The President in a bubble

Tom Engelhardt has written an amazing article entitled "Potemkin World… or the President in the Zone" that is published in TomDispatch. What he describes is downright creepy:

"The great motorcade," wrote Canadian correspondent Don Murray, "swept through the streets of the city… The crowds … but there were no crowds. George W. Bush's imperial procession through Europe took place in a hermetically sealed environment. In Brussels it was, at times, eerie. The procession containing the great, armour-plated limousine (flown in from Washington) rolled through streets denuded of human beings except for riot police. Whole areas of the Belgian capital were sealed off before the American president passed."

Murray doesn't mention the 19 American escort vehicles in that procession with the President's car (known to insiders as "the beast"), or the 200 secret service agents, or the 15 sniffer dogs, or the Blackhawk helicopter, or the 5 cooks, or the 50 White House aides, all of which added up to only part of the President's vast traveling entourage. Nor does he mention the huge press contingent tailing along inside the president's security "bubble," many of them evidently with their passports not in their own possession but in the hands of White House officials, or the more than 10,000 policemen and the various frogmen the Germans mustered for the President's brief visit to the depopulated German town of Mainz to shake hands with Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder.
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for Bush & Co., all life is lived inside a bubble carefully wiped clean of any traces of recalcitrant, unpredictable, roiling humanity, of anything that might throw their dream world into question. On the electoral campaign trail in 2004, George probably never attended an event in which his audience wasn't carefully vetted for, and often quite literally pledged to, eternal friendliness, not to say utter adoration. (Anyone who somehow managed to slip by with, say, a Kerry T-shirt on, was summarily ejected or even arrested.)

In a sense, our President's world has increasingly been filled with nothing but James Guckert clones. Guckert is, of course, the "journalist" who, using the alias Jeff Gannon, regularly attended presidential news conferences and lobbed softball questions George's way. The Gannon case, or "Gannongate," has -- are you surprised? -- hardly been touched on by most of the mainstream media despite its lurid trail leading to internet porn sites and a seamy underside of gay culture -- issues that normally would glue eyes to TV sets and sell gazillions of papers (and that in the Clinton era would have rocked the administration). On the other hand, it did cause an uproar in the world of the political Internet, where, if we were to be honest -- and stop claiming to be shocked, shocked -- we would quickly admit that almost all of George's world has essentially filled up with Gannons (though not necessarily with the porn connections).

After all, even the President's Crawford "ranch" is really a Gannon-style set. And in Germany and France, George and Condi, his new Secretary of State, managed to have town-hall style meetings only with audiences of European Gannons; audiences so carefully combed over that, on a continent whose public is largely in opposition to almost any Bush policy you might mention, not a single challenging question seems to have been asked. That certainly represents remarkable advanced planning. It's no easy thing, after all, constantly to rush ahead of a President and his key advisors and create a Potemkin world for them from which reality has been banished and in which no rough edges will ever be experienced.

It's a long article but I highly recommend it. Included is a very moving open letter to Bush written by an ordinary Iraqi.

The cost of war

I invite you to read "It’s Time To End The War On Terrorism As We Know It" by John Friedrich. Friedrich's suggestion is elegantly simple and, sadly, too sensible ever to be considered by the powers that be:

Redirecting resources from the Iraq occupation and the bloated military budget to confront worldwide poverty and suffering would go a long way toward winning back the “hearts and minds” of the people we need on our side. A shift in global opinion of U.S. foreign policy – particularly in the Middle East -- would help dry up the ground upon which violent extremists have been feeding and growing.

I leave you with two presidential quotes offered by Friedrich:

Even if one believes the Bush Administration’s rationale for fighting terrorism with war, the truth is that we can’t afford it – financially or morally. As former President Eisenhower said during his first term in office, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

And this one:

President John F. Kennedy, giving an American University commencement address in June, 1963 at the height of the cold war said “let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

Protests in Germany

It seems the German citizens took to the streets for Bush's visit as reported upon by this Reuters article entitled, "German protesters call Bush 'No. 1 Terrorist'" .

I especially call your attention to this postest sign's message that is directed to the American people:

We had our Hitler, now you have yours.

The words of James Madison

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

How true. Why don't we listen to the Founders?

Simon-kitty for Friday!

