Random Musings from a Muse: Corporatism

Showing posts with label Corporatism. Show all posts

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Dagger of the Mind

Scapegoat/Boogeyman

Dagger of the Mind,

or,

"The Only Thing We Have to Fear

Is Fear Itself,"

by Liviana

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

~ A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend,
by Walter C. Langer,
Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C., 1943/1944
(emphasis added)

For some months now, the American people have been subjected to insinuations, implications, speculations, and even blatantly explicit declarations that Russia somehow "interfered" with the just-past election, most often involving claims of alleged "hacking" on the part of the Russian government or its assets or agents, sometimes accusing other Americans, especially those who run or work for independent media outlets, of having acted willfully or unwittingly as agents of this scheme. Despite no evidence being provided in support of this narrative, certain venues of the main stream media have repeated these speculations, insinuations, and explicit allegations ad nauseam. Worth remembering in considering these tales and whispers is the history of how a mere six corporations came to dominate most of American media. Also extremely worthy of note is the history as well as the current connections of The Washington Post, which has been one of the main media outlets pushing this narrative.

The narrative in question began following publication, by WikiLeaks, of various emails of the Democratic National Committee (nobody seems to be even trying to pretend anymore that these emails are not authentic, so let's admit that they are in fact the genuine article), which exposed widespread corruption in the form of the DNC colluding with the Hillary Clinton for President campaign to promote said campaign and attempt to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders for the same office, a fact which many of Senator Sanders' supporters already suspected. Whether the narrative originated with the Hillary campaign or the DNC, it was a transparent attempt at diversion and misdirection. As the revelations continued, the main stream media was also implicated. One of the main media outlets promoting Mrs Clinton's candidacy was, again, The Washington Post, but it was by no means acting alone in this. The narrative was spread in an effort to shift attention from the content of the emails to the alleged theft of the emails by agents or assets of the Russian government's intelligence services, and possibly with the intention of frightening or enraging the American people so that the plans of certain geopolitical interests could be actualized, since such actualization would require activities with a great probability of provoking Russia's government and could lead to war with Russian forces.

To say that Russia alone was being scapegoated for the abysmal candidacy and pathetic strategies of the Hillary Clinton for President 2016 campaign, the corruption of the DNC, and the cooperation of much of the corporate media, however, would be to present only a part of the picture. Indeed, Senator Sanders himself, his supporters, Doctor Jill Stein, third party voters, Director James Comey of the FBI, the spectres of racism and sexism, and assorted other persons, groups, and ideas, were all subjects of the attempt to shift blame away from Hillary herself, her campaign, the DNC, the corporate media, and the Democratic Party establishment. Once the general election was over, though, the focus was quickly narrowed to "the Russian government." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence got involved in promoting the narrative. The FBI stated there was no evidence in support of this narrative. The Geheim Staats ... um ... the Department of Homeland Security got involved in promoting the narrative. CIA intel veterans scoffed. The CIA itself got involved in promoting the narrative. President Obama pushed the narrative. Even with the alphabet soup and the President joining in, however, only roughly half of Hillary's supporters were willing to buy into the narrative, far fewer of President-elect Trump's supporters thought it possible, and (although no data is available for the views of third party voters on the narrative) most Green Party US members and supporters of my acquaintance seem to me to be unimpressed with the narrative. Tied up in this mess is also a lot of hysteria over "Russian propaganda" and "fake news," which has prompted the critters in Congress, always eager to engage in kneejerk overreactions to hysteria, to pass a couple of laws which are, like the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act before them, attacks upon the Constitutional Rights of American citizens. This is where we are on the final day of the year 2016.

I have been keeping up with this as it unfolded, and have collected a number of sources which cast significant doubt on the narrative that "the Russians" engaged in any "hacking" or other "interference" in the just-past election cycle. I present them here for the consideration of the American people, in the interests of our Republic and with the hope that the people will come to the correct conclusion and demand that our government avoid the utter insanity which war between the USA and the Russian Federation would be, regardless of what some billionaires and their stooges might like. Note that, rather than embed the videos as I generally do, I will be giving video sources as hyperlinks; I made this choice to keep the presentation looking cleaner and more organized, because I wanted to present these sources in a chronological order (due to other responsibilities, I have not completely accomplished this, but only a few are out of place in the desired order).

