Democratic Capitalism as an Oxymoron

Detecting a neocon crapshoot with our futures

      I am not an economist. I have never taken even one course in economics. I do, however, have a highly sensitive, built-in crap detector, and, after having lived through 40 years of laissez-fair, “free” market, trickle-down Reaganomics, and spending a great deal of my free time reading about politics, the antenna on my detector is quivering like mad.
      I wrote an email to the real deal recently, the Chair of the Economics department at a local university. His response was reassuring. He said, “I expect that the financial meltdown will be prevented from getting worse.”
      Okay...that sounded good. But then McCain bailed out of the debates; then the Republicans bailed out of the bailout...then Paul Krugman said, this morning on DemocracyNow!, it’s looking “scary.” So, I am beginning to wonder what’s next.
      This question arises: would a complete meltdown of our entire economy really be a bad thing in the screwy mind of the neo-con? Think about 9-11. Didn’t that disaster lead to the fulfillment of many of their wildest dreams?
      Consider how this historic tidbit, from Greg Palast about Chile, economic collapse, and Pinochet, rings familiar: Palast

      It was fascinating to hear G.W. Bush refer to “democratic capitalism,” as the “best system ever devised.” I mean, considering the reality of American life today, where union membership has reached an all-time low; where Congress, increasingly indebted to corporate support and influenced by lobbyists pushing corporate interests, chooses again and again to ignore the interests of ordinary citizens in favor of corporate America; where the will of the people —expressed on the streets during the Democratic and Republican conventions, with calls for impeachment, an end to torture and the war in Iraq and Afganistan, healthcare, a living wage and all manner of progressive changes— was ignored by the corporate media and denied constitutional rights —of speech, peaceable assembly to petition the “government for a redress of grievances”— by unidentified riot police who looked and acted like police-state goons; where, if you’re “the people,” ordinary citizens trying not to go bankrupt, well, you’re on your own, as Obama says about Bush’s “ownership” society; but, if you’re Wall Street —corporate America— well, hey, here’s 750 billion dollars for you! You know what I mean. So, isn’t the notion of “democratic” capitalism an oxymoron? Just how much influence do we demos have, anyway?
      No. Better terms would be totalitarian capitalism, given that our previous mixed economy is moving closer and closer to a condition of absolute intolerance of regulation and democratic controls on industry (thus, you have the Republicans bailing out of the bailout because they want more(!) de-regulation); or fascistic capitalism, given that corporations and government are nearly completely merged, i.e. gone fascist.

      Here’s what I wrote to the chairman of the economics department: “I don't share your confidence that the ‘financial meltdown won't get any worse,’ however. For a long time now I've been watching the de-regulation trend —laissez-faire, "trickle-down" Reaganomics— and those who have been doing their best to destroy the New Deal and everything good about it; and this current crisis seems totally consistent with their anti-democratic desires. The next thing, after they add this next hundreds of billions to the government's already huge debt, will be to say, Oh so sorry, we're going to have to privatize Social Security now, i.e., destroy it— the funds are gone...oops!" I mean, it's all so obvious. So, that's what I mean by ‘worse;’ and, it would be unbearably worse for me, since I am living off my Social Security benefits now.”

      I hope I am wrong and he is right. Let’s see if McCain suspends his campaign entirely, when the bailout completely fails. It wouldn’t surprise me, given his weird threat not to attend the debate tonight, if that’s not a hint of things to come. Will Bush’s sudden fear-mongering over the economy morph into an excuse to delay the election, when he can make a case that the economy is in collapse?
      Just connecting the dots...but remaining hopeful that these are merely the natural, though unfounded, fears that trickle down during times like these.

The One True Maverick

...which cannot be said of McCain or Palin


      Let’s get one thing straight: The only true maverick running for president this year is Ralph Nader.
      How do we know Nader is the maverick and not just another opportunistic politician (McCain and Palin) trying to con the American people and corrupting the language in the process, or some nut-case, waving his arms from the sidelines? Well, aside from his life-long record of system-bucking battles against entrenched wrongs on behalf of you and me, consider his exclusion from the debates; consider how he is reviled not only by conservatives —his natural enemies— but by Democrats as well, those who, in a better world, would cherish him as kin and as the most steadfast advocate and hero of their ideals, you know, democratic ideals and principles, those little things the Dems left behind, like wussies in accordance with power, corruption and corporate allegiance?
      See, that’s the thing about mavericks—they’re outside the mainstream. McCain and Palin? Hello, there’s nothing outside about them: McCain has voted to support Bush policy 90% of the time; has been a constant nurturer of the conservative “nanny state,” of “free” market, laissez-faire, totalitarian capitalism, i.e., those good ol’ powers that be; Palin fulfills both the authoritarian leader and follower mold, which, by definition makes her a blue blood of conformity and allowed her to fit in quite easily at her former church, the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, where they talk in “tongues,” that is, babble in bull doo-doo. No. To describe either McCain or Palin as a maverick is not only to put lipstick on that metaphorical pig; it is to give it a complete make-over and a nose job to boot.

Why Voters Should Not Trust John McCain’s Word on Anything

“Well, it’s quite simple,” said Condi Rice today in her testimony before the Senate Ethics Committee. “You see, he was forever telling us that this...


...was eight inches.”



—L.M.