I want to feature Cynthia's wonderful cat named Simon on both blogs today. The picture I'm offering here is an oldie but goodie. Cynthia used to have this as a screen saver on her computer with the caption, "Kitty from Heaven". He's really looking very adorable in this pose!


Photo by Cynthia Burgess

What you can do about global warming

I have just discovered the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council and have signed up for the activist program. What I want to share with you today is their page outlining what each of us can do personally about global climate change. I don't know about you but I often feel helpless and hopeless in this regard. This is a wonderful page giving very specific advice about very specific actions to take. For example, I already knew how important it is to drive a fuel-efficient car but I didn't know that using fluorescent bulbs reduces carbon dioxide in the air. Do read the page entitled "How to Fight Global Warming". Here's a little excerpt that I find really intriguing:

Buy clean energy certificates. Another way to help spur the renewable energy market and cut global warming pollution is to buy "wind certificates" or "green tags," which represent clean power you can add to the nation's energy grid in place of electricity from fossil fuels. For information, see Green-e. And here's an innovation that's catching on: calculate the global warming pollution associated with your everyday activities, then buy enough certificates to offset them and become "climate neutral." Two places to learn how: NativeEnergy's WindBuilderssm program and Bonneville Environmental Foundation's Green Tags program. (NRDC worked with these two groups to make our February 2003 Rolling Stones concert to raise awareness about global warming climate neutral.)

Many thanks to Echidne of the Snakes (a great blog, by the way) for providing the link to NRDC.

The REAL agenda

"Hey, hey, ho, ho, Social Security has to go!"

-- a chant by college Republicans at a town hall meeting hosted by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.)

History repeats itself

Thom Hartmann has written an article entitled, "When Democracy Failed - 2005: The Warnings of History". It is about the parallels between Germany of the 1930s and what is happening in America today. I do urge you to read it. I know it is easy to tune out what is going on and just focus on our daily activities. Please be willing, however, to see, to know what is really happening.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using religion and war as tools to keep power: "fas-cism (fâsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, bust up unions, and create an illusion of prosperity through government debt and continual and ever-expanding war spending.

America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

Another Gannon-Guckert article

This one was originally in Salon and was picked up by Common Dreams. It is by Eric Boehlert and is entitled, "Gannongate: It's Worse Than You Think".Here's an excerpt:

When the press first raised questions about why Jim Guckert had been awarded access to the White House press room for two years running while he worked for Talon News, critics charged that Talon, with its amateurish standards and close working ties to Republican activists, did not qualify as a legitimate news organization. It turns out the truth is even stranger: Guckert was waved into the White House while working for an even more blatantly partisan organization, GOPUSA.
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This is not how the White House press office has traditionally worked. "When I was there we didn't let political operatives in. It was completely contrary to what the press room should be used for," says Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary to President Clinton during his second term. Asked what would have happened if a reporter from a clearly partisan operation, say "Democrats Today," had requested a White House press pass, Lockhart said that if the chief of the Democratic National Committee were attending an event at the White House, then perhaps the Democrats Today reporter might be allowed in for that one day. "But to be admitted as a reporter and sit in a chair and act like a reporter" for months on end the way Guckert did? "No," said Lockhart, "that's not within the realm of what [is] proper."

It's a good article. And it sums up the issues thoroughly and succinctly.

That mainstream press

Okay. I'm going to ask the question again. Why isn't the mainstream press just screaming about the Gannon-Guckert affair? Why are they willing to give this man an easy pass - not to mention the White House? Is it because the press was bought and paid for some time ago and we simply cannot expect unbiased reporting from them ever again? If this situation had happened during the Clinton administration it would be headline news for weeks, it would be the occasion for bringing the president down. And the scandal that's barely being reported should bring this president down. Gene Lyons addresses the matter in an article ironically entitled, "'Outing' ignored by liberal media". Here's an excerpt:

Citizens, it's finally happened. An alleged former male prostitute has been unmasked among the White House press corps. If this comes as a surprise, don't blame liberal media bias. For once, there's a Washington sex scandal our fastidious "mainstream" press mostly wishes to avoid. Why? Good question. By day, "Jeff Gannon" posed as White House correspondent for a fictitious news organization called Talon News, an Internet site that is a subsidiary of GOPUSA. com. That's a Texas-based Web site bankrolled by one Bobby Eberle, an activist now depicted as virtually unknown in Texas GOP circles, even though he was a Bush delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention.

