Not in Control

I had a discussion with a commenter on this blog (who shall remain anonymous unless he/she chooses to come forward) in person at a local pub.

"Tell me again how I'm not in control of myself," she/he stated.

"Well, you are a smoker," I replied.

"Yeah, that's right. I'm addicted."

"So....you aren't in control of yourself. The nicotine is."

"I could quit but I choose not to because I'm addicted."

"But doesn't that mean that you are not in control of yourself?"

"No."

"But what about Jeffery Wigand," I asked, "the guy who came forward and said that Brown and Williamson (now merged with RJ Reynolds) manipulated the nicotine and the ingredients in tobacco to make the cigarette more addictive? Isn't that a great example (like the PG&E one I had given earlier) of a private corporation purposefully doing harm to people in order to control them into spending more money? Making more profit?

"But it's my choice. I can quit if I decide," she/he replied.

"But I thought you said you were addicted."

And so it went from there without any resolution.

It may have been his/her choice to continue to smoke but becoming more addicted was the choice of Brown and Willamson. They controlled millions of smokers by manipulating the contents of cigarettes. Having control was made more and more difficult due to the desire for more profit.

Wigand, incidentally, works with governments around the world to regulate tobacco on stricter control policies. I'd guess he's not getting much done here these days with the general sentiment in our country. Know which sentiment I am talking about?

It's the same one that thinks we tell the government to get out of the way and watch the free market take off. A tobacco company's dream!

An Actual Death Panel

On December 20, 2007, a 17 year old girl named Nataline Sarkisyan died after a three year struggle with leukemia. Cigna, the insurance company that covered her, refused to provide coverage for the liver transplant that she needed to live. They did, however, provide the same amount of money for an "Investor Day" meeting to announce their earnings just a few days before Nataline died.

Soon after that time, a gentlemen by the name of Wendell Potter, Cigna's VP of Corporate Communications, left Cigna after it became clear to him that the company wanted him to wage a spin campaign to make it look like they didn't essentially kill Nataline. He couldn't take it any more. And now he has book out about the entire experience. A book, incidentally, that answers (again) how private corporations harm people or, in this case, kill them.

Generally, there are two parts to the strategy. One is what they’re doing publicly, what you can see. The other is what they’re doing behind the scenes — working with PR firms like APCO and through the think tanks.

They approach this very strategically. It’s important to note that the committee that I was on for quite a while, the Strategic Communications Committee, they’ve been working on this for a long, long, time well before the elections were held in 2008. They see all these organizations as ways to communicate with public opinion.

Think tanks are particularly important because they have good connections. The Heritage Foundation, CATO, the American Enterprise Institute and the Galen Institute and a few others that issue reports and commentary and people from those organizations themselves have connections to the media, can get op-eds placed in the Wall Street Journal and other places.

Insurers also work through their PR firms with T.V. producers, in particular, the conservative talk shows like Fox. They see that as a very very important place to go to get their point of view across and the producers are probably on speed dial.

Insurers also worked for a long, long, time, as I did when I was with Cigna, to develop relationships with reporters in the mainstream media. I certainly had very good relationships with reporters from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today.

It's as simple as that, folks. Even easier when the place you start from is having a large group of people that have a pathological distrust of government to help you along. So it becomes the government that has the death panels, they say, not them, knowing full well that they are the actual death panel and the government could stand in their way by actually enforcing the law. And just like that, a family who has paid their premiums and expected coverage watches a loved one die. Worse, the family is at fault, not the insurance company, and blaming the victim is the icing on the cake.

I'm trying to imagine what kind of people think it's alright to spend a quarter of million dollars on a party as opposed to saving a person's life. It makes me sick to think about it but that's our society today...driven by insatiable greed and supported by anti government fervor that enables it.

Beaten By Corporate Force

Take a look at our president. A pretty sad fucking picture, isn't it? Not surprising, though, when you consider what he has now come to realize in the last few weeks: our country...our world, actually, is being run by corporations and there is nothing we can do about it. The United States government is completely powerless to stop this oil spill and must sit on the sidelines as British Petroleum attempts yet another Shemp like move in order to plug the damn hole. Not that the government would want to help anyway as so many of them have been bought off by the oil industry.

