Dear Prime Minister:

The on-going negotiations, under excessive secrecy, regarding “deep integration” between the U.S. and Canada — countries of vastly unequal bargaining power — have received too little attention during this election period. The serious issues and consequences of any forthcoming agreement to Canadians deserve immediate public discussion among the candidates prior to the May 2 election.

Inasmuch as you are both the protagonist and the chief negotiator with the Obama administration, it is your responsibility to inform the Canadian citizenry about the general frameworks, directions and any subordinations of sovereignty that are on the table. Additionally, you can certainly disclose what is off the table and the general timetable for concluding the deliberations and announcing the proposed agreement.

Voters in a democratic society are rightfully irritated to find that a subject of such gravity excluded from public debate before Election Day. Canadians do not want a fiat accompli shorn of any public knowledge and participation. Such a process reveals a deep concentration of power in the executive that tears away the pretense of the deliberative parliamentary democracy that Canada holds out to the world.

The designs of “deep integration” are reflected in your interest in purchasing F-35 fighter jets (already estimated at $29 billion by a Parliamentary office) that has no Canadian defence rationale but serves to help bail out the Pentagon’s procurement mess with Lockheed-Martin’s delayed, troubled and way over budget aircraft.

The early tangle of “deep integration” within the framework of a proposed North American Security Perimeter Agreement will wrap many Canadian concerns — your Arctic, water, energy, anti-monopoly and foreign investment reviews — in a bi-national security blanket to the disadvantage of both the Canadian and American people. The corporatist lobbies and what President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address 50 years ago — “the military-industrial complex” — will favour this lucrative and anti-democratic initiative.

Such a Perimeter Agreement would place Canada under further pressure to forego its leading peacekeeping role — now at its lowest ebb — in favour of joining what is becoming open-ended, unconstitutional and unlawful military adventures by the U.S. government overseas. Involvement in the Afghanistan war could be only the beginning of this dismaying Canadian turnaround.

As an economist, you must know what the post-war Canadian Consensus has meant to the well-being of all Canadians –such that your country has often led the world in overall standards of living. You know that this understanding in the past received support from Liberals, Conservatives and the New Democrats. “Deep integration” will further the contrary corporatist uber alles philosophy that marks what has become known as the Washington Consensus.In a contest under deep integration, you don’t have to wonder which will prevail, especially given your own strong predilections in favour of an ideology of corporate globalization, militarism, privatization and de-regulation so identified with the Washington Consensus.

Since you are known to be proud of your views and what Harper’s Canada would look like, how can you not share forthrightly the scenarios you are conjoining between Ottawa and Washington so that the Canadian voters can register their response? Our corporate-hi-jacked government in Washington is not known for its sensitivity to the notion of Canadian independence. But having co-authored the book Canada Firsts in 1993, I learned that many Canadians treasure their sovereignty and associate it with making possible many advances long in your land that are still not prevalent in our country. Canada’s prudent bank regulation prevented a Wall Street style collapse of your economy.

Please recognize your peoples’ right to know now about what is going on in these deliberations over “deep integration.”

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

Washington, DC

Since corporations were artificial legal entities and not human, these lawmakers feared that without some strong leashes, they could be creating Frankensteins.

Over the following two hundred years, these ever larger corporations and their attorneys have been driving relentlessly, dynamically to erect systems of privileges and immunities that give the corporations themselves limited liability.

Their first big move was to take the chartering authority from the state legislature and place it inside an executive agency where chartering became automatic, shorn of the conditions the lawmakers once imposed.

Once chartering became automatic, perpetual and open-ended, corporate lawyers moved to have the courts — not the legislatures — turn corporations into “persons” for purposes of constitutional rights.

Their big breakthrough came with the Santa Clara case in 1886 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed its summary headnotes to declare that the railroad in the case was a “person” for purposes of the 14th amendment. Through elaborations in later Supreme Court decisions, that meant that companies like Aetna, General Electric, Exxon and Lockheed had most of the same constitutional rights as real people like you.

Soon it was off to the races and the promised land of no-fault corporate behavior. Early in the 20th century, companies erected “no-fault” workers compensation schemes limiting damages for the horrors of worker injuries and workplace diseases in those mines, factories, and foundries.

Then came the steady erosion of shareholder rights and power, notwithstanding the securities acts of 1933 and 1934 which emphasized disclosure and anti-fraud rules. As owners, the shareholders have had little control over the corporations they “own”. The split between ownership by the stockholders and control by the corporate bosses, and their rubber stamp boards of directors, is now wider than the Grand Canyon.

With the limitless “business judgment rule” and the permissive corporate chartering goliath ensconced in the state of Delaware, shareholders don’t even have a vote as to whether their hired bosses should dissolve their company into bankruptcy.

These investors cannot even determine the limits on the runaway pay packages by and for their supreme executives. Investors cannot even propose their names for election to the boards of directors in these Kremlin-style corporate board elections. Investors are told-if you don’t like what we your bosses are doing, you’re free to sell your shares. And, of course, that exit leaves the rascals more in charge.

Anytime the law is activated on behalf of the “little people”, corporate lobbyists move in to weaken or delete these instruments of accountability. For example, tort law giving wrongfully injured Americans their day in court against manufacturers of defective cars, hazardous chemicals or drugs and other products has been weakened by business-backed state and federal laws. More immunity for corporate wrongdoing.

When the early atomic power industry got underway in the nineteen fifties, insurance companies would not insure the potentially massive damages a breach of containment disaster might produce. No problem. The industry pushed Congress to pass the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which greatly limited the utilities’ and manufacturers’ liability for the human devastation arising from a class nine meltdown.

How about the contracts you sign with credit card, auto dealer, insurance company, bank and other vendors? Over the years by using fine print contracts to avoid many obligations, sellers have disadvantaged consumers who have to sign on the dotted line. Corporate lawyers have turned contract law upside down. And if you don’t want to sign, you can’t go to a competitor company because the contracts are just as one-sided, taking away your rights page after page, including your right to go to court.

Well, suppose a corporation, like General Motors, is so mismanaged that it is losing sales, profits, creditworthiness and heading toward abject failure. No problem. There is always chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy to terminate obligations to creditors, dealers, litigants, and other claimants with pennies on the dollar.

Here is how bankruptcy attorney Laurence H. Kallen described the process in his book,Corporate Welfare: “[In] chapter 11 the megacorporations almost all succeed famously. They dominate the committees and bully the judges. They stay ten steps ahead of any feeble attempts at supervision. They use the bankruptcy laws to force plans of reorganization down creditors’ throats. And then the executives of those corporations laugh all the way to the bank.”

Speaking of banks, wouldn’t you like to have the power to mutate yourself like six large insurance companies did last November to get billions of your tax dollars under the TARP rescue program?

Mired in their risky, reckless investments, including derivatives, these insurance companies qualified for the money simply by a paper restructuring of themselves as bank holding companies. Voilá! The U.S. Treasury declared they qualify as financial firms and will soon be receiving your money. The New York Times reports that “hundreds” of other such companies “are still in the pipeline for review.”

Whether it is equal justice under the law, equal protection under the law, equal access to the law, or the power to make laws, there is no contest between the corporate entity and the real human being.

What Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis feared in an opinion he wrote during the 1930s is happening. These megacorporations have become Frankensteins — moving to own our genes, the plant seeds of life and taking control of computerized artificial intelligence. Their final conquest is far along — the control of government which is then turned against its own people.

As Paul Harvey used to say: “Good day.”

Forget it. They’re baaack! Their greed and power are revving up big time to bring Washington and you the taxpayer, you the parent, you the consumer, you the worker, to your knees. Here is a sample of the appalling dynamics of corporate greed and continuing over-reach each day in your nation’s capital.

1. Just when people thought the taxpayer-subsidized corporate student loan racket was ended by the Democrats, Sallie Mae, its cohorts and lobbyists, like Jamie S. Gorelick of FannieMae notoriety, are descending on Congress. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that replacing these subsidized loans with direct Department of Education lending will save $94 billion over the next ten years.

It is long overdue to end this gouging, college payola giving, obscenely overcompensated industry, and give students an efficient and reasonable lending system. Still, Sallie Mae, Citigroup, Bank of America and others are swarming over Congress to retain a big piece of the action. “Why do we even need private lenders?” correctly asks Congressman Timothy H. Bishop, a former provost of Southampton College.

