We all know how items in the news often escape the corporate media machines. Here are a few juicy tidbits we may have missed:
* Mounting Opposition to the Patriot Act by Business Groups Even business is realizing that inner workings,“Confidential files, … as well as our trade secrets and other proprietary information – can too easily be obtained and disseminated under investigative powers expanded by the Patriot Act,” The Bush regime’s power grabbing is finally setting off alarm bells in the business world. Link to full story
* Rumsfeld’s $22.663 Billion Space Defense Budget in Chaos. Think Rummy’s gross incompetence is limited to his pathetic war planning? Think again. Link to full story
(more below)
*Will Proposed Intelligence Powers for the Pentagon Result in Spying on US Citizens? Not only will they be able to gather intelligence, build a dossier of informants, and spy on any one of us, but they won’t have to disclose a word of it. Link to full story
* Is Congress Planning to Sell Our National Parks to the Energy Industry? Apparently, this proposal is being bandied about by Richard Pombo R-Ca to coerce lawmakers to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. So land that belongs to every US citizen is being held for ransome. Link to full story
I think the opposition to the PATRIOT Act by the business groups (who have finally figured out that if their corporations are legally persons, they lose their privacy rights too) is a symptom of the growing disenchantment of the business powers-that-be with this administration. They will be supporting Democrats big time in 2006. Maybe not the Democrats we’d like, but the plutocrats have just about had their fill of W’s 3-ring circus featuring Cheney’s world-famous flying monkeys. And the fundies scare the bejeesus out of them. How are you going to run an engineering firm or pharmaceutical company without properly educated students? Especially since the best and brightest foreign students are going elsewhere now… All in all, very bad news for the bottom line.
Their dawning realization: Better to have to endure health, labor and environmental laws than a tanking economy, growing disdain for America (i.e., their products) around the world, skyrocketing energy costs, the whims of the theocrats (who might decide your new drug is immoral), cavernous budget deficits – with bills held by the Chinese, endless war and terror threats, etc. Time for the adults to clean up after the children.
The business class may be interested only in themselves, but they are rational – you cannot make and keep a fortune otherwise. The current Alice-in-Wonderland world is NOT a stable business climate. They WILL install a new regime as soon as possible, as that is cheaper than moving everything offshore, and it is still possible for people with their resources.
Or, as the theocrats could tell you, the writing is on the wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin…
Thanks, Knoxville Progressive, for that excellent analysis. I thought that story was an interesting way to show that not all corporations are in bed with the Bush administration.
That intel story is disturbing. More people need to be made aware of what’s going on.
I was worried about Negroponte, who seems to like working in the shadows. Rumsfeld is just as bad. I can’t put my hands on it, but I read an article recently that tells how Rummy is hiding more and more intelligence ops behind a wall of classification within DoD so Negroponte can’t get his mitts on them. The result is dueling intelligence agencies, both apparently looking to set up shop here in the US. Scary stuff.