badly trained or emotionally and mentally ill-suited to handle such an emergency. They were not up to the task they took on, and the military cannot bring itself to admit that it's people were, at best, incompetent, unqualified to deal with the terrible mess they found themselves in.

We're being lied to again. And a government that lies to us to protect incompetents and to save reputations certainly has no qualms about lying to us to cover its deliberate crimes.

The New York Times reported on Dec. 9, 2009, that the FBI has named its former director, William H. Webster, to conduct an “independent” review of the bureau's handling of information about the Fort Hood shootings. Not of the incident itself, mind you, but the FBI's own handling of information – i.e. what it told us.

Anyone here believe Webster is going to say anything other than that the FBI was generally brilliant in its providing the government and the public with accurate information on a confusing situation?

I didn't think so.

Now we are confronted with another situation – and apparent attempt to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit -- that is guaranteed to provide us with more official stories that we cannot trust.

But worse than that: We now have a "news media" that lacks competence and, anyway, has no interest in pursuing the big stories or getting at the truth.

We want truth. We are not likely to get it, on this or any other event that reflects badly, however correctly, on our government or its various cops, spooks, military or guns for hire. We are not likely to get it on any major event that would require a difficult and/or lengthy pursuit by well trained and dedicated reporters; those are so rare as to be effectively nonexistant.

Past time to follow the health care money

Industries that profit hugely from America's health care scam – notably insurance companies and pharmaceutical makers, but others as well – have spent massive sums to prevent any genuine reform of the non-system.

Many news and even some of the pseudo news outfits have reported what those companies spent and are spending to lobby against reform.

The Washington Post, CNN, New York Times and others said repeatedly during the fall that the profiteers were laying out $1.5 million a day to make sure we don't get affordable health care for all Americans. No doubt the expenditures have increased over the past month or so.

Estimates of the total spent by the profiteers on anti-reform lobbying go to more than $500 million since last spring.

CNN noted back in September that the expenditures to that point would cover top-drawer insurance for more than 30,000 Americans for one year. By now that number has to be 35,000 Americans.

But...

A very important set of facts has never been reported, so far as I can find. None of the badly educated, largely untrained stenographers who have replaced reporters seems even to have asked the big questions:

Exactly where is all the money going? Precisely how is it being spent? Who's collecting what the insurers and pharmas are paying?

Much of the money goes into the personal bank accounts of the lobbyists, of course.

The Guardian, a Brit news operation that does a better job of covering Washington than most U.S. news outfits, reported during the fall that the various health care industries had deployed a total of six (count them, six) lobbyists for each and every member of Congress. Of course, that's on average; some of the few unbought liberals may get only one or two or none at all, and Joe Lieberman probably has eight or nine brushing off his chair as he sits down for lunch while three others spread his napkin on his lap and four more serenade him. If you have a precious possession, you cherish it.

However, it is clear, on the face of it, that not all the money is being paid to lobbyists just to talk to members of Congress, sing them lullabies and massage them with expensive oils and ointments.

So where is the money going? To “charities” favored by legislators with power? To campaign funds? To wives and siblings and girlfriends under various ruses? To “nonprofit” employers of said wives, siblings and girlfriends? To PACs that saddle the various members' favorite hobby horses?

C'mon, “news” people. Where the hell is the money going, exactly? And I do mean exactly.

If the expenditures for lobbying are declared, and obviously a large percentage of the total is declared, then it is possible to find out who is being paid what.

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Oh, and while we're at it, why do the corporate “news” media generally ignore the fact that Hadassah Lieberman, Joe's wife, has spent most of the past ten years or so as a highly-paid lobbyist for the major pharmceutical companies? She was director of policy, planning and communications for Pfizer, one of the biggest drug makers, and then a lobbyist for the pharma industry until quite recently. Before getting in the health care biz, she was a research analyst for Lehman Brothers, the big investment house that collapsed in 2008.

Her activities are highly relevant and should be noted in every story about his gun-for-hire activities.

And why don't the purported news outfits include in reports on the Senate farce the fact that the wife of Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who was involved in writing the Senate's bill, is on the boards of directors of three health care corporations and for a time sat on the board of a subsidiary of AIG, the government funds gulping insurance giant?

And why hasn't anyone made a big splash by reporting on the stock in pharmaceutical, insurance and other health care companies owned by members of Congress? Democraticunderground.com stated way back in June that more than 30 “key” members of Congress owned substantial amounts of stock in pharmas and that some are directors of drug companies.

I come near to weeping sometimes for what has happened to the craft to which I devoted my entire working life.