2. ABC News reports that banks are hiking already high credit card rates and other bank-related fees: “The Banks have been given billions of dollars of tax money and only lend it out if customers are willing to pay extortion rights,” said Tony Cesnik, a Concord, California, resident. Cesnik adds: “The banks need a legal spanking. They are acting like spoiled brats!” Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel agrees: “We’re asking taxpayers to pay twice.”

3. The big oil and gas companies are saturating the airwaves with ads warning about the Obama Administration’s alleged desire to tax them $400 billion. This will cost jobs and reduce the discovery of more oil and gas, they say. Where is this $400 billion figure from? Obama’s ambition is not much beyond repealing the tax breaks George W. Bush gave his oily friends for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico when oil was selling at less than $40 per barrel. Some of the oil industry’s own spokespersons admitted last year that their argument doesn’t hold water any more with such high oil prices and profits since then.

So what are the big oil corporations like Exxon doing with their excess profits that totaled a record $45 billion just for Exxon last year? They’re not even drilling on two-thirds of the acreage they have rights to explore. Instead Exxon is spending $35 billion to buy back its stock and hold in cash. When the next oil shock comes, Exxon will demand more tax breaks and other dispensations to fund its drilling. We’ve seen that game played out before at the gas pump.

4. Now comes Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh to report a private meeting recently between six senators and Obama in the White House where the president heard complaints that his proposed regulatory reforms were too weak and were being devised by his appointed officials who were part of the problem in Wall Street. Well, are you surprised that a new powerful lobby created by the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs is gearing up to stop adequate regulation of “over the counter” derivatives, to keep these transactions secret, and to continue to permit what Hirsh called the “systemic risk that led to the crash.” This brazen move by the incorrigible banks is underway after they received huge bailout money from Washington. Beware they may yet demand and receive another big bundle.

5. With workers losing millions of jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and virtually the entire business juggernaut are amassing tens of millions of dollars to stop the union-facilitating “card-check” legislation and any effort to bring the federal minimum wage up to what is was back in 1968, no less, adjusted for inflation. It is now about three dollars short of that modest goal for hard-pressed laborers, many without health insurance.

6. And oh, how these company bosses are fighting to keep their big bonuses going as a reward for tanking many of their own companies. Call it hubris, arrogance, disdain for common decencies of the American people, it all reflects too much corporate power over our lives-a judgment over 75 percent of Americans share.

All this lobbying of Congress and the White House year after year pays off. A study by three Kansas University professors found that a single tax break in 2004 earned drug, manufacturing, and other companies $220 for every dollar they spent in their cash register politicking. Presently, Lockheed Martin is spending millions of our taxpayer dollars to oppose Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and many other defense experts who want to finally shut down the price-skyrocketing F-22 fighter extravaganza designed for combat in the Soviet Union-era.

So, are you more upset than when you started reading this column? Feel frustrated and powerless? With your friends, ask your Senators and Congressperson during their frequent recesses for a three-hour public accountability session. If you can assemble 300 or more residents, after you rev up your community, you’re likely to have your elected representatives come to an auditorium where you live and work. If they think 500 people will show up, it is even more likely. Especially if you are organized and tell them this is just the beginning. Just the beginning!

Without the rumble from the people back home, a majority of the 535 members of Congress will continue to kowtow to about 1500 corporations and you’ll pay the price again and again. So, rumble, rumble, rumble!

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity — not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an “undivided Jerusalem,” and opposed negotiations with Hamas — the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored “direct negotiations with Hamas.” Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote, “Anti-Semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.”

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties, which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: “There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.”

Palestinian-American commentator Ali Abunimah noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, “of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. . . . Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.’”

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on “the heart of a crowded refugee camp . . . with horrible bloodshed” in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate Uri Avnery described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that, “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama “is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future — if and when he is elected president,” he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama” (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.” None of these comments and reports changes your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans– even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hardliners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to “tumultuous applause,” following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the “middle class” but you repeatedly omit mention of the “poor” in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke “change” yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the “corporate supremacists.” It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics — opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches) — and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say “springs eternal.” But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
November 3, 2008

Indeed, the right-wing pundits and the revisionists in Congress are spending an inordinate amount of time falsely claiming that our nation’s current financial disaster stems from the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. The primary purpose of this modest law is to require banks to report on where and to whom they are making loans. Community organizations have used the data produced as a result of this law to determine if banks were meeting their lending obligations in the minority and lower-income communities in which they do business. Congress passed this law because too many lenders were discriminating against minority borrowers. “Redlining” was the name given to the practice by banks of literally drawing a red line around minority areas and then proceeding to deny people within the red border home loans – even if they were otherwise qualified. The law has been in place for 30 years, but the right-wing fringe claims it somehow is responsible for predatory lending practices that date back just to the beginning of this decade.

Notice what these revisionists are not mentioning.

No “thank you” to former Senator Phil Gramm for pushing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. This law was passed in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 – and designed to separate banking from securities activities. In 1999, when Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and in so doing repealed Glass-Steagall the banks strayed into rough waters by looking for fast money from risky investments in securities and derivatives.

As predatory lending mushroomed out of control, the regulators — key among them, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Comptroller of Currency — sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took exactly three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. Bloomberg news service found that the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

No “tip of the hat” to the Bush Administration for preempting state regulators and Attorneys General from using state consumer laws to crack down on predatory and sub-prime lending by national banks.

And, let us not forget the folks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine allowing these two government sponsored enterprises–that were weakly regulated by HUD–to claim they were meeting the national housing goals by counting the purchase of subprime loans. Back in May of 2000, our associate Jonathan Brown warned that it would be inappropriate and counterproductive to encourage Fannie and Freddie to meet the housing goals by purchasing subprime loans. Too bad our members of Congress and the regulators at HUD were infected with deregulatory zeal. Former Texas Senator and current UBS executive Phil Gramm — would-be President John McCain’s Treasury Secretary-in-waiting — pushed through the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the derivatives market. With help from his wife, Wendy, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who went on to a post on the Enron board of directors, Gramm removed the controls on Wall Street so it could innovate all sorts of exotic financial instruments. Instruments far riskier than advertised, and now at the core of the financial meltdown.

The SEC, through its “consolidated supervised entities” program, decided that voluntary regulation would work for the investment banking sector. Not surprisingly, this was a scheme cooked up by Wall Street itself. The investment banks were permitted to double, triple and go 20 times (and more) down on their bets by using lots of borrowed money. They made minimal disclosures to the SEC about what they were doing, and the SEC didn’t bother to review those disclosures adequately. Too bad for the investment banks — and the rest of us — they made lots of bad bets. The SEC has now closed the voluntary program, though now there aren’t any major investment banks left (the two remaining ones have converted themselves into conventional banks).

It is time to start paying very close attention to government officials behind the deregulation curtain. Let your Members of Congress know you are not willing to bailout the gamblers on Wall Street with a no-strings attached pile of taxpayer dollars. The time for regulation is upon us.

* Ralph Nader is running for president as an independent.

The 68-year-old justice fighter had been battling a reoccurrence of lymphoma cancer, and his condition had rapidly deteriorated over the past few days.

Peter was a student leader, civil rights advocate, leader in the socially responsible investment industry with his own investment firm, Progressive Asset Management, Inc., and author of books on investment and history including Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877, The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction, California Under Corporate Rule, and his recent book, The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially.

Peter used his eloquence, sharp wit, and barnstorming bravado to blaze a trail for 21st century third party politics in the US. He was a third party candidate for state and national office, making three gubernatorial runs in California as a Green, including one in the 2002 election when he earned 5.3 percent of the vote. In the 2003 recall election, he debated Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and in the 2004 Presidential election, he was my running mate on our Independent Ticket.

Among the many causes Peter forcefully championed were a living wage, healthcare for all, and making the US the world leader in renewable energy. He was also a passionate advocate for electoral reform, pressing for proportional representation and internal run-off voting (allows voters to rank their top choices) in an effort to overturn the “200-year-old dysfunctional money-dominated winner take-all system that disrespects the will of the people.”

