Big Brother's Holding Company

By Anne Lavoie

No, I am not referring to Janis Joplin's great band (for those of you of a certain age who remember them.) I am referring to our federal government, Big Brother, and the corporate cabal that has a stranglehold on almost everything that has economic value in our country, the Holding Company. I like the definition I found that describes a Holding Company as 'a parent corporation that owns enough voting stock in another corporation to control its board of directors and, therefore, controls its policies and management'. It fits the description of corporate control of our government, from Congress to the Presidency.  

Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse in our country, the plot sickens. There is a bill that was introduced in April by Republicans in Congress, HR 1505, otherwise known as the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (NSFLPA). This bill merges the two in a new and insidiously powerful way. Janis would be screaming out, not in song, but in outrage as I am.

This bill is a pure power and land grab that also takes away our freedoms, rights, and protections. I consider it a corporate power grab because The Holding Company doesn't just call the shots in Washington, but owns and controls nearly the whole show, providing unknown numbers of private contractors conducting military, national security, guard, prison, surveillance, and border control related functions among others. The numbers are unknown because of they are hidden behind the veil of national security secrecy. Here is what this bill proposes to do: 

Under the guise of national and border security, and in order to eliminate pesky obstacles such as environmental laws, this bill gives to Homeland Security (and its innumerable private contractors) waivers for a whole list of environmental laws which allows them to trump management of these lands by the Departments of Interior and Agriculture and gives DHS unfettered access and control without ANY public accountability. Officials in both Interior and Agriculture are opposed, but they are not elected officials, so they really have no clout, and as we saw when they spoke out strongly against allowing loaded weapons in National Parks, Congress passed it anyway and Obama signed off.

With the adoption of this bill, a total of 36 environmental laws would be waived affecting federal, state, and private lands, including coastlines. They include, among others, the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act, Antiquities Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, etc. Rather than kill each pesky law individually, they are simply waiving them all, for the sake of security of course.   

Oh, but I'm still building up to the worst parts. The power, control, and authority they wish to give to Homeland Security over federal lands would encompass all the land within a 100 mile swath around the entire United States, including the coasts, not just borders with Mexico and Canada. A map of the area can be found here. You've got to see it to believe it. The area covered would even encompass the entirety of ten states and large portions of most of the others. 

The bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security immediate access to any public land managed by the federal government within this area. They would be able to conduct activities that 'assist in securing the border', including access to, maintaining, and constructing roads, constructing fences, using patrol vehicles, and setting up monitoring and surveillance equipment. Patrol vehicles are not just trucks, but would probably include helicopters, drones, and any other technological marvel, such as those butterfly cameras that look and fly like the real thing. Homeland Security wouldn't have to consult with tribal communities or even private landowners before entering the areas either.

This is somewhat familiar to me. I saw what has happened to Organ Pipe National Monument, on the Arizona/Mexico border, even back in the early 2000's. After paying to get into this national park, we found that areas of it were closed to the public for security reasons. The following year, even more area was closed off.



Keep Out



There was even an incident where a couple of our hiking club friends in their 80's were stopped by a helicopter that landed near the trail they were on and the camouflaged and heavily armed Border Patrol agents interrogated them. They did not show up to stop the hundreds of Mexicans we saw hiking openly across the desert every day, probably because it would be too much work. They preferred flying around in a helicopter in full combat gear, harassing elderly hikers. So I saw firsthand what happens when they get the authority to take over an area. 

I always thought they'd try to steal the public lands by privatization, but never did it occur to me that they would use a reverse and twisted form of eminent domain for phony security reasons. Now they call them 'federal' rather than 'public' lands, and they no longer want to be mere stewards of our lands but prefer total and unaccountable control. 

I consider our public lands, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas in particular, very special places that nourish the body and soul. Some I consider sacred, particularly our beloved Glacier National Park that sits entirely within their proposed 100 mile area of control. I am sure the long range plan is to open all those areas for resource development since they will be building all those convenient roads on the taxpayer dime, making them shovel ready for development, and environment laws will conveniently no longer apply.

