Corporate club

One hears about shadowy groups of people who run things from behind a screen. Some of it's crazy, some of it isn't and with some of it, you just never know. There never was anything like the group said to be behind The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the book was actually re-purposed from an earlier anti-Napoleonic screed to vilify Jews. Rather successfully too.

There are, however uncountable but influential think tanks and other agencies pumped full of cash from the deep pockets of hidden global interests. There is a real Bilderberg group and you'll hear from some that it has all kinds of sinister purposes related to globalism and world government. Whether that agenda includes corporate feudalism or worldwide socialism depends on whose axe is being ground, and their guarded secrecy only invites speculation: but the most successful of secret groups would probably be invisible or apparently innocuous and would include entities quite a bit more powerful than effete European aristocrats and the selection of politicians and industrialists who attend annual Bilderberg meetings.

To me, the most likely home for such a group or groups would be right here in the USA and The New York Times' Jimmy Zuma gives us a candidate: the notorious industrial barons, the Koch Brothers who

"regularly convene secret conclaves of industrialists aiming to prevent government from regulating business."

Has the rightward tilt of the United States Supreme Court been facilitated and encouraged or even paid for by Oil money?

Was the Citizens United decision granting corporate ability to pump unlimited amounts of money into campaigns designed to repay that money, to influence elections and guarantee the allegiance of politicians bought and paid for? Despairing minds want to know. The decisions of Supreme Court Justices allowing corporations the power to slander and libel ad libidum, the decision eviscerating any attempt to influence elections and legislation with secret, untraceable Gigabuck contributions: did the attendance of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia at Koch Brothers secret meetings about which the press never talks ( although it attends) have anything to do with the biggest handover of political power to the very, very rich in our history?

"Now that we know Supreme Court justices attended Koch’s political planning meetings, it is time to ask some important questions… "

Yes it is and now, while we still can.

What's in your wallet?

The prospect of foreclosure is frightening enough to the many people who are having trouble making mortgage payments and who fear losing their homes. It's frightening enough without the prospect of strange men crashing through the back door in the middle of the night.

Even worse for some people here in The Sunshine State, folks who are simply a bit behind in payments but who are not in foreclosure have been treated to a surprise breaking and entering by representatives of one of those banks that love to advertise how they're on your side. Listen to the 911 call from one frightened woman and put yourself in her position and ask yourself what you would do if the man in black kicked in your door. I certainly know what I would do and what the law allows me to do to a possibly armed unannounced midnight caller. It would involve more than an angry letter to J.P. Morgan.

The hired thugs of our friendly banking industry have done worse than frightening people half to death in a way Pauly Walnuts could only envy. There are stories of home invasions at wrong addresses and one Jason Grodensky from nearby Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with the good fortune to have no mortgage at all had his house foreclosed on by Bank of America. What's in your wallet?

The publicity has been bad enough that major banks are curtailing foreclosure viking raids or freezing foreclosures entirely for the moment. Nancy Pelosi and some 30 Democrats in the house are calling for an investigation in their typically socialist way and Attorney General Eric Holder has announced he will be looking into it. Bloomberg News reports that some 7 states are investigating charges that false documents and signatures have been used to justify hundreds of thousands of possible fraudulent foreclosures and their attendant Viking raids against surprised and terrified homeowners.

So it's all going to be taken care of right? The Democrats are on the side of the people and against those huge, ugly hordes of corporate Visigoths and their paper battering rams, right? They control the Senate and the House and they'd never let the Republicans rubber stamp the right of Corporate Huns to lie, cheat and bypass every code of human decency since the Code of Hammurabi and the Proclamation of Telepinu -- right?

Don't be too sure, because a bill that may do just that now sits on President Obama's desk that somehow oozed through our lefty, anti-business, death-to-Capitalism Congress. Stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Senator Robert Casey used some obscure procedure to take the bill away from the Senate Judiciary committee and the Senate then immediately passed it without debate and by unanimous consent. There was no one in the gallery to sing Whose side are you on.

