No doubt some of you will write me off for that comment and move on, thinking what I have to say cannot possibly be relevant to your life, or to anyone’s real life, for that matter.  Obviously, I’m some kind of a nutcase.  After all, extinction is impossible; humanity is unstoppable.

But that — combined with the fact that extinctions are not at all rare — is exactly why this event may be the trigger for the next mass extinction.

Ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever existed on this planet are currently extinct.  More join the list every day. And even before the current BP disaster, the ocean was in trouble.

The most ecologically essential habitats — estuaries, wetlands, shallow water seagrasses, and coral reefs — are most threatened. Thirty percent of the world’s mangrove forests and nearly half the world’s coral reefs have been lost due to direct habitat destruction. Many of the remaining critical marine habitats are indirectly degraded by pollution, freshwater diversion, and climate change. As human population pressures grow, essential ecological services and species are affected, leading to conditions in which the planet’s vital organs can serve neither nature nor us. (Tundy Agardy, “Are we in the midst of a mass extinction?” (undated) from roundtable: A Modern Mass Extinction?, PBS.org, boldfacing in the original PBS page.)

A Google search on the phrase “extinction ocean” turns up 3,150,000 hits, with titles like “Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048″ for a 2006 CBS news story, a 2009 story from the Discovery Channel titled “Ocean Dead Zones Could Approach Mass Extinction Levels,” and the news that in the five of the prior known mass extinctions which the Earth has endured, “the tropical marine biota has been the most impacted in all cases.”

In short, even before the BP catastrophe — and, mind you, “disaster” is far too mild a word — the oceans were reeling.  For years, scientists have been warning us, unsuccessfully, about the damage we’re doing.  But the stupidity of human beings knows no bounds when it comes to immediate gratification.  This is borne out most obviously when politicians vie for votes, as California’s Devin Nunes does by hammering away at the concept that the delta smelt is “a three-inch minnow,” which environmentally-minded Democrats are choosing “over working families.”

I’ve news for Mr. Nunes, plankton are even shorter than three inches.

More importantly, the argument of scientists and environmentalists is that the mass extinctions going on right now cannot help but impact working families. Some of the impact is immediate, as for the economies — and families — along the Gulf Coast which depend upon the existence of fish, clams, oysters, shrimp and other marine life which has become unavailable due to BP’s spill.  The longer range impact is not known to many of us, if to any of us.

The scary thing is that all of this is driven by greed.  It is not driven by need.

Although they denied it in testimony before a panel in Louisiana, BP knew, for example, that some kind of disaster was in the making.

Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control “sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.”

Problems with the well — including both the casing and the blow-out preventer — went back at least as far as a year ago, when BP’s own engineers expressed concern that the cheaper materials being used risked disaster.

On June 22, [2009] for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

But BP officials responded, “Drill, baby, drill!”

The fact is that BP repeatedly cut corners and ignored warning signs, including instrument read-outs before the explosion showing gas bubbling into the well, indicative of a pending blow-out.  Cutting corners is all about money; it’s not a matter of necessity.

Ironically, a Wall Street Journal story comments that demand for fuel is down, creating a problem for oil company profits.  Shell Oil saw a 19% decrease in profits to $2.9 billion.  I wish I had a fraction of that kind of a problem.

The overall story of oil profits is difficult to discover, but this much is known: oil companies increasingly do phenomenally well, while destroying our planet.  Net profits — that is, the profits after all costs, including fines for cutting corners, clean-up costs, etc. — run into billions and billions of dollars per year for each oil company.  In fact, even BP reported an obscene increase in profits over last year for the same quarter:

BP…said its profit rose to $6.08 billion from $2.56 billion during the same period of 2009. Excluding the impact of energy prices on unsold inventories as well as $49 million of one-time items, and BP would have earned $5.65 billion, topping consensus estimates by about $900 million.

Revenue rose to $74.42 billion from $48.09 billion.

So I don’t really know what to make of the Wall Street Journal story of “decreased profits.”  The WSJ reports, however, that the response of the oil companies to such “decreased profits” is two-fold: they’re trying to permanently shut down refineries, so as to decrease the available supply and force prices up, and they’re cutting corners.

Regardless of BP’s bottom line, the bottom line for the rest of us is this: without strict regulation, the greed that drives oil companies may very well have already started the ball rolling on Earth’s sixth major extinction.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I tend more toward libertarianism than either progressivism (or liberalism) or conservativism.  But the primary purpose of governments is the protection of all of us. This is the one thing I really cannot do for myself.  I can arm myself against robbers, burglars, even individual potential murderers.  I cannot stop large multi-national corporations with billions of dollars that make them more powerful even than most governments.

Companies like BP have shown that they are incapable of regulating their own greed, so government must do it for them.  Ever consistent in their philosophies, right-wing conservatives will scream bloody murder about the regulation of oily murderers, but that is exactly the problem.  Unrestrained, these corporations are murderers, on a scale unmatched in history (human or otherwise).

The same people who insist on locking away folks for life because they steal CDs, tattoo children, or murder individuals should wake up and realize that the time for regulation of those who would willingly risk the extinction of all life on Earth is a necessary governmental function.

After all, extinctions do happen. Even non-greedy humans drive them. Thus, we may be doomed anyway.  If we don’t allow our governments to regulate against these tendencies, we are truly doomed.  Shouldn’t we at least regulate the most obvious — and most dangerous — offenders?

After all, the planet we save could be our own.

We’re told that banks and mortgage companies made a bunch of stupid mistakes which resulted in an economic meltdown.  So to save us from the economic meltdown, we were told we have to give $700 billion to the same banks that put us into this mess to start with.