Peter was a friend, colleague and politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere. Everyone who met Peter, talked with Peter, worked with Peter, or argued with Peter, will miss the passing of a great American.

Peter Camejo is survived by his wife Morella, his father Daniel, his daughter Alexandra, his son Victor, three brothers Antonio, Daniel, and Danny, and three grandchildren Andrew, Daniel, and Oliver.

When his autobiography (with the working title Northstar) is published, we will all be able to get a vivid sense of the great measure of Peter Camejo as a sentinel force for civil rights and civil liberties, and expander of democracy. His lifework will inspire the political and economic future for a long time.

PS: As Vijay Prashad notes, Camejo was a member of the 1960 Venezuelan Olympics team for yachting.

The corporate controlled, so-called Commission on Presidential Debates will not let any independent candidate in unless they show 15 percent in a series of polls in September.

That’s no surprise.

What is surprising is the failure of other debates to fill the vacuum.

Part of this is due to Senator Obama’s reluctance to engage his opponents.

On May 4, Obama told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that he was willing to debate with “any of my opponents about what this country means, what makes it great.”

But earlier this month, Obama’s campaign manager backed off, saying that Obama would debate only Senator McCain, and only in the three rigged debates sponsored by the two parties and paid for by major corporations.

Senator Obama has also refused to participate in a number of other debates — including the Google debate in New Orleans, the Ft. Hood, Texas debate that is being organized by veterans groups, and the series of ten town hall meetings proposed by Senator McCain.

Senator Obama’s refusal to participate is a mistake and is costing him in the polls.

Just yesterday, the Gallup tracking polls put McCain and Obama tied at 44 percent each.

If Obama doesn’t agree to more debates, he could end up at the end of a sentence that starts with Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

With only McCain and Obama on the stage, there will be no debate of key issues and re-directions important to the majority of the American people.

Just go down the partial list:

Single payer Medicare for all health care — supported by the majority of the American people, the majority of doctors and nurses, and just recently, unanimously, by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Obama says no. McCain says no.

Reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East — Obama says no. McCain says no.

Cut the bloated, wasteful, redundant military budget — Obama says no, McCain says no. They want a bigger military budget.

Empty the prisons of drug possessors and fill them up with corporate criminals — Obama says no, McCain says no.

Nader/Gonzalez says yes — to each.

The only way to change this systemic exclusion is for millions of Americans to become engaged now.

Think about oil prices for big consumers, not just your pocketbook. Airlines are groaning, limiting flights, and laying off employees because of the skyrocketing price for aviation fuel. Executives in that industry say that fuel costs are close to 40 percent of the cost of flying you to your destination.

The powerful chemical industry is under pressure from the prices they’re paying for petroleum — probably their main raw material.

The powerful trucking industry is beside itself with diesel fuel going to $5 per gallon.

You can add your own examples — cab companies, tourist industry, auto companies, etc.

Why aren’t these very influential lobbies throwing their weight around Washington to get something done about the speculators on Wall Street determining what is paid for gasoline and related petroleum products? It is in their own economic interests.

To do what? Well, for starters, push Congress to legislate higher margin requirements for the speculators at the New York Mercantile Exchange—the same fellows who, based on rumors, took the price of a barrel of oil up another $10 in one day.

Higher margin requirements (and wider disclosure rules) result in dampening speculation by reducing the amount of borrowed money these traders can use in their gigantic commodities casino.

Long-time member of the New York Stock Exchange, Michael Robbins — an astute and fair analyst — says margin rules have historically been used to dampen speculation on stock exchanges. He mentioned a time years ago when the Federal Reserve raised the margin requirement to ninety percent — meaning the traders had to put up 90% of their own money on trades.

There are other moves that can be made by Washington to ease the oil price crisis that is fueling inflation throughout the economy and shocking consumers. Suffice it to say that ExxonMobile testified earlier this month in Congress that absent the speculators, the price of a barrel of crude oil would be half what it is today. That would mean about $65 a barrel instead of $130 a barrel.

What else do these big corporate buyers of oil need?

Another area of major business firms not acting in their own interests involves the proposal in Congress (HR 676) to establish a single-payer health insurance system. That would mean government health insurance, private delivery of health care, free choice of doctor and hospital and saving about half a trillion dollars in insurance company administrative expenses and computerized billing overcharges a year.

Presently, tens of millions of workers have employer-based health insurance. For years, CEOs have complained that this cost puts them at a competitive disadvantage with their corporate competitors abroad and in Canada where there is universal government health insurance.

Former General Motors CEO, Jack Smith, publicly approved of the Canadian Medicare system, which he had experienced when he was head of GM Canada. Under full Medicare, these companies will pay less even with an assessment.

So, what’s up here? We don’t see these weighty corporate lobbies on Capitol Hill supporting the 91 House members who have endorsed HR 676.

Then there is the small business lobby ostensibly represented by the large National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). Small business is regularly subject to government policies and market discriminations that put them at a disadvantage with their large competitors.

Presently, for example, a Small Business Administration report concludes the following:

“Small businesses in their commercial sector faced a 30 percent price differential for electricity and a 20 percent price differential for natural gas. In the manufacturing sector, small businesses faced a 28 percent price differential for distillate fuel oil, a 27 percent price differential for natural gas, and a 14 percent price differential for coal.”

Are these volume discounts all fair for the Big Boys? Doubtful. Don’t count on the NFIB to protest. More often than not, the NFIB talks small business but walks the walk of the National Chamber of Commerce, which primarily lobbies for the interests of large companies.

So, why the overall reticence to fight for their own economic interests? First, corporations do not like to fight each other because they may need each other on other matters. Second, hey also have exposable skeletons in their own closets. Third, they do not have to initiate a business war of retaliation. Fourth, they do not want to give their traditional labor, environmental and consumer adversaries cause to strengthen their own power by, in effect, siding with these groups’ traditional causes.

If investors in this country had any power over the companies they own — as individuals, or through mutual funds and pension trusts — an inquiring process could open up on this fascinating question.

But as Robert Monks — a leading shareholder activist and writer — has said many times, those same CEOs have their own economic interests — think CEO compensation — in keeping investors powerless.

The “campus” keeps spreading with the growth of Google into more and more fields, even though advertising revenue still comprises over 90 percent of its total revenues. The company wants to “change the world,” make all information digital and accessible through Google. Its company motto is “Do No Evil,” which comes under increasing scrutiny, especially in the firm’s business with the national security state in Washington, DC and with the censors of Red China.

Google’s two founders out of Stanford graduate school — Sergey Brin and Larry Page — place the highest premium on hiring smart, motivated people who provide their own edge and work their own hours.

We were given “the tour” before entering a large space to be asked and answer questions before an audience of wunderkinds. E-mail traffic was monitored worldwide with a variety of electronic globes with various lights marking which countries were experiencing high or low traffic. Africa was the least lit. One of our photographers started to take a picture but was politely waved away with a few proprietary words. A new breed of trade secrets.

I noticed all the places where food — free and nutritious — was available. The guide said that food is no further than 150 feet from any workplace. “How can they keep their weight down with all these tempting repasts?” I asked. “Wait,” he said, leading us toward a large room where an almost eerie silence surrounded dozens of exercising Googlelites going through their solitary motions at 3:45 in the afternoon.

“How many hours do they work?” one of my colleagues asked. “We don’t really know. As long as they want to,” came the response.

In the amphitheatre, the director of communications and I started a Q and A, followed by more questions from the audience. It was followed by a YouTube interview. You can see both of them on: (Q&A) http://youtube.com/watch?v=KR-V6bl41zU and (Interview) http://youtube.com/watch?v=zzUrUNhIj4c&feature=related.

Google is a gigantic information means, bedecked with ever complex software, to what end? Information ideally leads to knowledge, then to judgment, then to wisdom and then to some action. As the ancient Chinese proverb succinctly put it — “To know and not to do is not to know.”

But what happens when a company is riding an ever rising crest of digitized information avalanches without being able to catch its breath and ask, “information for what?” I commented that we have had more information available in the last twenty five years, though our country and world seem to be getting worse overall; measured by indicators of the human condition. With information being the “currency of democracy,” conditions should be improving across the board.

