News & Articles

For today’s report, I have a bunch of statistics for you. Wait… don’t run away! Where are you going? Come back here and sit still while I drill these stats into your head!
I realize that numbers can numb the brain, but this is a good story, and I promise that these statistics are easy to absorb. In fact, the number 400 pretty much sums it up. It’s a story of political intrigue and corruption involving some of America’s wealthiest families and corporations.
Start with the “Billionaire 400,” a clique of the elite organized by the conniving Koch brothers. These ultra-rich right-wingers gather each winter in some warm weather resort for a secretive, invitation-only retreat. There, they plot strategies and pledge money for electing politicos who’ll support their vision of corporate rule in America. For the 2016 elections, they’ve already committed nearly a billion dollars to impose their vision of plutocracy over our democratic ideals – double the combined amount that the Republican and Democratic parties will spend.
Then, there are the secretive SuperPACs that’re sacking-up tens of millions of dollars to back various presidential candidates. Again, a mere 400 corporations and rich families – each writing checks for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars – have put up nearly half of all the money in these electioneering committees.
But now, here comes the antidote to this corruption of our politics by fat cats. Instead of being financed by 400 special interests, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has raised its $15 million from 400,000 ordinary Americans. In fact, the average donation to Bernie is a heartwarming, soul-saving $31.30!
You can’t buy a president for 30 bucks – but you can help elect one who isn’t owned by Big Money. Isn’t that the way it ought to be?

“Bernie Sanders’ Small-Beer Donors,” The New York Times, August 28, 2015.

“Sanders’s Success in Attracting Small Donors Tests Importance of ‘SuperPACs’,” The New York Times, August 26, 2015.

Obama says “We are writing the rules.” Who’s “we”?

Gosh, Americans don’t need enemies like China when we’ve got “protectors” like Obama.
In his pitch to get us to swallow that glob of global corporate greed known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama has resorted to a tacky bit of China bashing. He recently crowed that, “Under this agreement we, rather than countries like China, are writing the rules for the global economy.” This backhanded slap at a major trading partner is meant to tell us that Big Bad China would’ve written global trade rules to hurt the American people.
Aside from the fact that we and our allies would never agree to such biased rules, even if the Chinese were stupid enough to propose them, Obama’s assertion contains two self-destructive bombshells, both tucked inside the word “we.”
First, if okayed by Congress, this TPP scam would offshore a whole new round of America’s middle class jobs, hold down or even lower US wages, flood our market with unsafe imported food, free Wall Street banksters from oversight, and empower global corporations to use private “trade tribunals” of corporate lawyers to usurp our people’s sovereignty. How embarrassing that our own president would claim credit for doing such explosive damage to the American people! I’m guessing that even China would not have done worse.
Second. Obama’s entire TPP charade is blown to bits by his assertion that “we… are writing the rules.” Who’s “we”? Were you consulted? Did you even know that a tiny group of unelected people have been meeting in secret for seven years to write “rules” for us? In fact, only about 600 corporate executives and lobbyists were allowed to be at the table, writing rules to benefit themselves at our expense.
It’s a disgrace that Obama is fronting and even lying for these self-serving kleptocratic corporate powers.

“Obama begins selling trade agreement to Congress, public,” Austin American Statesman, October 7, 2015.


Just “doing the best we can”… can make a difference

Toward the end of his life, the civil rights champion and Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, was asked how he wanted to be remembered. “He did the best he could with what he had,” Marshall replied.
That’s really the most any of us can do, and those who achieve it tend to make a lasting contribution to bettering our world, no matter who they are. Luckily, there are many such people across our land, working in our neighborhoods, cities, states, and occasionally at the national level – including Rev. Everett Parker, who recently died at 102 years old.
In the early 1960s, he noticed that many television and radio stations were blatantly racist. They refused to cover the African-American community, ignored civil rights news, openly used on-air slurs and racists portrayals of black people, had no integrated programming, and failed to hire minorities. Others noticed this same institutional racism, of course, but Rev. Parker decided to do something. As the communications director of the United Church of Christ, he began to monitor stations and file actions with the FCC, the federal overseer of our public airwaves.
In 1964, the commission conceded that Parker was correct that discrimination was rampant, but decreed that viewers had no standing to challenge a station’s license. But Parker kept pushing, and five years later he – and we – won a court ruling that “a broadcast license is a public trust subject to termination for breach of duty.” Since then, he and such allies as Public Citizen organized volunteers to monitor stations, demand reforms, and train minority broadcasters.
Over time, by simply doing the best he could, Rev. Parker’s initiative and tenacity helped alter the whole industry’s guiding ethic, recognizing – in his words – that to serve the public interest they must “serve all the public.”
“The Rev. Everett Parker, Who Fought Bias in Broadcasting, Is Dead at 102,” The New York Times, September 19, 2015.