Tag Archives: corporate greed

Republican disinformation

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Republican subversives, the same greedy corporate players that brought us the Citizens United decision and tipped the 2024 election in favor of that incredibly stupid and detached exemplar of vacuity, George W. Bush, have been funneling money into a media saturation campaign in Wisconsin. The campaign is rife with misinformation and deceit. It’s tedious to catalog the lies and to analyze the falsehoods that provide the foundation for Republican Party support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Walker himself is cut from the same mold as Bush the younger. He’s not terribly bright. He’s not terribly committed to his work or his responsibilities. He is, however, enormously conceited, smug, and self assured. Tonight we’ll see another example of his hollow posturing as he leaves truth and reason behind in the steam tunnel and enters the Capitol through a sub basement with but one thought in the narrow mind that lurks behind those narrow set eyes: “Will I be home in time to watch the Everyone Loves Raymond re-run on Fox 47?” The governor is on auto-pilot. There’s no room for deviation in his game plan. The corporate vultures that are circling the state won’t wait forever. If he can’t kill the spirit of Wisconsin they’ll be off to some state where community has been destroyed and the best morsels of enterprise lie dead and rotting, easy pickings for the carrion eaters of corporate capitalism. For Walker and the flock he feeds, it’s all about profits and public welfare be damned.

In that spirit, a few weeks ago the Republican Party of Wisconsin cobbled together a web video supposedly documenting the “angry rhetoric coming from pro-union protesters in Madison.” The idea behind the video is that we all do it, no side has a monopoly on excessive use of metaphor when political passions are high. (Note my own identification of corporate investors as vultures in the preceding paragraph. I thought about “seagulls circling a garbage dump,” but we’re not there yet, no thanks to Walker.) The New York Times did a meta-narrative blog piece on the video…

Eugene Robinson, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, is shown saying that “Violent political rhetoric and the threat of political violence in this country comes almost exclusively from the right.”

That is followed by a sign from the Wisconsin rallies showing Mr. Walker’s picture with a gunsight crosshair over it and the words: “Don’t retreat. Reload. Repeal Walker.”

In all the hours I’ve spent on the Capitol square I haven’t seen that sign. One person might have made it and carried it to a rally, but I doubt it. The visual context of the sign in the Republican advertisement is a narrow shot, with no crowd of demonstrators around it. As an advertisement it’s effective, but it’s a lie. It’s a lie, but it was broadcast as straight news without attribution on the Fox network. It’s a lie, but white supremacist Haley Barbour referred to it on Meet the Press as if it was emblematic of a Democratic mind-set.

A lot of the video in question is “real.” Early in the struggle, there were plenty of signs comparing Walker to Mubarak. Most of us thought that was a pretty dumb comparison. I imagine that tonight there will be some Walker = Gadaffi signage. That’s even dumber. But unless it’s created by a provocateur, I am almost certain there will be no sign tonight with cross-hairs on Scottie. The whole Sarah Palin “kill them to get them out of the way” metaphor is the dumbest of all. We ain’t that dumb!

Days of unrest

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The men and the women of the Madison Police Department train for crowd situations where an agitator or provocateur may try to create safety risks for citizens and officers. During recent demonstrations around the Capitol Square no such situation has arisen. Crowd behavior has been exemplary, and thousands of Wisconsin citizens are to be commended for the peaceful ways in which they have expressed First Amendment rights. – Madison Police Chief Noble Wray

I just watched Meet the Press for the first time since maybe 1961 when I was home alone with the flu with a limited number of Sunday morning broadcast channels available. I haven’t missed it. Today Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, a Southern Democrat who will announce for the Presidency as a Republican on or about April Fools Day, evoked Sarah Palin and claimed that the workers of Wisconsin have circulated posters of Walker with cross hairs over his face.

And the lie went unchallenged while an evil meme was allowed to be sown.

The host, forgettable except for his clonal resemblance to Anderson Cooper (also forgettable, though perhaps a little less so), showed a clip of a demonstrator with a sign comparing Wisconsin Governor Walker to Egyptian dictator Mubarak and explicitly claimed that this was a dominant theme in the two weeks of rallies, protests and marches.

And the lie went unchallenged and another evil meme was reinforced.

People allow their opinions to be shaped by mainstream shows like Meet the Press (sponsored by Bank of America), but today’s coverage of collective bargaining and Wisconsin politics lacked objectivity–that’s as kind as I can be. As the story continues to unfold in Madison with possible lay-offs, strikes, and budgetary gridlock, it seems unlikely that anyone on the national news scene will get it right.