Glacier National Park

Republican Congressmen want to help Big Brother for the benefit of their partner in crime, The Holding Company. Unfortunately, with everyone on both sides of the aisle in on the act and bought off by lobbyists, this thing could pass with both parties' help. If that should happen, everything they do on the federal lands encompassed by this bill could be kept secret and immune from court review. What more could they ask for? Oh, maybe 200 miles, or the whole country, for security reasons of course.

Plutopods on Their Perches

We can only hope the now-viral video of champagne-guzzling oligarchs ogling the Wall Street indignados gets as much traction as the ones of Inspector Gadget squirting his pepper spray. Nothing beats an infuriating optic for giving a movement that nice added oomph.


Of course, aristocrats on balconies have been amused by peasants in the streets since time immemorial.  Or at least since 1789......

Marie Antoinette & Co Ogled at Their Peril

Or as recently as last May, when the same plutopods at the Cipriani Club at 55 Wall Street peered and sneered at another protest march. (Yes, there have been protest marches, demonstrations, rallies and sleep-ins galore in lower Manhattan this whole year.  But they have not been covered by the mainstream media, apparently because the participants were not bused in by the Koch Brothers.  And although there were a few arrests this summer, they lacked the drama of pepper spray and other assaults. In other words, since they didn't bleed, they didn't lead.)

(photo by Christopher Robbins)

Remember all those horror movies from the 50s and 60s where critters ran amok and attacked out of the blue for no apparent reason, and we come to find out it's because  humans have been so vile and corrupt for so long that nature finally has enough and retaliates?  (Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" comes to mind, along with "Them" and other giant insect films made in the wake of The Bomb).


Well, it just so happens that a swarm of 20,000 angry bees did attack the original Stock Exchange building in 2010.  They must have been pissed off about the TARP bailouts, the trillions of dollars in secret Fed loans to the multinationals and banks, the foreclosures, the foreclosure robosigning scandals, the CEO bonuses, the impunity, the fact that the current owners are convicted tax evaders, fraudsters, alleged mobsters, bribers of government officials  -- and yet, in the fine corrupt Wall Street tradition, the Cipriani clan still manages to maintain possession of its property and get richer by the minute.


Were the bees harbingers of things to come?  Let's hope.  But let us also pray that the "OccupyWallStreet" resistance movement does not meet the same fate as the bees.  The NYPD sucked them up with a giant vacuum cleaner and shipped them out to a farm in Connecticut.  So for those who plan to march on One Police Plaza this afternoon to protest the Inspector Bologna brutality, be careful out there!  Remember -- New York's finest also have weapons designed to shoot planes out of the sky.

The Cipriani Club, for those of you not in the know (and I was among the unknowing myself until earlier today) was constructed during the Gilded Age of  Wall Street's glorious heyday  and comprises an entire city block. (the better to view the hoi polloi).  It now houses restaurants, condos selling in the mid to high seven figures, spas, bars. The restaurant has the dubious distinction of being home to a $32 hamburger. It's gotten many a lousy review in the New York Times, for its terrible food, tiny chairs and conspicuous consumption.  As far as I know, the Cipriani is not among the financial district eateries donating food to the Zuccotti Park campers.  But we can always call and ask!  Here is their number: 212-699-4096. 


And speaking of reviews: Ginia Bellafante, the Times columnist who made fun of the Wall Street protesters and their regalia last weekend, should have gone into Cipriani instead.  According to the Indagare travel site, the uber-wealthy Cipriani crowd " truly verges on Fellini-esque with extreme hairdos, face-lifts and implants on parade."  And all Bellafante could come up with was a topless dancer and some cheap masks?  What has journalism come to? 



The Decline and Fall of the Wall Street Empire (Fellini "Amarcord" Poster)



Barry Loves Him Some Privatization

Inquiring minds want to know how President Obama feels about the ongoing assault on postal union employees by House Republicans who want to "improve" the USPS  by privatizing it. The Postal Service is on the verge of going broke, as explained in the previous post, because Congress has required it to fund medical pension benefits pretty much into perpetuity, making it appear bankrupt when it isn't.  It's in the best tradition of the "Shock Doctrine" school of crisis creation.  Make something up and then cash in on it.
 