Blame yourself

Was Tom Daschle (D-SD) telling the truth when he said that the health care public option Obama campaigned on was:

"taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others,"

or was he telling the truth when he said the President really did fully support what he promised to support and that:

"The President fought for the public option just as he did for affordable health care for all Americans. The public option was dropped only when it was no longer viable in Congress, not as a result of any deal cut by the White House."

Does it really matter? Were some people right on the money in telling me that either party would, in time, do just about the same things if elected ?

While I'm not sure that "I'm a maverick/I was never a maverick" McCain wouldn't have buggered up the economy beyond recovery by caving in to every moneyed interest as he always has done, I'm not sure that Obama really ever had the ability to be the kind of People's hero his supporters dreamed of and that he presented himself as. I'm not sure anyone could have been or can ever be, because our government has become a conduit rather than a barrier between the interests of Global power and the perceived wants and dreams of the public -- and we like it that way. We want what they want. We see the government as the enemy rather than those entities behind the government which the government can no longer even desire to control.

We're out in the street supporting tax relief for the billionaires who got that way by taking our jobs abroad and importing foreign workers, legal and otherwise. We support the party that tries to block a tax cut for the vast majority and insist on keeping it for those whose wealth has grown exponentially as ours has faded away or stagnated. Hope itself has become the butt of a thousand jokes.

Since the dawn of supply side economics nothing much has trickled down but debt, no private sector employment was created and all those massive profits that were supposed to translate into more and better jobs simply trickled into hedge funds, tax shelters, fraudulent investments designed deliberately to fail; grossly inflating markets and tempting us all into massive debt. We've supported every false characterization, every fabricated and fanciful bit of data, every promise of future glory as well as every scurrilous slander designed to keep us dancing in stage managed anger on the ends of our puppet strings -- dancing to a tune we think is our own.

Lack of oversight and lack of responsibility cause one disaster after another, yet we keep insisting we need more of the same and any attempt at standing between us and rapacious global profiteers and pirates can handily be dismissed as Communism or Tyranny or Godlessness and "too much government interference." Safety inspections, food inspections, even rules against selling worthless commodities are "government interference with profits," but we're quiet about every increment of additional government power to snoop on us, track our movements, our finances and to interfere with our privacy whether it's the government itself or corporations wanting to sell us more and sleazier things. Cows want to be milked no less than we do, but only we two legged cattle see it as freedom.

It doesn't seem like "socialism" to the fellow who gets his hip replaced at the VA hospital and for far less than he could even if he were employed and had insurance that didn't pass it off as "pre-existing." -- yet he thinks it is "Obamacare" when Big Brother tries to keep United Health Care death panels from denying coverage for his grandson with cystic fibrosis. He oozes platitudes like " well insurance companies have to make a living too" and he doesn't see the difference between making a living and unlimited, government protected rights to make as much as possible without a moral scruple about exploiting human suffering -- and the land, water and air that make life possible. The common good? That's Communism.

No, it's too easy to blame Government, blame Liberals, howl about socialism, 'redistribution' of wealth, chortle about Nancy Pelosi and weep idiot tears with Glenn Beck until we don't notice the shackles. Or maybe you're one of those bumper sticker bozos who think that that hopey changey stuff is just hilarious compared to the same old despair and we ought to keep on staging unfunded wars and ignoring the bill because as the Maverick said: "Debt Doesn't Matter" until, of course, it does and then you can giggle and blame it on somebody else.

Did Obama sell out? Did Congress sell out? Was it the media who told us to walk toward the light when the light was over a cliff? No, you sold out, you bought into it, you gave it all away because otherwise it would be Communism and Fascism and Tyranny. Either that or you thought a new figurehead could steer the ship on a new course. Happy now?

Things that ring in the night.

If there is any part of "our freedoms" that must be defended more than the right to risk irreparable disaster for profit, the right to sell fraudulent securities, bogus debt reduction plans and to buy election results, it's the right to harass people at all hours of the day and night in their homes, in their cars and at work in the process of fleecing them.