It's been mighty interesting these last few weeks listening to the Cult trying to spin this one away. This is Obama's Katrina, some say. Others like Sarah Palin say that it proves her "Drill Baby Drill" line was right all along. I'm not sure how that works. To be fair, some of them haven't uttered a peep because they know how royally fucked we all are. The United States government is bowing down to the corporate cock and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

At the end of the day, it's example #343 of how the free market fantasy of the Cult has no practical application in reality. We've seen quite clearly what happens when private concerns have little or no oversight. In the case of the BP spill, take a look at five specific examples of the Mineral Management Services complete failure in doing its job of regulating.

• MMS's 2009 decision that acoustically-controlled shut-off valve (BOP) would not be required as a last resort against underwater spills at the site.

• MMS's failure to suggest other “fail-safe” mechanisms after a 2004 report raised questions about the reliability of the electrical remote-control devices.

• MMS granted a categorical exclusion waiver on April 6, 2009 to BP exempting it from National Environmental Policy Act's requirements including a detailed environmental analysis, concluding the spill risk in that part of the Gulf was “minimal or nonexistent.” Such NEPA waivers have become routine at MMS, and the Interior department approves 250 to 400 per year for Gulf of Mexico projects.

• MMS gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from NOAA about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

• MMS routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf and in Alaska.

But why would MMS do this? Aren't they supposed to be regulating BP?

In September 2008, reports by the Inspector General of the Interior Department, Earl E. Devaney, were released that implicated over a dozen officials of the MMS of unethical and criminal conduct in the performance of their duties. The investigation found MMS employees had taken drugs and had sex with energy company representatives. MMS staff had also accepted gifts and free holidays amid "a culture of ethical failure", according to the investigation.

The New York Times's summary states the investigation revealed "a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch." Gee, I'm shocked.

And in May of 2010, after the spill, it was revealed that MMS regulators in the Gulf region had allowed industry officials to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency. MMS staff had routinely accepted meals, tickets to sporting events, and gifts from oil companies.

Of course, none of these facts matter. In Cult Land, the government is still all powerful and tyrannical with President New Hitler at the helm sinking his leather boot heel into face of private industry. I guess it's up to the rest of us in the real world to solve this problem. Honestly, I don't have much faith that we will. Our culture and society have already shifted to be extremely distrustful of anything government related despite all evidence to the contrary.

Interestingly, though, a solution was presented in comments recently by none other than our very own Last in Line.

You all know that this could have been taken care of in 48 hours...the typical procedure oil companies and other governments have done many times in the past is to put a 100 yard tube down the well, send dynamite down the tube to blow up the well at the bottom, and pour concrete on top of it. Problem solved. What is going on is BP doesn't want to lose the well so they are doing all kinds of other half-assed crap that is further damaging the gulf region.

Why hasn't this been done yet?

The answer is quite simple, actually. Our "socialist" president doesn't want to be held responsible for BP losing money. He isn't going to allow the government to interfere in a private concern. In other words, he knows that corporations are running our world. He can't involve the government any more than it already is at present. Plus, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would all up in the hizzy about the brown shirts again.

C'mon, last, don't you know that the government is completely evil? That they are forcing us to bend to their will with the butt of a gun? Let's just all get down on our knees and thank BP for all the black liquid love that is washing up on our shores right now in the Gulf. The Corporation is good....the Corporation is beautiful....anyone who thinks that the Corporation is anything other than pure goodness is a Marxist....(chant with me, touching yourself and Atlas Shrugged simultaneously)....The Corporation is good....the Corporation is beautiful....anyone who thinks that the Corporation is anything other than pure goodness is a Marxist....The Corporation is good....the Corporation is beautiful....anyone who thinks that the Corporation is anything other than pure goodness is a Marxist....The Corporation is good....the Corporation is beautiful....anyone who thinks that the Corporation is anything other than pure goodness is a Marxist....