January 21, 2010

I don't know who is reading this, but surely I don't have to draw your attention to the massive creep of corporate power over our country during our lifetimes. The major corporations hardly needed unfettered control over our election system. They already control the media, the voting machines that determine the elections, which means they can create a narrative in the media, and then fulfill it in the invisible realms of the electronic voting system of Diebold, ES&S and other right wing companies.

It's hard to imagine them being under any spending limits in campaigns as things have stood until now. They still find ways to drop billions upon billions into the pockets of politicians who please them. And they have to have millions to give to the corporate media for ads if they want anyone in America to know their names. So the big corporations control that sphere too, and these are all public spheres that the corporations have taken over, have essentially stolen from the public.

Reagan's administration stripped the media of their obligation to provide news as a public service, which they used to have to do in return for being given control over the public airways. So candidates have to have millions of dollars to be in the game. The voice of the people, the will of the so-called common man has been lost in the shuffle of a legal system built by slick corporate lawyers who have piece-by-piece assembled the perfect corporate dictatorship. Right under our noses.

The unleashing of corporate election spending is the final piece. I can hardly imagine any power that is not now in the hands of the corporate sector. With NAFTA and other so-called Free Trade agreements, the corporations can overrule the soveriegnty of the countries. Those agreements take away the power of governments to protect themselves against multinational corporations.

With the USA Patriot Act, the government, the unitary executive, as in a corporation has nearly unlimited power. The president can now strip citizens of all their Constitutional rights, according to this travesty of a law. This is what our politicians have done to us in this first decade of the Corporate Century. They have sold us out to the Corporate State. We have been privatized.

Fortunately there are some very smart, responsible people who have been preparing for this day when the Supreme Court would roll back the 1907 law that prevented corporations from dumping money from their coffers into elections. Corporations had not long been considered persons at that time. It was a new device of lawyers arguing case law for corporations. The idea was absurd from the moment it was uttered, but has managed to hold sway in our legal system and lead to some catastrophic results, with corporations now co-opting human rights and assigning humans to nonpersonhood. That is literally what the law now allows the president to do.

There is a great deal more to be said and explained about this issue, and it's very important for Americans to rise up against this. Fortunately, unlike many other judicial travesties of the last decade, this one has attracted immediate attention and there are already forces in Congress working on doing something. There really is a chance of a movement making a difference here. And there is no bigger issue. This is the human's last stand. If we don't confront corporate power now, democracy, human rights, justice, will be things of the past.

Check these out: PUblic Citizen

Video: "Don't let corporations steal our elections".

Sign Public Citizen's petition at action.citizen.org

More coming.

December 22, 2009

January 16, 2009

It's hard to even guess at Obama's motivations, what he really wants, whether or not he misrepresented himself, or if he would sincerely like the changes he alluded to but just can't deliver them. But obviously, it becomes increasingly irrelevant who or what he is. We're still essentially stuck in the same mire. The same people are in charge. We're still carrying on disastrous war policies, torture, environmental destruction, massive extortion via government defense contracts, expanding corporate welfare and diminishing support for the people. The health insurance companies seem to have largely defeated any meaningful reform of the healthcare industries. We are now engaged in even more war than before, not less, expanding America's Middle Eastern rampage into Pakistan and Yemen.

So it appears that the hidden esatablishment has merely shifted to a new front man while it has consolidated its grip on power even more. Where to now? What next? Does the human race still have time to head off environmental disaster and survive another century? Prospects do not look good. Human beings as a mass seem unable to change behavior no matter how disastrous. We just plow ahead blindly like a herd of cattle. So might as well enjoy the ride, such as it is.

Meanwhile, here are some interesting stories I've seen lately.

Leading the Blind -- Paul Krugmanreports that The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which began last Wednesday, has already shown a remarkable depth of ignorance in the banking industry people who have been interviewed. Looking to them for ideas on how to get out of the current mess is obviously a fool's errand. They don't know what to do even to the extent that they care about anything but further enriching their bank accounts. Note I do not say that their main concern is their own welfare, because they are so conditioned to seek only expansion of profits they do not realize when that is no longer even in their own best interests.

