Corporatism

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore—James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here”

Thoughts along the armadillo highway . . .

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s obvious escape from the sinking fortunes of the Republican Party and his possible presidential run as an independent candidate created quite a splash in the media, but not one story challenge the basic premise of whether it is good for democracy that a multi-billionaire uses his own money to essentially buy political power. There was much celebratory speculation about how much Bloomberg might personally spend in a presidential bid—$1 billion was mentioned in one article—but no debate about whether it is good for the country that a person can purchase or try to purchase the American presidency. For the record, money has polluted the American political process and threatens the country’s democratic structures. Bloomberg symbolizes how even the American presidency is for sale these days.

Has anyone else noticed the editorial videos starring The Daily Oklahoman’s Ed Kelley begin with an advertisement urging people to go to Colorado. It makes perfect business sense. After watching the somber Kelley drone on about how no one deserves free parking in Bricktown or whatever, one does feel the pull of different climes.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com is writing the sharpest political and media commentary in the nation right now. Greenwald is meticulous and ruthless with facts, sources, and logic. His new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs.Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, is out and making its way up the bestseller lists. It can be ordered here.

So who will step up to run against U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-ExxonMobilChevronTexaco) in the 2008 election? Inhofe is currently raising money for his campaign and stinking up Washington with his certifiable tirades that appeal to a narrowing base of ultra-conservative voters. It appears at this point he has the full support of the established Oklahoma power structure, from the right-wing The Daily Oklahoman to Chesapeake Energy. But that could change. Inhofe could become a major Republican liability in the months to come. Democrats need to get a viable candidate as soon as possible.

Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, actually wrote this paragraph: “With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.” Note the “it is often best to keep the lights off.” As Glenn Greenwald points out, this one line perfectly summarizes the corporate media these days. Reporters and editors are busy turning off lights so Republican corruption and fascism can flourish. Cohen, who once supported the “case” for the Iraq war, is another example of a dreadfully wrong beltway pundit. Why is he still writing for this influential paper when others who were right about the war and who would always argue for more, not less, light on public officials are marginalized and dismissed?

Greensunshine.org, a site under construction, will help marginalized voices get online. Rooted in the personal experience of its creators, who speak out in a hostile environment and face harassment and threats on a regular basis, the site will serve as a bridge between the content side of activist Web sites and open source code technologies and applications. Can you help? Do you have ideas? Check out the site and contact us with your thoughts.

The basic democratic structures of the United States of America are in jeopardy, and the country teeters on the precipice of fascism. We are a country that now systematically tortures prisoners in a vague so-called “war on terrorism” and both major political parties support it. Only right-wing political speech is given prominent play in the corporate media these days, though the mainstream media still pretends it offers balanced views. We incarcerate more people than any other nation in the country. Some of our prisoners languish for years in dilapidated prisons for simple marijuana possession charges. They are more often than not the victims of jail rape and torture. Despite recent elections that demonstrated the citizens’ desire to stop the Iraq occupation, the president has escalated the country’s involvement in an act of world defiance that has changed the nature of the U.S. presidency forever. The opposition party, elected to a majority based on anti-occupation sentiment, refuses to stand up to President George Bush and the growing corporate-military complex. American elections have been corrupted by right-wing tactics to lower voting by minorities. Only fools trust the official results in some election races throughout the country. The president himself was initially elected in a corrupt election, the results of which showed his opponent had won. Bush has ordered the wiretapping of millions of innocent American and world citizens. Our justice system—the one that incarcerates the most people in the world—is operated by complete political expediency.

("Pa-rum-pa-pum-dumb!" Read DocHoc's commentary this week in the Oklahoma Gazette on the tenth-year anniversary of an Oklahoma County judge's absurd decision to ban the Academy Award-winning film, The Tin Drum.)

Oklahoma is tied with Mississippi for last place in the nation when it comes to overall health system performance, according to a new report.

The Commonwealth Fund, which describes itself as a private, nonpartisan devoted to health and social issues, issued its first-ever report on the nation’s overall health care performance. It ranked each state. Hawaii was first. Oklahoma and Mississippi tied for last place.

Oklahoma “won” last place for its high numbers of uninsured residents, its lack of access to health care, and its large number of citizens who lead unhealthy lifestyles.

The report shows Oklahoma is above the national average in infant mortality and breast cancer deaths.

The report demythologizes the common state slogan that “Oklahoma is a great place to raise a family.” Yeah, right, maybe if you think going without health insurance and lacking access to quality health care are family values. In Oklahoma, even upper middle class citizens have to fight for average-at-best health care, and even then it is sometimes simply not available.

