Right-Wing Hand-Basket

About 27,000 people (or 1/100th of one percent of the US population) spent more than $10,000 to influence elections during the 2010 election cycle.

I invite you to peruse the ten most influential Daddy Warbucks in 2010 and consider their political axes (from The Who's Who of Top Political Donors):

1. Bob Perry. CEO of Perry Homes. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
2. Wayne Hughes. Owner and chairman of Public Storage, Inc. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
3. Fred Eshelman. CEO of Pharmaceutical Product Development. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
4. Robert Rowling. CEO and Chairman of TRT Holdings. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
5. Donald Sussman. Chairman of the holding company Paloma Partners. Moderate. Tax dodger.
6. John Ricketts. Founder and board member of TD Ameritrade. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
7. Jerry Perenchio. CEO of the investment firm Chartwell Partners. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
8. Trevor Rees-Jones. President of Chief Oil & Gas. Hater. Right-wing ninny.
9. Rachel Hunter. Treasurer for the organization Media Matters and an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune. Democrat. Moderate.
10. John Childs. Board of Directors for Club for Growth. Hater. Right-wing ninny.

Is it any wonder that the US is going to hell in a right-wing hand-basket?

Kudos to the Sunlight Foundation for shining light on the special interest machinery turning the US into a people-hating Corporatocracy of haves and have-nots.

Antidote to Despair

Perhaps in waning daylight of October we find ourselves approaching the nadir of darkness. And so it is on the political landscape too. We are witnessing a burgeoning Global Corporatocracy.

But the pendulum swings. There is reason hope.

Discovering this picture of crocuses stored on my phone since last spring reminds me that following 3-4 snow-covered months in Minnesota, there are few spectacles more hope-filled than the fiercely blue petals and gold stamen of crocuses piercing the furry gray snow-fungus in the yard.

A few rays of sunlight on the political landscape are:

1. Decades of corporate profit-wringing and corporate outsourcing to the cheapest bidder has made it impossible for young people to get an economic foothold. From that springs the Occupy Wall Street movement which is the new, vigorous left-of-center demonstrating for economic fairness and accountability.
2. Decades of assault on standards in journalism have made it difficult for citizens to find non-didactic news sources. From that springs WikiLeaks shedding light on state secrets.
3. Decades of autocratic rule, marked by dictatorship, human rights violations, and government corruption, stripped millions of people of their hope for the future. From that came a wave of revolutionary demonstrations and protests known as the Arab Spring.

Spring is a yearly revolution in many parts of the world.

Action is the antidote to despair
~Joan Baez

Political and social activist Abbie Hoffman said,

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

BP PR - The Ultimate Junk Shot

The Ultimate Junk Shot

The ultimate junk shot is not injecting a clever mixture of golf balls and tire shards into the blowout preventer. It's that we live in a balls-out corporatocracy where laissez faire capitalism - from the likes of Ayn Rand to Rand Paul - repeatedly explodes into a fireball.

Mud Beats Oil

The headline for BP's Top Kill procedure at the Deepwater Horizon calamity read "Mud Beats Oil". This makes me wonder if BP executives do a collegial round of Rock-Paper-Scissors before making all crucial decisions.

Why are so many corporations hell-bent on doing the wrong thing?

BP is destroying an entire region of the world & there's still no talk of cutting their next dividend -- Scott Adams

Inexplicable.

But, it does make for dark humor.

Here are the funniest and most poignant tweets about the BP calamity from the fake BP Twitter account BPGlobalPR:

• The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares
• We are dedicated to helping the wildlife in the gulf. Any birds that need cleaning must report to 287 Quartemain St, Baton Rouge, LA 70801.
• Just got the concession call from Exxon Valdez. They were great competitors and remarkably evil about everything. #bpwins!
• Not only are we dropping a top hat on the oil spill, we're going to throw in a cane and monocle as well. Keeping it classy.
• If Top Kill doesn't work, we're just gonna toss a giant "Get Well Soon" card into the gulf and hope for the best. #bpcares
• BP will be sponsoring the New Orleans Blues Festival this summer w/ special tribute to Muddy Waters. #bpcares
• We just saw a shark fight an octopus inside the geyser. Almost made this whole thing worth it.
• We are starting a movement to fix the oil leak. Just mail your garbage to New Orleans and we'll take it from there.
• Sorry Kevin Costner, if we were interested in what you had to say, we'd rent Tin Cup.

I Don't Need No Doctor

The reckless US Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance handed down yesterday is a giant step for corporate personhood, but a giant step backward for US citizens.

Schlubs like me, who vote in every election and make $25 campaign contributions, are eating humble pie.

A politically-charged US Supreme Court yields the potency to seed and nurture a Corporatocracy like invasive crab grass.

The Corporatocratic Court decision may be a blessing: it may trigger a groundswell of opposition to corporate personhood. ~J.P. Barlow, from Twitter

One of my favorites rock bands as a teenager was Humble Pie. In 1971, when this video of Humble Pie was made, I was a freshman at New Providence High School. Crank the volume.

In my slightly post-pubescent mind, I Don't Need No Doctor might have meant ditching school without a doctor's note.

Today, I Don't Need No Doctor is

A mantra for people without health insurance

The corporate shills and troglodytes in the Senate (e.g. Max Baucus, Harry Reid, the RepubliCants, and the ConservaDems) failed to hammer out a version of the insurance reform bill that the ever-so-slightly more enlightened House of Representatives (e.g., Anthony Wiener) could stomach.

The US Senate is a snake pit of uncontested corporate corruption. If ever you can't fathom a Senator's position or motives, Google their campaign contributions or go directly to the Center for Responsive Politics. Suddenly the irrational and unfathomable makes sense. Suddenly you'll understand your elected official is on someone's payroll. And, sadly, it’s not yours