Corporate States of America (or the end of Responsibility)

Funny, much of this blog seems to remind me of lessons I learned as a child. One of these lessons my mother and father taught me was to take responsibility for my actions.

Responsibility

It seems to be fairly clear that top telecommunication companies such as AT&T and Verizon broke United States law in helping US intelligent agencies spy on Americans under the Bush Administration. At least 40 lawsuits are pending against these companies.

Yesterday, 69 senators, including Barak Obama and Dianne Feinstein (is she really a Republican?) voted to let them off the hook. The bill's 28 opponents included Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and California Congresswoman Barbara Boxer (John McCain, who consequently has received more donations from telecom companies than any other senator in 2008, was the only senate member absent for the vote).

The new bill continues to require warrants to target Americans in the United States, which the Bush Administration blatantly ignores anyway with 'signing statements.' Bush has used over 750 of these signing statements to bypass US and International law on torture, spying and many other crimes against humanity and the environment.

(In the first six and a half years of Bush's presidency, he never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he signed every bill that reached his desk, then, after the media and the lawmakers had left the White House, Bush quietly filed ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed)

But we all know Bush is a full of deceptions and lies (weapons of mass destruction, Valery Plame, Saddam Hussein & Al Qaeda, not anticipating Katrina... the list is too long). The LA Times reported in late June that only 23 percent of registered voters approved of the job the President is doing, an all time low. But why are these senators helping him ignore our constitution? It is the Legislative Branch's job to the the checks and balance against the Executive Branch, and we've never needed them to do their job more than now.

I contest that we don't have a multiparty system, not even a two party system. We have a one party system in the USA: The Corporate Party. And Fienstein and maybe even Obama are proud members of this party.

The telecoms broke the law for George Bush. They should be held accountable. They should take responsibility for their actions and if they will not, we elected a government to protect our constitutional rights and hold them accountable. Or did we?

Sources: The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Salon.com & SF Gate.

Thanks Stephanie

I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the corporate states of America.
And to the conglomeration,
for which it stands,
one nation, under many CEOs,
always divisible,
with liberty and privileges for some.