Reader Pat Reynolds (a postal employee) has discovered a video shot in 2009, at the height of the health care reform debates, in which Obama talks about the wonders of privatization, and how a public option in health care would not necessarily hurt the for-profit insurance industry.  To prove his point, he compared the post office unfavorably with FedEx and UPS.  "I mean, if you think about it," he says, "UPS and FedEx are doin' just fine.  It's the post office that's always havin' problems."  (Yeah, he was at one of those folksy, g-droppin' town halls).


Bear in mind that during this August 2009 appearance, Obama had already taken the public option off the table even as he continued to pretend it was still viable, and that he was actually for it.  Of course, in retrospect, his praise of those fine folks at WellPoint and Aetna and UnitedHealth was painfully prescient.  Thanks to what Jon Stewart recently called a "2,000-page clusterf**k", the insurance companies are still "doin' just fine" (especially with no Public Option to compete and make them behave). They are raking in record profits after sometimes doubling the premiums of policy holders.  The net effect is that people are so broke after paying the bills they have nothing left over to see an actual doctor or dentist.  The insurance companies are in a win-win situation.  They collect the money, impoverish the patients, and don't have to pay out nearly as much to the health care providers.  It gives a whole new meaning to hoarding.  It makes normal every-day capitalistic greed look beneficent.


So this is what we can expect if the post office is privatized.  FedEx (which treats its employees abysmally and has been known to fire drivers when they have accidents in their crappy trucks so they won't have to pay medical costs) will raise the price of a 44-cent stamp to four or five bucks, fire the union postal employees who haven't already been laid off, hire a bunch of people out of the millions who are desperate for a job, pay them maybe $10 a hour, put them in poorly maintained vehicles and pay no benefits as they sleepily careen down the interstates in 12-hour marathons, and probably lose a large portion of the letters and packages entrusted to their care.  It's the new normal.  To use Obama's two favorite words when he talks about jobs, it's "innovative" and "competitive."

"FedEx is Doin' Just Fine" -- Barack Obama

Oh, and speaking of that Jobs Bill -- you know, the one where Barry whips the crowds into a frenzy with his jeremiad-like  "PASS THIS BILL! PASS THIS BILL!" PASS THIS BILL RIGHT NOW!!!" harangue -- well, not so fast.  Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in no hurry to take it up, because a sudden new urgency has developed about punishing China for its currency manipulation.  That, according to Reid, is more important than JOBS RIGHT NOW.


The Washington Post quoted Reid as saying:  “We understand that there’s conversations going on about the president’s jobs bill — which I support, I’m in agreement with. We’ll get to that. But let’s get some of these things done that we have to get done first.”


You can't even make this stuff up.  No wonder Barry finally chose to go to Hollywood to spin his fantastical yarns.

P.S.: For a cogent analysis of the craven machinations of those who want to destroy the post office, read this New York Daily News editorial by Juan Gonzalez.

Support Your Local Postal Workers

Thousands of U.S. Postal Service employees are in danger of losing their jobs, thanks to a wholly manufactured budget crisis created by Congressional Republicans.  On paper, the Post Office is nearly bankrupt because of a law forcing it to prepay medical retirement benefits so far into the future (75 years) that the presumed beneficiaries haven't even been born yet.  The pension fund is actually flush with cash overpayments, $47 billion in the past four years alone.


Rallies to highlight the proposed closings of individual post offices, distribution centers and resulting layoffs are being held today (4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. local time) in every Congressional district in the country.  A list of events, along with a petition to save the post office, can be found here. (Thanks to reader Pat for calling my attention to today's rallies.  I hope to post pics later).*


The union aims to rescind a federal requirement that the post office pay a whopping $5.5 billion annually into the employee pension fund, as well as fight back against a bill sponsored by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) that would restructure the post office by privatizing it -- and thus destroy the union by doing away with collective bargaining and lowering wages and benefits.  The post office is the largest unionized employer in the country, and the second largest employer, period (after low-wage, anti-union Wal-Mart).