DNC Hacker Denies Russian Link, Says Attack Was His ‘Personal Project' | Motherboard
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-denies-russian-link-says-attack-was-his-personal-project

Against Neo-McCarthyism | The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/against-neo-mccarthyism/

Democrats’ Tactic of Accusing Critics of Kremlin Allegiance Has Long, Ugly History in U.S. | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/08/dems-tactic-of-accusing-adversaries-of-kremlin-ties-and-russia-sympathies-has-long-history-in-us/

A New McCarthyism: Greenwald on Clinton Camp’s Attempts to Link Trump, Stein & WikiLeaks to Russia | Democracy Now! - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yy742HAovY

Follow the Money Trail For Source of 'Russian Threat' Paranoia | Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/follow-money-trail-source-russian-threat-paranoia/ri16086

Getting Fooled on Iraq, Libya, Now Russia | Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/15/getting-fooled-iraq-libya-now-russia

Corporate Media & Democrats Play Russia FEAR Card; Hide Hillary Clinton's Russian Record | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbBxrUJSItw

Russia responds to U.S. hacking allegations | CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-responds-to-us-hacking-allegations/

Background and Documents on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russian spy | WikiLeaks
https://wikileaks.org/Background-and-Documents-on-Attempts-to-Frame-Assange-as-a-Pedophile-and.html

Jordan's NOT HAVING Donna Brazile's Russia Dodge! | TYT Politics - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JChl8w6oQ

Media Ignores Clinton's Wikileaks Emails, Focuses On Russian Hacks | The Young Turks - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEDHjxOK6g

Clinton Confirms That WikiLeaks Podesta Emails Are True, Still Blames Russia | Inquisitr
http://www.inquisitr.com/3614870/clinton-confirms-that-wikileaks-podesta-emails-are-true-still-blames-russia/

The "Fact" That 17 Intelligence Agencies Confirmed Russia is Behind the Email Hacks Isn’t Actually…A "Fact" | Zero Hedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-20/fact-17-intelligence-agencies-confirmed-russia-behind-email-hacks-isn%E2%80%99t-actually%E2%80%A6a-f

NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia | Zero Hedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-22/nsa-whistleblower-us-intelligence-worker-likely-behind-dnc-leaks-not-russia

John Podesta Wasn't Hacked by Russians—He Fell For a Phishing Scam | The Humanist Report - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0oFRqnBhfQ

Despite Clinton Conspiracy Theories, FBI Finds No Clear Link Between Trump And Russia | Liberal Values
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/2016/11/01/despite-clinton-conspiracy-theories-fbi-finds-no-clear-link-between-trump-and-russia/

Here’s the Problem With the Story Connecting Russia to Donald Trump’s Email Server | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/

If You Question the Establishment You Are Guilty of Espionage, Says Corporate Media -- Because Russia | The Free Thought Project
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/establishment-guilty-espionage-russian/

Mainstream Media Recap: Who Colluded With the Clinton Campaign? | Observer
http://observer.com/2016/11/mainstream-media-recap-who-colluded-with-the-clinton-campaign/

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/

Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See | Fortune
http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/russian-fake-news/

'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful, Disgusting | Matt Taibbi - Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/washington-post-blacklist-story-is-shameful-disgusting-w452543

The CIA and the Press: When the Washington Post Ran the CIA’s Propaganda Network | CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/30/the-cia-and-the-press-when-the-washington-post-ran-the-cias-propaganda-network/

The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda | The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda

CounterPunch as Russian Propagandists: the Washington Post’s Shallow Smear | CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/counterpunch-as-russian-propagandists-the-washington-posts-shallow-smear/

Neo-McCarthyism and the New Cold War | The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/neo-mccarthyism-and-the-new-cold-war/

When the jig is up, the mainstream media blames Russia | The Digital Firehose
http://thedigitalfirehose.blogspot.com/2016/12/when-jig-is-up-mainstream-media-blames.html