This afternoon at 4pm, the Capitol will be closed and protesters will be evicted. The decision comes down from the Governor through his Dept. of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch to the Chief of the Capitol Police, Charles Tubbs. Chief Tubbs is a long time state employee, appointed to his position by a Democratic governor, and he must be feeling a little conflicted today. The police unions oppose his boss’s anti-union stance and his fifty employees are union members.

On March 1st, the Governor faces the third deadline for his budget address. The address is required by law to be delivered in January. The governor got an extension to February 23rd. When that day approached and his non-negotiable demands faced strong opposition, he was forced to ask the Republicans of the State Senate for another extension. He now intends to deliver his speech on March 1st in the Capitol, so it’s important to him that he clears the building well before then. He doesn’t want to hear any opposition.

The Governor’s one-way, non-negotiable intentions have forced local government across the state to address collective bargaining before the governor himself spoils the relationships between towns and their employees. So, in La Crosse County, Janesville, Racine, Sheboygan, Madison, and at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, new contracts have been made that include pay raises, pension contributions and health benefits for nurses, teachers and other public workers, benefits that the governor had planned to eliminate.

And the governor is a whiner. The unions told him they’d be willing to pay more for health and pensions and give up raises, but they needed him to agree that he wouldn’t eliminate public worker collective bargaining rights. He said, “No way, my way or the highway, I will not give an inch.” A week or so later he was moved to issue a whiny press release claiming “Union Bosses Say One Thing, Do Another.”

Well, duh-uh.

The month of March will be crucial. The Governor’s speech on March first will give him a chance to come to the table or end his political career. The absent 14 democratic Senators may get a chance to come home and help save $169 million of our money by re-financing existing bonds. The deadline for the re-fi is March 15th, so the absent 14 may have a few more weeks of pizza and motel cable-vision if the governor can’t learn to compromise. But meanwhile we’ll be organizing the recall elections for the governor’s Republican supporters in the Senate, canvassing for Kloppenburg in an effort to restore balance to the Supreme Court, and basically laughing at the noobie governor that Haley Barbour put in the cross hairs this morning on Meet the Press.

Transcript of Al Franken Speech re Network Neutrality and NBC Comcast merger

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Al Franken spoke today with clarity and vision regarding the role of the FCC and his hopes that the cable industry will not be able to exercise vertical control of the net, from the bandwidth to the content. Long story short… the Comcast/NBC merger must not be allowed to happen!! The following transcript is choppy, but the video of the speech at the preceding link is very powerful. I hope people can watch it and share it. I hope someone can put it on Youtube!

