Petroleum Pity Party

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips are going to receive $18 billion dollars' worth of tax breaks over the next ten years, in spite of $123 billion dollars in profit and poor people spending 10 percent of their income on gas because American corporations have sabotaged every attempt to create European style mass transit in this country.

In 1886 the Supreme Court unwittingly created a pantheon of living gods on Earth by granting corporations the same rights given to individuals. In a dispute between Santa Clara County and the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Court defined corporations as "persons", that according to the 14th Amendment (intended to protect freed slaves), "no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law", and that California could not tax corporations differently than individuals.

A corporation can effectively become an immortal being of immense power by replacing worn out personnel and acolytes, and if need be, by moving across the street and changing its name, as gods themselves are wont to do. Modern life has thus become a competition between unconnected individuals and the thousands who have allied themselves with some corporate master. This puts a free man in the unenviable position of a journeyman carpenter trying to compete with the team building a pyramid.

To join a corporation, to consider its mission statement your holy writ, requires the corporate believer to hold fast to certain professions of faith. The Senior Vice President of Exxon Mobil, Stephen Simon, tells us that the oil companies deserve the tax break because "imposing punitive taxes on American companies will discourage the investments needed to safeguard our energy security." Shell's Hofmeister has the gall to blame the Interior Department. "The U.S. government restricts supply to American consumers," and Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron, chimes in that the Congress should "open up the 95 percent of the outer continental shelf that's off limits" to drilling. Poor babies; Exxon only made $40 billion dollars last year, and only 9 percent of that was profit margin.

Remember when we used to smile at Grandfather Heinlein's science fiction prophecy that nation states would be replaced by corporations?

Poor Butterfly Continues to Astound

The Captain Renault Awards (don't bother to Google, I made them up) have almost always gone to a Republican, if not a salaried member of this administration, but this time...! Now... a surprise winner of the Captain Renault "I'm Shocked! Shocked!" Award for Sheer Brazenness, Gall, Audacity and Butter-Wouldn't Melt in My mouth Denial of Objective Reality...

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her outriders now claim that Barack Obama is the "establishment" candidate, and she herself is the anti-establishment insurgent. Close your mouth, gentle reader, before the flies get in. I was just as astonished at her audacity; (ga-kak) I think I swallowed a bug.

It is absolutely true that Hillary-bashing has brought out the strange misogyny lurking beneath the suits and ties in mass media, as with the David Schuster vileness, and the just plain weird stuff scurrying around behind the eyeballs over at the RNC-- but now Hillary's defenders are going off the rails, as in Robin Morgan's argument that not voting for Hillary equates with hatred of women in general.

I hope that this casting of herself as upstart rebel against Old White Man Obama is laughed into oblivion, and Clinton stops "framing the issues" like a Rove Republican. There are objective reasons why we will not vote for Hillary Clinton as president, while wishing her all the best as a leader of the Senate. There are objective reasons why I support Barack Obama: his experience as a teacher of Constitutional Law and community activist, the ability to perceive ambiguity expressed in his memoirs, his childhood exposure to a variety of cultures. Charisma doesn't enter into it until I have to ask if he's electable in November. The Republicans are scared pissless of him. If the Democrats lose this November election by insisting on Hillary Clinton, the most divisive nominee since the Republicans nominated Goldwater in 1964, they will move beyond the Captain Renault Award to having their names inscribed next to George Bush himself and the city fathers of Troy on the not-so-coveted Monkey Fucking a Football Terminally Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition Award.

"Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.
-- Langston Hughes

I'm Shocked, Shocked...

And the Captain Renault Award for Disingenuous Surprise goes this week to anyone over the age of 18 who professes bewilderment at Musharraf's behavior in Pakistan. The omniscent strategists of the Bush dynasty are ineligible, as they now compete amongst themselves in a special category, the exemplary "Again-- It Is the Legend" Prize.