Don't Do It Barack -- Michael Moore's thoughts on Obama's escalation in Afghanistan, published the night before Obama's speech. Michael Moore

November 5, 2009

Bloomberg Buys New York -- It's amazing that Bloomberg, the incumbent billionaire who spent about $100 million to get elected, many times more than his unknown, unspectacular opponent, barely squeaked by with a victory. It's reassuring that it was not possible for that overkill spending to get him more of a victory than that. Bloomberg has been a breath of fresh air after the ersatz storm trooper Giuliani. But changing the law to give him a third term is creepy. Giuliani wanted to do it and was stopped. And there will be other Giulianis in the future who could be dangerous if allowed to take a third term. It's also disturbing that someone can be allowed to outspend a political rival by so much. Bloomberg spent more than any political candidate in history (LA Times), perhaps 16 times what his opponent spent (Huffington Post). He had the power of the incumbency, brand recognition, control over the government, and he still only chalked up a 5 percent margin. Given that he spent tens of millions more than his opponent and only won 557,059 votes to his opponent's 478,521 (Observer), is it possible to say that he did not buy the election, that his outspending his rival by many times was not what gave him that small edge?

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Book Credits:

In the 21st Century, being naive to the workings of corporate media can get you killed.

Chomsky For Beginners written by David Cogswell, illustrated by Paul Gordon, published by For Beginners LLC, is a documentary comicbook about Noam Chomsky the man, the linguist and the political voice, but more than anything, it is a guide to media propaganda, how the corporate-owned mass media are designed not to inform you but to manipulate you for the benefit of the owners.

Order Chomsky For Beginners from Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com

Interviews with Noam Chomsky

Interview with Noam Chomsky 1997

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See also Existentialism For Beginners.

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Post Script, Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President by J.H. Hatfield, second paperback edition, published by Soft Skull Press, 2001

For more on the late J.H. Hatfield, who wrote the controversial Bush biography Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President, see below

The French language version: La Mort de Jim Hatfield is included in the French translation of Hatfield's Fortunate Son: The Making of an American President, published 2003 in Geneva by EditionsTimeli.

More Book Credits:

Introduction to America's Autopsy Report, John Kaminski

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SEARCH HEADBLAST ARCHIVE

Search www.davidcogswell.com

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9/11 Links

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January 25, 2009

Parsing the free speech implications of the campaign financing laws is very delicate, and freedom of speech is very fundamental to the American system. But on the other hand corporations are artificial entities created by the laws of the states and the federal government, and I think this is the part we should focus on. Corporate law has largely evolved through case law being interpreted by slick corporate lawyers, and this needs to be re-examined radically and re-written through the legislative process.

I think the idea that corporations are legally persons should be thrown out the window. We need to re-define what corporations are. We need to go back to what they were historically, where they began. Legally it doesn't seem that difficult. But in terms of inertia, of course it's a massive undertaking. However, ironically, the court decision may have intensified the public antipathy toward this corporate state as it now exists -- and it sucks by the way if you haven't noticed. To see health insurance companies making the fortunes they are making by denying care is literally sickening.

Seeing the contrast with other countries' medical systems as in Michael Moore's Sicko shows what utter insanity we have learned to live with in this country. It is possible for things to change. We do have the power to regulate corporations and we now have to assert it. When Exxon, the richest company in history and the single largest impediment to progress in warding off climate disaster has just been given carte blanche to use its massive capital to manipulate elections, we are dealing with major survival issues. Exxon's profits versus survival of life on earth. Hmmm, which side do I come down on?

But, in fact, as Greenwald points out, the corporations already control our electoral system almost entirely. Corporations have managed to work around whatever limits have been placed on them in financing elections, so this may not be such a radical change in practice as it is on paper. Congressman Barney Frank was recently discussing how to regulate corporations and some legislation is now being formulated. We should be making a big stink about it until something is done.

Friday, January 1, 2010

I could rattle off many of the things that are still going on that the Obama is now supporting that were first put into place by the Bush administration and are as wrong now as they were outrageous then. But I won't. I'll just proceed with a note of recognition of the triumph of the status quo. I am still very grateful that the Bush regime and its heirs were pushed out of power by a powerful popular movement that left little doubt as to its distaste for the regime. It's true that the US has not changed owner/operators. But it is a different world than under the Bush mob. When the Bush crime family reigned, it was to me a state of emergency. It was an invasion, a takeover. It goes back to the way they took power by subverting the electoral system in a broad campaign of illegal activities that they got away with. They were in fact rewarded by being given the keys to the national vehicle. It was not a legitimate election. They didn't win and should not have been put into power.