And now the banks tell us that they are not going to tell us what they did with our money which we gave them to save us from them.

So, seriously, just how stupid are we?

First of all, as “artificial persons,” Corporations have rights under the Constitution, including primarily Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, which are enforceable even upon States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Increasingly, Corporations are being given First Amendment protections that allow them to fund false advertising about the way they operate. (In the old days, commercial speech received less protection than political speech, but this is increasingly switching around so that political speech gets less protection, while commercial speech gets more.)

What a lot of people don’t stop to think about — and this is why I say that most Americans cannot see farther than the nose on their faces — is the Big Picture.

Corporations live longer than people. Corporations have no feelings. No conscience prods at a Corporation if it starts to do things which are harmful to the humans for whom it was originally created. Because Corporations are created for one purpose — to make profits for their shareholders — they sometimes must do things which are harmful to the very shareholders for whom they’re earning profits.

For example, if a set of laws get in the way of a Corporation, the Corporation must do what it can to get rid of the law. Sometimes, this means “taking it to the people,” as happens frequently when zoning laws and regulations get in the way of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart then spends millions to try and buy an election. Additionally, Corporations work to outsource jobs, so they can go to countries where laws that protect workers do not apply. Finally, they also work within the United States to change those laws.

And Corporations have an unfair advantage in these fights. First of all, they have more money. Few human beings have the resources that even a small Corporation has. Large Corporations? Fuggedaboutit. Even if Bill Gates had to battle Microsoft somehow — and in spite of his position, since it’s a Corporation, he could actually be in that position one day — he’d be hard-pressed to defend himself.

Secondly, Corporations can live hundreds of years longer than human beings; technically, they’re immortal. This is why one of the favored methods of used by tobacco companies in the past to beat lawsuits was to drag out litigation as long as possible. The person suing the tobacco Corporation would die before the suit could come to an end. It also means that people fighting against the Corporation politically will sometimes pass before any legistlation they sponsor does.

And now, Corporations are becoming even more powerful. Because they’ve started literally taking over the legal system.

Jeff makes this comment about Corporations:

The corporation is a non-sentient structure. It doesn’t feel good or bad about what it does. Even its human officers aren’t really concerned with good or bad. By the very structural nature of the corporation, the humans behind the corporate front are only responsible for pleasing the shareholders. If responsibility for moral or just action exists at all, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the shareholder. Shareholders make their desires very clear indeed: they must choose between money and morality–the corporation cannot by its very structure make that decision for them. — Jeff Vail, Corporater Interest & Bhopal (December 7, 2004) A Theory of Power website.

This is the sort of thing I periodically try to explain. It’s not so much that Corporations are deliberately evil. This isn’t what makes them so destructive and fearful. The problem is that they’re simply amoral. The purpose and focus of a Corporation is to make money for stockholders. Period. In fact, they are required to do this by law, under threat of lawsuit if they fail to pursue this goal.

And if doing that means destroying lives, countries, cultures or the Earth’s natural resources along the way, it will be done. Again, not because Corporations are intentionally evil. It’s just that, in the absence of any check on their power, they can no more help doing that than a hungry dingo could help dragging a human baby off into the brush of Australia. (If it helps, substitute a San Diego-area mountain lion and a small girl.)

Jeff also has some interesting things to say about the Bush “plan” for Iraq and the possibility that an implementation of George Orwell’s “continuous state of ‘war’” via intentional instability — a model that may have evolved from strategies employed by the British government during their years as an empire — is at the root of that plan. Vail asks, “Is this the result of a new, intentional US strategy, or is it simply incompetence on the part of American foreign policy?”

Check it out.

Truth be told, when I have taken mathematics courses in college, I caught on quickly, but was bored at how slow it went. Sitting around waiting for the rest of the class to “get” quadratic equations, sines or cosines, and other mathematical concepts that I no longer remember distressed the crap out of me. I’ve often lamented, though, that I didn’t stick with it, because mathematics is a) important and b) something like pool or golf or tennis — the more you play with it, the better you get; stop playing, and your skills flush right down the poo-poo pot. (Sorry. I just really wanted to use that phrase.)

You don’t need incredible skill with mathematics, though, to understand my oft-repeated fear that the United States is headed for the Dark Ages and the average American is headed for serfdom. Anyone who manages their own household finances can figure it out.

Rowan gives an outline of how that’s happening and what it will look like by discussing the looting of Russia by capitalists after the end of the Cold War. It’s plausible, scary and the rich oil corporations that milked Russia are doing the same thing right now to America as well.

His post reminds me of the nightmares I had as I struggled through Peter Peterson’s Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (2004). If you look at that book, do not make it — as I did — the last thing you read at night.

The shame of it is that only “average Americans” working together can stop this. And the possibility of that happening is extremely unlikely, particularly when you consider that the people who are ultimately responsible have successfully brainwashed those average Americans into helping with the project. Like the Borg, they have assimilated most of us. As with those assimilated by the Borg, those assimilated by Corporate America, a.k.a., the Bush Administration, no longer are capable of free and independent thought, let alone action.

At the risk of sounding like a 1960s-style pinko, a.k.a., commie-bastard, a.k.a., socialist sympathizer, this is why the founding generation of Americans were individualists. Unfortunately for us, they believed that the laws that controlled corporations — including limitations on corporate “lives” — would endure forever. So they didn’t build safeguards into the Constitution to protect us — the owners of the government — from corporate take-over. (No doubt, they thought the fact that the government they created was limited to its “enumerated powers” and that the people were clear that they had certain unalienable rights — and, under the Ninth Amendment, all other rights not expressly given up to the government — protected us. Consequently, corporate seizure of governmental powers would be pointless, because it could not be used against the people. As we’ve come to learn, the government refuses to be limited by the Constitution and not even our unalienable rights are unalienable.)