If this level of sophistication can be achieved by a schoolteacher in the hinterlands, whose knowledge of Pakistan consists of:
1) an Oriana Fallaci interview with Ali Bhutto in 1976,
2) a second interview with his daughter Benazir after the Musharraf coup, and
3) that guy with the cigarette holder in the film biography Gandhi,
imagine what the Bush State Department must-- oh, right. Better bring Karen Hughes out of retirement to help Condi with this one. The Taliban can practically taste those nuclear convoys the Pakistanis drive around.

The Captain Renault Award comes with a framed portrait of the good gray Mr. Claude Rains in his most famous role. The "Legend" Prize is given only to professed experts who repeat more blunders than the combined cast of "Cops" in a given year. The "Again-- It Is the Legend" Prize comes with a sculpture showing Arrakis fremen looking on with amazement at a monkey trying to fuck a football.

THE SYSTEM WORKS, FOR WELL-CONNECTED WHITE MEN FROM CONNECTICUT

"Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man." Dick Cheney regarding Lewis "Scooter" Libby, June 5, 2007.



No surprise here that Libby was pardoned, and lest we get too sanctimonious, let's not forget the Clinton pardons for Bill's brother Roger and Hillary's brother Hugh. I won't waste my breath sputtering over the pardon, which is of course scandalous. More interesting is whether this pardon sparks a debate over our two-tier justice system, or a great national shrug. It's not as if Bush's standing can get any lower in the polls, and it's not as if Congress is actually going to impeach anyone over this.

The people in charge of the Democratic party now belong, for the most part, to the same social class as the Republicans. And although the poorest among us have things a tiny bit easier under Democratic administrations, that social class doesn't do Hard Time unless one of them is caught with a dead girl or a live boy,

In a better world, we would see a presidential candidate using the Libby pardon to talk about the forgotten men in prison. If there are 2 million Americans in prison, that's a city as big as Houston or Chicago. And in the best of all possible worlds, we will have no more public sanctimony about the American justice system, unless we're talking about what it MIGHT be.

What Muppet Are You?

You are Scooter.
You are a loyal, hardworking person, better known
as a doormat.



SPECIAL TALENTS:
Going for stuff.
LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE:
"Go For Broke!"

QUOTE:
"15 seconds to showtime."

LAST BOOK READ:
"300 New Ways to Get Your Uncle to Get You a
Better Job "

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
Coffee, clipboard, and Very Special Guest Stars.

I'm Shocked, Shocked That We Don't Have a Word for People Who Should Have Known Better

The great Claude Rains-- and the screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch-- contributed this delightful and extremely useful catchphrase to American politics:

RENAULT
Clear the room at once!

[An angry murmur starts among the crowd. People get up and begin to leave. Rick comes quickly up to Renault.]

RICK
How can you close me up? On what grounds?

RENAULT
I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

[This display of nerve leaves Rick at a loss. The croupier comes out of the gambling room and up to Renault. He hands him a roll of bills.]

CROUPIER
Your winnings, sir.

RENAULT
Oh. Thank you very much.


Renault's demonstration of "chutzpah" matches the classic example of the man who murdered both his parents, and then threw himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds he was an orphan. We also have Richard Pryor's "Who you going to believe? Me, or you lying eyes?"

Renault's protest has its uses, as when politicians discover that veterans are not served well by VA hospitals, that millions of dollars have gone AWOL in Iraq, or that one of their relatives was given a sweetheart deal or that the genetic celebrity they hired as a "researcher" is less than qualified for her post.

What I'm calling for is a new word or phrase that describes the irritation I feel when ordinary citizens express surprise and dismay when the men they elect fail to live up to their campaign promises. Lies that would not fool a child have somehow clouded the judgement of grown men and women who are trusted with a vote and heavy machinery.
But what shall we call it? What internet meme would both mock the voter who should have known better and lead them towards a better way? These are people who would buy a ticket for "Saw" and be surprised by the violence.

My first choice-- though it's not known widely enough, and too subtle to catch on-- is an exchange from "Bebop", one of Langston Hughes' "Simple" stories. Simple has just finished explaining that the rhythms of bop music are are a response to the sounds of billyclubs on folks' heads. "Your explanation depresses me," says the narrator, and Simple answers, with quiet disgust and exasperation at such naivete: "Your nonsense depresses me."