"Gannon" was granted day passes to White House press briefings and news conferences, where he routinely lobbed softball questions to press secretary Scott McClellan. MSNBC's acerbic news anchor, Keith Olbermann, almost alone among TV journalists in giving the story the coverage it deserves, has aired hilarious pastiches of "Gannon's" servile questioning of Mc-Clellan on his "Countdown" program.

What does the affair tell us about White House security amid the "war on terror"? That's hard to say. So far nobody's explained how a man with no journalistic credentials and a phony name passed muster with the Secret Service. One reasonable presumption might be that a high-ranking White House official must have vouched for him, but given the Washington press' reluctance and GOP control of Congress, we may never know.

I recommend the whole article. It's hard to face the loss of the free and independent press but it's better that we know than not.

Communications professor Mark Crispin Miller put it this way in an interview with BuzzFlash:

The media's bizarre avoidance of this very juicy story makes a few things very clear--or I should say, very clear again. First of all, it's further proof that there is no "liberal bias" in the US corporate press--none whatsoever. It also reconfirms the fact that this media system is not simply "sensationalistic," and therefore apt to print whatever lurid stories its employees can dig up. There is a tabloid element, of course, but it works according to a double standard that is more ideological than commercial. Simply put, the US media reports sex scandals only when they seem to tar "the left," i.e., the Democratic party. As long as they involve the Democrats, the press is clearly willing to report such scandals even when they're fabricated. On the other hand, the press goes deaf and blind to "moral" scandals that involve Republicans, no matter how egregious and well-documented....

It's typical. There was a big sex scandal back in 1989, reported by, of all organs, the Washington Times, which broke the story of a male prostitution ring with lots of clients in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and a midnight tour of the White House by six revelers, two of them male prostitutes. Did anybody ever hear of that again? ...

William Bennett's gambling got a lot of press, but his employment of Mistress Lee was not reported anywhere. Gary Condit's affair with--and alleged murder of--Chandra Levy was The Story You Could Not Escape for weeks right up to 9/11, even though there was no evidence that he had harmed her. On the other hand, Laurie Klausutis, an intern in Joe Scarborough's office, was allegedly murdered, right in his office, but it was all, some would contend, hushed up completely (and yet Scarborough sometimes whines about it anyway). We heard a lot about Woody Allen's situation--Newt Gingrich even crowed that it was typical "liberal" behavior--but when it turned out that the president of Hillsdale College, a far-right institution, had been boffing his own daughter-in-law, who went and blew her brains out in despair, that icky item had no legs. In fact, it had no torso, and no head. It simply wasn't, because the press will not go there when it involved the right.

This is why I get all my news from the internet - from foreign newspapers and articles I find through progressive sites and from the major bloggers. I simply don't trust the mainstream media to report what's really happening.

Discomfort with Europe

Today I'm offering you an article about Bush's dislike of all things European and of how obviously difficult it is for him to be enduring a week there. Bill Gallagher analyses this situation in "An American president in Europe: Just not Bush's kind of place".

Feel our president's pain. He's in Europe on a diplomatic mission and he's squirming, mechanically going through his duties, checking his watch and dreaming of the flight back home and a return to his Texas dacha. For George W. Bush, this is an ordeal he'd love to avoid, but he must, at least, show the world he's trying, however disingenuously, to improve U.S. relations with Europe.

Bush loves any visit to a military base or aircraft carrier, where he can address the folks in uniform. The cheers and adoration are guaranteed. He craves those opportunities. His eyes light up and he struts around like a bantam rooster.

For Bush, a visit to Europe rates below even news conferences or an actual conversation with a real, unscreened American not used for political prop purposes.

Also discussed is how difficult it is for Bush to let go of his rigid routine.

Perhaps most disturbing for Bush is that foreign trips throw him off his routine and unmask his thinly veiled impatience and irritability.

Americans need reminding that our leader is a classic "dry drunk," whose untreated addiction leaves him seriously flawed, even dangerous.

He shows growing signs of megalomania. His pomposity is apparent. He is consumed with single-minded obsessions, and his rigidity and aversion to introspection are legendary.

Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington, D.C.-based psychiatrist, understands the president's disability and describes it in detail in his book, "Bush on the Couch." Bouncing from Belgium to Germany will upset George W.'s emotional equilibrium. As Dr. Frank observed, "The rigidity of Bush's behavior is perhaps most readily apparent in his well-documented reliance on his daily routine -- the famously short meetings, sacrosanct exercise schedule, daily Bible readings and limited office hours. A healthy person's able to alter his routine; a rigid one cannot."

Our rigid ruler will painfully endure his week in Europe.

None of this is new. But having our president in Europe is a disturbing reminder of some of his characteristics.

That Bulge Again

There are a number of stories the mainstream media should be screaming about nonstop but have either ignored altogether or managed so to downplay that they have almost withered on the vine. Included are these:

1. The outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame
2. The accuracy of the content of the memos about Bush going AWOL
3. The Gannon-Guckert gay-prostitute-fake-journalist story
4. The bulge under Bush's jacket during the debates

Smirking Chimp has published another article about issue number 4 by Dick Ahles entitled "The battle of the (Bush) bulge" that tells how the story was killed by the mainstream media. If you're not outraged, I don't know why not.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), an online media watchdog, is now reporting that all the White House theories became inoperative in late October when the photo was enhancedby a NASA scientist to better examine the bulge . Robert Nelson has spent 30 years as an astronomer with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech and is part of a photo enhancement team for the Saturn space probe. He concluded the bulge wasn't doctored or the result of a sartorial mishap, but looked for all the world like a device for receiving electronically transmitted material. The photo is available by going to www.fair.org and clicking on the story entitled “The Emperor's New Hump.”

FAIR says Nelson failed to interest newspapers in California and Pittsburgh before offering his photo and findings to The New York Times, which assigned three reporters to the story. On Oct. 26, reporter John Schwartz e-mailed Nelson that the story was “shaping up very nicely, but my editors have asked me to hold off for one day while they push through a few other stories that are ahead of us in line,” according to FAIR.

The next day, Oct. 27 and just six days before the Nov. 2 election, the story failed to appear and Nelson was told it had been killed. The Kerry campaign, as was its habit, blew an opportunity. If Kerry had commented,the media would have given the bulge question the attention it deserved.

The president almost certainly cheated during the debate. The American people had a right to know and they were not informed. The big newspapers and network news organizations should be shouting this from the housetops. Me, I just shout it from my little blog.

The White House Mole

The articles keep being published about Jim Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) and still the mainstream press refuses to treat the story as the major scandal it undoubtedly is. The mainstream American press, I should say. Because the British newspaper, the Guardian, has indeed offered a thorough report on the issue along with an analysis of what's wrong with the Fourth Estate in the United States. Entitled "The mole, the US media and a White House coup", the article is by Paul Harris.

[Gannon] was writing under a false name and working for a Republican front organisation. Suddenly, his 'softball' questions to White House officials looked less like eccentricities and more like plotting by an administration which has frequently displayed a dark mastery of the arts of press control.

When it emerged that Gannon was also linked to gay prostitution websites and might be a gay prostitute himself, the scandal as to how he was allowed daily access to the White House grew even murkier. The American media is now being forced to confront the possibility that Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, was simply a Republican plant, used by officials, including President George W Bush, to ask easy questions in difficult press conferences. 'The idea of having a mole in the White House press corp is amazing, but that's what it looks like,' said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.

Harris takes a look at just how the White House practices this art of press control by reminding us of the recent stories concerning journalists for hire as well as outright deception using the medium of television.

Last week a federal watchdog warned the Bush administration that any video news releases must state that the government is the source. Twice in two years, government departments have been accused of distributing fake news packages, using actors as journalists.

The ridiculous idea that we have a "liberal media" is also discussed.

Right-wing media ratcheted up the long-standing conservative complaint that the media is dominated by liberal publications. Though many journalism experts deny that is the case, the image has settled in the American consciousness, forcing newspapers, magazines and television stations to go out of their way to prove they are not liberal. 'We have a conservative media and also a mainstream media, which is also now fairly conservative because it has been forced to deny being liberal,' said Lule.