Corporations are unconstrained naturally by the infirmities of mere mortals. They don’t have to die because, in reality, they don’t have lives. They can’t be physically wounded or catch colds. Unless we build them into the corporate charter, as the Founders of our Great Nation did, they don’t have handicaps. When you combine that with the legal evolution of the last 70 to 100 years or so, wherein they seized our government, obtained “artificial personhood” complete with the creation of the legal fiction that the protections of the Bill of Rights are applicable to them, ordinary human beings are incapable of competing. We die. We get sick. We have natural handicaps. And most of us cannot acquire huge amounts of capital with which to purchase advertising to brainwash and squash those who might otherwise hinder us.

I used to think that my wife and I didn’t really have to worry about this, because we don’t have any kids to leave behind to suffer what’s coming. And it’s been clear for decades that it’s coming.

Unfortunately, I no longer believe that it’s going to wait to hit until after we’re gone. It could very well be the thing that does us in.

This is where a little skill with mathematics — and common sense — would help us. Add up the costs of things like the war in Iraq (and I’m not even talking about the human costs; just add up the money for now). Look at the obscene profits being drained away from the poor by the rich. Consider the huge tax cuts they’ve received.

On that last point, take a serious look at your own tax return. After the Bush Administration’s 2001 tax cut, the Treasury Department reported that “91 million taxpayers will receive, on average, a tax cut of $1,126.” Wow. That’s almost enough to rent an apartment in Fresno for two months. Sounds like a lot.

Did you know there are approximately 295 million people in the United States? So “91 million taxpayers” means less than one-third of Americans got that whopping huge tax cut of $1,126. And, by the way, if those folks are home-owners, forget what I said about paying the rent for two months. That $1,126 won’t even cover one month of the average mortgage in my neighborhood!

Half the people of the United States earn less than $43,000 per year. (That, by the way, has not changed much since the mid-1960s.) And it’s dropping according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration and the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2004. That same report says that the number of people living in poverty in the United States has increased since 2002. I guess those tax cuts really helped, nu? To cap things off, “the official poverty definition uses money income before taxes” so some people are above the poverty line — until they pay their taxes. (Carmen DeNavas-Walt, et al. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003 (August 2004) U.S. Department of Commerce/Economics and Statistics Bureau/U.S. Census Bureau.)

The tax cuts benefited people depending upon their level of income. In terms of real dollars, it’s easier to understand if you divide the United States taxpayers up into five groups. The middle group received about $217. Yep. That’s right. Two-hundred and seventeen dollars. That buys a couple of nights in a hotel. In 2005, tax cuts are expected to bring the middle fifth another $162. (Robert Greenstein and Isaac Shapiro Many Middle-Class Families Likely Will Wind Up as Net Losers From The “Middle-Class” Tax Cut Legislation (September 28, 2004) Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.) So there. You get another night in a hotel.

Even those with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 are expected to get back only $2,390 actual cash in 2005. Meanwhile, those making over $1 million per year will receive breaks worth as much as $136,398! (William Gale, et al. The Ultimate Burden of Tax Cuts (June 2004) Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

As the Gale report says in its opening paragraph,

Popular discussions about the advisability of recent tax cuts have frequently ignored a simple truism: someone, somewhere, at some time will have to pay for them. The payment may be in the form of increases in other taxes, reductions in government programs, or some combination of the two; the payment may occur now or later; it may be transparent or hidden. But iron laws of arithmetic and fiscal solvency tell us that the payment has to occur. (William Gale, et al. The Ultimate Burden of Tax Cuts (June 2004) Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

“Iron laws of arithmetic and fiscal solvency tell us that the payment has to occur.” Makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, when I use my credit card, I ultimately have to pay the bill. Right now, the government is borrowing like mad. It costs money to run a government. It costs money to have an army of bureaucrats, politicians, congresspeople — not to mention an Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corp to handle both our defense and the war in Iraq. Throw in Social Security, MediCare and other government programs and “someone, somewhere, at some time will have to pay for them”!

Why do you think the Bush Administration is so eager to do away with Social Security through the pretense of “privatizing” it? Sound like a good idea? Ask Enron employees how well-protected their privatized retirement plans were.

This is what “deficit” means, folks! When there’s a deficit it means you’re spending more money than you have. So you can either cut spending or find a way to increase the amount of money you have. It’s really that simple. It doesn’t change just because it’s the government doing the spending. “Iron laws of arithmetic and fiscal solvency tell us that the payment has to occur.”

The Bush Administration has given so much money to the rich through tax cuts that even cutting social programs isn’t enough. That’s why Congress recently raised the limit on the government’s credit card to $800 billion. (Associated Press Congress OKs $800B debt limit increase (November 19, 2004) via MSNBC.) We have to borrow more!

And think about it: All this is so the middle-fifth of taxpayers receive a few hundred dollars in tax cuts while the richest people receive thousands — depending on financing calculations, over one-hundred-and-thirty thousand. Who do you think is going to bear the brunt of the ultimate pay-off? I’ve heard people say, “It’s about time the government gave back some of my money.” They didn’t give back your money! They gave back your kids money! They gave you money they don’t yet have!

