700,000 Americans have moved their money

A note from Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos:

To SLANTblog,

Since September 29, at least 700,000 Americans have moved their money out of big banks and into credit unions.

The big banks say they don't care because they are getting rid of their least profitable clients. In reality, they are so freaked out by what's happening that some have locked their doors and even called the police on customers who tried to close their accounts.

Click here for ten amazing stories about big banks desperately trying to stop customers from closing their accounts. Please share the stories with a friend, too. Everyone needs to know we have the big banks on the run.

Saying it ain't so for too long

The unfolding story of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged crimes is truly mind-boggling. The firing of 84-year-old Joe Paterno -- heretofore, a living legend -- who has been Penn State's head football coach since 1966, was unthinkable in most sports fans’ minds until the horrific Sandusky child abuse story broke over last weekend.

But as shocking as this has been to most of us, it's obvious there are people in Happy Valley who have known this day of reckoning was coming for some time. From here on that part of the story is going to get steadily more important. It may lead to people going to jail, besides just Sandusky.

In my memory there’s never been a sports-related scandal like this one. But as others have already pointed out, this is more than a sports story. It's more than an aberrant story about a predator. This story is about idolatry. It’s about money and politics. At the bottom line, it’s about the corrosive effect power can have when it grows, unchecked, to bully all sorts of supposedly decent people into doing shameful things.

Eventually, Penn State is going to have to fire everyone who was in any way connected to Paterno. That's going to mean everybody! To clean house, all the assistants, the secretaries, the people who washed the uniforms, popcorn vendors at the games, etc., will all have to go.

Who knows? This may even mean a SMU-like death penalty for football at Happy Valley.

Over the last few days, each time I’ve read about what’s been going on at Penn State, I’ve said to myself, that's it! I'm so disgusted that I'm not going to read any more about it. Then I read/watch the next story, anyway.

So here are some links to related stories that seem worthwhile, without being over-the-top on being sensational:

• Click here to read “Penn State tragedy shows danger of making coaches false idols”
• Click here to read “Coaching icon Paterno sacked in ignominy”
• Click here to read “Abuse victim's mother says Paterno had to be fired”
• Click here to read “The Question Joe Paterno Needs to Answer”
• Click here to read “Will Paterno Scandal Hurt Pennsylvania Republicans”
• Click here to read “Who knew what about Jerry Sandusky?”
• Click here to read "Penn State Sponsors Anxiously Watch How Events Unfold at University"
  

A long way from home ... on a horse

A Veterans Day Remembrance: In 1916 the fit young men who had already volunteered to be members of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were dispatched to Brownsville, Texas, to watch over the border and chase Mexican bandit/revolutionary Pancho Villa, who had crossed the border to stage a few raids on American soil ... or, so people said.

To do the job the Richmonders were quickly converted into a cavalry unit.

My grandfather, Frank W. Owen (1893-1968), seen at the age of 23 in the 1916 photo above, was one of those local boys in that Richmond Blues outfit.

Following that campaign, in 1917 the Blues were sent to Fort McClellan, located in the Alabama foothills, near the town of Anniston, for additional training. Then it was across the pond to France to finish off the Great War -- the war to end all wars.

Frank Owen grew up in South Richmond in what was then called Manchester. Before his active duty he had mostly made his living as a vocalist. The stories I remember him telling from his years as a soldier were all about his singing gigs, playing football and poker, and various other adventures.

Owen is on the right in the photo above. Like other men of his generation, who saw war firsthand, he apparently saw no benefit in talking about the actual horrors he'd seen. At least I never heard such stories. However, he was always quick to point with pride at having been in the Richmond Blues, then seen by many in Richmond as an elite corps.

Eventually, he became a draftsman, then an architect with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (forerunner to CSX), which was then based here in Richmond. He continued to perform as a soloist, as a studio backup vocalist and in barbershop quartets into his 60s.

F. W. Owen believed there was a coward at the heart of every bully. Without hesitation, he depended completely on his own view of life. He passed what he could of that self-reliance on to me. The badge below is from the mid-1950s.

My grandson's middle name is Owen. It's a name he should always wear proudly. A long way from home, almost a century ago, his great-great-grandfather certainly did.