SENATOR FRANKEN:
MR. PRESIDENT, I RISE TODAY TO TALK ABOUT THE GROWING THREAT OF IT CORPORATE CONTROL ON THE FLOW OF INFORMATION IN THIS COUNTRY.
07:40:07 RIGHT NOW, TODAY, WE’VE BEEN DEBATING INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ISSUES AND I DON’T MEAN TO DETRACT FROM ANY OF THEM.
07:40:13 WE NEED TO BE DOING ANYTHING WE CAN TO PROTECT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY AND REDUCE THE THREAT FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
07:40:22 WHILE WE DEBATE THESE ISSUES IN FRONT OF THE PUBLIC, BEHIND THE SCENES AWAY FROM PUBLIC SCRUTINY, THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION IS ABOUT TO DECIDE TWO DISTINCT BUT VERY CLOSELY RELATED ISSUES THAT HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO CHANGE DRAMATICALLY THE WAY WE GET OUR ENTERTAINMENT, THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER, AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE WAY WE USE THE INTERNET.
07:40:48 THE FIRST MATTER BEFORE THE F.C.C. IS THE PROPOSED MERGER OF COMCAST AND NBC UNIVERSAL.
07:40:57 THERE IS NO QUESTION IN MY MIND THAT REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU HEAR FROM INDUSTRY, THIS MERGER WILL BE BAD FOR CONSUMERS AND ON MANY LEVELS SMS IT WILL ALLOW COMCAST TO EXPLOIT NBC UNIVERSAL’S CONTENT, CHARGE OTHER CABLE NETWORKS MORE FOR ACCESS TO NBC SHOWS AND MOVIES.
07:41:18 DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WILL DO?
07:41:23 IT WILL RAISE YOUR CABLE BILLS.
07:41:25 AND NBC UNIVERSAL, WHICH ACTUALLY OWNS 37 BROADCAST OR CABLE NETWORKS, WILL BE FAVORED BY COMCAST TO THE EXCLUSION OF NETWORKS.
07:41:35 OTHER INDEPENDENT OR COMPETING THIS MEANS THAT COMCAST WILL PAY LESS TO CARRY CHANNELS LIKE THE DISCOVERY NETWORK, THE FOOD CHANNEL, BLOOMBERG, OR THE TENNIS CHANNEL, THREATENING THEIR FINANCIAL VIABILITY, OR THESE CHANNELS WILL BE RELEGATED TO THE GRAVEYARD AROUND CHANNEL 690 OR 691.
07:41:59 OR 692.
07:42:01 OR CUSTOMERS WILL HAVE TO PAY EVEN MORE EACH MONTH TO BUY ACCESS TO THESE CHANNELS.
07:42:08 THIS IS BAD FOR CONSUMERS BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO PUT MANY BUSINESS.
07:42:12 OF THESE NETWORKS OUT OF THAT MEANS LESS CHOICE AND MORE COMCAST/NBC PROGRAMMING.
07:42:21 BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE.
07:42:22 COMCAST ALSO HAPPENS TO BE THE NATION’S LEADING WIRELINE BROADBAND INTERNET PROVIDER WHICH MEANS THIS SINGLE COMPANY WILL BOTH OWN THE PROGRAMMING AND RUN THE PIPES THAT BRING US THAT PROGRAMMING.
07:42:34 HERE AGAIN COMCAST WILL BE ABLE TO USE ITS OVERWHELMING MARKET SHARE AND IN MANY MARKETS IT’S NEAR NONE MONOPOLY IN THE INTERNET BUSINESS TO FAVOR ITS OWN VIDEO SERVICES.
07:42:48 SAY, ITS ON-DEMAND SERVICES OVER COMPANIES LIKE NET FEDERALISM THEIR — NETFLIX THAT WERE CHEAPER AND WOULD OTHERWISE WIN UPON AN OVERALL PLAYING FIELD.
07:43:01 THESE ARE OWL ALL PROBLEMS WITH THE OVERALL DEAL BUT IT MAY BE HARD TO UNDERSTAND SO LET ME TAKE A MINUTE OR TWO TO MAKE THIS MORE CONCRETE.
07:43:11 I ASK THE PEOPLE SITTING IN THE GALLERY, THE SENATE STAFF WATCHING THIS SPEERCHTION AND EVERYONE AT HOME IN MINNESOTA — THIS SPEECH, AND EVERYONE AT HOME IN MINNESOTA, HOW MANY OF YOU LIKE YOUR CABLE AND INTERNET PROVIDER?
07:43:24 WHEN YOU CALL COMCAST OR VERIZON OR AT&T ABOUT A PROBLEM, HOW MANY OF YOU GET GOOD SERVICE?
07:43:31 HOW MANY OF YOU LIKE THE PRICES YOU PAY?
07:43:35 WHEN YOU DECIDE YOU WANT TO SIGN UP FOR BROADBAND AND COMCAST TELLS YOU THAT THEY AREN’T SURE WHEN THEY CAN COME TO INSTALL YOUR SERVICE AND THEN FINALLY YOU GET AN APPOINTMENT AND YOU HAVE TO TAKE A DAY OFF FROM WORK TO WAIT BETWEEN 9:00 A.M. AND 2:00 P.M. FOR A REPAIRMAN TO COME AND THEN HE DOESN’T COME, IS THAT HOW YOU FEEL YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED?
07:44:00 ARE YOU GETTING GOOD SERVICE?
07:44:03 WHEN YOU CALL VERIZON AND SPEND SO 10 MINUTES LISTENING TO AUTOMATED MESSAGES AND PRESSING NUMBERS TO DIRECT YOU TO MORE AUTOMATED MESSAGES AND THEN FINALLY, FINALLY YOU GET A HUMAN BEING ON THE LINE, BUT THAT PERSON TELLS YOU THAT HE OR SHE CAN’T HELP YOU AND YOU GET PUT ON HOLD AGAIN; IS THAT HOW YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED?
07:44:28 SERVICE?
07:44:30 WHO WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH WITH BAD SERVICE AND RAPIDLY RISING BILLS ANTS YOU DECIDE YOU WANT TO SWITCH TO ANOTHER COMPANY, HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE FOUND THAT YOU DON’T HAVE ANOTHER CHOICE, THAT THERE IS NO OTHER CABLE PROVIDER IN YOUR AREA?
07:44:47 WELL, I CAN TELL YOU THAT RIGHT NOW COMCAST HAS ABOUT 23 MILLION CABLE SUBSCRIBERS AND ABOUT 16 MILLION INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS.
07:44:56 THEY ARE ALREADY THE LARGEST PROVIDER OF CABLE SERVICE TO AMERICANS BY A VERY LARGE MARGIN, AND IN SOME AREAS THEY HAVE A TOTAL MONOPOLY.
07:45:06 THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN IS WHAT CABLE AND INTERNET CUSTOMER SERVICE IS LIKE TODAY.
07:45:13 DO YOU THINK THAT MERGING THE SINGLE-LARGEST CABLE PROVIDER, WHICH IS ALSO THE LARGEST WIRELINE INTERNET PROVIDER, WITH ONE OF THE BIGGEST TV AND MOVIE STUDIOS IN THE COUNTRY WILL MAKE ANY OF THIS BETTER?
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Clonal moo juice