Washington Post Appends Editor's Note to Russian Propaganda Story | Washingtonian
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/12/07/washington-post-appends-editors-note-russian-propaganda-story/

A New Wave Of Anti-Russia Hysteria Based Upon Questionable Information | Liberal Values
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/2016/12/10/a-new-wave-of-anti-russia-hysteria-based-upon-questionable-information/

Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA’s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/anonymous-leaks-to-the-washpost-about-the-cias-russia-beliefs-are-no-substitute-for-evidence/

Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked-the-dnc-its-not-enough/

CIA Intelligence Vets Dispute Russia Hack Claims, Look at the Wider Picture | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh0EAj9UUIY

Corporate Democrats Stir Up War Fever Against Russia to Turn Election | Black Agenda Report
http://blackagendareport.com/dems_stir_war_to_turn_election

Hillary Clinton Using "Fake News" as Excuse to Wage War on 1st Amendment | The Humanist Report - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh4JbZktGnY

Supposedly “Objective Reporters” Not So “Objective” When It Comes To The Scary Russian Menace | mtracey – Medium
https://medium.com/mtracey/supposedly-objective-reporters-not-so-objective-when-it-comes-to-the-scary-russian-menace-1c039d330196#.gur09xqw8

WikiLeaks Got Clinton Emails From Disgusted Insiders, Not Russia | The Jimmy Dore Show - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JafSyi4ZZ7w

WikiLeaks: Seth Rich Leaked Clinton Emails, Not Russia | BuzzfeedUSA
http://buzzfeedusa.com/wikileaks-seth-rich-leaked-clinton-emails-not-russia/

WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Hillary Clinton emails | Daily Mail Online
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html

Under Amazon’s CIA Cloud: The Washington Post | Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/12/18/under-amazons-cia-cloud-washington-post

Glenn Greenwald Sets The Record Straight On The CIA & Russian Hacking | Secular Talk - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4TD2xugqA

Obama Signs Ministry of Truth Into Law Two Days Before Christmas | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8K29tGuUpk

WikiLeaks ✔@wikileaks Obama's Russia sanctions: Comment & Link | Giovanna X - Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GiovannaX/posts/g4cYCFSkPqD

What Assange Actually Said:
Julian Assange: "Donald? It's a change anyway" | Repubblica.it
http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/12/23/news/assange_wikileaks-154754000/

What The Russian Hacking Report DOESN'T Say | Washington's Blog
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/russian-hacking-doesnt-say.html

Obama Sanctions Against Russia About War & Geopolitics NOT US Elections | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuFuueLi8s

The American Public Should Be Thankful For Russian “Interference” | mtracey — Medium
https://medium.com/mtracey/the-american-public-should-be-thankful-for-russian-interference-6f2a4cc8d0ab#.84rg3l15w

Something About This Russia Story Stinks | Matt Taibbi - Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439

The Demand For Proof Of Russian Hacking Completely Misses The Point | Caitlin Johnstone - Newslogue Debate
http://www.newslogue.com/debate/244/CaitlinJohnstone

White House fails to make case that Russian hackers tampered with election | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/did-russia-tamper-with-the-2016-election-bitter-debate-likely-to-rage-on/

Exhibit A: Narcissist, Megalomaniac, Pathological Liar, or Just Plain Batshit Crazy Warmonger? Hillary Clinton, ladies and gentlemen.
Hillary Clinton Calls Out Vladimir Putin in Most Hypocritical Rant Ever | The Humanist Report - YouTube
https://youtu.be/BCutIKaa2oQ

Corporate Media Draws Opposite Conclusion from CIA Vets on Leaked Russia Document | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwlJHzOjRtE

Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid | The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/

No, Russia Did Not Hack Grid. Republican/Democrats Reveal the GAME with Latest Lie | Sane Progressive - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zwJO5DFy0

2016: How Truth was Destroyed So You'd Buy the Government's Propaganda | The Free Thought Project
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/information-destroyed-truth-propaganda/#LDB1IZ92sLRYV8sb.99

US Govt Data Shows Russia Used Outdated Ukrainian PHP Malware | WordFence
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/
From the article just linked:

Overall Conclusion

The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

Fear is the mind-killer.

