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Renouncing Sins Against the Corporate Faith

Just about every politician and pundit is eager to denounce wrongdoing in business these days. Sinners have defiled the holy quest for a high rate of return. Damn those who left devoted investors standing bereft at corporate altars!

On the surface, media outlets are filled with condemnations of avarice. The July 15 edition of Newsweek features a story headlined "Going After Greed," complete with a full-page picture of George W. Bush's anguished face. But after multibillion-dollar debacles from Enron to WorldCom, the usual media messages are actually quite equivocal -- wailing about greedy CEOs while piping in a kind of hallelujah chorus to affirm the sanctity of the economic system that empowered them.

At a Wall Street pulpit, Bush declared that America needs business leaders "who know the difference between ambition and destructive greed." Presumably, other types of greed are fine and dandy.

During his much-ballyhooed speech, the president asserted that "all investment is an act of faith." With that spirit, a righteous form of business fundamentalism is firmly in place. The great god of capitalism is

Corporate Malfesance

AUSTIN, Texas -- Well, President Bush made his big speech on corporate reform Tuesday, and the stock market went down by 178 points.

As predicted, Bush proposed stiffer penalties for bad apples, evildoers and perpetrators of "malfee-ance." Unfortunately, that won't fix the system.

Much as one would like to see many corporate executives doing time alongside hard-working stick-up artists, that leaves the systemic problems in place. Among the leading structural factors causing the cascading scandals are conflict of interest on the part of auditors who also get paid by their clients as consultants, conflict of interest on the part of stock analysts and their investment-banker bosses, abuse of stock options encouraged by not having to count their cost against earnings, and lack of oversight on accountants and insider loans -- of the very kind Bush himself got at Harken. Bush addressed none of it.

Stiffer penalties for what is already illegal are not helpful when the problem is what is legal. Bush's effort to treat this as though it were simply a law 'n' order problem is not going to be effective.

Terror by Rail: Senate Okays Yucca Mountain Dump

It's an all-too-rare pleasure to see the nuclear industry sweat, but in the run-down to the wire, there were clear signs of panic in the campaign to push through the U.S. senate a plan to ship the nation's commercial nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas.

When Bush came to power, the nuke lobby thought they had it made. The days of competition between the oil industry and the nuclear lobby are long gone. Now they all belong to the same conglomerate. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, perhaps the only member of the cabinet who requires a more simplified briefing book than Bush, was an old industry pal, long since bought and paid for.

Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industry's most fervent dream: the Yucca Mountain dump for nuclear waste from around the country, hauled in by rail. September 11 changed all that. Not immediately, mind you. But as the patriotic hysteria, in which it was deemed un-American to question any Bush proposal, began to subside, people began to conclude that the scheme to truck 77,000 tons of radioactive waste through their

Yucca Mountain Comes Down to the Wire

It's a rare day that you see these guys sweat, but the nuclear industry is getting frantic. You can tell by the desperate nature of their recent campaign to push through the U.S. senate the plan to ship the nation's commercial nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, outside Las Vegas.

When Bush came to power, the nuke lobby thought they had it made. The days of competition between the oil industry and the nuclear lobby are long gone. Now, they all belong to the same conglomerate. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, perhaps the only member of the cabinet who requires a more simplified briefing book than Bush, was an old pal, long bought and sold. Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industries most fervent aspiration: the Yucca Mountain dump.

September 11 changed all that. Not immediately, mind you. But as the patriotic hysteria, in which it was deemed un-American to question any Bush proposal, began to recede, people began to conclude that the scheme to truck 77,000 tons of radioactive waste through their communities wasn't

'Monomedia' and the First Amendment

Speaking with grace and ease, a pensive network anchor compared the America of today with the one of a year ago. His script had the ring of media truth at the start of a new season. "How different the summer is going to be for all of us," CNN's Aaron Brown told viewers. A minute later, he added: "Summer life is going on. It's just different. Everything is."

Such assertions have repeated endlessly in media circles. They make sense if dictionaries are now obsolete and words don't really need to mean anything in particular. "Everything" is "different" for "all of us" only when the preposterous can be rendered plausible.