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Savvy dairymen in Britain may be adulterating the nation’s milk supply with something that looks like milk, tastes like milk, and comes from an animal that moos like a milker, but leaves regulators and ethical arbiters unsure of whether or not to permit its consumption. Here and there around the world, cloned cows and their offspring have quietly found their way into dairy herds and regulators are quite twitchy about the situation. If it comes from a clone, is it milk that’s safe to drink?

It’s not exactly a fresh concern. Since Ben wrote about his gustatory experience with cloned milk and meat for Wired magazine three years ago, the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved meat and dairy products from cloned critters. The US Department of Agriculture, bureaucratic servant of the big ag biz, has called for farmers to voluntarily keep cloned food products out of the supply chain “so it can manage a smooth and orderly transition to market.” In other words, until the “greed is good” crowd can control cloning operations under the umbrella of amoral corporate agribusiness, the USDA wants to keep the market closed.

In the Eurozone, government approval hasn’t been this easily won. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), sensitive to citizens’ concerns regarding animal welfare, genetic diversity of farm animals, and market conditions in the face of pressure from the global agribusiness giants, maintain a cautious attitude about clone products and other “novel foods.” In July clone products were removed from the “novel foods” category and the European Parliament called for more specific regulation (see Amendment 14). A press release accompanying this action said:

“A clear majority in the European Parliament supports ethical objections to the industrial production of cloned meat for food. Cloned animals suffer disproportionately highly from illnesses, malformations and premature death. MEPs have been calling for proper regulation for years: it’s high time the Commission listened to the European Parliament and citizens on this issue.”

There are now over 6 billion people to feed on the planet earth, and the way things are going there will be nine billion by 2024. Agricultural production on an industrial scale results in a degraded environment and ethical shortcuts that end up poisoning people. I’m thinking of mad cow disease, BSE prions spread through the mixture of brains, bones, and meat in cattle feed. USDA regulation is a sick and twisted example of government bureaucracy cross bred with corporate interests to the detriment of us all. In the case of mad cow disease, US beef producers have been restricted by the USDA from testing their own cattle. Whatever regulations emerge in the USA to control the market for clone sourced food, they will doubtless be as noisome and as ineffective as the regs surrounding animal feeding.

Cross posted at Class War.

What You Need to Know About the Gulf Oil Disaster

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By Barbara O’Brien

Every day, news about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico gets worse. This week we learned that a large section of the Gulf could become a “dead zone” as oil-eating microorganisms proliferate and suck oxygen out of the water.

Whether anything positive could somehow come from this disaster remains to be seen. But ecologically conscious people should be aware of and involved in the political response to the spill. Because if you aren’t, the people whose greed, ignorance and negligence led to the disaster will be the ones creating the “solutions.”

For example, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is urging the federal government to allow offshore oil drilling to continue, in spite of the damage being done to Mississippi’s beaches. Note that Barbour was once a Washington lobbyist for the oil industry.

For years, conservatives have pushed issues that were and are central to the Deepwater Horizon spill. One is “drill, baby, drill,” or turning the planet inside out to suck up every last drop of oil before investing in alternative energies or conservation.