~ Frank Herbert

Believe what you want, but please investigate with critical thinking skills first, and without allowing incompetent twits and lying jackasses to terrorize you into swallowing claims which are, at best, dubious. War between the US and Russia would be devastation on a massive scale, and the goal of this would be, yet again, more profits for the already insanely and obscenely wealthy petroleum industry. Follow the money from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you'll know who's behind this current narrative and why (if you aren't already familiar with the players in the CNAS and their paper linked above, and haven't already read the Project for the New American Century's paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" ...).

I will continue to update these resources until shortly after Donald Trump has been inaugurated as President, after which time, the efforts of the establishment Democrats and their pals in the USIC to spin this "Russian interference in the election" narrative will become largely irrelevant. And again, for anyone who still doesn't get it: I'm not a supporter of Donald Trump (but do not mistake that disclaimer for any indication of support for Hillary Clinton; I am a member of the Green Party of the United States, and I voted for Doctor Jill Stein, who was the only person in the race worthy of the office after July of 2016), but more than enough TRUE things about him exist to criticize without having to make up unbelievable fairy tales.

The title of the post comes from Star Trek (The Original Series), Season 1, episode 9; episode 9 overall; production code 11.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2016

The Enterprise Incident(s)

The Enterprise Incident(s),

or,

Why Corporations Cannot Be Trusted to Self-Regulate,

by Liviana (Giovanna L.)

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume I, Reason in Common Sense, Chapter XII, "Flux and Constancy in Human Nature," Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905

Preface

Some of my readers already know, and others may have guessed from avatars I use in various places online, that I greatly enjoyed an episode of Star Trek (The Original Series) with the title of "The Enterprise Incident." Indeed, it is my favorite episode of all the Trek series. As a young child, watching the show for the first time (forty-eight years ago this evening when it was first broadcast on 27 September 1968), I do not recall my response to the episode. I was too young at the time to have much self-awareness or to remember much of what I was like then. However, having watched The Original Series (hereafter referred to as "TOS") in syndication for most of my life since then (and now having the entire series on DVD), "TEI" became my favorite episode from a rather early age. The Romulan commander in that episode (unnamed in the show or the script, but called variously "Di'on Charvon," "Liviana Charvanek," and "Praetor Thea" in the various novels which expanded upon the episode in subsequent years, and portrayed by the actress Joanne Linville) was someone I aspired to be, in some sense, and part of the reason for this, I must confess, is because Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was so damned hot! But part of it was also because she was a woman with authority, in charge of not merely one ship, but a wing of at least three ships.

For those who don't remember, in this episode, Commander t'Charvon sought to seduce Spock with two goals in mind (at least as far as the episode revealed): she wanted him, and she wanted the Enterprise, which had violated the treaty between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire by entering and crossing the Federation-Romulan Neutral Zone into Romulan territory. As the story played out, Spock deceived her, but only in part (as was revealed in the scene in the turbolift near the end). She did win his heart, but not his loyalty to the Romulan Star Empire; he did not and would not betray the Federation, and it was revealed also that the entire incident of the Enterprise entering Romulan territory had been a ruse ordered by Starfleet, in order to effect the theft of the new cloaking device then being used by the Romulans, an act, that is to say, of military espionage.

It is, therefore, with some annoyance that I write this particular blog post and give it this title. I would far rather anything I write which borrows this title be about more pleasant things than the subject matter of this blog post. Nevertheless, as some of my readers have noticed, I have recently begun a series of posts with the titles of episodes of TOS ("The Alternative Factor," "Bread and Circuses," and "For the World Is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky"), and I mean to continue that, for a bit longer at least; some of the episode titles would be challenging to apply to the sort of blogging I have been doing over the past several months, concerned primarily with social, political, and economic matters. I cannot see doing a series of posts with titles borrowed from TOS episodes without including the title of my favorite episode, but the only way of which I can conceive doing so at present is to do a post on incidents involving enterprise in the economic sense, and, to tie it (tenuously) to the ideas of the episode, what I will discuss in this post will concern corporate crime, including theft.