According to the union: 

Events will engage the public through speeches, handouts and gatherings to make our voices heard. They are not protests.

It's anticipated that a wide variety of supporters will participate in "Save America's Postal Service" rallies, including small business owners who use the mail to advertise, businesses that consistently ship products using the Postal Service, and faith leaders and progressive allies who have concerns for the plight of working men and women.

I have always had a soft spot for the post office. As a child, I was a stamp collector, and had "snail mail" pen pals all over the world.  I have never in my life encountered a grumpy post office employee. Mailing a first class letter for only 44 cents is still the greatest bargain the world.


I do have one suggestion on how the postal service can save money, though:  we should do away with Congressional franking privileges (mailing at the taxpayers' expense) and make Issa first on the list.  As the second richest political hack in Congress, he can afford to pay for his own propaganda.  Besides, I thought misuse of the mails by thugs for fraudulent purposes was a crime. 




*Update: Thanks to Deborah Klaus, aka "DreamsAmelia" for sending pics of the rally she attended in Virginia this afternoon. The man in the blue suit is Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA-08) who spoke in support of the beleaguered postal workers at a small gathering.  The young ladies holding their handmade signs are Hannah (left) and Deborah's daughter, Amelia.

Young Activists & Handmade Signs:  Save Our Mailmen! 

Scene Outside a Virginia Post Office Today

Blogger Deborah Klaus on Steps, center

Deborah writes:

Our Rep., Jim Moran, when asked at the protest why he thinks Republicans want to severely cut back the Postal Service, said because right now the post office is too stiff a competition for UPS and FedEx -- the US Postal service's low rates cut into the profits FedX and UPS could be making--both by eliminating their competition and getting more business, and being able to charge higher prices, since there would be no, or less, public sector alternative.

He said the pension requirement change was passed 5 years ago, and he has an amendment to eliminate it--doubtful it can pass this rabid Republican House, and even if it did, I asked him, what would we be looking at in 2012 if we have Republican sweeps of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency?

He smiled and said, "Well, in some cases, paranoia is realistic. I agree, I am very worried about the future of our country." I just adore him, and I grew up going to public school with his son, Jimmy, K through 12. The funny thing is, Jimmy was quite a fire brand, always getting in trouble and being sent to the principal's---but now I admire him for that, and think he has his Dad's admirable trait of not cowering before authority. He settled down to have a normal middle class life like the rest of us.
And it is our complacency that is the symptom of society's illness. We are suffering from a dearth of rabble rousers willing to stand up and speak out for the common good, to reject the purely selfish life.

Well said, Deborah, and thanks again! 

  

NY Times Sends Arts Critic to "Cover" Wall Street Occupation

The Grey Lady has stuck her long nose up in the air and given a mighty sniff, finally deigning to publish a story on the ongoing "OccupyWallStreet" demonstrations in its dead tree edition.  After more than a hundred people were arrested on suspicion of being pedestrians Saturday, the Times take is that the whole mass protest is nothing but an amateur hour performance by airheads.

Readers were outraged at the tone of the article, which carried the subhead: "Demonstrators on Wall Street this week seemed to lack hard knowledge about the system they were fighting."  The reporter, one Ginia Bellafante, chose to make the lead paragraph all about a topless dancer who's been waiting all her life to cavort on Broadway.  Further down, she writes:

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

Reader reactions were universally scathing.  Barbara of Mexico/New Mexico writes: "Considering this is taking place in the heart of the financial district, and that other major media is covering it well & seriously ( Al Jazeera, for one, is doing an excellent job), it is quite sad and very revealing the New York 'paper of record" chooses to treat this movement with such superficiality".

The tone of the piece is easier to understand in light of the fact that Bellafante is not a political reporter or even a metro beat reporter.  She is a Times arts section critic, who in the past has written about HBO miniseries and other TV fare.  She now does something called the Big City column. That's right: The Times couldn't be bothered to send a political or news reporter to cover the populist dissent.  They sent somebody to write it up as an entertainment piece, a whimsical look at the passing parade of weirdness in the Big Apple. 