Another is deregulation, or the belief that industries must be freed from interference by government regulation, including environmental and consumer protections. For example, already a few politicians are calling for deregulation of the oil industry, as if government caused British Petroleum to mismanage its oil rig. Some pundits are saying the disaster proves government regulations “don’t work.”

The truth is that the federal agency responsible for inspecting offshore oil rigs did not do its job. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was not conducting the monthly inspections at Deepwater Horizon that its own policies required. It appears BP was running the rig without adhering to all safety procedure.  Critics say the MMS is staffed by “industry friendly” people who don’t believe government regulations should get in the way of making money.

Regarding the cost of repairing the damage, there are two kinds of cost — environmental cleanup and economic damages. The environmental cleanup part is relatively straightforward, although there will be a fight to be sure it gets done. In 2024, a full 20 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, 16,000 gallons of oil remained in the intertidal zones of Prince William Sound.

The more contentious issue will be paying for the economic damages. These include revenue lost to fishing and tourism businesses and income lost by their employees. The federal Oil Pollution Act written into law after the Exxon Valdez spill caps an oil company’s liability for economic damages at only $75 million in the case of an oil spill caused by accident.

And this brings us to another issue pushed hard by conservatives — “tort reform.” Tort “reformers” want to change personal liability law to protect industries from being sued by people they injure. This campaign was begun in the 1980s by big tobacco companies facing lawsuits from lung cancer sufferers. It was joined by asbestos manufacturers being sued to pay for employees’ mesothelioma treatments. More industries followed suit.

Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the oil spill liability cap to $10 billion, although this could probably only be applied to future spills. But Republicans, long the champions of “tort reform,” strongly oppose the change.

The cap issue may be moot if investigation shows criminal negligence on BP’s part. But already the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been calling for putting cleanup and damages costs on the backs of taxpayers. And this week House Minority Leader John Boehner concurred, although the subsequent uproar caused him to walk his comments back.

In November, the U.S. will be holding midterm elections. At the very least, find out where candidates in your state stand on these issues before you vote. And some faxes and phone calls to your congress critters wouldn’t hurt.

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Barbara O’Brien is a long-time political blogger and activist who writes for several websites, including her own blog, The Mahablog, and Mesothelioma Law and Politics. She also is the Guide to Buddhism for About.com.

Weekend Bobcat

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Lots o’ lynx…

A big chill

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It’s hard to put a dollar value on a dead sea turtle. Impossible, actually. Estimates of royalties owed to the US taxpayer for the lost oil amount to around $35 million. Chump change. Lurking somewhere offstage is the specter of a liability cap. Seventy-five million dollars per oil spill? Still chump change.

The Deepwater Horizon accident will cause billions of dollars of damage and have incalculable effects on planetary systems. The reflectivity of massive oil slicks will shift the planetary albedo. The ecology of the Caribbean may be permanently altered. The economy of the gulf coast will take a hit as seafood supplies vanish and snowbirds take a pass on their winter trip to the redneck Riviera.

It all adds up.

BP management has assured us that they’ll ignore statutory caps on liabilities and pay all claims. BP shareholders have not been heard from on the matter of their management’s largesse. The best guess is that the shareholders will force management to an about face on any generous gestures made during this time of crisis. The legal beagles at 1 St. James Square are even now digging in for a protracted battle to protect their shareholders’ asses and assets. The Attorney General of the United States owes it to the world to freeze the assets of BP and any rogue corporation that ignores environmental and safety regulations in pursuit of profit.

Freeze their assets now. Seize them later when the total amount of damages is settled.

Invitation to visit a new blog of mine

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“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.” — Noam Chomsky

Thus begins a new blog with the preposterous and passé name Class War. The author? Yours truly, of course. Who else would hurl a dead skunk into the marketing meeting then chain the door shut?

Class War is a blog where I can post my perhaps outré but passionately held political opinions. This blog (Listics) isn’t going away. It will remain an eclectic collection of links to good blogs, good food, journalistic criticism, the Interwebs tech community, and basically anything I want to share. But from now on I’ll be banging the drum for progressive politics and meaningful social change at Class War. I’m just tuning up over there, finding my voice, finalizing formats and layout, that sort of thing. Drop in. Leave a comment. Subscribe.

The Republicans are growing ever more strident in their opposition to Health Care Reform. Many have already begun to hold their breath until they turn blue. Palin is speaking at the NRA convention. The lines are being drawn… there’s a lot to write about as the 2024 political season gets underway.