Introduction

The word "enterprise" is defined by the Oxford Online Dictionaries, for our purposes, as "a business or company," or "entrepreneurial economic activity." We can of course substitute "a corporation" for "a business" or "a company," they being synonymous.

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum) was a Russian woman who emigrated to the United States in 1926, aged 21 years. When she was 12, the Russian Empire fell in the February Revolution, which was followed some months later by the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power. Rand supported the February Revolution. After the Bosheviks came to power later in 1917, her family's shop was seized and nationalized, which, according to her followers, resulted in "crushing poverty" for the family. As a consequence of the Bolsheviks coming to power, however, Russian universities were opened to women, and a sixteen-year-old Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was in the first group of women to enroll in Petrograd State University. She and many other "bourgeois" students were purged from the university shortly before graduation, but complaints by foreign scientists visiting the Soviet Union resulted in her (and other purged students) being allowed to complete her work and graduate. Sometime before this, she had decided to call herself "Ayn Rand" as a nom-de-plume.

After coming to the United States, and eventually getting published, Rand began to fancy herself a philosopher. Now, this is something I know a fair amount about, having gotten my BA with a double major, and one of those majors was Philosophy, in which my focus was Logic and the history of ideas (as is the usual course of study in undergraduate Philosophy departments these days). I read a few of Rand's works as an undergrad (not for any class, but on my own initiative), but by no means all, finding them rather unsatisfactory in the philosophical concepts put forth in the pages. In later years, I learned more about her life, and her attitudes. Ayn Rand apparently firmly believed that the Soviet Union was a communist nation, and could never get over the facticity (or baggage, if you will) of her family having lost their shop and the subsequent "squalor." Her "philosophy," then, was influenced by these two things, and she became a staunch opponent of what she thought was Communism and Socialism, conflating the two into a conception of "Collectivism," and based, as she assumed, on a tribalist notion as distinct from Individualism. The Soviet Union named itself the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," and made use of much Marxist and other socialist rhetoric, and was generally portrayed as communist in the West, so perhaps she should not be faulted too much for believing this to be the case. However, a philosopher ought to examine rhetoric and seek to know if it be true or no. Not only is "the People's Democratic Republic of China" not democratic, but "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" was never socialist, much less communist, and while Tribalism is not radically individualistic, neither is it radically collectivistic (nor, for that matter, is all Socialism collectivist), but rather, Tribalism in its economic aspects is a form of Cooperativism.

Among Ayn Rand's ideas was the notion that any government regulation of corporate activities was undesirable, and she attempted to make virtues of greed and selfishness, regarding altruism as a vice. A full criticism of her "philosophy," which she named "Objectivism," is beyond the scope of this blog post (if the reader would like to see more thorough criticism of her ideas, I can recommend Adam Lee's two-part series of articles published by Alter-Net: "10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged'," and "10 Things I Discovered About Ayn Rand's Addled Brain After Reading 'Atlas Shrugged';" and for a criticism of her ideas in practice, I can recommend Edwin Lyngar's article, "My libertarian vacation nightmare: How Ayn Rand, Ron Paul & their groupies were all debunked," published by Salon), nor is it my intention here (or anywhere else) to defend the USSR (or actual Communism -- however, conflating all forms of Socialism with Marxism is intellectually dishonest, and there are forms of Socialism which are considerably different from Marx's version). At some point in the near future, I intend to discuss Socialism in greater detail, perhaps as part of a larger discussion of economic theories including Communism, Capitalism, Mercantilism, Feudalism, and Tribalism, but this will have to come after a discussion of the distinctions between Progressivism and Liberalism, because in talking about economic theories, I will have to go into distinctions between, say, Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy (the former is more in tune with progressive ideals, while the latter is more in tune with liberal ideals).

