Rights? You don't have any. Corporations do.

The United Citizens Supreme Court ruling not only elevated corporations to personhood and gave them full rights, it set in motion a process whereby individuals are deprived of those rights.  Government is superseded by corporations as the determiner of rights and responsibilities.

Slate tells the story: 

Disclosure of contributors to political campaigns, and campaign advertisements, used to be an unobjectionable proposition. Now, resisting it is a matter of highest principle. Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs for the United States Chamber of Commerce, told Jake Tapper, "We're under no obligation, as any organization or association in the United States is, to divulge who its members are, who its contributors are." Why? Explained Josten: "We're not going to subject our contributors to harassment, to intimidation, and to threats and to invasions of privacy at their houses and at their places of business, which is what has happened every time there's been disclosure here."

Also this:  Return of the secret donors

A Good Day To Die

An important new documentary on Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement is previewed in this trailer:

A majority of Americans do not like anonymous campaign donations

State candidates and political organizations must reveal the sources of their money in campaign finance reports.  On the national level, there are many ways to hide the identity of donors.  Big PACs and lobby organizations have the ability to launder money as it comes in from sources that voters have cause to fear.  People have the right to know who is influencing the political process and to what degree.  The fact that the National Chamber of Commerce does not have to reveal who provides funds through membership dues which go into a fund from which campaign donations are dispersed is a danger signal to those who want full disclosure on campaign sponsors.

That wariness is expressed by a majority of Americans.

A Bloomberg national poll indicates that 47 percent of Americans say they would be less likely to support a particular candidate if his or her campaign was aided by advertising paid for by anonymous business groups, with nine percent saying they would be more likely to back such a candidate and 41 percent saying that it would not matter.

The United States of Dysfunction

The people living on the Gulf of Mexico feel abandoned.  When BP managed to put the cap on that gushing oil well, it also seemed to put the lid on all the implications of that disaster.  It was one of the most serious environmental disasters in world history, but, like much that holds the American attention for a time, it has blown through the American mind like a hurricane and lingers only as a dim memory, not a threatening and destructive presence that still deeply affects life.

Only the despised tree-huggers talk about the despoiling of the Gulf at this point.  And I admit to being an unabashed tree-hugger.  Until recently, I was the primary care-giver to tens of thousands of pine trees in Wisconsin, from infancy to towering 40-foot adults.  It was a project that reclaimed some farmed-out land (another environmental disaster) and brought it back to viability.  Part of that viability was in supporting wildlife and letting natural forces correct the results of human stupidity.  But that project did not involve millions of barrels of life-destroying oil.  And the human stupidity did not extend to using the disaster for partisan politics.

The changes  in the Gulf, however, have been taking place long before Deepwater Horizon blew its top and went on its killing spree--eleven men and untold populations of wildlife.  Those changes in the Gulf have been evident in South Dakota for some time.  I do not know when the last time was that you could buy  red fish at the seafood counter in the local market.  Occasionally, a truck parks in the lot at Kmart and you can get Gulf shrimp, and you can get wild-caught salmon from Norway or Alaska at the seafood counter for a $10 a pound premium, but the staples now are pond-raised shrimp from India, pond-raised tilapia from Malaysia, and some tuna steaks from Japan. The Gulf long ago ended as a presence in South Dakota.

Conserving the life-sustaining resources and the natural systems that have evolved on earth are essential to a tolerable life for humans.  Plundering and destroying the environment is a form of mass suicide.  A healthy environment is not only essential for maintaining physical life, it shapes the mental and spiritual culture of those who occupy it. Keeping humanity healthy, physically and mentally,  is the point of conservation.  There is a difference between conservationists and environmentalists, but they agree on much more than they differ.  I include myself among the former.  My tree-hugging was labor intensive.  The forest I owned and worked  involved the constant maintaining of fire lanes, cutting and managing slash (the dead branches that accumulate as the trees devote their energies to new growth), the thinning of the forest to produce big, healthy trees instead of a lot of scraggly ones, fertilizing,  controlling insects and disease, and planting species in the forest for a viable succession, as the forest followed its natural urge to support hardwood growth. This intense forestry is called silviculture.  It conserves forests with human objectives included in its practice.

The biggest threat to healthy forests are ignorant and predatory humans.  That ranges from the idiot who throws a lighted cigarette butt out of a car  window, to a corporate enterprise that is polluting the air and water,  to a farmer who applies herbicides that can drift into the trees and insecticides that are producing mutations of insects that cannot be controlled. A silviculturist is alert to the health of all the flora and fauna that are part of the forest.  When plants and animals show signs of distress, that indicates that some problem is in the environment that could jeopardize the health of the entire forest.  Humans do not like to be told they are responsible for bad things that happen on earth.  They deny their responsibility and culpability.  Many reject the idea that their own survival is dependent upon a healthy planet, and that what they do affects the health of the planet.  That denial is the basis for a major political strain in our population.