Just because Americans have never been serfs before, folks, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Look to the so-called Great Depression. What’s happening today has the potential to make that look like a great big workers’ vacation. At least some of those folk could run into the hills and forage or grow their own veggies.

Try that in the middle of a city of a million people.

Unfortunately, allowing all this to happen is as easy as shopping at Wal-Mart. Preventing it won’t so easy. Especially since most of us don’t know that it’s happening, let alone how.

What we need is to develop a little healthy fear of corporations and more loathing for the Bush acolytes who support them above real people.

Normally, I’m so against the intrusiveness of Internet advertising and I’m so deeply convinced that the majority are scams that I refuse to succumb to the urge to click-through on even the best-sounding ads. I figure unless I’m deliberately trying to help support someone’s website by getting them get “click-through credits,” I’ll just buy my stuff the normal way — through eBay!

But I’ve been craving another Apple Macintosh lately. And tonight I just happened to see an ad banner I couldn’t resist.

While reading an unfathomable article — a group of Christians has convinced an Indiana legislator to change the name of highway I-69 because (obviously) it’s an immoral number — I spotted an ad banner that said if I could “shoot the cockroach,” I might win an Apple desktop computer.

Shooting the representation of the cockroach was easy. But it turns out the real cockroach is the company: Consumer Research Corporation.

Because, you see, the “free offer” is not, technically-speaking free. Or maybe the real problem is that it’s only “technically-speaking” free.

Shooting the representation of the cockroach caused it to splatter (nice graphics) and then I was asked to enter my zip code to see if they were “recruiting” in my area. Imagine my amazement when I discovered they were.

So I start to fill out the form, which requires name, address, phone number, valid email address, etc. Then I decide I’m going to carefully read the “CONSUMER RESEARCH CORPORATION FREE GIFT INCENTIVE PARTICIPATION TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY.” Carefully.

And am I glad I did. I almost sacrificed another (temporary) email address.

The participation terms are that you agree to let them track your behavior on the Internet. They’ll do it with cookies, web bugs, web beacons and things of that sort. You agree that they’re allowed to use the information “in accordance with the terms of this Policy.”

“This Policy” explains that they’ll sell the information to other companies and that people will spam you (of course, they don’t call it that; they say “targeted advertising via electronic delivery and/or direct mail”) and that you’ll agree to periodically fill out questionnaires — some of which, apparently, will be used to cross-reference information about you. They’ll track whether you’ve read email promotions that have been sent to you and which servers your computer logs onto.

Several times during the process, I was told:

You are guaranteed to be accepted if you meet the eligibility requirements:

• Over 18 years old
• Legal United States Resident
• Valid Email & Shipping address

Since I was going to give them an old Hotmail address to use, I was willing to chance the spam for my free Apple computer. But then . . .

To receive the free membership incentive gift you must complete all of the steps outlined herein. . .

. . . acquire two advertiser action points from each of PTP’s three Offer Groups for a total of six advertiser action points. Action points are earned when a PTP user fully completes an advertiser offer after accessing the offer by clicking on a link provided on the PTP website or from the PTP member area. Attempting to gain action points in any way other than clicking on the advertiser links provided by PTP will result in the cancellation of your PTP membership. Please understand that this means completing two offers from the Top Offers group, two offers from the Prime Offers group, and two offers from the Premium Offers group.

If the “offer” is a credit card, you have to actually activate and use the credit card — and you have to keep it for at least 60 days. If the “offer” is a “paid retail offer,” then you have to actually accept delivery on the item and pay in full.

That’s how you earn the points to get your “free” Apple computer. Oh, and you have to “earn” all your points within 90 days.

And so, when I said “you can imagine my amazement,” I actually meant to say “you could imagine my amazement if it turned out they were not accepting new testers in my area.

It’s “technically” free, I’m sure. No doubt they’ll probably really give you the computer if you get all your points. But, somehow, giving me 90 days to buy six things I probably don’t need takes the joy out of it for me.

Too bad all I got to shoot was a representation of the creature that cooked up this “free” offer.

Nevertheless, the “interesting” juxtaposition of stories in the San Francisco Chronicle on my birthday (July 31) begs for me to at least bring it to your attention.

A story on the front page of the Business section (page C1) sports the headline “ChevronTexaco profit more than doubles.” The story continues on page C2, where it sits neatly tucked up inside another story with the headline “Energy industry cautious about increasing oil output.”

Just in case the irony is lost on some, the ChevronTexaco story quotes George Gaspar, an analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co., putting the case mildly: “This was an absolute blowout quarter. I don’t think there’s any other way to describe it.” Oppenheimer & Co. equity analyst Fadel Gheit, however, did find another way to describe it when he said, “We have not seen the level of capital spending (on exploration and production) reflect the high oil prices or obscene profits.” Of course, Gheit wasn’t talking just about ChevronTexaco.

Yet ChevronTexaco’s story is certainly worth noting. Their net income this past year was 4.13 billion dollars. The year before? A mere 1.6 billion. As the story from page C1 notes, they’re “benefiting from the continuing surge in oil and gas prices around the globe.” Well, it’s good to see that someone is.

ChevronTexaco, by the way, is just one company currently gouging Americans at the gas pumps. (And they’re doing it at a time when the cost of a barrel of oil is almost the same as it was during the “crisis” of the 1970s that resulted in gasoline prices approximately half of what they are today.)

On the other hand, did we really expect it to be different? After all, the United States’ energy policy was drafted in a meeting between Vice-President Dick Cheney — who, like the President, is a multi-millionaire oilman — and the chief executives of the major oil companies. And the American public, says Cheney, is not even entitled to know who was there, let alone what was said.