Corporate Criminal Incidents

Twenty years and three days ago, on 24 September 1996, Pete Wilson, then Governor of California, signed AB 1890, the Electric Energy Restructuring bill, into law, it having been passed by the California Legislature without a single dissenting vote. AB 1890 was supposed to dispense with utility monopolies in California, opening the market and thereby, theoretically, lowering costs to consumers. What happened in actuality was deregulation of the electric energy industry, massive consumer abuse by the industry, and unbridled greed which led to rolling blackouts and price gouging, which has forever after been associated with the name "the Enron scandal." Who can forget the Enron traders' callous references to having stolen "all that money ... from those poor grandmothers in California," who were personified as "Grandma Millie" in tapes and transcripts of calls released to the media? There were eventually hearings and lawsuits, government prosecution and incarceration and/or fining of at least some of the guilty. The CEO of Enron, however, Ken Lay, escaped the justice of man by dying from a heart attack while on vacation at his summer house in Colorado, three months before he was to be sentenced, having been found guilty on ten counts of securities fraud; his conviction was therefore posthumously vacated. One would think (hope, even) that the state government of California, as well as citizens of California and the rest of the nation, would have learned from this experiment in deregulation. But Jerry Brown is the current Governor of California, and while he may have been at one time somewhat progressive, today he is a cog in the establishment, and that means, among other things, that the state government's control over the industry is once again being questioned and put at risk.

Lest anyone think such excess is restricted to the energy industry (which I cannot imagine anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 20 years assuming), the same capitalist motto is whispered in the ear of executives across the corporate world: "Profit is success, and success is life!" Witness, for example, the strange case of one Martin Shkreli, who raised the price to consumers of a life-saving HIV drug by 4000%, without any increase of cost to produce the drug and no justification for the price hike other than his own greed, news of which broke about a year ago, while the pharmaceutical industry tried to pretend that his price hike was somehow uncharacteristic of the industry as a whole. Daraprim, the medication in question, was raised from $13.50 to $700, per pill. Nor did Shkreli start or stop with that single medicine, having previously owned a company which raised the consumer price of Thiola from $1.50 to $30 per pill in 2014, and went on in November of 2015 to buy a majority share in another pharmaceutical company, thereafter applying for exclusive right of sale to another medication. In December of 2015, Shkreli was charged with securities fraud by the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and arrested by the FBI. In February of 2016, he appeared before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the US House of Representatives, having been subpoenaed to answer questions about the Daraprim price increase. Shkreli refused to answer questions, on the basis of the Fifth Amendment and on the advice of his counsel. His behavior in the appearance, and his subsequent social media activity demonstrated what many believe (and I concur) to be an astounding level of hubris and sense of entitlement. While his criminal case has not yet been decided, he has continued to profit in the meantime, although he is no longer CEO of Retrophin, Turing Pharmaceuticals, or KaloBios Pharmaceuticals.

Now, once again, you would think that people would learn from this example, even though his case has not yet been decided, simply by virtue of Shkreli's notoriety for a while as "the most hated man on the internet," due in no small measure to his price hikes of medications like Daraprim. Yes, you would think, and hope, that others would have learned from Shkreli's sorry example. Not so! Enter Heather Bresch, daughter of Joe Manchin (former Governor of West Virginia, Democratic Super Delegate who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination for President by the Democratic National Convention, and current Senator from West Virginia to the US Senate) and CEO of Mylan, another pharmaceutical company, who saw to it that Mylan raised the price of the EpiPen, used to treat anaphylaxis, by 461-550% from the time the company secured the rights. This price hike resulted in a 600% salary increase for Bresch. The cost of an EpiPen in the United States is now as much as nine times higher than in other developed nations. If this price hike were not malicious enough, Bresch's mother, Gayle Manchin, after becoming head of the National Association of State Boards of Education, encouraged states to require schools to purchase epinephrine auto-injectors, and the EpiPen, manufactured exclusively by Mylan, was nearly the only such product available. In addition, while it could have been an honest mistake (although skepticism of such an explanation is perhaps warranted, given all that has been revealed already in this paragraph), Bresch did not give an accurate reckoning of profits to Congress during a recent House committee hearing. And the most repulsive thing about all of this? Anaphylaxis is deadly, the cost of manufacturing an EpiPen is rather small, and no justification for the price hike exists (unless, like Ayn Rand, you believe that greed is good, selfishness is a virtue, and altruism is a vice, and if you do, then may you swiftly reap what you sow).