“Knowledge for what?” I asked. Well, for starters, Google is trying to figure out how to put on its own Presidential debates, starting with one in New Orleans in the autumn. Certainly it can deliver an internet audience of considerable size. But will the major candidates balk if there are other candidates meeting criteria such as a majority of Americans wanting them to participate?

The present Commission on Presidential Debates is a private nonprofit corporation created and controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties (see http://opendebates.org/). They do not want other seats on the stage and the television networks follow along with this exclusionary format.

Google, with its own Foundation looking for creative applications that produce results for the well-being of people, should hold regular public hearings on the ground around the country for ideas. They may be surprised by what people propose.

In any event, the examples of knowing but not doing are everywhere. More people succumbed to tuberculosis in the world last year than ten years ago. Medical scientists learned how to treat TB nearly fifty years ago. Knowledge alone is not enough.

For years the technology to present the up-to-date voting record of each member of Congress has been available. Yet only about a dozen legislators do so, led by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Chris Shays (R-CT). Recalcitrant power blocks what people most want directly from their lawmakers’ website. Here Google can make the difference with Capitol Hill, if it wants to connect information technology to informed voters.

When the internet began, some of us thought that it would make it easy and cheap for people to band together for bargaining and lobbying as consumers. At last, the big banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, automobile firms and so forth would have organized countervailing consumer power with millions of members and ample full time staffs. It has not happened.

Clearly technology and information by themselves do not produce beneficial change. That depends on how decentralized political, economic and social power is exercised in a corporate society where the few decide for the many.

I left Google hoping for a more extensive follow-up conversation, grounded in Marcus Cicero’s assertion, over 2000 years ago, that “Freedom is participation in power.” That is what connects knowledge to beneficial action, if people have that freedom.

To hear Harry speak out against the scourge of hunger in a world of plenty was to hear informed passion that was relentless whether on Capitol Hill, at poverty conferences or at his concerts.

Now the specter of world hunger is looming, with sharply rising basic food prices and unnecessary food shortages sparking food riots in places like Haiti and Egypt. Officials with the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) are alarmed. The WFP has put out an emergency appeal for more funds, saying another 100 million humans have been thrown into the desperate hunger pits.

Harry would have been all over the politicians in Congress and the White House who, with their bellies full, could not muster the empathy to do something.

Directly under Bush and the Congress is the authority to reduce the biggest single factor boosting food prices — reversing the tax-subsidized policy of growing ever more corn to turn into fuel at the expense of huge acreages that used to produce wheat, soy, rice and other edibles.

Corn ethanol is a multifaceted monstrosity—radiating damage in all directions of the compass. Reducing acreage for edible crops has sparked a surge in the price of bread and other foodstuffs. Congress and Bush continue to mandate larger amounts of subsidized corn ethanol.

Republican Representative Robert W. Goodlatte says: “The mandate basically says [corn] ethanol comes ahead of food on your table, comes ahead of feed for livestock, comes ahead of grains available for export.”

Corn growing farmers are happy with a bushel coming in at $5 to $6 — a record.

A subsidy-laden, once-every-five-years farm bill is winding its way through Congress. The bill keeps the “good-to-fuel” mandates that are expanding corn acreage and contributing to a rise of global food prices.

Of course, more meat diets in China, futures market speculation, higher prices for oil and some bad weather and poor food reserve planning have also contributed to shortages and higher prices.

But subsidized corn ethanol gets the first prize for policy madness. It not only damages the environment, soaks up the water from mid-west aquifers, scuttles set asides for soil conservation, but its net energy equation qualifies for collective insanity on Capitol Hill. To produce a gallon of ethanol from corn requires almost as much energy (mostly coal burning) as it produces.
Designed to alleviate oil imports, hold down gasoline prices and diminish greenhouse gases, corn ethanol has flopped on all three scores.

Princeton scholar Lester Brown, an early sounder of the alarm of global food shortages and higher prices, writes in Science Magazine “that the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in global carbon emissions — and thus a catalyst for climate change.”

Can Congress change course and drop its farm subsidy of corn ethanol this year? Observers say, despite the growing calamities and the real risk of severe malnutrition, even starvation in Africa, Congress will do nothing.

Farm subsidies, once installed, are carved in stone—unless there is enough outcry from food consumers, taxpayers and environmentalists. They are paying from the pocketbook, from their taxes and health. That should be enough motivation, unless they need to see the distended stomachs of African and Asian children on the forthcoming television news.

Unless we wake up, we will continue to be a country stuck in traffic — in more ways than one.

Don’t rely on the election year political debates to pay attention to destructive corn ethanol programs. For years I have been speaking out against this boondoggle, while championing the small farmer in America, but no one in positions of Congressional leadership has been listening.

They must be waiting for the situation to get worse before they absorb a fraction of Harry Chapin’s empathy and care.

It seems that Stern wants to put heat on the private equity funds that have bought hospitals, nursing home chains and other firms whose employees he wants to organize. He lost a clumsy attempt to get a bill through the California legislature to restrict state pension funds from investing in private equity firms. The bill was backed by some foreign countries’ sovereign investment funds.

The state pension funds—CalSTRS and CalPERS—defeated the bill and received the approval of the Wall St. Journal’s right wing editorial writers—a rare plaudit indeed. The Journal even praised the California Nurses Association for obtaining a restraining order from a California court against SEIU harassing, assaulting and stalking members of this union, which is embroiled in disputes with SEIU for what the nurses’ union says are blatant sweetheart contracts that SEIU dangles before large employers.

Are you confused?

The California Nurses Association (CNA) is a fast growing union that fights for patient rights, for adequate nurse-patient ratios and bargains for strong contracts with hospital chains. SEIU, by contrast wants membership growth even if the cost is a weaker contract for the newly organized workers.

In Ohio, the CNA exposed a SEIU deal with nine hospitals owned by Catholic Healthcare Partners. SEIU let the employer pick SEIU as its chosen union without a single signed union card. The company-union collaboration scheduled elections.

CNA sent representatives to Ohio and sounded the alarm about a top-down agreement sealed by a mutually imposed code of silence.

SEIU and the hospital chain owner postponed the election after the employees became aware of this sweetheart deal.

CNA’s actions threw SEIU into a rage. Buses of SEIU people from Ohio were sent by Mr. Stern to break up an annual meeting of 1000 labor activists sponsored by the magazine, Labor Notes, in Dearborn, Michigan. CNA’s Executive Director, RoseAnn DeMoro was scheduled to speak to the assemblage.

Shouting, scuffling, overturned chairs and the arrival of the Dearborn Police to impose order led A.F.L.-C.I.O. president John J. Sweeney, to denounce what he called “a violent attack” orchestrated by SEIU.

SEIU split from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in 2005. SEIU aggressively raids other unions, such as the Allied International Union (AIU).

AIU fled a RICO law suit in New York against Stern’s alleged racketeering behavior and tactics to replace AIU leadership and take control of its members.

In addition, the Department of Labor is investigating a Las Vegas local of SEIU regarding possible misuse of employer funds to advance certain candidates in a local election.

All these struggles and outside charges against Andy Stern are not keeping him from moving to remove rebellious leaders of locals and consolidate power at the top. The biggest battle is in San Francisco. Dissident, Sal Rosselli, head of SEIU-United Health Care Workers West, will propose democratic changes to the autocratic way Stern runs the union at their national convention in June.

Rosselli is pushing to give local unions of SEIU more authority in contract bargaining and more voice in proposed union mergers.

Some labor observers believe Andy Stern is biting off more than he can chew. His assurance to the Democratic Party of over $50 million for the upcoming election exposes him to critics who believe he should be spending the money on and pay far more attention to getting more for his members from the large corporations he massages.

Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill’s mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack’s pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?

Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain’s wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?

On the Sunday talk shows, it is the same couple dozen members of the opinion oligopoly. There is Bill Kristol bringing home the neocon bacon with dreary frequency. There is the James Carville/Mary Matalin spouse show featuring their squabbling over ideology.

Meanwhile the daily struggle of the American people, absorbing the results of the power abuses by the rich, powerful and corporate, continues outside this inbred force field of insipid coverage and commentary.