 One of the reasons that the people in the Gulf feel abandoned is because they are.  The deniers would prefer to think that the Gulf oil spew was just another environmental incident, like Katrina, that blew over and can be forgotten.  Oil drilling in the Gulf is a major part of the economy.  The deniers do not want to contemplate that it is dangerous.  They get angry over the curtailment and regulation of  drilling because it affects so many jobs.  But the oil field workers are not the ones who have been abandoned.  The fishermen are.  While they make a huge contribution to the economy, they aren't as big and powerful as the oil interests.  They do not have the corporate money and, therefore, the political clout that the oil interests do. In the deniers' scheme of things, the fishing industry is best ignored and forgotten.  It gets in the way of human enterprise.

Another disaster that signals problems with how some humans treat the plant is the red sludge flood in Hungary.  It killed people and forced the evacuation of communities because it leaves them too toxic for humans to occupy.  The sludge is created by the process that extracts aluminum from its ore.  The deniers see it as a threat to the aluminum industry, although the North American aluminum industry does not use that kind of process and is regulated (yes, regulated) to prevent such a disaster.  Nevertheless, for the good of our country, it is better to deny and ignore the suggestion that the production of an essential metal might pose threats to natural and human life.

Denial is a big force in American politics.  You have something in your life you do not like to think about, you simply deny it.  As in denying that President Obama is born in America.  If denial is not enough, you call him the names of things that other deniers hate, as in Muslims, socialists, etc.  Denying environmental threats is treated the same way.  If a conservationist or environmentalist brings up a problem in our environment, dismiss it by calling those who bring it up tree-huggers, or some other pejorative that titillates the hate glands of the deniers.  

The Denial Party is a big force in American politics right now.  The politicians want to garner the denial vote.  So they fawn, and grovel, and pander. The media wants the denial audience.  So it fawns and grovels and panders.  As a result, the country is in a state of paralytic dysfunction.  It can't do anything.  All it can do is stand around and bicker, call names, and accuse.   

Thomas Friedman in The New York Times defines the problem:

politicians who only know how to read polls, never change them; media outlets serving political parties; special interests buying senators; mindless partisanship; an epidemic of low expectations for our government. And us — we elected them all, and we tolerate them.

You think the Gulf oil spew or the red sludge might portend some problems for humanity?  Forget it. Get over it.  Deny it.

The State of Dysfunction is a happy state.  Learn to live with it.  And die with it.  

Happy Denial Day

Are foreign corporations pouring illegal money into U.S. election campaigns?

There is no way to find out.

Here is Factcheck.org's examination of the matter: 



Q: Is illegal foreign money being filtered through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund ads attacking Democrats?
A: The chamber says dues money paid by overseas companies "is not used for political ads," but won’t discuss how it segregates those funds. Democratic and liberal groups want an investigation of "likely" or "possible" legal violations.
Read the full question and answer

The dumb guy prevails

David Letterman made an acute political observation to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair Tuesday night.  He said that if you had four people in a room, and three were smart guys and one was a dumb guy,  the dumb guy would prevail.

He was referring to what passes for political discussion today and the emergence of candidates who are intellectually challenged or downright loopy.  People are in high profile political contests today who in the past would have been dismissed as totally incompetent, and who we would probably never have heard of in more thoughtful times.  But the dumb guy prevails.

Most political discourse today is utterly stupid.  And a goodly number of people are giving up on the political system the dumb ones are influencing.  One of the reasons the dumb guy is prevailing is digital communication.  Political discourse has descended to the level of middle school squabbling.  Some celebrate the advent of the Internet and web blogs for giving ordinary people a voice.  The dumb guy has found a way to amplify his voice and to find networks of  other dumb guys. Rather than enhance communication, digital electronics has reduced it to the rituals of dominance and submission of the  lower order animals.  Text and twitter messages, aside from observing no standards of literacy, are largely grunts and howls.  And much of the blogosphere is taken up with middle school taunts, insult, abuse, the utterances of dumb guys too lazy or inherently incapable of civil discourse. 

This is not to say that informing and intelligent information is not available on the Internet.  Yesterday the Internet aggregator contained two items that reflect the state of politics and discourse.   Bob Mercer notes that the Democratic Party in South Dakota is lagging behind in voter registration. Tim Gebhart reviews a book that may explain some of the  reasons why the Democratic principles do not generate more enthusiasm among voters. My own observations involving voter interest are informed by Tim Gebhart's summary of the book The Anti-American Manifesto by Ted Rall.