Yes, there are laws regulating telemarketing: no call lists, restrictions on times called, restrictions on robocalls that tie up the line until they're through telling you how evil Nancy Pelosi is or how they can get you out of debt by lending you more money at 400% interest. These laws are scrupulously ignored and lawbreakers are carefully protected by the phone companies who in turn are allowed to buy the privilege of ignoring not only the law, but common decency. Virtually all these calls, including the call that woke me at 3:33 this morning are untraceable. "Hell-O - are you late in your mortgage payments???" I was ready to kill someone, but thanks to an FCC that is owned by the telecommunications industry, I'm not allowed to do what I would be allowed to do if someone in a black ski mask showed up in my bedroom at the same hour. That I don't have a mortgage and am not in debt adds a certain edge to the anger. That I only got 4 hours of sleep hasn't allowed it to dissipate.

I may have to give up my land line. Even in a non-election year, I average about 8 telemarketing calls every day, usually most frequent at 8 O'clock AM, again around dinner time with a late peak at 9 to 10 PM. It rings when I'm in the shower, in the pool, up on a ladder trimming trees or under my car changing the oil. Of course it's nearly twice as bad this year.

My number is registered on that most pathetic of places, the Federal no-call list. I wonder why I bothered to register it. So is my cell phone and yet every loan shark and financial con man sends me text messages and calls me at the most inopportune times, so I have to remain unreachable, which largely defeats the purpose of owning one. Yes, this continues when one is overseas and for some reason, candidates all over the country continue to call me even when I demand to be removed.

Of course, I'm just a crank with no knowledge of how evil Liberals are and no proof that the ever further to the right corporate shills still calling themselves Republicans aren't the cause of our woes. After all, it's just freedom I'm objecting to and the will of the proletariat is that the will of the corporations be the law -- and isn't it typical of loser liberals like me to promote such Communo/Fascist ideas like a right to be left alone by scam hawkers and sleazemongers and political flim flam artists who have a far greater right to use a service I pay for than I do.

Never forget 9/11

Unless it might cost offshore corporations some taxes, that is.

Well industry self regulation has been a great thing for America, hasn't it. We've all become prosperous and freedom is ringing everywhere here in Utopia now that industries we depend on can write laws and make national policy in secret. Now that they can write their own permission slips to embark on dangerous and ill advised policies and of course give unlimited financial support to politicians who handle the paperwork for them. Of course it's not government intrusion - it's not even government, at least not a government elected by or responsible to the American people. Private security companies can fight our wars for us without having to tell us what they do or how they do it - they're private, after all. Responsibility and accountiblity are, of course, COMMUNISM, as some Republicans have told us. Paying for the damage you've done is a shameful thing to ask of a Corporate Lord - the very kind of government intrusion that might take a burden off the taxpayer and place it on the corporate elite. That damned Obama!

It's all worked out so very well that there's hardly anything left to privatize, except perhaps justice itself. Now that the BP leak seems to have been plugged, it's time to figure out what went wrong and why it went wrong and who allowed it to go wrong. Who better to examine the evidence but BP, Transocean and Halliburton? We can't have our enemy, the government we elected, mucking about and trying to place blame on the guilty instead of Barack Obama, the "enviros" and the customary straw men. Offshore based companies in the business of exploiting American resources for their own profit must always be protected from the consequences of their actions and from the wrath of fish hugging liberals.

So important is that, that our own Whorehouse of Representatives is willing to sacrifice the 9/11 responders suffering from serious illnesses resulting from their efforts on behalf of our country, and why? Because of a rider that attempted to disadvantage Corporations like our beloved master Halliburton that has moved to Dubai so as not to pay takes on the windfall profits we've given them and perhaps to be out of reach when we notice how many billions they have let disappear without explanation.

It's OK, we don't want or ask for an explanation because nothing matters but taxes and if we're really nice, Baron BP and Lord Halliburton will cut taxes and we'll all be rich!

Crack in the floor

You didn't think the monster on the sea bed was going to stay muzzled, did you? I was on a ship headed for Palm Beach when I saw the news report that the well had been capped and the pressure was rising. That rising pressure was a good sign seemed to confuse my fellow passengers, being young Americans and thus not quite up to seeing the analogy between this and trying to pump up a tire with a hole in it, but the early good sign didn't stay very good as pressure failed to reach what it should be if there were no other leaks and now it seems there are. Oil is seeping up from cracks in the sea floor.