The people hear nothing regarding what McCain, Obama and Clinton will do about runaway drug, gasoline, and heating oil prices, not to mention what these Senators have already not done in these areas of public outcry.

Disintegration is everywhere. Public works are crumbling — schools, clinics, public transit, libraries, drinking water and sewage-treatment plants. Tax dollars are being used to destroy more of Iraq and to subsidize or bail out companies recklessly run by obscenely overpaid CEOs. Public deficits are soaring.

Corporate criminals laugh all the way to the bank and back. Eighty percent of the workers have been falling behind while the growth of the economy, until last October, made the rich richer and the hyper-rich go off the charts.

One of three workers lives on Wal-Mart wage levels. Nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance. Eighteen thousand of these Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine. The recession deepens.

The corporate giants are abandoning millions of American workers as they move whole industries to dictatorial regimes abroad where political elites dictate wages, ban independent trade unions, and given sufficient grease, reduce other costs for these companies. Only American CEOs are not outsourced in this mad dash for greed and profits.

All our democratic institutions — courts, agencies, legislatures — are bypassed by “pull-down” autocratic trade treaties like the secretive World Trade Organization and NAFTA.

Wall Street operators seethe with reckless risks and then expect Washington to bail them out. Sure, why not? Washington is run by Wall Street executives on temporary job assignment in high government positions. The big corporations are big government.

Consumers are facing rapidly rising food prices, more home foreclosures, and rising rents. They have lost control over their money, as shown by the daily gouging by credit card companies, cell phone operators and the thousands of imposed fees, penalties, and charges, so well described in the new book Gotcha Capitalism by MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan. Poverty increases.

Each year, about 58,000 Americans die from air pollution (EPA figures), and 100,000 patients lose their lives from medical negligence in hospitals and many more from hospital-induced infections. Have you heard any of the major campaigns pay any attention to these grim casualty levels?

Anxious workers feel shut out — they are disrespected, denied claims, arbitrarily laid off and just plain helpless on the shifting sands and seas of corporate globalization.

Fully 81 percent believe the country is going in the wrong directions. Almost as many believe corporations have too much control over their lives. And 61 percent polled say the major parties are failing.

Now turn on the television and radio coverage of the presidential campaign. How much of the above is reflected in the incessant distractions about tactics, gaffes and the fervid money-raising race?

Can the press and pundits ever be serious if the people do not grab hold of politics and make them become serious about their pleas, their plight and their revulsions? If voters want a concise mission statement, read the preamble to the Constitution, which starts “We the People…” not “We the Corporations….”

There is a responsibility attached to those words.

There used to be a time when libraries were maintained and stocked as an integral part of the neighborhood and community. Not a single library closed in America due to the great economic depression of the nineteen thirties.

As illustrated so elaborately in Washington D.C. last week, the “gleaming new baseball stadium” temporarily named “Nationals Park” for the local major league baseball team, opened with $ 611 million dollars—mostly taxpayers money—going into its constructions. A Washington Post editorial crowed that the stadium was built “on time and within budget.” Why not? The cost came in at twice the estimate five years ago and its frantic construction pace reflected the priorities of the nation’s capital.

Consider one aspect of this “tale of two cities”—the depleted and disrepaired condition of the main Martin Luther King Library and its twenty six neighborhood branches. The annual budget last year was only $33 million. Four of the branches were shut down for remodeling or rebuilding three and a half years ago. The money has been appropriated. But with the sites being eyed by avaricious developers for “multi-use” complexes, among other reasons, the residents still do not have operating libraries. “On time and within budget” is not even on the radar.

Now I ask you—what is the most appropriate, profound, and respectful use of tax dollars? A ballpark built for mega-millionaire owners who could have raised their own capital? Or “gleaming new libraries” which edify a metropolis and play a critical role in educational, civic and urban renewal?

The question would answer itself were the decision made by local referendum. Polls continually showed that the disenfranchised people of the District of Columbia opposed a taxpayer-funded professional ballpark. The new mayor Adrian Fenty made this opposition a major issue in his improbable run for that office in 2006.

There is little doubt that the people would have preferred to use that $611 million (and other estimates are higher) for library renovations and acquisitions as well as neighborhood recreational facilities for participatory sports by all ages. Studies have shown that after school programs at libraries help children learn better and participatory sports—indoor and outdoor—keep physically exercised youngsters from getting into street trouble.

Nationals Park opened to great fanfare this past weekend, hailed by page after page of coverage in excruciating detail by the Washington Post. Would that this major newspaper devote such attention to the details of 27 library buildings, many of them crumbling and dysfunctional, in its home town.

When Post opinion writer Marc Fisher did devote two columns to the library’s plight in 2002, it helped spark our D.C. Library Renaissance Project, headed by Robin Diener. With library-minded citizens, this Project has brought more public attention, an increased budget and some improvement in the D.C. Library system, long considered to be in the bottom tier of library systems in major American cities.

When power is concentrated in the hands of the few, it’s small wonder that priorities are inverted to the level of the grotesque. Our national capital has been undergoing one of the biggest commercial building booms in its history. Cranes are busy everywhere, except for building the schools, libraries, clinics and neighborhood parks. Real estate developers and their customary allies—banks, mortgage firms, corporate law firms and trade associations—dominate. Not the people, who cannot even have the right to vote for two Senators and a Representative having full voting power in the Congress.

In its March 28, 2008 special, ten page section on Nationals Park, the Washington Post printed a full page “Letter to Nats Fans” by the team’s owners, the Lerner family. They profusely thanked the Mayor, the DC City Council, the corporate-welfare promoter called the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission, along with the construction firms, consultants, and workers.

Remarkably absent from their list of gratitude were the D.C. taxpayers who paid for the building that will make the Lerners and their partners even more wealthy. (These owners are in arbitration over their demand that the taxpayers even pay for the uniforms of the multi-millionaire ball players!)

The Lerners, in all decency, should name the stadium “Taxpayers Stadium.” Instead, they are shopping around the corporate groves for a company to pay to put its name on the building instead of its present “Nationals Park” designation.

Once again the boosteristic Washington Post headlined “Millions Ride on Nats’ Naming Rights.” It is the Lerners who get the millions, but Mark Lerner shared a worry, during an interview with the Post reporter while looking around the Park.

“It’s going to be a huge and expensive task between the signs on the roadways, and all the signs in here—all these neon signs. It’s going to cost a fortune—when the time comes,” he declared.

D.C. taxpayers are left to wonder who will pay for replacing these Nationals Park signs? They better check the fine print.

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, remains, disgracing his office for longtime repeated violations of the Constitution, federal
laws and international treaties to which the US is a solemn signatory.

In his forthright resignation statement, Eliot Spitzer — the prominent corporate crime buster — asserted that: “Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself.”

In a recent speech to a partisan Republican fundraising audience, George W. Bush fictionalized his Iraq war exploits and other related actions, and said that next January he will leave office “with his head held high.”

Eliot Spitzer violated certain laws regarding prostitution and transferring of money through banks — though the latter was disputed by some legal experts — and for such moral turpitude emotionally harmed himself, his family and his friends.

George W. Bush violated federal laws against torture, against spying on Americans without judicial approval, against due process of law and habeas corpus in arresting Americans without charges, imprisoning them and limited their access to attorneys. He committed a massive war of aggression, under false pretenses, violating again and again treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, federal statutes and the Constitution.

This war and its associated actions have cost the lives of one million Iraqis, over 4000 Americans, caused hundreds of thousands of serious injuries and diseases related to the destruction of Iraq’s public health facilities. As the popular button puts it: “He lied. They died.”

From the moment the news emerged about Spitzer’s sexual frolics the calls came for his immediate resignation. They came from the pundits and editorialists; they came from Republicans and they started coming from his fellow Democrats in the Assembly.

Speaker Sheldon Silver told Spitzer that many Democrats in the Assembly would abandon him in any impeachment vote.

George W. Bush is a recidivist war criminal and chronic violator of so many laws that the Center for Constitutional Rights has clustered them into five major impeachable “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” (under Article II, section .4)

Scores of leaders of the bar, including Michael Greco, former president of the American Bar Association, and legal scholars and former Congressional lawmakers have decried his laceration of the rule of law and his frequent declarations that signify that he believes he is above the law.