Bellafante took the most heat recently for her negative review of the HBO series "Game of Thrones" -- spawning a revolt in the blogosphere from fantasy fans, accusing her of (surprise!) literary snobbery.  Here is how she explains her philosophy: "Writing criticism is completely personal and often impressionistic. I write from a perspective that is my own, not one that seeks to represent a big tent of varying opinion."

Assigning Bellafante to cover Manhattan's version of the Arab Spring speaks volumes about the Times editors, and their choice to treat it as some sort of  amusement for the elites. They can spend millions subsidizing safely-distanced reports by Tommy Freedom and Nicky Kristof on the Egyptian revolution, and  government crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain --  but I guess they couldn't come up with cab fare for them to ride the few blocks from Times Square to Zuccotti Park to watch our own indignados getting pepper-sprayed.  For real coverage, check out the links in my previous posts, or just troll the Internets. Here, for example, is some real reporting from New York 1, the local 24 hour news channel. The truth is out there, in plain sight and out of the control of the editorial boards of the American corporate media.



Just Another Day of Street Theater or Maybe a Lost Episode of "Law & Order"

 

The Dope on the Primary Challenge

The people have spoken. The winner and undisputed champion on the White House's new citizen petition webpage is the legalization of marijuana.  And not only are the activist stoners demanding their weed, they're insisting on being told the rationale for the O Administration's disdain for it, and them.  In other words, give us the science, dudes!  Where do you get off throwing people in jail for this?   We don't buy into your DEA propaganda!

In order for any petition to merit a glance from a White House minion, it must have garnered at least 5,000 signatures in 30 days. The plea for pot got 20,000 signatures in less than two. So, whoever said pot users are nothing but apolitical, apathetic slackers who retreat into their own hazy worlds has smoke coming out of an orifice where the sun don't shine.

Anyway. Speaking of signatures --  a consortium of people who may or may not have also signed the pot petition are looking for not one -- but six primary challengers to President Obama!  Nothing like covering more than all the bases just to be on the safe side. The effort is being led by Dr. Cornel "Obama is Wall Street's Black Mascot" West and Ralph Nader, who is not running, just asking.

The slate of dream candidates, who would theoretically run against Obama as a bloc, would represent areas where the president has broken a campaign promise, or veered to the corporate, right-wing dark side.  (why only six?)  They would include labor leaders, academicians, members of the NGO community, experts in poverty, consumer protection, human rights and health care. (Since Obama also broke his campaign promise to stop the useless War on Drugs, I hope they are including the person who started the Legalize Pot petition too).

 "We need to put strong democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people” said West. “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”

The letter, according to the website Common Dreams, "points to numerous decisions that have drawn criticism from Obama’s own Democratic Party, including his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while simultaneously engaging in a unilateral war in Libya, his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts, and his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the recent debt ceiling negotiations."

The letter and its signatories can be found here. The identities of the actual recipients are being withheld to protect their privacy.  I wonder if they include anybody from the Sunlight Foundation or other groups advocating for transparency? (another Obama Fail).  I guess we'll never know.

But back to the White House "We the People" petition drive.  I just checked, and the pot petition is now up to 26,819! (and counting).  Here are some other hot button issues, along with recent vote counts, important to the peeps:

* Ban non-therapeutic routine infant circumcision (165).

* Immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communication with extraterrestrial beings (972).

* Support a ban on horse slaughter (292).

* Try Casey Anthony in federal court for lying to FBI investigators (1,719).

* Repeal the Patriot Act (4,042).

* Stop the Patriot Act (4.334).

* Ban Redundant Petitions (1). 

* Provide medical marijuana to angry space aliens posing as Republicans. (0). 






Yellow Dogs

By Jay -- Ottawa

“Yellow Dog Democrat” defined: an unflinching party loyalist who votes for the Democratic ticket even when the party elevates as its candidate a scoundrel, a dead man or, for that matter, a mangy four-legged cur.  The term goes back to the nineteenth century.  The term is applicable today in the twenty-first century.  I speak of Democrats who will not budge, who will not think out of the box, no matter what.