Speaking of corporations which should have learned from the past, Wells Fargo should have remembered 2008, when, as a result of the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and banking "self-regulation" inspired by Alan Greenspan, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and was subsequently liquidated, the Federal government had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and bail out AIG, which it also took over, and the Dow fell more than 700 points in a single day. These banking corporations had seen accounting scandals, high risk lending and investment in the bubble economy of the housing market, negligence, and malfeasance including "cooking the books." But even these banking corporations should have known history well enough to know better, for bubble economies and deregulation were among the causes of the Great Depression. But again, that old lie, "Profit is success and success is life!" was whispered around inside the heads of the executives, and they hoped to avoid being caught. No concern for those who were exploited has been in evidence, lower level employees have been fired, and the executives believe that they will be able to enjoy their ill-gotten gains and escape any meaningful punishment. Indeed, so far, the only punishment for Wells Fargo's crimes has been a record-breaking fine which, however, was paltry in light of their profits, and their CEO, John Stumpf, being yelled at by US Senator Elizabeth Warner (perhaps trying to recoup some of the credibility she lost by endorsing corrupt corporatist pimpette Hillary Clinton) and verbally chastised by Senator Robert Menendez, and Wells Fargo has, as might be expected, admitted no wrongdoing. I am not the only one to point out that Wells Fargo and Mylan should have known something was wrong; Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, said something similar on the 19th, in reference to more recent history. Seth Meyers also alluded to the banking crisis of 2008 in reference to Wells Fargo's actions. Jimmy Dore pointed out that this has been going on at Wells Fargo since 2011, a mere three years after the events of 2008, and that Wells Fargo stock initially went up following the revelation of the cheating (although it has dropped some since then):

Although Stumpf did accept responsibility and claims to be "deeply sorry" for the actions of Wells Fargo, he has not resigned, has not been fired, has not, in fact, been punished in any way. Indeed, Carrie Tolstedt, head of the division responsible for overseeing the sector of Wells Fargo where the fake accounts were created, retired in July, with approximately $96.6 million in stock, stock options, and equity awards. In 2015, Stumpf himself received $4 million in awards, on top of his salary, from Wells Fargo, in addition to base salary and other compensation, and in 2014, his salary was $2.8 million, on top of which he also received a $4 million cash bonus, and shares valued at $12.5 million, for a total of $19.3 million in "compensation" for the year. Wells Fargo executives will retain their bonuses in spite of the scandal, and were Stumpf to retire, step down, or be fired, he would receive $123.6 million. In spite of Stumpf's repeated insistence that the culture of Wells Fargo was not to blame for these criminal actions, not everyone agrees. And to make matters worse, it turns out that Wells Fargo executive salaries were subsidized by US taxpayers. Pissed off yet? You should be. Just make sure you're pissed off at the right people, and don't fall for their attempts to blame the little guy who has only crumbs:

In light of these abuses, Violation Tracker, the corporate crime and misconduct searchable database maintained by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs first, has been expanded and now highlights banking, consumer protection, false claims, environmental, health, safety, price-fixing and bribery cases initiated by 30 federal regulatory agencies and the Justice Department since 2010. You can access Violation Tracker here.

But wait, there's more! ... although, at this point, I'm not sure we can take much more. But yea, verily, there have been still more "enterprise incidents" in the recent news, not least of which is the blatant destruction of ancient sacred sites by the interests behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (hereafter called the DAPL), and the intransigent insistence on building the thing, crossing the Missouri River twice and going through a sacred tribal burial ground of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, despite massive public opposition, outcry, and protests. The Department of Homeland Security (as if to cement its reputation as a government gaggle of fascist bully-boys intent on imposing the will of the corporate oligarchy on the people whether we want it or not) has been involved, cutting the water supply of the Sioux and others protesting (mostly other Native Americans, as well as environmentalists, anti-statists, anti-corporatists, and progressives), private security firms have used pepper spray on protesters and allowed their dogs to attack the protesters, and a sheriff's department has issued arrest warrants for Amy Goodman, a journalist who was simply covering the protests, as well as for Green Party presidential nominee Doctor Jill Stein for "vandalizing" the blade of a bulldozer (the spray paint she used on the blade would of course be worn away in the ordinary course of use of the 'dozer, so the charge of "vandalism" stretches the credibility of the sheriff's department) and "trespassing."

