Not even our sagacious friend Obey could have imagined how many big mistakes would be pushed through Congress by selfish interests disingenuously shouting “Terrorism! Patriotism! God bless America!” while they grabbed as many governmental goodies as their fat fingers could clutch.
While the media trumpeted a jingoistic call for every American to rally around the flag, and while assorted corporations slapped their logos on billboards to piously proclaim “United We Stand,” a pinstriped, Gucci-clad army of lobbyists for these very same corporations quietly invaded our nation’s capital within hours of the September 11 crashbombings.
Like Special Forces going cave-to-cave in Tora Bora, this army went corridor to corridor, office to office, seeking out Congress critters, agency heads, and White House officials in an all-out effort to seize the moment for their own avaricious gain at the expense of everyone else. United We Stand? Hey, their motto is, “Me First.”
Let’s say it bluntly: These corporate interests are shameless war profiteers, predators on our democracy, and never in our history has there been such a loathsome frenzy of looting as the one still underway in Washington. The sheer scope of their haul is breath-taking, yet we continue to have our attention diverted from it by the Bushites and media elites, who keep pointing excitedly to maps of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.
Even though it’ll make you want to puke, let’s take a look at the corporate greed-o-rama going on under our very noses (and under our waving flag) here on the home front. The list that follows is by no means complete — and while some industries failed to get theirs in the first go-round of 2001, their lobbyists are still deployed en masse.
Who’s at the trough
Airline executives. These guys were at the front of the soup line, and there was sympathetic media coverage of the $15 billion bailout handed to this hard-hit industry within days of the terrorist attacks.
There was scant coverage, however, of the skullduggery within the bailout. For example, with White House backing, airline lobbyists killed all provisions that allocated even a dime of this fund to provide benefits to the devastated families of 140,000 fired workers.
The bailout did include a nifty provision assuring that top executives would keep collecting their bloated paychecks — sparing them any personal sacrifice even as they whacked workers and canceled their severance pay.
Beaches. Some of America’s most highly developed and exclusive coastal beaches do not exist naturally, but have to be re-sanded periodically to maintain the wide expanses that draw developer and tourist dollars. Beach-rebuilding lobbyists flocked to Washington after September 11, wailing that federal dollars for beach rebuilding not only were urgently needed for national-security reasons, but also were “vitally important” to help bolster the economy.
Incredibly, it worked. Dredgers, developers, engineering firms, and others in the beach-lobbying alliance took home $150 million, the largest sum ever doled out for sand. ... [ read more ]
Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
By gollies, when the economic going gets tough for America's workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders to get going! Get going, as in: rush like hell to find some gimmick to make it look like they're doing something without actually, you know, doing anything.