Many retired high military officers, diplomats and security officials have openly opposed his costly militaristic disasters.

Only Cong. Dennis Kucinich (Dem. Ohio) has publicly called for his impeachment.

No other member of Congress has moved toward his impeachment. To the contrary, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Dem. Calif.), Rep. Steny Hoyer (Dem. MD) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman, John Conyers (Dem. Mich.) publicly took “impeachment off the table” in 2006.

When Senator Russ Feingold (Dem. Wisc.) introduced a Resolution to merely /censure/ George W. Bush for his clear, repeated violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — a felony — his fellow Democrats looked the other way and ignored him.

Eliot Spitzer came under the rule of law and paid the price with his governorship and perhaps may face criminal charges.

George W. Bush is effectively immune from federal criminal and civil laws because no American has standing to sue him and the Attorney General, who does, is his handpicked cabinet member.

Moreover, the courts have consistently refused to take cases involving the conduct of foreign and military policy by the president and the Vice President regardless of the seriousness of the violation. The courts pronounce such disputes as “political” and say they have to be worked out by the Congress — i.e. mainly the impeachment authority.

Meanwhile, the American people have no authority to challenge these governmental crimes, which are committed in their name, and are rendered defenseless except for elections, which the two Party duopoly has rigged, commercialized, and trivialized. Even in this electoral arena, a collective vote of ouster of the incumbents does not bring public officials to justice, just to another position usually in the high paying corporate world.

So, on January 21, 2009, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be fugitives from justice without any Sheriffs, prosecutors or courts willing to uphold the rule of law.

What are the lessons from the differential treatment of a public official who consorts with prostitutes, without affecting his public policies, and a President who behaves like King George III did in 1776 and commits the exact kinds of multiple violations that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other founders of our Republic envisioned for invoking the impeachment provision of their carefully crafted checks and balances in the Constitution?

Well let’s see.

First, Bush and Cheney are advised not to travel to Brattleboro or Marlboro Vermont, two New England towns whose voters, in their frustrated outrage, passed non-binding articles instructing town officials to arrest them inside their jurisdictions.

Second, George W. Bush better not go to some men’s room at an airport and tap the shoe of the fellow in the next stall. While one lame-duck Senator barely survived that charge, for the President it would mean a massive public demand for his resignation.

We certainly can do better as a country of laws, not men.

It is sub-visible but in your pocket and on your back.

I speak of the hundreds of billions each year of federal government contracts, grants, leaseholds and licenses given to corporations to run our government, exploit our taxpayer assets and lay waste to efficient, responsive public services.

Before he left Washington in 2003 to run for Governor of Indiana, the hyper-conservative Director of Bush’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Mitch Daniels, endorsed the policy of having all federal departments and agencies place the full text of their contracts, leases of natural resources and other agreements on the Internet.

He placed a notice in the Federal Register inviting comments. Obviously, the large corporate contractors and lessees of minerals and other public resources did not like the idea. After all, information is the currency of democracy. Big businesses, like Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, love oligarchies and corporate socialism featuring subsidies, handouts, bailouts and contracted out governmental functions.

Big Bureaucracies in Washington, D.C. were not exactly enthusiastic about applying Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ comment that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Unfortunately, Daniels’ successor at OMB, Bush loyalist and now his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, was totally cold to the proposal. Activity grinded to a halt.

There is new activity on other fronts, however. Congress, in 2006, passed legislation to shed light on the contracting process. Starting in January of 2008, the government website: http://www.usaspending.gov/ started providing the public with the following information:

1. the name of the entity receiving the award;

2. the amount of the award;

3. information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;

4. the location of the entity receiving the award; and

5. a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award.

But the essential requirement-placing the entire text of these contracts on the web is the unfinished business of Congress which some Democrats and Republicans are turning their attention to in the coming months. In a meeting, Senator Chuck Grassley (Rep. Iowa) declared his support. Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, has also assented. Others from both Parties are on board.

The next step will either be placing the requisite amendment in must-pass legislation or having public hearings to show the American people the advantages as a taxpayer and citizen of expanding their “right to know.”

Consider the groups who will benefit from such open government:

1. Small business competitors who are often aced out of no-bid contracts and over-ridden by major prime contractors’ influence on federal agencies. The quality of competitive bidding and performance should go up.

2. Taxpayers and taxpayer groups have opportunities to review, challenge or oppose where their money is going.

3. The media will be able to report to the public about the doings of contracting and leasing and licensing government in faster and much greater detail.

4. Scholars and students at universities, business schools and law schools will be able to provide analyses, improvements on both the substantive content and proper procedures for making these agreements. Sweetheart giveaways, for example, of minerals on public land and easy avoidance of responsibilities should be reduced. Archives of these contracts will be created for historical reference.

5. Local and state governments and legislatures will find themselves equipped to participate where their interests are at stake and may be encouraged to emulate such openness with their own texts of contracts, leases and so forth.

Already, some states like Texas and Indiana are placing notices of state contracts on their websites.

Last week, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, took the initiative by placing on his department’s website. “Track Your Taxes,” details on his office’s spending, “including every single contract that our department has entered into, including legal services, such as Special Assistant Attorneys General, and expert witnesses.” Mr. Cox added that all vendor contracts, “the type of service being provided, the term of the contract, the amount of the contract, how much has been spent, and how much is left,” will be online.

Good step forward. But much more at all levels of government is needed, including the full texts and any performance information about delays, incomplete or incompetent work and other qualitative information such as cost over-runs. You may wish to contact your legislators and solicit their support.

Is it “mission accomplished” when all such outsourcing information is online for everyone to see? Of course not. Information has to be used. This requires that new habits be established.

Reporters, scholars, taxpayer groups and other are not used to this “beat.” They have to expand their time and resources to get on it. Otherwise, the bureaucrats and the business lobbies will continue with business as usual.

* You won’t hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime,
fraud, and abuse that have robbed trillions of dollars from workers,
investors, pension holders, taxpayers and consumers. Among the reforms
that won’t be suggested are providing resources to prosecute executive
crooks and laws to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have
real power. Candidates will not shout for a payback of ill-gotten gains,
to rein in executive pay, or to demand corporate sunshine laws.

* You won’t hear a demand that workers receive a living wage instead of
a minimum wage. There will be no backing for a repeal of the anti-union
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which has blocked more than 40 million workers
from forming or joining trade unions to improve wages and benefits above
Wal-Mart or McDonald’s levels.

* You won’t hear for a call for a withdrawal from the WTO and NAFTA.
Renegotiated trade agreements should stick to trade while labor,
environmental, and consumer rights are advanced by separate treaties
without being subordinated to the dictates of international commerce.

* You won’t hear a call for our income tax system to be substantially
revamped so that workers can keep more of their wages while we tax the
things we like least, such as pollution, stock speculation, addictive
industries, and energy guzzling technologies. Nor will you hear that
corporations should be required to pay their fair share; corporate tax
contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have
been declining for 50 years.

* You won’t hear a call for a single payer health system. Almost sixty
years after President Truman first proposed it, we still need health
insurance for everyone, a program with quality and cost controls and an
emphasis on prevention. Full Medicare for everyone will save thousands
of lives a year while maintaining patient choice of doctors and
hospitals within a competitive private health care delivery system.

* There is no reason to believe that the candidates will stand up to the
commercial interests profiting from our current energy situation. We
need a major environmental health agenda that challenges these
entrenched interests with major new initiatives in solar energy,
doubling motor vehicle fuel efficiency, and other quantified sustainable
and clean energy technologies. Nor will there be adequate recognition
that current fossil fuels are producing not just global warming, but
also cancer, respiratory diseases, and geopolitical entanglements.
Finally, there will be no calls for ending environmental racism that
leads to more contaminated water, air, and toxic dumps in poorer
neighborhoods.

* The candidates will not demand a reduction in the military budget that
devours half the federal government’s operating expenditures at a time
when there is no Soviet Union or other major state enemy in the world.
Studies by the General Accounting Office and internal Pentagon
assessments support the judgment of many retired admirals and generals
that a wasteful defense weakens our country and distorts priorities at home.

* You won’t hear a consistent clarion call for electoral reform. Both
parties have shamelessly engaged in gerrymandering, a process that
guarantees reelection of their candidates at the expense of frustrated
voters. Nor will there be serious proposals that millions of law-abiding
ex-felons be allowed to vote.

