Harry Truman said, "No man should be allowed to be president who doesn't understand hogs." That's never been more true than it will be for the man or woman who walks into the White House on January 20, 2009.
If you've ever entered an enclosed, industrialized hog facility where hundreds of fattening porcines live out their short lives, you know that the smell of pig excrement completely redefines "stink." This stench will knock you to your knees, sear your lungs and brain, and make you scream for mercy. For nearly eight years, the White House has been a confined hog pen for corporate porkers, right-wing ideologues, imperialists, autocrats, and other swinish mess-makers. America's next president must not only set a new direction but will also have to clean up the mess and eradicate the stink left by the Bushites.
To help presidential contenders, congressional candidates and the rest of us get perspective on the odiferous legacy of the Bush-Cheney regime, the Lowdown is presenting a two-part factual accounting of the administration's achievements since 2001. This issue will feature Bush's domestic performance, and the May issue will highlight his international agenda. Hold your nose--and get out your scrubbers. [ read more ]
FROM THE "LAND OF THE CLUELESS AND CONNIVING," meet a couple of gentlemen who insist that America's political funding system is working splendidly. They report that there's absolutely nothing going on between the money interests and our lawmakers in Washington that should trouble our fuzzy little minds.
First up is one Paul Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists (bet you didn't know that lobbying is now such an industry in Washington that they've formed a lobby group for lobbyists!). He offers this insight:
"Our government is not corrupt, lobbyists are not bribing people, and members of Congress are not being bought for campaign contributions. I don't think we can say for certainty that the current system is broken."
Gosh, I wonder if he can say "TomDeLay JackAbramoff DukeCunningham" with certainty...or a straight face?
Next comes Ben Barr, who's from a pro-corporate Arizona think tank called the Goldwater Institute. In an interview last October on the PBS television show "NOW," he shared this wisdom:
NOW: Do you think money is a problem in politics under the traditional system?
Barr: No, I do not. Money is speech.
NOW: But, surely money can also distort speech....
Barr: That's the price of freedom.... Speech costs money.
Follow the bouncing logic: Speech costs money; money distorts speech; distorted speech is freedom. [ read more ]
There'll be a crush of cameras at the front door of the White House on January 20 as scores of media outlets scramble to record the moment that the new president walks in. But, wait--who're those people who'll be sliding in quietly behind him? They're the ones who'll spend the next four years whispering in the president's ear, sitting in strategy sessions, running presidential councils, filling agency slots, and pulling the levers of executive power.
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BREAK FOR CORPORATE CRIME
Corporate executives and their lawyers like to claim that a corporation is a "person" with all of the rights of an actual human being. Yet when one of these outfits gets caught violating laws, its lawyers argue that while this... [read more]