The term is key to help me understand why many an otherwise sensible commenter, in this blog and elsewhere, continues to stick with Obama, despite his consistent betrayal of the best principles that stand for – or used to stand for -- the Democratic Party.  Yellow Dog Democrats are rarely enthusiastic about Obama.  How could they be in light of his abject failures and acknowledged willingness to turn his back on truth itself?   And yet they back him. 

Humanist ideals like compassion, or philosophical principles like the lesser of two evils argument, are usually advanced in defense of the sure thing Yellow Dog vote for Obama in 2012; but I’m not convinced about their being motivated by high principle.  Fear of Republican candidates and justices is often mentioned.  I think it’s just life-long habit, inertia, timidity and, most importantly, a failure to see the equal sign between the labels “Democrat” and “Republican.”  Note how the Yellow Dog Democrats regularly criticize just about everything and everybody affiliated with the Republican Party.  They have sidebars in their blogs mocking Republican gaffes and misdeeds.  They are trying to erase that equal sign.  Republicans bad, Democrats not so bad.  See the difference?  Is the Democratic Party of Obama, Pelosi and Reid much better?  Couldn’t right wingers post entertaining sidebars about Democratic hypocrisy?  Well, maybe the Democrats are a wee bit better.  But statistically significant, as they say?  I don’t think so.  At times the Democratic leadership under Obama has been out in front of the Republicans in pleasing the elites.  If Republicans gave away honorary degrees, Obama would gotten one for each of the past three years he's been in office. 

Since Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has been in the ring against the Republican Party like a boxer who intends to throw the fight.  Republicans and Democrats take big money from the same corporate and financial giants.  Neither side touches the Pentagon’s bloated budgets for endless, pointless wars.  The Patriot Act, tax breaks for the rich: extended.  The aggressive Republicans and the spineless Democrats have been moving shoulder to shoulder down the same road to the same goal: national collapse.  If principle had motivated Obama and the Democrats since January 2009, the nation and the world would be in much better shape today.  The Democrats got a mandate in 2009, which they didn’t want.  They shadow boxed with the other party.  The Republican party should be on the ropes today.  Instead, the world is on the ropes.  The elites at ringside smile and puff their cigars. 

Yellow Dog Democrats write, but they don’t fight.  Yellow Dog Democrats take the crumbs and lick the hands of those who abuse them.  Where were the Yellow Dog Democrats in 2000 when the election was stolen, votes not counted, the losing candidate appointed to office by five Justices with a decision that didn’t parse?  Yellow Dog Democrats hardly even barked.  They should have been in the streets.  Where are the Yellow Dog Democrats today when the young, the old and the Middle Class are being thrown under the bus?  They bark, but they don’t bite.

Yellow Dog Democrats brag about the accomplishments of FDR and the New Deal.  But the Democratic Party of  FDR is extinct.  It is a light extinguished, fading into myth.  In fact, the Democratic Party of today, lead by Trojan Horse Obama, works diligently to overturn the New Deal, as well as to gut the Great Society programs of President Johnson. 

All three branches of government are bought.  Both major parties are bought.  These once great institutions and once great parties dance to the tune of the elites.  Both parties ignore the will of the people; just ask the pollsters.  And still, Yellow Dog Democrats, the party loyalists no matter what, swear allegiance to the likely party ticket of November 2012.  Shifting support to primary challenges or Third Parties, like the New Progressive Alliance, is labeled naïve, impractical, risky.  The Yellow Dog Democrats are right: Obama will become the Default President in 2012.  The best of the Empire will disappear; the worst of the Empire will endure -- and continue to be funded.

America is trapped in a two-party system subverting democracy.  And Yellow Dog Democrats are helping to seal the trap.

(Ed. note: For more fun and colorful facts about Yellow Dogs, Yellow Dawgs, Rabid Yellow Dawgs, Blue Dogs, check out this site: http://www.yellowdogdemocrat.com/variations.htm )