As for the decline in interest among those would seem to be attracted to Democratic programs, I have noted a number of times on this web log how many people I know have left South Dakota, mentally if not physically.  I also commented about the problems with finding someone to run against John  Thune.  Candidates who were being recruited to run for office were adamant in their refusals to subject their families and friends to the libels  and falsehoods that characterized Thune's campaign against Tom Daschle in 2004.  Furthermore, these people reflect a trend to invest their cultural and intellectual energies in other places.    That is why many people are who are allied with Democratic programs are diffident about voting in South Dakota.  Their interests are invested where they have a better chance of being realized.  Among colleagues of my  age who have retired,  I note that the vast majority leave the state. 

 The examples are anecdotal, but the individual anecdotes add up to a noticeable trend.  That trend is further illustrated in a mailing list of active supporters I have had the responsibility of maintaining over the years.  Every mailing results in a return of letters of 2 to 3 percent.  There are, of course, deaths that account for some of the names we remove from the list.  But the bulk of the returns is from people who have moved to other areas of the country.  In recent years, that list has shrunk by more than 30 percent, and few people are added.  A common response we get from people we approach to add to the list is that they are sympathetic with the Democratic program, but do not want to get involved with politics as they are practiced today.  Attrition has had its effect on people who would vote Democratic, but many of the people who support Democratic causes have come to believe that the political system has become incapable of reflecting their interests.

The election of President Obama was driven largely by the promise of change.  He was given a huge majority in the House and Senate in support.  There are those who disagree with his programs, but rather than engage in legislative negotiations to work out agreements, the Republicans have deliberately thrown government into a state of total dysfunction.  The raging malevolence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter became the guiding principles of Republican tactics, and we found out that,  like insurgent attackers in Iraq and Afghanistan, a minority could totally disable government and make it irrelevant to the lives of the people it is supposed to serve.  While the tea party movement has had the press, the discussions in the media over the meaning of polls have never covered those people who have given up on the system and are in a state of quiet withdrawal.  Tim Gebhart quotes Ted Rall in that regard:

Unless you’re hopelessly self-deluded or stupid, you have to accept the painful truth. Under the current triumvirate of state power currently presiding over our lives — governmental, corporate and media — you have no more ability to change anything important — e.g. the way the economy is managed, or which countries and people are being attacked by the armies you pay for — than a medieval serf or a German under Nazism did in the past, or a detainee in a secret CIA prison somewhere does now.

Rall suggests that the only solution is revolution.   Tim summarizes Rall's point-of-view:

Not only is necessary change not coming, he believes it never will. Rational people, then, have only one choice, which is to take things into their own hands and start over. Even if people don’t, the system is going to collapse on itself and revolution will be forced upon us. He believes it better to be proactive than reactive. Whether that call to action will succeed is another question altogether.

The suggestion that revolution is the solution to our current dysfunction is one I have heard hinted at by many people.  They are not advocating revolution, but they seem to accept the idea that it is probably the only way to change the direction in which the country is headed.  A colleague who is an authority on journalism and rhetoric says that the country has shifted from the rhetoric of opposition to the rhetoric of war.  He says that the focus is not to produce compromise and change, but to incite hatred.  He cites Limbaugh and Beck and Coulter as the most obvious proponents of it.  He makes the point that the rhetoric of war-level hatred does what it is intended to:  make war.

Those who find that America has become unredeemable do not have the political solutions available that their ancestors did.  My grandparents were all immigrants who found no economic and cultural opportunities in their fatherland, and a state endorsed religion had become an oppressive force.  They moved to America.  The people I know who have left South Dakota did so  for essentially the same reasons.  But where does one go when the whole country follows the trend of South Dakota?  There may be other places to recreate America, but the world has shrunk.  Revolution may, indeed, be forced upon us.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mexico give us a caution.  Revolution can take the form of an extended, mindless feud.  The dumb guy prevails.

Dishonoring the troops

Ft. Hood was psychologically stunned  last weekend when four soldiers committed suicide.  In addition to the incident last November when an Army psychiatrist shot and killed 13 soldiers there, the base has been struggling to deal with an outbreak of suicides among the troops, 14 so far this year.  The Army has had 104.  The suicides are related to a problem that when troops return from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the crime rates in the base town of Killeen, Texas, soar with arrests for domestic violence, assault, and drunk and disorderly conduct. Drug addictions are also a big problem. A recent report says that the Army has concerns that the force is becoming increasingly dependent on both legal and illegal drugs.   The Washington Post article  , which reports the situation, concludes that "The skills that keep soldiers alive in war make them dysfunctional in civil society."

Duh.  In regard to trying to give the troops mental health assistance, a psychiatrist says, "They don't trust us. They believe we speak with forked tongues."  Double f**king duh.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates addresses the problem this way:   In"an era of persistent conflict," soldiers are increasingly culturally, socially and physically isolated from the rest of the country.