Other electoral reforms should include reducing barriers to candidates,
same day registration, a voter verified paper record for electronic
voting, run-off voting to insure winners receive a majority vote,
binding none-of-the-above choices and most important, full public
financing to guarantee clean elections.

* You won’t hear much about a failed war on drugs that costs nearly $50
billion annually. And the major candidates will not argue that addicts
should be treated rather than imprisoned. Nor should observers hope for
any call to repeal the “three strikes and you’re out” laws that have
needlessly filled our jails or to end mandatory sentencing that
hamstrings our judges.

* The candidates will ignore the diverse Israeli peace movement whose
members have developed accords for a two state solution with their
Palestinian and American counterparts. It is time to replace the
Washington puppet show with a real Washington peace show for the
security of the American, Palestinian, and Israeli people.

* You won’t hear the candidates stand up to business interests that have
backed changes to our civil justice system that restrict or close the
courtroom to wrongfully injured and cheated individuals, but not to
corporations. Where is the vocal campaign against fraud and injury upon
innocent patients, consumers, and workers? We should make it easier for
consumers to band together and defend themselves against harmful
practices in the marketplace.

Voters should visit the webpages of the major party candidates. See what
they say, and see what they do not say. Then email or send a letter to
any or all the candidates and ask them why they are avoiding these
issues. Breaking the taboos won’t start with the candidates. Maybe it
can start with the voters.

Obama and his entourage poured out of the bus and headed for the front door, over which hung a large sign: “HOME OF THE POLI-BEER: WHERE BOOZE, POLITICS AND SPORTS MIX IT UP!”

Inside the packed bar, the guys and gals were gathering for the Big Game to start. Before the game, however, there was an hour for political talk time. Their eyes widened in amazement when they saw Barack, bounding through the doorway with his secret service detail.

The bar had a big pit, with a huge crackling fireplace, where the patrons have their regular give and take. Obama was ready for some of that.

He started: “I stand for change. They said we set our sights too high in Iowa. They said now is not the time. I proved the cynics wrong in corn country and I’ll prove them wrong in the granite state. To show you I mean it, no speech, go at me. Our time for change has come.”

Guy number one-”Ok, Barack, you’re going for the power in the Big House, the big companies already have the power, how ya gonna make us little people powerful?”

Obama-”Stay tuned. One leap at a time. We are one people. Get me there first.”

Gal number one-”You say, CHANGE, well how are you going to cut the bloated military budget full of vast waste, fraud and abuse, when you’ve specifically said you’ll ‘expand and modernize the military?’ Why, it’s already half or more of the government’s operating budget, squeezing programs for children, health and all that. I’m an accountant and I know numbers.”

Obama-”Exactly. Our time for change has come. I’m going to change the old weapons with new weapons and the old soldiers with the new soldiers. That’s real change-at the grass roots.”

Guy number two-”You don’t seem to have any rough edges, Barack.”

Obama-”It’s all about the mood, dude.”

The crowd was getting agitated and the questions came faster and faster.

“Why are you for nuclear power with taxpayer guarantees?”

“Will you oppose Congress getting pay raises, pensions and health insurance until the American people get the same?”

“Do you favor repealing the anti-union nightmare-the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947?”

“How can you talk about change and take gobs of campaign money from the big corporate lawyers and bosses?”

Obama, smiling: “It’s ALL about the mood, dudes. All the rest are details you can look up on my website-obama_is_us.org. We are choosing hope over fear.”

Gal number two-”Ok, answer this one that probably isn’t on your website. When are you going to meet with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and campaign in the black ghettos-say Harlem or Watts?”

Obama-”Whoaa, give that tough lady a Poli-beer on me! We are one nation.”

Guy number three (with an Obama face mask)-”I’m the old Obama, remember me? I was for single-payer, full medicare for everyone. I was strongly for Palestinian rights and for replacing NAFTA and WTO, not for tweaking them. I was for taxing the super-rich and defending class actions. I was for capping credit-card and loan shark interest rates. What happened to me?”

Obama-”Well, didn’t I tell you that I stand for CHANGE?”

Gal number three-”You seem to be for everyone, but not everyone is for everyone. Some are against everyone. Tell me, are the big corporations, the greedy defense contractors, drug, oil and insurance companies, starting to quake in their boots at the thought that you are now the front-runner?”

Obama, lifting his chin-”Well, Ma’am, we haven’t ordered our seismometer yet.”

Oooohs and boos float around the pit. A few start drifting away.

Guy number four-”You’re one of those smart Haavard lawyers, Barack. You were a constitutional law teacher. You were against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. So, why aren’t you putting two and two together-impeachment of the war criminals in the White House followed by conviction in the Senate?”

Obama-”You don’t understand (testily), impeachment talk is just more of the same old Washington politics. I stand for change. No need to point fingers. We are one people.”

Gal number four-”Hello, Barack. I’m Hermaphrodite and I luv your blended politics of harmony.”

Obama-”Great! Then how about a quick dance around the bar before we have to leave,” he said, humming to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic-”We are choosing unity over division, we’re sending a powerful message, that change is a coming to America, it is all about the mood, dude”

Speaking, writing and testifying against these massive unregulated rip-offs of defenseless Americans are two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — Arthur Levitt and William Donaldson. Openly sharing their urgent pleas for reform are John Bogle, founder of mutual fund indexing and severe critic of excessive, often hidden, mutual fund fees, and Lynn Turner former chief accountant of the SEC.

These men are well known and respected in their fields, have ready access to the mass business media, possess great rolodexes of supportive people all over the country and could raise substantial sums of money. They are part of the monied classes themselves.

And for what? To start a large investor protection and action organization to represent the 60 million powerless and individual investors in our country. Individual investors really have no organized voice, either in Washington, D.C., or the state and local level where public sentiment and demand for action generates the rumble for change.

These experienced, superbly connected men, who have respected each other for years and are frustrated over inaction by those in authority, are not taking the next step.

To demonstrate their credentials, see their books Take on the Street: How to Fight Your Financial Future and Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don’t Want You to Know by Arthur Levitt, and The Little Book of Common Sense Investing and The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle. To document the broader urgency of their concerns, see veteran shareholder rights leader, Robert Monks’ new book Corpocracy.

It would not take you very long, searching the Internet, to come up with scores of retired high military officers, from Generals and Admirals on down, high-ranking former diplomats and national security officials, who have spoken and written against the invasion of Iraq and the continuing quagmire and casualties that have cost our country so much and destroyed so much of Iraq and its people.

These outspoken, stand-up Americans, include former cabinet secretaries, agency chiefs, and White House special assistants, who have serve under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

No one can question the experience and service of these straight-talk, former public officials. They have seen it all. Wealthy, like-minded funders would return their calls. Organized together into a powerful, well funded advocacy organization, these Americans can have a decisive impact on Congress and the White House, because they would be able to reach the American people through the mass media with the truth, and the strategies for peace and justice.

Although active in their pursuit of a sound foreign and military policy that does not jeopardize and bankrupt America, they have not taken this next step.

Can you possibly count all the progressives — elected, academic, authors and columnists — who are tearing into the Democratic Party for how often they caved in Congress this year to George W. Bush and his minority Republicans in the Senate and House?

There is nothing new about their complaints. Whether on foreign or domestic policy, whether on the domination of giant corporations over elections, legislatures, regulatory agencies and mass media, whether on the destructive results and portents of corporate globalization and autocratic trade regimes (WTO and NAFTA), progressives have been criticizing the Democrats for years now.

Hear it from Bob Herbert of the New York Times, John Nichols of The Nation magazine, the duos of James Carville and Paul Begala, Mark Crispin Miller and Jim Hightower, Bill Moyers and Anthony Lewis, Senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown, and Congressman John Conyers and Ed Markey — to name just a very few of the grossly disappointed and outraged critics of the establishment Democrats, and their Democratic Leadership Council and their corporate financiers.

But they do not take the next step. Or steps. Either organize into a powerful counter-weight inside the Democratic Party to make progressive demands that cannot be shrugged off, or move to a progressive third party that can either lever its messages to the Democrats or compete with them?