At first blush, this might make a reasonable person a little suspicious, especially given that Cheney has waged a significant battle in the courts to keep the American people (that would be “the people” in “government of the people, by the people and for the people”).

On the other hand — hey, how many hands do I have here, anyway?! — what is “reasonable”?

The Supreme Court of the United States, in Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia (2004) 124 S.Ct. 1391 [158 L. Ed. 2d 225], in an opinion written by none other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, noted that it was unreasonable for anyone to believe that just because Cheney took his good friend Scalia duck-hunting right before Cheney’s case went before the Court, he would be favorably inclined toward Cheney. Scalia callously noted “If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.” (Cheney, supra, 124 S.Ct. 1391 at 1403.)

Now I have no doubts whatsoever that Scalia is unable to imagine the deep trouble the country is in right now. After all, he’s hanging out with Cheney! But the comment is more than a little disingenuous. The suggestion that Scalia might consider recusing himself wasn’t because anyone believed he was bought off with a duck hunt. The suggestion was that there might be an untoward appearance that he’d been bought off — period.

More likely, Scalia was not bought off at all. Nevertheless, there is cause for concern and at least an appearance of impropriety when a good friend of the Vice-President and President, who just happens to be a Supreme Court Justice, coincidentally goes on a big duck-hunting trip with the Vice-President as that Vice-President’s case is headed to the Supreme Court upon which his good friend happens to sit. And that concern is not limited to any “appearance of impropriety.” Scalia’s own opinion gives some reason to believe that he has been compromised. When he writes about “the issue here,” it appears quite clear that he just doesn’t get it.

There are, I am sure, those who believe that my friendship with persons in the current administration might cause me to favor the Government in cases brought against it. That is not the issue here. Nor is the issue whether personal friendship with the Vice President might cause me to favor the Government in cases in which he is named. None of those suspicions regarding my impartiality (erroneous suspicions, I hasten to protest) bears upon recusal here. The question, simply put, is whether someone who thought I could decide this case impartially despite my friendship with the Vice President would reasonably believe that I cannot decide it impartially because I went hunting with that friend and accepted an invitation to fly there with him on a Government plane. If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined. — Cheney, supra, 124 S.Ct. 1391 at 1403

It’s a nice spin, but “the issue here” isn’t whether Cheney bought Scalia off with a duck hunt and an airplane ride, even on a “government” plane. “The issue here” is what that trip represented, which is the close tie of friendship betwixt the two.

The ethical standard to which Scalia should aspire is contained within 28 U.S.C.A. ? 455(a):

Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned. (Emphasis added.)

Scalia is aware of this United States Code section and, although he admits that someone could think there are questions about a potential lack of impartiality, blithely notes,

Since I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned, I do not think it would be proper for me to recuse. — Cheney, supra, 124 S.Ct. 1391 at p. 1401.

He indicates that part of his reasoning for this is that,

My recusal would also encourage so-called investigative journalists to suggest improprieties, and demand recusals, for other inappropriate (and increasingly silly) reasons. The Los Angeles Times has already suggested that it was improper for me to sit on a case argued by a law school dean whose school I had visited several weeks before–visited not at his invitation, but at his predecessor’s. — Cheney, supra, 124 S.Ct. 1391 at p. 1402.

Ignoring the pejorative “so-called” impliedly applicable to anyone who might question Scalia, one wonders what happened to the “reasonable person” standard. Regardless of what any given newspaper says, even Scalia should be capable of distinguishing between a visit to a law school at the invitation of a prior dean and a duck-hunting trip at the invitation of an old friend right before that friend’s case goes to the Supreme Court on which Scalia sits! News organizations will occasionally publish outrageous stories — witness Fox’s version of “news,” where this happens by the minute. They are, after all, in the business of selling, convincing and inculcating, rather than reporting, these days. The rest of us aren’t always so stupid as to be unable to distinguish between non-acquaintances and good friends. (Demonstrating the irony of this, even newspapers recognize the distinction; they just deliberately ignore it when trying to sell “news.”)

Scalia’s own opinion should give a reasonable person pause when it comes to determining whether or not he can impartially consider the case. While noting the accuracy of the brief on the motion to have him recused, he states “as the motion cruelly but accurately states….” ( Cheney, supra, 124 S.Ct. 1391 at p. 1403.) A motion, accurately stating the grounds upon which recusal should be considered, is characterized by Scalia as cruel because it stated those grounds — however accurately it may have done so. How mean of them to accurately state the facts supporting their motion to recuse!

This is not symptomatic of an impartial judge. It’s all the more problematic when you take into account that he’s one of the five who elected the current administration in the first place (see Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98 [121 S. Ct. 525; 148 L. Ed. 2d 388]) and that Scalia and Cheney are not mere acquaintances, but long-time friends.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices in Fresno hover around “a low” of $2.06 per gallon, with local news organizations promising this “low” will be short-lived. ChevronTexaco’s net income has gone from $1.6 billion to $4.13 billion in one year. The energy industry doesn’t want to increase production of oil because it might lower prices at the pump. ( See Brad Foss, “Energy industry cautious about decreasing oil output” (July 31, 2004) San Francisco Chronicle at p. C2.)

And no one discussed in this article has anything but our best interests (and a smoothly-functioning corporate-driven government and judicial system) at heart.

Thanks to Wal-Mart, we’ll soon never lose another dress…or the person who wears it.