Gates skirts the crux of the issue.  He is too damned smart not to know that the problems in the military are caused by the civilians who maintain the services and assign the tasks to the military.  That means us.  It particularly means those developmentally-challenged souls who ride around with those yellow "Support our troops" decals on their tea-bagging cars.   It means those people who cannot accept or choose to ignore that the contrived war on Iraq is intellectually and morally indefensible, and Afghan has become that way.  And, when troops obediently carry out orders when they doubt the authenticity of their mission and the intelligence of the orders, they bear a psychological burden.  That burden is the festering suspicion that the battles they are sent to fight are patriotic shams.

Begin with the fact that bureaucracies are inherently the product of self-serving idiots.  The military services are bureaucracies.  They serve the interests of  presidential administrations, which are bureaucracies.  The issue is not how big government is.  It's how perversely venal  it is.  Venality is the organizing principle of bureaucracies, unless there is some system of oversight that keeps the f**king twithood honest.  The first rule of a bureaucracy that strives to be a moral and intellectual failure is to frustrate the oversight.  And make patsies out of the grunts who have to carry out the orders.

An example.  Remember Jessica Lynch?  She is the young woman from West Virginia who was injured, taken prisoner in the early days of the war on Iraq and was later rescued from her Iraqi hospital bed by a team of Army Rangers.  The story that the press trumpeted throughout the world was that Soldier Lynch was in a convoy that came under attack by Iraqi forces and was wounded while firing her weapon at the attackers.

The actual incident that put Ms. Lynch in the hospital is a typical bureaucratic tale.  She was driving a Humvee in a convoy.  Its commander.  Capt. Troy King, screwed up a couple of times.  He made a wrong turn, in fact he made two, that put the convoy in the middle of the heavily armed city of Nasiriyah.  He was supposed to be taking a route that skirted the city.   When he finally checked his GPS and turned the convoy around to retrace its route,  it came under attack.  In the frantic effort to haul ass out of Nasiriyah, a semi in front of Pvt. Lynch's Humvee jack-knifed.  She ran into the jack-knifed trailer at 50 mph.  She was not wounded in combat.   She did not fire her weapon.  As subsequent investigations of the incident reported,  all the injuries she sustained, which were serious, were from the collision with the semi trailer.

So how did the press and the American public get such a totally fabricated version of what happened to Pvt. Lynch?  There is much more to the convoy story.  A battalion of Marine tanks was headed into Nasiriyah to take control of the city.  The tank column came under fire as it entered the city when a bullet-riddled, burning Humvee containing Capt. King screeched to a halt as it approached the tank column, and Capt. King told the Marines his convoy was under attack.  The tank column's mission then became trying to extract the convoy from the city. 

Some of the vehicles in the Marine column got stuck in the mud along a river when trying to turn around.  The Marines called for air support.  They got it in the form of two A-10 Warthog aircraft loaded with anti-tank missiles and bombs.  When the Warthog pilots spotted the Marine vehicles,  they thought they were Iraqi.  So they bombed the shit our of them.  They killed 18 Marines and wounded 17.

The Bush Administration was being criticized for waging war on Iraq, and this "friendly fire" incident could lose popular support for the war.  But the Administration had put a master propagandist in place to control all the information coming out of the Iraq military.  He is Jim Wilkinson, who worked for Bush in the 2000 Florida election battle.  Wilkinson quickly moved to divert public attention away from the 18 Marines killed by their own colleagues.  He fastened on to Jessica Lynch and made up a bunch of stuff about her, and the American public was so inflated by the lies about Jessica that it ignored the mistakes that got Jessica injured and ignored the 18 dead Marines killed by the support that was supposed to come  rescue them.

This is succinctly and clearly summarized in a book about Pat Tillman, who was killed by members of his own squad in Afghanistan, the account of which  was fabricated and lied about by the entire command of his Ranger unit.  His family has worked to get the truth out since his death in 2004.

When soldiers volunteer to put their lives in danger and make the ultimate sacrifices,  they like to think their efforts are for a higher purpose.  But when it begins to occur to them that they are being sacrificed as pawns by dishonest and incompetent bureaucracies, they realize that their lives are cheap and they are simply regarded as expendable cannon fodder.  Being duped and used like that is hard to live with.  Many are choosing not to.  It is dishonorable.  Four of them chose not to at Ft. Hood last weekend. 

The best mental health measures that can help our troops is to stop lying about why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan today.  We can stop lying about the duplicity of the regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the culture of those countries.  We can't do much about those cultures, but we don't have to support them  by having our troops killed wantonly and needlessly.

The best way to honor our troops is not to get them killed.  And to tell the truth.  Of course, they think their commands speak with forked tongues.  They know what the lies are and who makes them up.

Those "Support our troops" decals are an offense.  They have nothing to do with honoring and helping or troops.  They have everything with a bunch of mindless fools buying the lies about Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman.  And when you are fighting a war at the behest of people who like to believe in lies because they reinforce their venal politics, it may be more honorable to commit suicide.  It is hard for good people to live for a lie.