Fun Encounters at the Post Office

The satisfactions of not biting my tongue

      The woman in line ahead of me at the post office said to her two children, “Stop it. Stand still, or I’m going to pinch you hard.”
      I noticed the woman had some sort of Christian literature to send; I noticed the hard expression on her face; I noticed how her children’s faces went from happy innocence, as they giggled and jostled each other, to fear and foreboding after their mother’s threat.
      Then I heard her respond to something one of them had asked: “No...” she answered harshly, as she stepped away from the line to go up to the counter, “...that wouldn’t be Christian!”
      “...and neither is pinching your children,” I said. The timing was perfect. She heard me but didn’t have a chance to hit me over the head, like she probably does to her children behind closed doors.
      Many parents think they own their children and think nobody has a right interfere with their parenting. The are wrong; children belong to themselves first, but because abused children grow up either to be problems to themselves or to society, you and I have a right to correct parents, when parents abuse their children in our presence. In fact, not to speak up is a way of condoning abuse.

      After I reached the counter and my package was being processed, somewhere during the lively conversation I was having with the postal clerk, I heard myself say, “thank goodness for FDR and Social Security!” This seemed to strike a simpatico chord with the clerk, who then leaned forward to whisper a tidbit from his own political mind: “Can you believe women voters are so stupid they would vote for a woman, simply because she’s a woman?!” Well, I tried to tell him it was all media lies, that mainstream women aren’t going to vote for what I call the McCain/Palin-Comparison ticket, but he was on a roll— “What a pack of idiots, eh?”
      The fallacy here, the one the media tend to use, is the notion of the pack. The real idiots are the ones who say, “The American people...” this or that. Or, “Women want...” this or that. “White males...” vote this way or that. I don’t think you can generalize in that way. I think there is far less homogeneity out there, and people are way more complex and individual than that. Having said as much, I will now contradict myself by saying right-wing conservatives do tend to behave as a pack, whereas liberals do not. As Jim Hightower once said, “Trying to organize Democrats is like trying to load frogs into a wheelbarrow.”
      What do you think?

—L.M.

St.Paul, The Little City that Could ....Be Fascist

If your police look and act like
militarized, American-style jackboots,
you just might be a police state

      Given the assaults the City of St. Paul perpetrated against the Bill of Rights and the Constitution during this week's Republican National Convention, I could complain at length, reminding city officials of their sworn duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, that is, America. However, they know these things, and, they don’t care. Clearly, they planned from the start to engage in political repression; they had every intention of violating the Constitution and continuing to do so, regardless of the consequences, which they knew would be minimal—the city had made a deal with the Republican Party prior to the convention, one that rendered the city immune from lawsuits, to the tune of $10,000,000, the amount the Republicans were willing to cover for whatever lawsuits were incurred over Republican-approved, civil-liberties violations by the police.
      Thus we saw the city attorneys, the mayor and the police chief employing a twisted logic in arresting, charging and detaining journalists, photographers, protesters and those who were on the streets of St. Paul to bear witness and hold the city to its responsibility to protect civil liberty in a free society; that is why we saw the law in St. Paul represented by American-style jackboots, bearing nunchucks, clubs, assault rifles, tasers; dropping concussion grenades(!), smoke bombs, and all manner and means of repressing speech and dissent; that is why we heard first-hand testimony by victims of police who engaged in torture behind closed prison doors and in public, where the police apparently thought they had permission to bully political activists. Clearly, the city was guilty, and they planned on denying their guilt and pretending to be concerned about "terrorism," when it is America's movement toward a Pinochet-style dictatorship they defended.

      I would be happy if anyone can prove me wrong. If the charges are dropped against Amy Goodman and any and all journalists or peaceful protesters, who did nothing but exercise their Constitutional rights, and we never again see such a brutal demonstration of militarized police in an American city, I will say, “Sorry, I was wrong.” I will be happy to say it. However, I see dark clouds forming— incrementally, the American people have been programmed to accept the militarization of our police and the normalization of attacks against and violations of our civil liberties, and so the authoritarians are secure in the assumption that the American people won’t make a stink. Just take a look at the program “Cops,” if you doubt it. House raids by SWAT teams, SWAT, which was originally intended for “high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular patrol officers,” have become the norm, as is seen regularly on TruTv, MSNBC and elsewhere. This should be stopped. The use of SWAT teams against civilian demonstrators should be stopped too, now that we see just how creepy and terrorizing it is; but it won’t be. I think the signs are clear: we are here, now—the fascist state has arrived, and there’s no turning back.
      Some say the behavior of the police in St. Paul and Denver seemed like practice for something worse to come—soon. I would not be at all surprised. The Bush administration and the Republicans, with Democratic help, have pulled off every criminal thing they could think of, without consequence. What’s to stop them now from postponing the election and installing their version of the Third Reich, that is, a third term for the Bush dictatorship?
      It doesn’t hurt to repeat myself, and these days it is even more important to remind people that the other side of the coin of paranoia is naiveté. Let’s not be naive—government of, by, and for corporations —fascism— is our reality, and that oppressive reality will stop at nothing to have its way.
      Bless their souls, the ACLU is busy with lawsuits over these things. That wonderful organization needs our help now, more than ever.

—L.M.

Kvetching toward Bethlehem, or Slouching toward Extinction?

How the history of courage, rage, and change got lost during the Democratic National Convention


      Hillary Clinton had some nerve, harking back to the civil rights and women’s suffrage struggles in her speech before the Democratic National Convention—as if she and the Democratic Party were today’s party of the people, as if she were in a position to equate herself, her Party and the teachers, nurses and police officers she referred to in her speech with those activists of the past! Sorry, Hillary—it’s a specious comparison, and shame on you for your dishonest exploiting of history to propagandize your audience.