This month’s CSO: The Resource for Security Executives notes that

During the next year, hundreds of companies will be forced to deploy technology for automatically tracking the movement of consumer goods using radio waves. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been mandated by both the U.S. Department of Defense and — perhaps more important — Wal-Mart. — Garfinkel, “What’s Your Frequency?” (May 2004) CSO: The Resource for Security Executives, p. 55. [Emphasis added.]

RFID uses low-powered transmitters so small they can be sewn right into the fabric of clothing. These devices are capable of sitting, quiescent, until you walk within 1 inch to 100 feet of a reader. The most common use is to track assets or manage inventory. RFID tags can also contain additional information — they’re used, for example, to tag sheep with information about blood lines, date of birth and shot records.

And now Wal-Mart has insisted that manufacturers put these tags into every item they manufacture.

The data store on a 13.56-MHz tag is large enough to contain routing information for the shipping container and a detailed inventory of the products inside. — Brewin, “Radio Frequency Identification,” ComputerWorld (online).

Or information on the name, address and other identifying information of consumers who purchase items laced with RDIF? Wal-Mart, who once sued an elderly woman for her Social Security payments to recover some of their costs after they ran over her with a fork-lift (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Keel (2002) 817 So.2d 1; 2002 La. LEXIS 969), would surely never stoop so low, would they? They couldn’t do that, could they?

While most RDIF tags currently in use are “write once, read many” devices — meaning the information is imprinted at the time of manufacture and is not modifiable afterwards — there are RDIF tags that can be imprinted with fresh information. With the proper devices at each purchasing terminal (e.g., “cash register”) it would be possible to imprint tags hidden in your clothing with information about who you are, where you live and anything else available to the checker. Perhaps if you pay for the item with cash, it would be easier to avoid this, but if you pay by credit card or use a store discount “club” card the checker has your personal information in hand. And suppose you mostly buy using cash and without a “club” card, but one time, you didn’t? It shouldn’t be too difficult to read the clothes you’re wearing which you purchased with a credit or “club” card, while you stand in front of the cashier waiting to pay cash for your new clothes, and transfer information from the clothes you’re wearing to the new clothing. And then…

Indelible tags sewn into clothing or embedded in the soles of shoes would make it possible to track consumers as they enter or leave stores. Readers on store shelves could alert whenever a consumer picks up expensive merchandise — perhaps automatically snapping a picture [or reading their identity from their clothes] if someone gets too many razors at once. Tags on books or magazines would identify what a person is reading by scanning his briefcase or backpack. Tags on banknotes would enable a mugger to figure out who is carrying large amounts of cash. — Garfinkel, supra, at p. 56.

Think this sounds paranoid?

It’s tempting to dismiss these scenarios as ravings from unsophisticated technophobes. Don’t. The glaring mis-uses of RFID technology previously mentioned were first brought up not by privacy activists, but by the RFID industry itself. — Garfinkel, supra, at p. 56.

Some 6 million Americans are already familiar with RFID technology, although they may not realize it. Cars equipped with RFID transponders allow consumers to pull into a gas station, fill up and never so much as remove a credit card from their wallet. And guess what?

[T]ransit authorities in several cities use E-ZPass tags as a way to measure traffic flow. In other words, people are reading the RFID in your car without your knowledge. — Newitz, “Wearing a Wire” (May 6, 2003) Alternet.org. [Emphasis added.]

Remember the scene in Back to the Future II where Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) is walking down the street and the commercials adapt to his presence? This is one of the more innocuous realities made possible by RFID; but it also demonstrates how easy it is to recognize that you are you as you pass by. Surely the government would never monitor ordinary, non-criminal citizens!

Oh? Cities from Honolulu to Miami are currently using cameras to watch citizens 24 hours a day. In Honolulu,

The cameras are mounted on utility poles, and a camera operator watching a video monitor at a police substation can zoom in and out, rotate a camera 360 degrees and even look straight down[.] — Gonser, “Security cameras under repair” (March 5, 2004) Honolulu Advertiser.

And The Miami Herald reports that,

One of the nation’s richest towns has decided to digitally record the license plate of every car that meanders through its small stretch of mansions on the Palm Beach County coast and to run an automatic background check on each driver. — Bierman, “Just passing through? In this town, the cameras will know” (April 24, 2004) The Miami Herald. [Emphasis added.]

Combine that with RFID technology now being built into nearly every new automobile (16 million vehicles have this feature today) and you get a lot more than instant background checks on every driver — RFID technology could be used to disable the automobile by changing the RFID code in the ignition system. And for those who have no problems with the government keeping tabs on all people within our geographic reach twenty-four-by-seven, don’t forget that the same technology would be within the reach of criminals. Imagine being out in the middle of a deserted area in the middle of the night when someone disables your car’s ignition system.

These applications are only the tip of the iceberg. Do you think periodic drug testing is intrusive? Employers in the private sector — who are not bound by constitutional restrictions the way some governments (theoretically) are — have utilized RFID for such functions as monitoring the number of calories consumed by their employees versus the amount of exercise the employee has gotten.

Privacy activists, such as the Electronic Frontier Federation, which has a section on RFID have noted this massive potential for invasion of privacy. And I’m pointing out the potential for government monitoring of citizens’ activities. Peace Fresno won’t have to worry about the sheriff’s department infiltrating their group when they can easily be tracked by the clothes they wear and the cars they drive. Fashion Fair’s guards could be alerted to their presence the minute they step on the property by RFID tags hidden in the shoes they bought from manufacturers who bowed to Wal-Mart’s demands.