The problem here is the state’s major structural problem in terms of its leadership over the last twenty-five years or so. A handful of corporate executives, The Hillbilly Aristocracy, dictate the growth and direction of the state. As the corportization of the state increases each year, more and more people are left without financial stability or access to decent health care.

The corporate bigwigs then put on blinders to human suffering. Ed Kelley, the somber, hectoring editor of The Daily Oklahoman, for example, recently editorialized the report could harm the state’s economic development because corporations might not want to locate to such an unhealthy place. Kelley did not mention a word about how the report actually describes human suffering on a catastrophic level in our state. He describes the state’s residents as the “populace,” yet these are real people in flesh and blood, our neighbors, our family members.

Too many babies are dying, people cannot afford to purchase medications that might extend their lives, women die more frequently here of breast cancer than elsewhere, and the meth-labs cooks are getting rich on all the ensuing despair, but Kelley is concerned about what this all means for companies such as Chesapeake Energy or Sonic. This concern for The Corporation—and it is not just Kelley, of course—over the individual is precisely the structural problem the state faces in trying to improve its overall health care ranking.

Can we not, at least on this issue, focus on what is right and healthy for people rather than corporate profits and economic development? At the very least, we can urge people to move from here to get better health care for their children. It would be the most humane thing to do.

Some random thoughts along the armadillo highway . . .

Americans spend millions of dollars each year as part of their health insurance costs to pay medical management companies to deny them health care. These companies reap profits by denying medical help to some of the most critically ill people in the culture, and Americans pay them exorbitantly to do so.

All these law-and-order Republicans are falling all over themselves urging Imperial President George Bush to pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Libby, a former aide to Imperial Vice President Dick Cheney, was recently sentenced to 30 months in jail for obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to the FBI. These forgive-the-criminal Republicans are the same people who promote an ideology of stiff prison sentences for the most minor criminal offenses, such as simple marijuana possession.

Americans now live under a government that sanctions the systematic torture of its prisoners, widespread wiretapping of its citizens, and a corrupt, politicized justice system. But many still believe somehow the country remains a democracy? Call it neofascism or American imperialism or the military-corporate-industrial complex, call it what you like, but what we have here can, in all candor, no longer be termed democracy.

When you privatize public institutions, you take away citizens’ interest in public service. The allegiance is now to the company’s profits, not the government nor even the individual. Eventually, government privatization leads to a collapse of government and any sense of civic loyalty.

The GOP has failed once again to produce any type of meaningful immigration reform on the federal level. Yet its rank-and-file members consider the issue one of the most pressing dilemmas in America today. Republicans today deconstruct. For example, a typical law-and-order Republican will be against amnesty for illegal immigrants but a strong supporter of Imperial President Bush or GOP presidential candidates John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, all who favor amnesty to allow companies to exploit workers and keep wages low for everyone. This type of accepted irrationality—the unspoken suspension of logic, clarity, and consistency—is the most dangerous ideology facing the world today.

Gasoline prices skyrocket. Energy companies report record profits. Somehow, though, the corporate media fails to tie the two together in any meaningful way. The media deflects the issue, making the issue about available fuel supplies and future investments in refineries, not about real people losing financial stability as ultra-rich oil barons fleece our families.

If a pro-choice, amnesty-granting Republican like Rudy Giuliani is nominated as the GOP candidate for president in 2008, does it mean the party no longer exists in a philosophical sense? We can only hope the party of Bush dies of its own contradictions and hubris.

If anyone wonders why people are so depressed these days over the country’s direction, just turn on the cable television news programs and watch the latest right-wing military general tell us the violence will continue in Iraq for years and years to come. In addition, relatively few people in our culture are even allowed to speak out against the Iraq occupation without suffering major repercussions in their lives, much less given time on a major cable news show. Those people who can and do speak out are marginalized by corporate media outlets, which support the continuing Iraq occupation either implicitly or explicitly. Those who speak out against the Bush regime and its failed policies are right, but those who support it are rewarded in government and the corporate world. Until this dynamic changes, the country will not be able to restore its democratic structures.

Graduating seniors this year spent their entire high school years under a violent, pro-war, pro-torture tyrannical despot and regime. This graduating class came of age during a time when logic and reason were replaced with crass manipulation of citizens to secure power and wealth for a relatively small group of American neofascists. The main tool of this manipulation was simplistic appeals to nationalism. What has been the impact on this group of students? Will they have the reasoning and critically-thinking skills to advance knowledge? How can students even think rationally when most of the government leaders they have ever known are calculated liars?