A young woman sitting next to me was confused by the word seep and wanted to know whether it was spelled 'sepe' or 'seap', but to those who are at least as smart as a fifth grader, it spells bad news. The cap either has to come off or the relief wells have to be completed before the cracks widen and proliferate and we lose control completely.

Of course what may be a disaster for the world may be a boon for Halliburton and perhaps for Darth Cheney himself. The Dubai based corporation posted second quarter earnings substantially higher than expected; an 83% increase in point of fact. Can we understand now why the power behind the Bush kept his energy policy meetings with the oil men a secret we'll never have access to in our lifetime? Can we begin to suspect that it really wasn't about 'principle' but about power and money?

Internet neutrality and the Courts

Marconi was still a young man when the need for government control of communications became all too obvious. Newsmen using the new wireless telegraph began to jam each others' transmissions accidentally and on purpose and battles were fought over frequency allocations. Someone had to step in with some rules to allow the technology to develop, to prevent it being used as a weapon in restraint of free trade and to make sure that those using the public airwaves would use it without disregard for the public interest.

I can almost hear throats clearing at those last two words, almost see lips forming words like collectivism, socialism, Communism, but without it, the guy with the most money has the podium and the guy who owns all the podiums: press, broadcast and now the Internet, might just as well be the government with all that power. The difference between a fair trial and murder; between a Hockey game and a viking raid (if there is a difference) is the rules, so save your breath. I don't want to hear it.

The FCC was formed for these reasons, but during the last administration, it's been almost exclusively concerned with promoting the interests of power companies who want to use the power lines to get into the internet business, and sometimes to the serious harm of other users of the frequency spectrum. Whether or not this has changed under the Communist/Fascist Antichrist from Kenya seems to matter less than the current posture of the courts. The District of Columbia Federal Appeals Court decided yesterday in favor of Comcast and against the authority of the FCC in it's attempt to mandate "net neutrality."

The new administration has been in favor of equal treatment for all internet users; in favor of a policy that would prevent Comcast, for instance from slowing down and restricting the content they don't like and making content they approve of faster and cheaper. Yes, yes, I know all about free market competition, but I'm talking about the real world here and that's a world where corporations collude rather than compete. It's a world where a small group can control information to the point where no one can compete successfully. As I said, the difference between boxing and assault and battery or even murder is the rules.

It's too soon to make scary assertions about how this will work out, but as restrictions on how much of all media outlets can be owned by one person, real or corporate have been loosened along with restrictions on how much information they can restrict in their own interest, it looks to me like we're once again shooting ourselves in the foot, slow motion style. Our obsessive fantasy of a 'no holds barred' marketplace leading to peace and order, prosperity and a well informed electorate is, along with our phobic horror of phrases like "public interest" may be making corporate demagoguery a more valid vision of the future.

Under my skin

It's strange to find myself on the same side of any fence with the Book of Revelation Literalists, a group for which my loathing is nearly boundless. None the less, the disturbingly Orwellian prospect of having RFID devices implanted in people so that their employers can track their movements scares hell out of them as much as it does me.

A Radio Frequency Identification Device is small enough to be placed under the skin with a hypodermic needle and it's a great thing for keeping tabs on cattle or identifying lost dogs. They can also contain data, medical or otherwise that can be read by a scanner. Most humans object to being forced to having one inserted however particularly as a substitute for a key or ID badge.

Civil Libertarians -- indeed any kind of libertarians -- tend to be militantly opposed to allowing this to be done to people but it's of course for reasons of privacy and the protection thereof, not because they give credit to what may be the looniest book to worm it's way into the Christian canon. There are many such people in places like Virginia and it seems to be they who are behind a bill designed to prevent such implants. Why? because John of Patmos almost 2000 years ago had RFID capsules in mind when he talked about the Mark of the Beast.

He didn't and the Beast is most likely Nero, but even if the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend, these things are the mark of some kind of beast, corporate or governmental and I'm as much against it as they are.