As a practical matter, virtually closed loops often dominate major news outlets. The result is what we could call "monomedia." When similar noises keep filling echo chambers, they tend to drown out other sounds.

July Fourth gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect. This holiday commemorates a revolution that made possible the extraordinarily important First Amendment. These days, in theory, just about everyone in the country has freedom to speak. But freedom to be heard is another matter.

A Modest Proposal for Media Reform

Many Americans feel under siege from advertising that insults intelligence and helps to degrade the nation's cultural environment. While serving the interests of advertisers, the daily ad-mania makes us sick -- sometimes quite literally. What can we do about it?

No easy solution is in sight. The ad craziness has gotten extreme in a context of greatly centralized economic power afflicting nearly the entire media landscape. "The bottom line is that fewer and fewer huge conglomerates are controlling virtually everything that the ordinary American sees, hears and reads," independent Rep. Bernie Sanders wrote recently in The Hill newspaper. With probably undue optimism, he added: "This is an issue that Congress can no longer ignore."

Such matters are way too important to be left up to politicians -- or the hotshots in the executive suites of gargantuan media firms. What's at stake could hardly be more basic. For instance, Sanders noted: "Despite 41 million people with no health insurance and millions more underinsured, we spend far more per capita on health care than any other nation. Maybe the reason is that we are seeing no

Peace is better than war

AUSTIN, Texas -- "Jaw, jaw," said Winston Churchill, "is better than war, war."

I bring up the not-often-contested notion that peace is better than war only because it seems the Bush administration is incapable of grasping the self-evident. According to The New York Times, President Bush has directed his top security people -- a happy nest of neo-con hawks -- "to make a doctrine of pre-emptive action against states and terrorist groups trying to develop weapons of mass destruction." This means, we declare war first. This dogma "will be the foundation of a new national security strategy."

Let's see, we already have our military in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia and the Philippines. We are also deeply into Colombia as part of the Drug War and have fairly regular deployment by special ops in Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Good thing for India and Pakistan they made it into the Nuclear Club before the deadline, eh? Let's see, add Iran, North Korea and some of the nuttier princes, kings, sheiks, presidents-for-life -- I make that

Democrats in Texas

EL PASO, Texas -- - Tony Sanchez, Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, made an effective speech at the state convention here. Some of you may not recognize this as a "STOP THE PRESSES!" moment, but that's because life has not forced you to listen to his previous efforts. Entire audiences have been stunned into immobility by the awesome mediocrity of Early Sanchez Oratory. Congratulations to the voice coach, the drama coach, the speechwriters and the candidate -- it's clear they've all been working hard.

It was a peppy crowd of Democrats whooping it up in Sun City -- evidence that they think have a shot at the statewide offices this year. The D's appear to be way more revved up than the R's were in Dallas a week earlier, though sometimes it's hard to compare the parties -- since R's, on the whole, spend more time at prayer breakfasts, while the D's drink more beer. The D's Irish-American Caucus met daily when the bar opened.

The D's were quick to jump on Sen. Phil Gramm's bad line about how diversity on the Dem ticket is "trying to divide us by race." So the

Terry Lynn's Fire?

If you believe what the Forest Service interrogators say, Terry Lynn Barton started the big fire in Colorado's Pike National Forest by burning a letter from her estranged husband. Maybe so, and possibly the jury will be forgiving when they hear more details of Ms. Barton's married life. But a jury might well be equally forgiving if it turns out Terry Lynn started the fire by setting fire to her pay stub.

After 18 years of dedicated service, Terry Lynn Barton's monthly pay was $1,485, which tots up to $17,820 a year. Try raising two kids on that in the greater metropolitan area of Denver. She's being described in the press as "a Forest Service technician," which is FS-speak for all-purpose manual laborers who clean up campgrounds, trail maintenance and kindred grunt work.

Forget the Edward Abbeys, Jack Kerouacs and Gary Snyders of the forest fire watches, turning out literature while communing with nature and scanning the ridge lines for telltale plumes. The Forest Service, part of the USDA, has long been notorious for exploiting its bottom-rung workers

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