Garfinkel notes that California has legislation pending which would require businesses selling consumer goods to kill item-level RFID tags at check-out — similar to what happens now when security devices are removed from clothing at the purchase point. But as Garfinkel’s article points out,

The problem with the “all tags must die” approach, says Henry Holtzman, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, is that tags on stolen property won’t be killed. That means that having an item on your body containing a live tag might be taken as circumstantial evidence that you are a shoplifter. It’s not hard to imagine police walking the sidewalks in some neighborhoods with high-powered RFID readers, searching for anybody giving off the right signals. And it’s not hard to imagine anti-RFID activists going into stores and killing every tag they can find with covert tools. — Garfinkel, supra, at p. 58.

Nor is it difficult to imagine the police using RFID readers simply to identify and run background checks on everyone passing a particular ad hoc security checkpoint. It’s the next-best-thing to Minority Report.

RFID technology is here to stay. In reality, it’s been available for decades. But never has it been as cheap, ubiquitous and potentially threatening as it is today, in an era where the USA PATRIOT Act and other legislation that strips restrictions from governmental spying on citizens is increasingly viewed as normal and beneficial by a government that views each of its citizens as potential miscreants or, worse, enemies. Unless citizens are aware of the issues outlined in this article, they cannot act responsibly to deal with it.

So what do you do? The threat to privacy is very real, but is accentuated by the absence of government regulations limiting the use of RFID technology. What needs to happen is for concerned citizens to write their congressional representatives and express their concerns. Don’t sit back and wait until it’s too late. Stores like Wal-Mart, who consider you not so much as customers as cash cows, are ready and waiting to say, “Tag, you’re it!”

This really should be a non-issue.

After all, the American people have proven that what the current administration does is actually irrelevant. I’m not saying this (seriously) to be sarcastic, but I’m not sure if the reason for this is because we so like having a Republican in office or if we just hate having a Democrat in office or if we like sending our children to die like heros in the dessert or if it’s because Bush claims to be a Christian or what. There’s something going on in the minds of most Americans that is simply unexplainable.

Over the last four years, I’ve seen prices going up for gasoline as if we were dumping gold into our gas tanks. Housing prices have risen dramatically (although this isn’t always bad, if you’re a seller). Civil Rights have become almost non-existent. Our government — and no one else — is responsible for this.

We accept these things because we refuse to believe our government — particularly one with a President who so frequently invokes the name of G-d — would not have our best interests at heart. And as to the restrictions on our freedoms, well, after all, most of us “have nothing to hide.”

Yet Americans don’t seem to understand that governments aren’t always benevolent. For more than 200 years, ours has been held in check by the law. For that reason, we’ve gotten used to the idea that (at least our) governments can’t really oppress — well, they can’t visibly oppress most white people, anyway. Essentially, we’ve been able to live free. The thing is that we’ve been able to live that way because our nation’s Founders placed limitations upon our government. Without these limitations, they believed, governments naturally turn despotic.

Under Parliamentary government, there is little or no restraint that is exercised by a Constitution upon the passions of the moment that may seize a nation. In what is perceived as an emergency, individual rights can be overridden. The entire government, therefore, is less stable over time and subject to being changed by something that might in retrospect seem whimsical.

The saving grace for the United States was that the Founders first wrote a Constitution to keep the power of government in check and then deliberately made it difficult to revise that Constitution. So opposed were the Founders to the concentration of power that a federal government would bring that the United States almost was not created at all!

Joseph Ellis points out in Founding Brothers: ?no one had ever established a republican government on the scale of the United States, and the overwhelming judgment of most respected authorities was that it could not be done.? The revolution had ?stigmatized all concentrated political power . . . and any energetic expression of governmental authority as an alien force that a responsible citizens ought to repudiate.? After all, Americans had just fought a long and difficult war to rid themselves of a ?despotic? king and ?tyrannical? parliament so they could be free to pursue life, liberty and happiness, unfettered by trade restrictions, taxes, and other burdens.

And so, for the majority of our history, our government has been limited in its powers. The major limitations have included requirements that prevent the government from conducting its business in secrecy. In addition to the Constitution, the Freedom of Information Act is one such limitation.

Freedom of information is a phrase bandied about almost daily by press and public alike. And with the perennial stress on both constitutional and inherent rights of American citizens, with the added assertion of government subservience to the individual, it was necessary that government information would be available to the public. Issues of counter-rights, such as sensitivity of government information or private interests, clash. It was, therefore, attempted in 1966 to enact a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which would effectively deal with requests for government records consistent with the idea that the people have the ?right to know? about them. Also, close in hand, the Privacy Act (PA) of 1974 covered government documents charting individuals.

Today, the Bush Administration has been hammering away at all such restrictions. They want the ability to operate in secret and they want the ability to maintain records on the majority of citizens.

That’s right, the majority of citizens, not just those the average American might agree “should be” watched.

This blog entry is not intended to be an in-depth examination of these issues. For more information on Total Information Awareness, “the closest thing to a true ‘Big Brother’ program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States,” you can check this web page. Technically, the Total Information Awareness program was killed by Congress amid concerns it would be used to spy on Americans. But the government views your privacy as anathema — which it is — to their ability to control. And Total Information Awareness lives on — but now with new names that help disguise its breadth.