Clinton:
      “These women and men looked into their daughters' eyes, imagined a fairer and freer world, and found the strength to fight. To rally and picket. To endure ridicule and harassment. To brave violence and jail...This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.”

      This, while outside the convention Cindy Sheehan, Ward Churchill, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and thousands of true activists —today’s equivalents of those who struggled for equal rights and the vote in the past— faced the oppressive forces of Homeland Security, FBI, and nunchuck-carrying, CS gas-spraying, unidentified Denver police—and Hillary ignored it all, making nary a peep about Denver’s “free speech” zones, nor about harassment of dissenters, nor about protest cages...not to mention torture for detainees, secret rendition, illegal wiretapping, violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or any of the other crimes of the Bush Administration.
      Regardless, you would think Barack Obama was the second coming! This, despite the fact that both he and Hillary Clinton have supported “free” trade, with its nasty effects on the human rights of indigenous people and the economic lives of millions of American workers. This, despite his rhetoric in support of “clean” coal, as if there is such a thing, as if the coal industry, “clean” or otherwise, does not damage the environment and the lives of hundreds of thousands Americans every day; this, despite his intention to send more troops into Afghanistan, kowtowing to the delusion that military force and occupation can ever bring peace there; this, despite his support for Israel, which has become what it —and we— despised during the Second World War, that is, a right-wing occupier and human rights abuser of people it doesn’t honor, whose land and property it wants to own.
      Sure, it was wonderful to see an American candidacy for president represented by a black man. This is great. It heals deep wounds. Still, it does not erase certain facts, and Obama’s skin color is less important than his allegiances. And we now know what those are, given his dishonorable and corrupt betrayal of the American people and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution with his Yes vote for the FISA bill, which gave immunity from prosecution to At&T and other telecom companies, for illegal wiretapping of American citizens; At&t, which was one of the corporate hosts of the Democratic Convention. (Funny how that works, isn’t it?)
      Millions of Americans are snagged on Obama’s gossamer threads of rhetoric about hope and change, and from there are taken on a heady ride, where all things become possible. The problem is, that’s not how change, the kind of change that will turn this empire back into a democratic republic, usually happens. It’s not happy, hopeful thoughts, or some supernaturally endowed, great leader, that will get the job done. The powers that be do not care about your hopes, your dreams, or what your charismatic leader thinks would be a damn fine thing to do; it is not by the goodness of their hearts that anti-democratic forces in culture change their ways. No. Change happens when ordinary people get damn angry enough to demand it, and demand it in loud, kvetching, furious, complaining tones.
      The women who fought for the vote did not wait for an Obama, nor did they worry about being labeled as extremists, or radicals, or commies, or socialists, or threats to the all-American, patriarchal family. Nor did they feel they needed to couch their demands in nice, lady-like, diplomatic terms, to avoid seeming like angry hussies, which I’m sure they were called. Instead, their Declaration of Sentiments has a list of seventeen complaints, each beginning with “He has”, and so forth, a list of human rights abuses done for so long by men against women that anger had to be the only proper tone of their declaration.
      We face equal and worse threats to human rights, democracy, economic security —the life of the planet!— today. You would think the people would wake up, as Dennis Kucinich’s clarion call at the Convention so eloquently urged us to do— and take to the streets, or at least support those who do put themselves at risk there. But no. To the average American, to conservative Democrats, which includes Hillary Clinton, and to Republicans in Congress, those activists are “extremists,” “radicals,” “persons of interest,” persons to put on a list of possible terrorists, persons to violate. And so we get the same ol’, same ol’, crap—politicians posing as sweet-talking progressives, likening themselves and their supporters to heroes of the past, who then make a sharp turn to the right, as soon as they’ve nailed the election. Thus, nothing changes, and here we go again, seduced and abandoned, slouching toward extinction.
      I am going to remember that anger over injustice is not a sign of depression or some sort of new psychological disorder needing the latest pill; remember what St. Augustine said: “Hope has two children, anger and courage; anger at the way things are and courage to make them better.”

—L.M. (and please feel VERY free to make a comment)

Waking Up Radical

Nightmares during the Bush Administration, a first person narrative

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal.” —Abraham Maslow via Viktor Frankl

      One morning last week, I broke out of a dream in a panic, breathing hard and fast, as if I’d been running, as if I couldn’t get enough air. Of course, I hadn’t been running; I was in bed asleep, stuck there motionless, like in the dream, where I tried to run for help but couldn’t, while a fish I loved (!) began to drown in the bowl of tap water I had put him in. Unable to get help, or to find the de-chlorinator that would enable him to breathe in tap water, I gathered him in my two hands, where he fit snugly, and began the dream-state option of artificial respiration, compressing and releasing his rib cage, and watching his gape and bulging eyes for signs of recovery. It was almost working. But then I began to internalize his struggle—I couldn’t breathe either, and my panic set in.
      This was not at all like my usual experience of waking, where the mixture of dream and reality is so lovely I want to prolong the event, finding powers there I never have when I am awake. Instead, it was a desperation to breathe, while realizing, gratefully, it was only a dream.
      Then, as I recovered my breath and woke up, I began to think about the part that was not a dream, the part about the tap water, the sad reality that we have so badly contaminated our environment, we need to put chlorine in the tap water to make it safe to drink; but, in the process, we have made this water unsafe for fish. You do not want to put your goldfish in a bowl of chlorinated tap water, not in Southern California. You either need to let the water sit for a day and let the chlorine evaporate, or you have to add de-chlorinator to it, which neutralizes the chlorine, so that delicate cells in fish gills do not die.
      I don’t want to start sounding like Grandma, but, back in the day —let’s say, in the 50’s— you could fill a fish bowl with tap water and plop your guppies in it, no problem. And the water tasted like water is supposed to taste—yummy. Now we have to filter it to get a tolerable taste, or we opt for bottled water, which isn’t any safer than tap water for drinking.
      This situation, our plight, is normal for us now, while the memory of what used to be our blessing —clean water brought to us from far away— fades from consciousness, and we accept this lesser life without question.