The Gannon case is a prime illustration. If, during the Clinton administration, a fake reporter from a Democrat front organisation, using a false name, had been exposed as attending White House press conferences it would have been a national scandal. If he had then been shown to be a gay prostitute, the scandal could have threatened a Democrat presidency. With 'Gannon' and Bush there has been no such outcry. The mainstream media has approached the story warily, while right-wing organisations such as Fox News have largely ignored it.

Finally, the role of the blogosphere is examined.

It was not the mainstream media that exposed Gannon, but left-wing website Media Matters for America which enlisted other liberal bloggers to help. All the significant breaks in the story emerged online, forcing Gannon to resign, reveal his real name and go into hiding.

Some commentators see the emergence of blogging as a media force as a liberating phenomenon. Unlike the mainstream media, blogging is cheap, easy and open to anyone regardless of qualification or background or money. 'Blogging gives a voice to those who were previously silent,' said Ananda Mitra, a communications professor at Wake Forest University.

Others see it as part of the trend towards partisan journalism. Spearheaded by the nakedly right-wing Fox News, journalism in America has come to resemble a political shouting match rather than any form of debate of the issues. But with soaring viewership, Fox has emerged as one of the most powerful forces in the media landscape. Other networks, such as CNN and MSNBC, have sought to copy Fox's personality-led and opinion-based news.

I keep waiting for the Gannon-Guckert story to get the attention it deserves in the mainstream press. Until then I'll raise my little voice along with all the other liberal bloggers in protest against the way it's being minimized. For the Republicans to plant a mole in the White House press corps is simply beyond outrageous.

No Saturday Blogging

I will be away from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon and will not have internet access so no posting on Saturday. But I've given you extra Friday postings!

See you Sunday!

Sign here to save the planet

Please read this article entitled, "Sign Here to Save the Planet" published by Grist Magazine. Then go to Kyoto and Beyond and sign the petition. Why? Here's why:

History and nature are on a collision course. And we are trapped at ground zero.

As the signals from the climate become excruciatingly urgent, the Bush administration turns its back on the challenge, the U.S. press remains in denial, and the environmental establishment agonizes over its own relevance. All the while, we are, as the British paper The Independent put it, sleepwalking into the Apocalypse.

What on earth is a person supposed to do?

The existential choices are few and barren. We can try to find a safe haven in, say, New Zealand -- but there's no escaping a global threat. We can defy a history of futility and try, yet again, to appeal to the humanitarian instincts of ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy. We can go into hibernation for four more years. Or we can try, as individuals and organizations, to bring the U.S. in line with the rest of the world.

That's what a small group is attempting with today's launch of a nationwide signature-gathering drive for a People's Ratification of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty. Last year, longtime New York-area activists Ted Glick, Connie Hogarth, and the Rev. Paul Mayer put together the Climate Crisis Coalition, an umbrella group that includes environmentalists, religious leaders, campus organizers, peace groups, and activists working on indigenous rights, environmental justice, and human-rights issues.

Every signature makes a difference. Put yours to work. Then send this information on to everyone in your address book. Our very lives depend on it.

Friday Cat Blogging!

Here's Ethel - still quite feral. I've tried to tame her and she will let me pet her when I feed her but if I make a wrong move she hisses and swats at me. And she will run off if I try to pet her any other time. Still, she know that the area around my house is her territory and she cuddles up with Edgar in the little pet igloo I have for them.

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

The scandal that oughta be

Doug Griffin has written an article entitled "Hypocrisy knows no bounds" that is published by Smirking Chimp. Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article about the Jeff Gannon scandal that was buried in the "Style" section. The story needs to be on the front page and you'd better bet it would be if there were a Democrat in the White House.

This guy Jeff Gannon/James Guckert (hereafter called Jimmy-Jeff - has a bit of Texas flavor doesn't it?) has to have something on someone extremely high up in our government. Why else would a former/possibly current male prostitute with no journalistic experience whatsoever be allowed access to the White House press room for 2 years - on day passes, no less? Why else would he have been given access to the West Wing? Why else would he have information about the Valerie Plame memo? Remember, this guy was denied a permanent pass and also denied access to cover the Capitol because of his questionable credentials as a journalist. Jimmy-Jeff is the skeleton in someone's closet.
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For all the self-righteous indignation conservatives displayed during the Lewinski scandal, this is well-deserved. People in glass houses should not throw stones. And if the Jimmy-Jeff scandal had happened to Clinton this would be all over our televisions and talk radio for the next several weeks. Save for a few peeps here and there, so far mum's the word.

