A Spectre is Haunting America

“How many people have to die or face ruin, and how much of nature has to be despoiled before we rein in the cowboys of these runaway corporations?”–Bob Herbert, (“Following BP’s Lead,” NYT, May 24, 2010)

A spectre is haunting America—the spectre of corporatism. All the Independents of old America—the patriots and constitutionalists–need enter a holy alliance to reclaim the values of citizenship from the Corporatists and politicos who have sold off America’s blood and treasure. With feet clad in alligator boots and pockets full of cash, lobbyists, seeking influence, ceaselessly pour greenbacks into the purses of congressional representatives and the presidents. Big Energy agents party with Dept. of Interior operatives at Minerals Management Services, who are responsible for regulating their masters—both drillers and miners, the ones who die, while despoiling Mother Nature.

Whether your name is real or symbolic–Goldman-Sachs (CEO Lloyd Bankfein), British Petroleum (Tony Hayward), or Massey Energy (Dan Blankenship) Company, we believe you should be charged with crimes against the free  market you rigged, the careless plunder of natural resource, and for treason against the American experiment in democracy. If a Corporation wants to be a “person”—per the courts–then “it” must take responsibility for fraud, negligence, and industrial homicide. The government imprisons poor inner city people of color for dealing drugs but they let the white-collar killers and swindlers run free. The corporatists have built maquiladoras south of the border, based on NAFTA regs, which have destroyed the Mexican economy, thus creating a narco state complete with economic refugees fleeing north. Where are the enforcers of the Patriot Act?

Contrary to the tea party crazies or Rand Paul acolytes, Independent Americans believe the evidence shows some members of Corporate America and government can manage an honest bank, drill an oil well with double-cement casements, or mine coal, while venting methane. Honest cops and FBI agents are capable of arresting malcontent security threats due to police work—not torture. The Independents support private enterprise but don’t believe that Corporate American owns the government—or has the right to vote—despite the opinion of activist and reactionary judges. In Independent America, doctors and nurses —not insurance agents—discuss decisions with patients about their health care.

Whether in Times Square or on an airplane, it is the Independent volunteer and band of brothers—“Let’s get it on” (on 9/11)—whose streetwise reactions save lives. And why are we fighting a war in Afghanistan? Oh! It’s about international security? Tell it to the cops, who must arrest suspect taxi drivers with bombs on their minds. Tell a new generation of vets coming home with PTSD—like the previous Vietnam-era generation—about security and suffering for the sake of the military combine’s profits. And what military doctors and what military police couldn’t protect thirteen soldiers from dying at the hands of the crazed and pitiful Major Nidal Malik Hassan at Fort Hood? Two underpaid civilian police officers saved more soldiers from dying by doing their duty and standing up with low-tech revolvers.

Independent Americans want their government to respond but without the crooks: Elected officials who sell their birthright to the highest bidder and fiddle the air or let the water go bad. The Louisiana Pelican, blackened by oil, has replaced the American eagle as the new bird of paradise.

Here in Taos County, New Mexico, this writer lives between the spawn of two progenitors of polluted water and contaminated air: the Moly Mine Superfund site twenty miles to the north and LANL, the mother of all nuclear WMDs, seventy miles to the south. Why the mayor of Questa in north Taos, on Tuesday, May 18, at the village where Mother Moly “pays to play,” called the cops on local citizens at a public meeting lest unpleasant questions be asked about the “cover-up” for the sweetheart deal at the Chevron Mining Superfund Site. As Taos County Commissioner Andrew Chavez has said, “There’s something stinky in Questa.”

Let us vote this year for candidates who advocate law and order. Show Wall St. and Washington how the road to perdition leads to the Big House of the Blues. Charge big-time wrong-doers like Bankfein. Blankenship, and Hayward with crimes against Life in America, the American Dream, and the Sacred Earth.

Tags: Chaucer Henderson