Sadly Prescient

Remember how some commentators and a huge number of ordinary people thought that the last US presidential election signalled the start of a shiny new enlightened era in US and world politics? With Obama's poll numbers plummeting and his abject failures to do much of anything substantial on the economy, the wars or the environment, it turns out that Jello Biafra's words from back in the 2008 primary season are looking as sage as ever:

“I figure every available tool should be used relentlessly to fight the powers that be. It’s not as though a President ‘Barack-star’ is going to wave his magic wand and suddenly Iraq is all better. My biggest worry about him is that if he wins, he’s just going to turn around, pull off the mask, and be the creature of the corporate establishment that his voting record indicates. And a whole generation inspired to get off their asses and participate will become so disillusioned that they don’t vote again.”

Indeed, Mr. Biafra, indeed.

The Health of Our Media = The Health of Our Democracy

Ex-CBS News anchor Dan Rather clearly gets it.

The Fix Is Indeed In

Frank Rich of the New York Times gets what this author has been saying since before the election. A change of style has, undoubtedly, taken place with the new administration but there's been very little change in substance that this blogger can see or believe in so far.

The Greatest Threat to Our Constitutional Democracy?

Dan Rather seems to get it.

Meet the new boss?

Think things will change substantially for the better if and when Hilary becomes President? Better think again. And then keep on thinking if you still have any doubts about what the priorities will be and who'll be pulling the strings behind the curtain.

Grover Norquist's dream comes true?

When the public sector has apparently been laid low to the point where it cannot even carry out its core function within the social contract, i.e. providing security for its citizens/subjects, and has to defer to corporations instead, it truly is in a position where it can be "drowned in the bathtub".

Key quote:

"We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube - those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets."

Great idea, because it's about as desirable for unaccountable corporations to be responsible for policing crime in the virtual world as it is for them to be responsible for policing crime in the physical one. Hmmm...

Of course, it may just be that the police actually do have the resources to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour but have other priorities instead. How much did hosting the G8 a couple of years ago cost the British taxpayer again? Or George Bush's pub lunch in Sedgefield? Or maintaining the massive surveillance state?

Information Landmine says that the real problem with the likes of the police, the security services and the military is that they don't exist to "serve and protect" the country but to defend wealth and privilege above all else. The fact that much of this remit is now being outsourced to private corporations, unaccountable to any nominally democratic processes, is merely a natural development given the Capitalism Gone Wild times in which we live.

The corporate takeover marches on

Not content with having privatized and outsourced much of the military, police and penal responsibilities previously the remit of the public sector, it seems that our right-wing, market fundamentalist overlords in the White House and Congress are now handing over significant amounts of responsibility for intelligence and national security to "private contractors" as well. Lo and behold, the public is only discovering the extent of this by accident.

Ironically, one of the touchstone issues that initiated the rise of conservatism to its dominant, mainstream position in US politics during the 1980s and '90s was, of course, the notion that "liberals" had not just allowed but actively encouraged a number of reckless entitlements, allowing "special interests" to "feed at the public trough" at the expense of hard-working taxpayer/citizens. Ronald Reagan once, (in)famously, told audiences on the campaign trail an apocryphal tale about an inner-city "welfare queen" in order to illustrate the incompetence and injustice fostered by "big government". That one wasn't even true, whereas the corporate sector's increasingly-extravagent free breakfasts, lunches and dinners at the public's expense are now (unwittingly, in the case of the Director of National Intellgence's PowerPoint presentation) a matter of public record.

So when does the left - or what passes for the left in the US - start hammering away at this as relentlessly as the cranky old conservatives did during their rise to power? And will the message be heard as loudly and as often this time, considering that pretty much next to every media outlet is controlled by corporate interests these days?

A New World Order, indeed!

One of the key tenets of the security structure within the modern International Political Economy has been the state's exclusive claim to "legitimate" violence. However, with the state increasingly having been taken over and dismantled by its ideological opponents on the right over the past quarter century, it should come as little surprise that the authority to wield force and inflict violence "legitimately" should be yet another thing that has been outsourced to the private sector.

Unsurprising, it may be. But whether it is a good thing or not probably depends on which side of the political spectrum one comes from, as well as which end of the assault rifle. What does seem clear to Information Landmine is that, so long as corporations and their allies remain in the ascendency over the public sector and the common good it exists to defend, we're likely to see a lot more of this kind of thing in future. For worse or for worse.