      Leaving aside the basic symbolism of my fish dream, where perhaps I expressed fears for myself after breast cancer, and considering the possibility that the dream arose during a sleep apnea incident, I wonder about this fish—how I loved it, how it was about to die, how I was losing it, how nobody could be found to help, how nobody cared, how it was terribly important, how I couldn’t save it, and how its life was slipping away. Isn’t that how I feel about so many things these days—the life of the planet, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, democracy, the balancing power of Congress, the Supreme Court and Justice Department, accountability, a free and independent press, the rule of law...peace...even a president I can believe in? (Now we see Bush exposed as a relapsed alcoholic, and Pelosi still makes no move to impeach!) Isn’t a dream like that the natural consequence of the frustration, helplessness and oppressive quality of life during the Bush Administration? That is, it’s not as though politics, and the public values I love, are external to my life. I don’t think so. They are central.
      Just before I woke up this morning, an old Asian woman in my dream, a shopkeeper, shook her fist at me and demanded, “What about Iraq—how do you like that? And Gaza, what is it? It is nothing but a concentration camp!” and on and on. It was as if she held me responsible, as if she took me for a Republican, someone she had a right to rail at. I felt embarrassed and offended to be taken for a conservative, and yelled back, “Hey! I’m not the enemy! I hate the war! I hate the occupation! I hate George W. Bush...”
      Even in my dreams...

      I also wonder about the panic and urgency expressed in these dreams. It reminds me of an old advertisement I used to see in the New Yorker. Each month, a stylized cartoon would depict a frantic character racing around a room, desperately trying to arouse the attention of the other characters in the cartoon as to a fire, or some other dire threat, while being totally ignored, because everybody is reading the paper. I believe the caption was, “Everybody Reads the Post,” but my memory is fuzzy on this. (and Google search fruitless) In any case, a lot of us feel like that frantic character. Amazing bad things are going on, but most Americans are too busy with their favorite diversion, or entertainment, to notice. Many of us are too somatized (remember Brave New World?) to have the energy and passion to stage a protest, let alone start a revolution—or, better yet, restore the meaning of the first revolution.
      I wish I could say the optimists, all the hard-working people out there who are trying to bring about progressive change, all agog for Obama, are helping. It amazes me how many Democrats prefer not to know what is going on, choose not to question reality or authority, do not search voting records, refuse to listen to outside voices and alternative news programming, prefer not to read about politics, fail to connect the dots, abandon the notion of ethics and accountability in favor of “forgiveness” and “looking forward,” and manage to float happily through life, being nearly as uninformed, conforming and brainwashed as the conservatives they feel superior to. Apparently, it is best to tip-toe around the doggy-doo of doubt, dissent, and dread, that is, the truth, so as to keep the tidy shoes of denial stink-free. One does not want the odor of negativity, which has come to translate as depression, even insanity, following oneself around. It’s just so off-putting, you know? You don’t ever want to smell like a “conspiracy theorist.” For example, so what if nothing makes sense about the official theory of the collapse of the World Trade Center and building #7, like NOTHING; better to scoff at the unbearable alternative, so as not to look like a nut. Well, you’re an American—gotta be chirpy; gotta be up-beat.
      I used to wonder how the German people allowed Hitler and the holocaust to happen. Were they also averse to thinking the unthinkable truth about their government? Did they also engage in a reflexive denial that said, “Oh, that’s impossible.” But now that I have watched Democrats veer farther and farther toward the right, working so hard to avoid being stigmatized —extremist, left-wing radical, commie, conspiracy nut, hippy, unpatriotic, anti-semitic, terrorist sympathizer— that they abandon true democratic values, liberal values, in favor of conservative values, I understand. The labeling is out there; they hear it, and they resist, not by exposing it as shaming, as a manipulation, but by being manipulated, by identifying themselves as “centrist,” to ensure they are not a member of that outside, “dishonorable” group, by moving to the “center,” which today is, in actuality, a right-wing position. I do believe this is self-inflicted social control. Rather than fighting back, by coming up with rhetorical jabs in response —conformist, sheep, fascist, naive sleep-walker, corporatist, unpatriotic, oppressor, torture lover— the timid among us say, “We are above such negativity. We are peace-loving, caring, people, and we will not stoop to their level.” Nonsense. Such talk is a rationalization, where fear, brainwashing, and powerlessness have taken hold. Nor do they defend democratic values in the George Lakoff manner, through better framing, to claim they are: Jeffersonian democrats, critical thinkers, free thinkers, patriotic, human rights advocates— and to stand up for liberal values, to educate others as to what those liberal values are.
      And so, America continues to inch toward a third-world reality with a dwindling middle class, a huge gulf between rich and poor, as, far away, polar bears are drowning, and war is waged forever on behalf of power, wealth and empire.
      All the clichés —outrage fatigue, learned helplessness, crisis of courage, failure of imagination— are true, and here we are, stuck, unable to do what needs to be done to rescue ourselves, from ourselves.