Again, it isn’t (well, it wasn’t) my intent to go into much depth on these issues. One other thing to note, though, is that even where the law still forbids government from collecting extensive databases on citizens, it does not forbid them from using databases created by non-government entities, such as Cendant Corporation, which is (legally!) compiling huge databases on citizens. So far, these databases are “only” being used by other companies to “weed out” customers they don’t want. Insurance companies, for example, look at the buying habits of Americans (remember those discount cards you get from Von’s, Ralph’s and other grocery markets that track your name and purchases?) to eliminate those with “unhealthy” habits like “buying alcohol, cigarettes and red meat.” (And when Robert Rivera slipped and fell in a California grocery store and fractured his kneecap, he sued the store to pay the medical bills. In turn, the store threatened to use Mr. Rivera’s shopping history against him, specifically, that he made frequent purchases of alcohol and that he “was a lush with poor memory and coordination,” the Seattle Weekly reported.) These same databases are being used by government agencies like the IRS to track people who underreport income — looking at your purchases allows them to make judgments about whether you are reporting less than you earn.

Meanwhile, as the government increases its surveillance of ordinary citizens, our Vice-President fights valiantly to protect his right to keep us from finding out how much participation oil and energy companies had in the writing of the United States policy regarding energy.

The Bush administration has lost two rounds in federal court. If the Supreme Court makes it three, Cheney could have to reveal potentially embarrassing records just in time for the presidential election.

Although he’s lost repeatedly in the lower courts, the chances are that his run at the Supreme Court will be like, well, shooting ducks. Purely coincidentally, “The Times notes that pair [sic] arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La.” (See “Scalia-Cheney Trip Raises Eyebrows,” CBSNews.com, January 17, 2003, emphasis mine. In fairness, of course, Scalia notes that “I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.” That’s his opinion, anyway; and any other opinion isn’t reasonable.)

The White House’s fear is that in the unlikely event Cheney loses in the Supreme Court, it could be embarrassed by the records which would end up being released just in time for the election. But the damage this administration is doing to our country and our willingness to sit still — like so many ducks — is what’s really embarrassing.

The War in Iraq is not going as well as expected. More money is needed. More troops are needed. More of your children (I have none, which is why I sometimes think I’m an idiot for not being a “get what I can and damn the next generation” Republican) are going to have to die.

On the other hand, our population is aging. There is already a recognized problem in that as the baby boomers age, there aren’t enough young people to support the Social Security program. There’s been talk about raising the age limits for Social Security benefits. And, since the government spends more of our tax dollars on fighting the rest of the world, those tax dollars cannot be used to support programs benefiting Americans at home.

The recent death of Pat Tillman — which was somehow publicized in spite of a Bush Administration ban on this kind of news — shows the heartache of the war caused by the death of the sons and daughters of America. Heartache is the inevitable outcome of war, but the death of our young does not have to be.

Instead, the President should consider changing the rules when the draft is reinstated. Instead of sending our young productive workforce to fight and die in Iraq, he should send aging baby boomers. In fact, the benefits would be even greater if he sends those already collecting Social Security. After all, they’re already used to living on lower incomes and it’s not like we’ll ever send the rich to fight the war they so desperately crave to run our military-industrial complex upon which they’ve built their riches. (More than half of our discretionary spending is military spending.)

This solution is even more important in an era where corporations increasingly profit from wars like this while simultaneously carrying less of the tax burden than they did in previous decades (in 1940, for example, corporations essentially split the bill with private citizens, paying almost half the taxes; today, they pay just 13.7%). It is increasingly important as we fail to listen to the warnings of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower — himself one of our greatest Army generals during World War II; he was Supreme Commander of the troops that invaded France to throw out the Nazis — when he said,

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The time to heed such warnings is past. As Eisenhower feared, the military-industrial complex has taken over our government and the problem now is to figure out how to keep America functioning in the face of what they’ve done. Since we cannot maintain the balance Eisenhower talked about between military programs and national social programs, the question now is how best to keep from killing our sons and daughters and continue to allow our aging population to receive subsistence.

By drafting only people between the ages of 50 and 70, we can accomplish both of these goals. First, our young people will not go off to war only to die for the rich. Secondly, our aging population will. This will alter the balance between young and old in our country and make it possible to sustain the Social Security program indefinitely. And since old people (arguably) cannot fight as well as young people, we will have to send twice as many; the balance will be achieved that much quicker.

Lastly, this could be combined with a plan to solve our prescription drug problem. If, during the draft, we make no exceptions for those older people on medications — in fact, we may even wish to target them — we could stop giving them their medications. Many of them are going to be shot anyway. Those that collapse on the field because of a lack of medications can be deemed “war casualties.” Bingo! No more Medicare problem!

This is a win-win-win-win-win situation for the President.

Win Number One: Most older people tend to be altruistic (they probably learned this caring for their young) and are more likely to join the Democratic party. Young people tend to be more selfish, making them ideal candidates for the Republican party. Thus, a plan that keeps the young alive while simultaneously reducing the numbers of older people benefits a Republican President and his party.

Win Number Two: By reducing the numbers of older people, less folk collect Social Security. The program is thus cheaper to maintain.

Win Number Three: By not killing young people, we have more workers to support the remaining Social Security program. In fact, this is actually two wins in one, because young people also tend to save less money, since retirement seems so far away. They spend more. This drives our consumer-based society.

Win Number Four: Old dead people don’t have prescription drug problems. They don’t have to be bussed to Canada for cheaper medications. This will also reduce the FDA budget as less of these buses will need to be stopped and searched.

Win Number Five: With less old people — and particularly if we target those on prescription drugs as noted above — overall Medicare costs go down.

Best of all for the President, there’s no downside! With so many elderly out of the way, and so few young people who actually vote (and fewer still who think before voting), there’s no one to vote him out of office!

See? I can think like a Republican!