How many years can the bad Republicans and their corporatist allies keep pulling the mainstream Democratic Party toward them and leave progressives with the futility of the least worst form of disastrous corporate government?

There are many influential and knowledgeable people in our country who know what causes are critical to pursue, what redirections are necessary for present and future generations, what assets of persuasion and change to amass. But they are stalled in this state of the next step not taken.

Taking the next step is the difference between talking and acting, between promise and performance, between autocracy and democracy!

In a recent column about what she saw as the repetitiveness and small-mindedness of Hillary Clinton (and her spokesman), Barack Obama and John Edwards, she took this unexplained swipe at former Senator Mike Gravel’s presence in a debate sponsored by National Public Radio:

“What the heck is Mike Gravel doing back on stage? Didn’t we get rid of him 10 or 20 debates ago?”

This dismissal may be seen by some readers as a laugh or as an impulsive throwaway line. Not so with Ms. Collins. She has little tolerance for filling media debate chairs with candidates pundits, like her believe candidates who are not front runners do not have a chance to overcome their super-low polls.

Nor does she lose any sleep over NBC (a subsidiary of General Electric) keeping the anti-nuclear Mr. Gravel out of its hosted debate in Philadelphia last month because he had not yet raised a million dollars.

Ms. Collins’ treatment of the “second tier” candidates in the Democratic Party, such as Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, is remarkable for at least three reasons.

First, although she is a more sand-papered progressive than in her more radical, younger days as a small starter reporting for the Connecticut State News Bureau, I’ll bet she agrees with much of the two-time Senator Gravel’s record in Congress and his present positions on the war in Iraq, Presidential accountability, corporate power and crime and the mistreatment of workers, consumers and uninsured patients.

Second, for several years ending a few months ago, she presided over the New York Times editorial page, producing some of the finest editorials in the paper’s history. Among many well considered subjects, were included such as: standing up for whistle-blowers, dissenters, the rights of small business and workers and especially, the civil liberties and rights of minority voters afflicted with myriad electoral abuses and obstructions.

Thirdly, she has written a book about the history of women’s rights in America — titled America’s Women (William Morrow, 2003), which must have touched in a sensitive way those lonely self-starters, known as suffragettes, along with those very small parties and even smaller candidates pressing for the female voting franchise. She knows there are many ways to win short of winning an election.

In recent weeks, her paper’s editorial page has delivered brilliant excoriations of the similarities in the converging the Republican and Democratic Parties, taking the latter severely to task on important national issues.

I doubt very much that Gail Collins disagrees with these editorials. In fact, privately she is known to be even more critical of the political status quo in this country. One might surmise that she should therefore welcome more voices and choices to come before the citizenry during election times, including more third party and independent candidates as well.

After all, aren’t we all glad that ballot access was so easy in the nineteenth century, compared to today, that small parties like the anti-slavery, women’s rights, labor and farmer-populist parties got onto the ballots and pioneered hugely important agendas, ignored by the Democratic, Whig and Republican Parties. These small starters never came close to winning the Presidency o, except for the populist parties, winning many Congressional elections.

Put Gail Collins back into the 19th century and she would be whooping it up for those valiant few voters and little candidates who voted and ran against the grain of the business-indentured, often bigoted major Parties. Here in the twenty-first century, Gail Collins writes the predicates of progressive values and then sprawls to the dead-end conclusions — stay with the least-worst major Party candidates.

Just as small seeds need a chance to sprout to regenerate nature and sustain humankind, just as the tiniest of businesses need to have a chance to innovate in the business world, so too, small candidates need to have the chance. For they can often enrich the political dialogue, move the big boys to overdue recognitions, even if they do not have a chance to win on election day in a rigged, monetized, winner-take all system, bereft of both instant run-off voting and proportional representation procedures.

Columnists such as Gail Collins and her humane colleague, Bob Herbert, abhor going into these fields of political fertility. Instead, their rendition of political and corporate abuses flows into the repetitive, narrow ruts of political servility — not just the two party duopoly ruts but its major candidate groovers.

So progressive columnists, such as there are, wring their hands over why the Democratic Party, its incumbents and its major candidates do not heed their findings, their pleas, their hopes for the American people. They keep on wringing their hands until they encase their minds in a cul-de-sac that categorically disallows even a contemplation that political alternatives in person and party should be given visibility.

Open you mind a little, Gail Collins, and you might learn something about the need for frameworks that enable the sovereignty of the people to be expressed in a variety of practical ways, including national initiatives. You may laugh at Mike Gravel having difficulty explaining his studious proposal for a national initiative during sound-bite debates. Instead, try writing a column on why some noted constitutional law professors believe there is a sound constitutional basis for such a proposal.

This would be a good way to spark a serious debate about the myth of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Such an excurses would help deepen a very shallow Presidential campaign and be more becoming to you than wanting to rid Mike Gravel from the so-called debates. And you and your profession, who regularly confess boredom with the major candidates, might actually find some excitement in your daily work.

After years of corporate greenwashing, is this wave of corporate greenmania for real? Is it more than hype when the New York Times marks a recent article with the sidebar “The market tells producers: it’s go green or goodbye”?

Well, not if the impetus has to come from stronger regulation or environmentally driven government purchases. Those two pressure points have largely been kept dormant or are de minimis.

When business sees environmental management as saving it money, increasing productivity, becoming more competitive and attracting young talent, the prospect of sustainable policies taking root becomes more likely.

Obviously, it was not always viewed this way by corporate bosses who, not long ago, saw our air, water and soil as their toxic sewers.

There is still a long way to go to “green” the entire supply chain from the mines to the markets.

No corporation illustrates this broad continuum better than the Atlanta-based Interface Corporation — the country’s largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer. In 1994, founder Ray Anderson started his company on its goal as a “restorative enterprise,” which he described as zero net pollution and 100% recycling by 2020. The company is 45 percent there, he estimates.

Anderson speaks figures in his 100 plus lectures around the nation and world. His company’s use of fossil fuel is down 45 percent, net greenhouse gas production is down 60%, while company sales are up 49 percent. Water use is down by a third in its manufacturing and the filling of landfill with waste is down 80%.

“Sustainability,” Anderson told the New York Times, “pays in customer loyalty, employee spent-hard cash,” plus 336 million dollars in savings since 1995.

Anderson is unique in that what he and his team have done is not anecdotal, but system wide in scope. The news is replete with one large company achieving this with lighting or that with their transportation. With Interface, ecological efficiency is across the board.

Since even a stodgy company like General Electric is moving quickly into selling “green” technology as the next profit center, why are the aggregate figures on hydrocarbon use, greenhouse gases still increasing? Because there are no national missions to take these successful examples — these best practices — and make them a mandatory floor for all companies.

I refer to mandatory performance standards by the federal government — not specific design standards — backed up by specifications set by Uncle Sam, who is the buyer of so many products we all use, for its departments and agencies. These include vehicles, building construction, paper and many other goods and services that could be purchased only from solid “green companies.” (See: Forty Ways to Make Government Purchasing Green by Eleanor J. Lewis and Eric Weltman. Available from the Center for the Study of Responsive Law for $10. Mail orders to PO Box 19367 Washington, D.C. 20036.)

Mandatory federal standards and government purchasing specifications brought the people safer cars, higher recycled paper content and greater fuel efficiency for their vehicles and appliances. The deregulation craze of the past twenty-five years ended most of this forward progress.

Moreover, the retarding corporate powers are still going anti-green. They oppose a carbon tax and long overdue upgrades of fuel efficiency and pollution control standards. They want to build dozens of costly, unnecessary, unsafe atomic power plants with no less than 100% federal government loan guarantees.

This overall persistence of corporate intransigence needs to be kept in mind as the blizzard of green announcements by companies continues.

To keep our demands on industry and commerce to become more efficient, productive and environmentally benign, it is worthwhile to quote a passage drawn from Natural Capitalism, a book co-authored by a physicist, a lawyer and a successful businessman:

“Whether through better design or through new technologies, reducing waste represents a vast business opportunity. The U.S. economy is not even 10% as efficient as the laws of physics allow. Just the energy thrown off as waste heat by U.S. power stations equals the total energy use of Japan. Materials efficiency is even worse.”