      In the meantime, the circus plays on at the Democratic National Convention, where there’s a lot of rhetoric about change, while nothing changes, except the gradual move toward a police state in the streets of Denver, where the real heroes of democracy are protesting. Unfortunately, we cannot find their point of view in the coverage of the mainstream media. We do, however, have alternative sources of information —clean, uncontaminated, pure, oxygenated good journalism! Dive in. I promise— the water’s fine.

—L.M.

Trekking through Disease Capitalism Where, "Oh Well, Everyone Dies."

“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” —Albert Einstein

      Losing body parts to breast cancer was pretty much the opposite of fun. Nevertheless, in 2001 I had a partial mastectomy on my left breast, and in 2007 a full mastectomy of my right breast—two different kinds of breast cancer.

      My current oncologist suggested awhile ago that I go on the drug Aromasin, now that I am done with chemo and radiation for the second time in my life.

      In 2001 my first oncologist wanted me to take Tamoxifin and became incensed when I told him I didn’t like the idea and would be getting a second opinion. The second opinion agreed I should go on Tamoxifin. I said, “But the drug is a carcinogen.” She answered, “Oh don’t worry about that. We’ll keep an eye on it.” I thought to myself, “What does that mean? You’re going to know the day before I get endometrial cancer?”

      The next oncologist wanted me to take Arimidex; yet another suggested the drug Femara.

      I cannot help wondering why each doctor has a different plan for me—could it be they just don’t have any idea what they’re doing? Naw-w-w...

      Tamoxifen has a black box warning label now and is listed as a carcinogen. The other drugs are “aromatase inhibitors,” and whether or not they are carcinogens has yet to be determined. My understanding is that these new drugs are supposed to limit the body’s production of tumor-feeding estrogen by “deactivating the aromatase enzyme,” an enzyme that converts androgens into estrogens, a perfectly normal aspect of my body’s functioning, one that protects me from osteoporosis.

      Aromasin does something the other drugs do not do, that is, the deactivation it performs of a cell’s aromatase enzyme is irreversible—what is morbidly referred to as “suicide inhibition.” Add to that a myriad of bad to worse side-effects, which my oncologist didn’t mention but which I found in reports on the internet, such as hot flashes, severe joint pain, painful feet, sleeplessness, increased aggressiveness, and on and on, meaning that a strong percentage of patients decide the fear of a recurrence of breast cancer is worth enduring, if only to have a return of the quality of life, and freedom from the miseries caused by this pill.

      What ever happened to “first do no harm?” I already have hot flashes, joint pain, sore feet, and occasional insomnia—how would taking a pill that causes more of such misery be harmless? Also, it turns out Aromasin is used by body-builders. It’s a steroidal drug! So, besides the sweat, pain, sleeplessness, and hostility, I should go Arnold too?

      Doctors sometimes get frustrated with me. I am supposed to ignore facts and trust them. I am supposed to have a flat learning curve and just go along with the program. I am not supposed to connect the dots, not supposed to think critically about their treatment plans.

      I used to trust my doctors. Then began my journey through menopause. I wasn’t particularly bothered by this natural transition of womanhood, but apparently my primary care doctor, an internist, was hugely disturbed by it. It was as if not to go on Hormone Replacement Therapy, specifically estrogen, was to wither away from true womanhood toward something unspeakably hideous and diseased. He had just the thing to fix me. He even called me at home to advocate on behalf of Premarin, going so far as to argue with me about it.

      Eventually, I gave in, and once I was “addicted” to the pill, every subsequent doctor over a ten-year span gladly filled my prescriptions, and I unknowingly became a guinea pig in what one author referred to as The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women. No proper studies had been done on HRT at the time I first began taking it, no randomized trials, but, based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence, all the doctors went crazy for it. Only recently have we have had the proper studies, and the results were not good:

According to the Million Women’s Study, for one (The Lancet):
• Estrogen-progestin use increased breast cancer by 19 per 1,000 women.
• Estrogen-alone use increased breast cancer by 5 per 1,000 women.

      Regardless, in the year 2000, according to IMS Health, U.S. doctors wrote 23,454,000 prescriptions for Premarin.

      Okay, correct me if I'm wrong: 23,454,000 @ 5 per 1000 women = 117,270 extra cases, among the prescription holders who will get breast cancer, assuming the group stays on Premarin more than five years—this, from the use of Premarin alone.

      But physicians and gynecologists are still prescribing it, still advertising it in their offices, and still lamely defending its use, as if they don’t look like ethical morons to claim that stopping hot flashes is worth the risk of developing breast cancer. The FDA still has not banned this horrible drug, nor limited its use.

      So there I was: I had been using Premarin for ten years when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a shock I still have not recovered from fully. Certainly, it was something I never anticipated: no woman in my family had ever had breast cancer; I have two older sisters who are breast cancer free (they never took HRT); I was not a drinker nor a smoker; I didn’t eat red meat—heck, I was a vegetarian. Did any of my doctors apologize for this medical atrocity, which left me missing body parts and bereft of confidence in my future? Nope. Not one word of remorse. In fact, one charming oncologist, upon hearing my complaint about being robbed of my golden years by HRT, said, “Well, everyone dies.”