Once they got in, they grabbed the wheel and lurched the American Adventure into the ditch of lowlife criminal warfare and looting. They threw the country into a panic over 9/11 and gutted human rights, human welfare, Having taken over in an illegal seizure of power, it may yet have been tolerable if they'd ruled moderately. In any case, that is old ground now. I was just recalling the state of emergency under Bush.

Most of the problems of last year are still with us now, but at least we have a president who was the actual victor of an election that was as legitimate as our system can now produce. The system is so badly corrupted that the country is still in a state of emergency and in many ways moreso than last year. But on that one level, the power structure of the executive branch, one glaring breach has been repaired. And for that I am grateful.

The practical difference between Obama and Bush is not in their differences as people or as politicians, but more in how they came to power and the resulting situations each encountered. Though most of Obama's policies are so far identical to Bush's, the difference is, once again, in the people, the body politic. Obama does represent the choice of the people, within the narrow range of big-money candidates that are presented to the public. Bush was not elected, never recognized any accountability to the people. He was correct in recognizing that his rise to power had little to do with the will of the people and only a small minority ever cast a vote for him.

Obama, on the other hand, does owe his victory to the people. He knows it and we know it. Obama may not carry out the will of the people, may not even have any intention of it, but we can take pride in having put him there. The Bush-Rove election rigging machinery, to the extent that it was still intact after Bush was done with it, was working against Obama, not for him. So at least there is a modicum of legitimacy in his being in office, as much as is currently possible in our money-corrupted electoral system.

Obama's actual political effects have been mild to the extent that his administration's policies differ at all from its predecessor's. But at least he represents the chosen agent of the people and we can hold our heads high that we restored electoral control to the people. The activists who railed against the voting irregularities were not able to turn back the clock and get convictions or reverse phony election results. But the attention to the problem created an atmosphere of vigilance, which did in part stymie the election rigging machinery.

So there is all that to be grateful for -- not grateful to the politicians who pose as our benefactors, but grateful to our fellow citizens who took their stands and made differences, all of which combined into a substantial difference. There have been some minor reforms, nothing approaching what the will of the people demands, but it's a better environment than when Cheney was running the country in flagrant defiance of any legal limitations or obligation to even consider the will of the people.

There is a different mood in the country, in the world. The Bush era is over. The awful decade is done. The damage they did will be with us a long long time. But they are done, at least for the moment. What is left of the hard right is marginalizing itself more and more. Once again, I am not expressing gratitude to the politicians, but to the people of the world, who are moving on and leaving that retrogressive mob behind. And I'm not saying the actual power structure of the country has changed, just what is appearing on the political stage. And it does represent the movement of the population, the culture.

Meanwhile, besides leaving us with a collapsed economic system and a decimation of human rights laws and customs, they left us with the institutionalization of the Global War on Terror, which hasn't changed noticeably since Obama took office. Through all the terror of the Bush years, the American people were conditioned to accept war as an ongoing, normal condition. The fact that the economic system of the country is being continually sapped and weakened by wars is rarely alluded too, as if the economic collapse of the country and the wars are in separate worlds. Now you turn on the news and it's today's report on the never-ending war against Oceania. All the commentators are discussing everything within the framework of military strategy. They compete in terms of who can reel off more detail and military expertise than the other. There is no voice to question whether we should be fighting a war in the first place. It's just about the details of operations. Within that framework, war is just the daily business, a dignified, respectable business just as any other, like manufacturing bottles of Coke or women's underwear.

But we should keep in mind what war really is. War is the suspension of all of civilization's most ancient laws against murder, rape and plunder. War is anything goes. It is the canonization of bestiality. The bottom-line fall-back justification of the clean-cut military spokesman is "This is war." In war you have collateral damage. It's not always pretty, but this is war, they say. But why is it war? Because you say it is. Because President Bush declared it, invoked it. Not with any justification, but once it is defined as war, then no one is any longer accountable for the worst crimes against humanity.

And all the while as we pour billions into bombing, killing, destruction and occupation, the environmental crisis is heightening with such rapidly gathering force that it is likely to obscure every other issue within a short span of time. It's getting harder and harder for serious scientists to sketch out any imaginable scenario for the survival of humankind, certainly on anything approaching the scale on which it now exists.

So flying by the seat of our pants, we hurl into 2010, a new baby year full of hope and promise, innocence and naivete. Let us set our sights on the stars and if we're going to go down, let's do it with style.

Friday, November 13, 2009