Furthermore, in defiance of the judicial process then in play, the corporate interests behind the DAPL had a two-mile, 150-foot wide path bulldozed through the sacred burial ground on Labor Day Weekend, land which was being contested in Federal Court when the path was bulldozed through it, another in a long history of injustices against Native Americans. On the Tuesday following the long weekend, 6 September 2016, a Federal Judge declined to order a halt to construction, instead requesting that Dakota Access LLC halt construction on only a small area in contention, pending a separate ruling to be issued later in the week. The company agreed to the request. This same Federal Judge, James Boasberg, on that Friday, the 9th, denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request for an injunction against the DAPL, but then, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Department of Justice, and Department of the Army, issued this joint statement, which temporarily halted work on the DAPL on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe. Also on the 6th, Democracy Now! reported on a new investigation which revealed more than two dozen major banks and financial institutions helping to fund the DAPL, among which are Bank of America Corporation, HSBC Holdings plc (held by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Ltd.), UBS AG (originally Union Bank of Switzerland), the Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo & Co, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., as seen here:

Not only because of the desecration of the sacred site of the Standing Rock Sioux, but also because of the potential ecological damage, the DAPL is ill-advised, as Doctor Jill Stein has pointed out. Between 2010 and the middle of 2015, leaks or ruptures in US pipelines killed 80 people, injured 389 more, cost $2.8 billion in damages, and released toxic chemicals into soil, waterways, and the atmosphere, in numerous states, as documented by the Center for Effective Government. Toxic chemicals released into soil and waterways may seep down into the aquifers, poisoning untapped reserves of what was formerly pure water. Truly, as Doctor Jill Stein has said, we do not need to be building more pipelines, but dismantling those already in existence, and moving to clean, sustainable, renewable energy. The outcome of the concerns around the DAPL remains uncertain. For the moment, construction in a limited area has been halted, pending a determination about whether or not the government will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions on the matter. Meanwhile, already back in May at the time the DAPL protests were gaining ground, the Obama administration quietly approved permits for two pipelines in Texas also owned by Energy Transfer Partners, and signed an agreement with Mexico forming the "US-Mexico Energy Business Council." Instead of approving these potential ecological disasters, we could be using our time, labor, and resources to fix some of the ecological damage which has been done.

And looming in the background are the "free trade" pacts which President Obama has favored, and which Hillary Clinton will push if elected to succeed Obama, agreements which will devastate national sovereignty by relaxing regulations on corporations even more and even allow multinational corporations to sue national governments for "lost profits" over any legislation which might include GMO labeling, country-of-origin labeling, protection of the environment, minimum wage, pro-labor policies, anti-trust laws, and so on.

And if you think this is only about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the already-extant North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), or even those and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), no; there are others already prepared in case the TPP and TTIP fail: the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). It is not enough to be vigilant; the corporate oligarchy has plans on top of plans on top of plans, and the money to hire thugs with pepper spray and attack dogs and bulldozers and more. While we are focused on one abuse, they are already busily planning more. When we have exhausted our bodies, minds, and financial resources fighting one abuse, they can simply hire more mercenaries and drones to enact their will while we recuperate and build back up our own finances which were expended in our previous resistance efforts. Instead, we must focus our efforts, not on the symptoms, but on the root causes of these abuses; we must change the system. This cannot be done by voting for politicians who are part of that system; we have to step out of line and elect those who have the interests of our nation and her states and people at heart. We must end the two-party duopoly, a deception in which two seeming parties are in actuality but one, which is controlled by the same establishment of corporatist oligarchs who have steadily eroded our democratic republic for their own gain. It's time. Will you step out of line and vote for Doctor Jill Stein for President, and progressives down the ballot? It's in our hands. We can do it, if we stop being afraid. Winning is impossible without the will to risk losing.

The title of the post comes from Star Trek (The Original Series), Season 3, episode 2; episode 57 overall; production code 59.

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