      Let’s face it: we live in a culture where greed is good and the profit motive is sacrosanct. As patients we like to think the pharmaceutical industry that instructs and assists our hapless doctors in treating us are good people who would love to rid us of our diseases. But the reality is that breast cancer is an industry, a cash cow for the entire medical industrial complex; and, whether those who profit from our sickness admit it or not, they don’t want to find a cure for cancer— think of the profit losses, were a cure to be found!

      Paranoia? Conspiracy theory?

      Consider this example: DCA, dichloroacetate, is a drug that shows real promise as a cure for many kinds of cancers, including breast cancer. Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta Department of Medicine in Canada, is currently researching this “inexpensive, relatively harmless,” drug. Has the pharmaceutical industry rushed to fund this research, or to do the research itself? Gosh O golly, NO! Don’t you know DCA is not patented—there’s no profit to be made off the drug? Did you think the industry would be interested in finding a cure anyway, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of you and me? Are you dreaming? As reality has it, Dr. Michelakis will just have to scrape up the funds for his research from independent donors. The big guys just don’t care.

      Consider another example, as a clue to the moral character and motives of the corporate owners and managers who bring our world of chemicals and pharmaceuticals to us:

• In 2000, Novartis —insecticides, the herbicide, atrazine— and AstraZeneca —agro-chemicals and pharmaceuticals— formed Syngenta through the merger of their agricultural divisions.
• Syngenta makes and sells both aromatase promoters and inhibitors, both atrazine and Arimidex, for example.
• Atrazine, a widely used weed killer, is an aromatase promoter, an endocrine disrupter. Atrazine was denied regulatory approval in the European Union—it’s banned in Europe. It CAUSES breast cancer.
• The United States uses about 80 million pounds of atrazine every year. It is in the water, folks.

      How tidy is that vicious cycle? With one hand, they cause breast cancer, by contaminating the environment with atrazine; with the other hand, they treat the breast cancer they caused in the first place, with aromatase inhibitors, to the tune of billions: “Worldwide sales of aromatase inhibitors have increased from approximately $340 million in 2001 to more than $1.2 billion in 2004, representing an annual growth rate of 52%.”

      Of course, Syngenta denies that its product causes breast cancer and has bribed researchers and quashed the findings of honest researchers, using the full force of its power to attack the truth about atrazine. You would think, if the CEO’s and managers at Syngesta cared about the health and safety of people and the environment, they would listen to bad news about the dangers posed by their product and remove it from the market. You would think...but that would be in a world where people come before profits. This, clearly, is not that world.

      You would also like to hope that Syngenta, and companies like it, would not want be responsible for contributing to an epidemic of breast cancer. But that would be a world where corporations were peopled by folks with consciences, where corporations are not peopled by sociopaths. This is not that world. Instead, this is a world where killing people for profit isn’t personal— it’s business, so that, if people die, well, “everyone dies”. Why not make a profit, while the gettin’s good?

      Just between you and me, it seems to me that if corporations insist on being legal “persons,” with all the rights afforded to persons in the Constitution, then they ought to be judged as persons in the criminal justice system—that is, if they kill people for profit, then try to suppress the evidence, they should be prosecuted for murder. The CEO’s, managers and boards of directors of these criminal entities need to go to prison. Enough of this lawsuit crap; they just count those losses as part of the cost of doing business. (Although verdicts can serve to validate the common sense finding of damage done.) No. They need pay a real price for first contaminating the environment, then, when we get sick, profiting again from our sickness.

      I discussed a few of these facts and issues with my oncologist the other day. I asked him how oncologists decide which aromatase inhibitor to recommend. Quite honestly, he said there was no logic to it, no evidence of one drug being any better than any other; sometimes the decision is based on whether or not a drug company has charity programs for patients. He laughed: “We just don’t know!”

      He also listened to my complaints about drug companies and agreed with me. He took notes on my information about DCA and web sites devoted to patient experiences with aromatase inhibitors. Best of all he didn’t push Aromasin on me. Then he kissed me on the cheek, when we said good-bye.

      I do think he is one of the good guys. Some do care, some are as frustrated as their patients with the industry, the system. I want to think I am in good hands, but I hesitate.

      Ralph Nader said, “The profit motive corrupts all things." Sadly, trust is among the casualties, as in, collateral damage.

—L.M.