Will the mainstream press do its job? That is the question, isn't it?

Climate Change in Pictures

The BBC has a series of pictures that demonstrate the effects of global warming. Go here to see them. This is very alarming, really.

Ignoring the REAL crisis

Yes, I'm giving you another article on global climate change. Why? Because nothing else will matter anymore if we don't have a planet that can sustain human life. Randolph T. Holhut writes about it in an article entitled, "The Bush style of crisis management" published by Smirking Chimp:

At the risk of sounding callous, the Social Security debate is about politics and in the long run isn't that important compared to the ultimate survival of the planet. Changing Social Security will hurt, but not nearly as much as the damage that's likely to happen if global warming isn't addressed.

The things already happening should scare the hell out of you. Last year was the warmest year on record. Florida and the Caribbean were hit by a succession of massive hurricanes on a scale never before seen.

Natural disasters such as flooding, droughts and storms are happening around the world more frequently and more severely than ever before.

There is so much fresh water entering the oceans from melting glaciers and the polar ice caps that the Gulf Stream may stop flowing and bring Europe another ice age by the end of the century.

The Amazon rainforest is drying out and could be gone within the next 50 years. One in 10 plant and animal species may be extinct by 2050.

He doesn't even mention what's happening to our oceans and that the coral reefs are dying. I really do urge activism on this issue. Write your congressperson and senators. Give to environmental groups. Hold this issue in the forefront of your consciousness and tell others about it. The ignorance out there is massive. And the denial will simply destroy us. We must do something and soon or humanity will perish.

Walmart's Sweetheart Deal

Please don't patronize Walmart. Please. Walmart is the main reason we have overseas outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. They pressure manufacturers to give them low prices so that the companies have to use sweatshop labor overseas in order to meet Walmart's demands. Then other companies move their manufacturing overseas in order to compete. Walmart is terrible to its workers and engages in union-busting activities. Because Walmart offers such low wages and because benefits are so expensive (read: unaffordable) the community at large ends up subsidizing Walmart's labor. We pay for the food stamps Walmart associates apply for. We pay for the Medicaid and emergency care they use because they can't afford medical insurance.

And now we learn that Walmart violates child labor laws. Jonathan Tasini writes about this in an article entitled, "Walmart's Sweetheart Deal" published by TomPaine.

The administration has gotten used to the idea that it can hoodwink us (weapons of mass destruction, a phony Social Security “crisis”), which is part of the lens through which we should view the recent Wal-Mart scandal. After Wal-Mart was found breaking the law on child labor, the government fined the company a measly $135,000 (and change) and signed a deal with Wal-Mart that says "Next time we want to investigate what laws you might be breaking, we’re going to tell you about the investigation before we do it"—just to give you enough time to cover your tracks, shred documents or muddle the trail.

Of course, this is absurd and can only exist in a world where a tax cut for the rich is called the “Jobs and Growth Plan.” But there is a different part of this whole game that has annoyed me for a long time and has been missed by the media coverage (which has been scant). While The New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse deserves kudos for bringing to light the story of the Department of Labor’s promise to alert Wal-Mart prior to launching an investigation, the big point is this: Wal-Mart endangers children and then gets away with a fine of 135 grand and change. Does anyone have a calculator to figure out what percentage that financial “penalty” represents to a company that had sales of $256 billion in 2003 or to the five Walton kids who are worth almost $100 billion? And, by the way, that damn fine is considered a business expense that Wal-Mart deducts from its taxes (unlike poor slobs like you and me, who cannot deduct legal fines).

Moreover, as part of the deal with the government, the company signed a paper that says it denied any wrongdoing. So the whole game is a hoax and charade. Everyone knows Wal-Mart broke the law. But using spin and doublespeak befitting a political race, the government says Wal-Mart will pay a fine, making it appear as if the government is really doing something about an act the company continues to say it didn’t do. It’s appalling.

It is appalling. Do read the whole article for the whole picture. And I said it before and I'll say it again: Please don't shop at Walmart.