A Crack in Job Hell and How the Light Gets In

If you are working poor, you are not alone

      In her odyssey across the landscape of the working poor in America — Nickel and Dimed — Barbara Ehrenreich didn’t find any university graduates to write about. (Does Bait and Switch make up for that omission?) It was the first thing I noticed about Nickel and Dimed, because one of the things I found in my own miserable experience as a college grad working at low-wage jobs was that I was never alone; college graduates were everywhere I went—young, old, single, married, including some with advanced degrees.
      Rebecca N____ and Chet N____ are good examples; they were a married couple who had been teachers for many years, then gallery owners, and then, when that failed, eight-dollar-an-hour customer service representatives, which was where I met them.
      Equally common in my experience were the day-to-day, petty humiliations and reminders of one’s powerlessness, served up by supervisors and bosses whose own lack of education seemed to be irrelevant. That is, power, and the enjoyment of it, has no educational requirements. Once you get there, you’re good to go.
      Way back when, I worked for a guy I thought must be the sinister incarnation of Ichabod Crane—tall, gaunt Bob W____. Bob once said to me, with a malevolent smirk on his face, “You’re a socialist, aren’t you?” It was a rhetorical question. And it was an insult, since the world according to Bob had socialists as among the most vile of the vile. Not that the assertion came as a surprise to me; after all, this was the same boss who introduced me to his wife on my first day with this odd —and wrong— parenthetical “compliment” about me: “...and she is ‘pro-life!’” which should have been my cue to offer a parenthetical middle finger to the ass and go find another job. But I was desperately needy for work —he knew it— and rendered cynical by experience; given the job scene in my area, San Diego’s North County, who was to say my next job would be any less populated by wackos, ghouls, and ethical polliwogs? This was pot-luck, and I would have to take it.
      Yes, I should have been stronger and more courageous, but by then such positives had been lost to necessity; you get to a point where you must have compassion for yourself and do what you have to do to survive—which is another version of courage, it seems to me. So, there I was, working for a fundamentalist Christian patriarch, a small business owner, who often shamelessly demonstrated his racism and discriminatory behavior, and who had the freedom to try to shame me with the label of “socialist,” or hover over me, pressuring me to go faster, and various other indications of the perverted nature of his mind.
      Well, he had the power. Businesses are not democracies, not organizations dedicated to “liberty and justice for all,” and I had checked my civil liberties at the door when I took the job—I had no freedom of speech. There would be no honest rejoinder to his “insult,” such as, “No. I am a small-d democrat. But you, Bob, are a fascist, right?”
      Ah, retro-visions of truth and glory...
      I did manage one happy moment of triumph in my trek through job hell. One sales manager, a squat guy with a skinny mustache and slicked-back hair, told us that if the “numbers weren’t up by Friday,” his manager said he might have to “change the oil.” So, when on Friday the numbers still weren’t up, I marched up the stairs to the manager’s office, opened the door onto a meeting, interrupted and said to the manager, “The next time you decide to change the oil, maybe you should take another look at the dip stick.” Then I walked down the stairs, out the door to my car and drove home, happy as can be.
      Funny, I ran into that former boss sometime later. He laughed about it and said that from that day on, he was referred to by everybody in the building as “Dip Stick.” This is the saddest thing about job hell—most folks have good souls; it’s just that the whole system is designed to undermine our best qualities and replace them with our worst. You start out as a loving person with a desire to contribute good works, and then one day you hear yourself saying to your underling, “You were one minute late. You know the rules. You’re fired.”
      That’s because the basic frame governing the work place is that workers are dishonorable people, fundamentally and as a class. According to the frame, workers were born bad, and they will die bad, and so you have to motivate them with threats and intimidation. Regardless of the enlightened frames found in management training courses, most American businesses operate according to the conservative model.
      Which reminds me—in a wonderful book with the awful title, Man for Himself, Erich Fromm writes this: “We are concerned with man’s character not with his success...but what is 'power'? It is rather ironical that this word denotes two contradictory concepts: power of = capacity, and power over = domination... Power = domination results from the paralysis of power = capacity. 'Power over' is the perversion of 'power to.' ...Where potency is lacking, man’s relatedness to the world is perverted into a desire to dominate, to exert power over others as though they were things. Domination is coupled with death, potency with life. Domination springs from impotence and in turn reinforces it, for if an individual can force somebody else to serve him, his own need to be productive is increasingly paralyzed.”
      I should have posted that one on the bulletin board at my last job in the composing department of a major publishing company, where the frame “workers-are-evil-spawn” governed all employer-employee relations.
      First came the drug testing, as it was required for employment; then came the time clock, modified eventually for a hand scan, so that they could keep track of your hand’s comings and goings, to the second, and have proof if your hand was one second late, three times in a row, which mandated your being fired on the spot.
      Given that the publications we produced had advertising, with text and images, the company placed a high value on accuracy; any ad that went out with a mistake meant that the client would get the ad for free. Thus, not only were individuals tracked and records kept on those of us who worked on ads, but the entire department’s error rates were mapped on graphs, graphs which were pinned to the wall directly adjacent to the time clock, where we could admire our mistakes as we waited by the clock to leave for the day. These graphs would show our progress, month to month, and some would give numbers as to the amount of profits lost to errors.
      Keep in mind that this was a company that would hire anybody off the street who expressed an interest in Photoshop and experience with Macs, not necessarily a proficiency in Photoshop, or even a fluency in the English language, for that matter. The pay was minimum wage, with a three month probation, after which Blue Cross benefits kicked in; full health care coverage was the main reason to put up with the negatives, of course. Still, the probation period was rough; you had to be a quick study and able to dodge the myriad, petty opportunities to be fired. I stayed there ten years, managing eventually to earn a whopping $10.50 an hour.
      We had to attend yearly “climate survey” meetings, where we were encouraged to vent our complaints and suggestions without fear of reprisal. The company always engaged in heavy PR to the employees about how they bent over backward to be a great employer and how lucky you were to work there. Everybody knew the real purpose of the meetings was to manage morale in the department and to snuff any possible threats of law suits. They rarely made changes based on our complaints, except in one instance, after my comments to the upper management guy about the “stick” we always received for mistakes. I wanted to know where was the “carrot?”
      This was something I said in a conversation I had with our personnel manager and him after the meeting. I also said that if we were going to be shown graphs with our mistakes and profit losses, we would also like to see graphs comparing company profits over the past twenty-five years, as well as graphs showing employee wages and department profit losses from mistakes over the same time period. Would they show us those graphs?
      Well, soon after, all the graphs came down, and we were never again humiliated in this way over our mistakes.
      Could it be that I was onto something? Given that the company had always paid its employees at the minimum wage (cost of labor), but over the years the cost for ads had most likely risen exponentially (profits), well, just how badly was our department, with our little mistakes, costing the company? And how much were company profits enhanced by our low wages? If we had been able to see charts revealing just how bogus management’s complaints about our mistakes were, and, more importantly, just how badly we were being cheated out of a fair wage, one that kept up with inflation, how long could the company control the “climate” of our discontent?
      Sadly, the company continued to enforce its rules about mistakes. I will never forget Joe, a hugely over-weight but perennially sweet Mexican guy, who was a “closer,” the last person responsible for checking ads before they went to print. He missed three mistakes in one week. Though he’d been with the company for years, he was fired. Joe visited us a few months after his firing, and I hardly recognized him, for all the weight he had lost. I asked him how he’d managed to lose so much weight. He said, “I’m not eating. Can’t afford it.”
      Our supervisor, the one who had fired Joe, a woman who believed in ghosts and the paranormal, once expressed to me her disdain for Mexicans— “they move into your neighborhood, and before you know it gangs are everywhere.”
      She and I didn’t get along very well, needless to say. But that’s story for another time.

The Crack and the Light:

      Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem, gives us these lines: “There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in.” Those words came to me the other day, as I drove down I-15 listening to KPBS, and heard a report about the city’s winning “the first case against a company for violating the city’s Living Wage Ordinance.”
      Hello? Living Wage Ordinance? Wait a minute—the city of San Diego? Amazing. The city of San Diego managed to let some light get in through a tiny crack in its conservative reputation, apparently. Could this be true?
      It is true. The ordinance was passed in 2005, when I wasn’t paying any attention. So now, any company contracting with the city must pay its employees either $12 an hour or $10 plus health insurance. How cool is that? Of course, there was a big battle over it. Obviously, corporate welfare queens prefer keeping their workers in poverty, while they reap the excess profits.
      Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Congress would now pass a similar law, a national, living wage law?

—L.M.

In “Good Faith” With Telecom Companies and Lawless Bush Administration, Senate Passes FISA:

A message to Senate supporters of HR 6304

To Pro-HR 6304 Senators:

      Today, with the passage of HR 6304, I mourned the death of the 4th Amendment to our Constitution, and I grieved for the loss of any conviction that I am a citizen of a democratic republic, governed and secured by the principle of the rule of law. Today you forced me to realize, once and for all, that I am not free, not a citizen with inalienable rights; today you disabused me of any trust I had in my government, by showing me this: whatever an administration and corporations want to do to me will be supported by you, as long as they act in “good faith” with each other, as opposed to acting in good faith with the American people and the Constitution of the United States.
      Today I grieve over your abandonment of the notion of government of, by and for the people, in favor of government of, by and for criminal corporations.
      Watching you over the past two days, as you defended your position in support of HR 6304, I grieved as your hearts bled for the telecom companies; as you pretended 9-11 was a legitimate and factual excuse for the President’s warrantless surveillance program, even though you knew he had begun the program immediately after his first month in office; as you granted unprecedented legal authority to the executive branch to violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, fixing the executive branch as the sole judge of its own behavior and removing the judicial branch as a check on executive power; as you sided with the likes of Kit Bond (R. Missouri), who framed telecom immunity as “liability protection” and bemoaned the possibility of holding to the rule of law as “penalizing the companies” with “frivolous lawsuits.” What is the matter with you that you approved such garbage?
      I grieved, and my stomach turned, as the bill passed, with only twenty-eight good Senators voting against and holding fast to the Constitution and the rule of law, a mere twenty-eight true patriots, compared to sixty-nine lumps of Senatorial cowardice and shame.
      I have to ask of Barack Obama and his Democratic comrades who voted for the Feingold-Dodd Amendment, which would have removed telecom immunity from the bill, but failed, and then went ahead and voted for the bill itself, which contained telecom immunity —a profound contradiction— why would you do that? So, your distaste for telecom immunity was a whim of the moment, which changed for the final vote? Or, was it the other way around? No. You knew what you were doing. Clearly, you wanted to have it both ways, so that you could say, “Well, it’s too bad about immunity, but I want conservative voters to know I’m tough on terrorists.” Sir, you have no moral compass, no profound or ethical position to offer as reason to vote for you. You are lost. I, for one, will never forgive you, never vote for you again.
      The most frightening aspect of this dark moment is that of precedence—you, Senators, have set the stage for what? What’s next after this? You have now established that a mere executive-branch say-so can be sufficient justification for lawbreaking on the part of a company, so, why should not the Bush administration, or any other administration, use other private companies to do further harm to our liberty, our privacy, our fundamental human rights? Now that you have given Bush, as well, license to gather up whole masses of communications between Americans without warrants, in violation of the 4th Amendment, why should he not go whole hog with his vile intentions against freedom, democracy and the rule of law and break more laws than he already has?
      Today you have done what Al Queda could not have done with all their miserable, ragged might, without your help—you have taken the essence of American freedom and liberty and subtracted it from the body politic; you have injured the soul of America.
      Shame on you!!!

—LM

ACLU on this subject

Judge Walker

Comic relief: Mark Fiore on the subject