The Origins of Occupy Wall Street

For an account of how the Occupy Wall Street movement got started, click here to read "Reawakening The Radical Imagination: The Origins of Occupy Wall Street" by Matt Sledge for the Huffington Post.

Here's a brief excerpt:

The movement didn't get that big simply because AdBusters, a Canadian magazine, sent out a flashy email promoting it, or because the hacker collective Anonymous flicked out a few tweets. Instead, it took a group of about 200 committed activists 47 days to outline the ground rules that have allowed the protest to flourish.

Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters

The mind-boggling story at Penn State has reminded me of a piece about child abuse I penned for STYLE Weekly in 1999. "Abuse is Forging Tomorrow's Bloody Monsters" was written not long after the shocking Columbine High School incident.

Today I might write it somewhat differently, but the point still hits home about how our society, as a whole, routinely refuses to look unflinchingly at the obvious cause of so much trouble and heartache.

Hey, I know people who usually believe the accusers are making most of it up, regardless of what sort of abuse is being reported. They think the reports of child molestation by Catholic priests have been greatly exaggerated. They even believe disgraced boxer Mike Tyson was not a rapist.

Here's the text of the 12-year-old piece:

We've all had to listen to almost monotonous explanations of the reasons for the explosion of teen-age mayhem: too many guns, not enough morality, too much violence on TV, not enough personal responsibility. These are all true. But as the news directors and speech writers spin in their desk chairs to find out what we want to hear, there is one aspect of the picture that is being avoided.

Perhaps this reason is considered an uncomfortable subject. Maybe it strikes a little too close to home. Consequently, we aren't hearing much about the common denominator in many massacres, wherever they occur. Instead of recognizing the systematic abuse of children as the key factor it has always been in such matters, we fret and search for peripheral reasons to explain the bewildering carnage.

In a knee-jerk response to the recent school yard blood baths, some would make schools and streets safe by putting a cop with unlimited power in every classroom and on every street corner. Hopefully, most Americans would still see such a cure as worse than the malady.

But the truth is we don't enjoy absolute freedom and never have. It is the balance between freedom and control that is the secret to making our system of democracy, free speech, and free markets work.

America is a representative democracy, not a pure democracy. Elections are held at regular intervals to control public policy. Freedom of speech doesn't allow for a fool to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, and so forth. What we do have is a tradition of wanting as much freedom as possible because we believe that it brings out the best in us. Amen.

Returning to the trouble that launched this most recent national debate — teen-age violence — I'm convinced we need to divide our thinking into long term and short term, or perhaps indirect and direct.

The long-term/indirect approach should recognize that the four obvious reasons for the escalating violence are excellent areas for concentrated efforts.

However, there is a solid reason that violence on TV, or the availability of guns, hasn't made us all blow each others' brains out. And that reason is tragically simple: Most of us have not gone through a soul-crushing experience of abuse as a child.

Some children who are tied up and beaten bloody will not break. Some little girls who are sexually molested by an adult they naturally trusted will outgrow the painful confusion and learn to trust again. Some little boys, who hear gunshots outside their windows most nights, will resist giving in to fear and grow up without joining a street gang. Some kids who suffer from cold neglect will be strengthened by the ordeal and become good citizens.

The others, the ones who can't overcome their bad luck, may shoot each other at school. If they survive the nightmare of their childhood, they are likely to end up being a perpetual nuisance to everyone. At some point it's probably too late to help them. However sad that may be, it's the truth.

By the time the most damaged kids are in school, they aren't really that hard to spot.

Here's the unvarnished truth: We can't continue to allow kids that we know are powder kegs to play with matches. Children of this ilk must be watched constantly and have absolutely no access to weapons with more potential than a spitball.

Here's the short term/direct strategy: We have to accept that children who are being subjected to systematic abuse must be taken away from the source of that abuse immediately. It's their only hope. It may be our only hope.

Yes, in some cases this essay is advocating the government's bold intrusion into private rooms behind locked doors. And that will always be painful. Yet, in order to protect the freedom of the many, we must be willing to focus our effort on the few who are central to this particular problem.

Once again, it's a matter of balance.

So forget about ranting at Goth fashions or the Internet. Unless we slow down the assembly line process of neglect and overt abuse that is forging tomorrow's bloody monsters, there's precious little use in talking about what else we are going to do to make schools, streets, workplaces or homes safe.

If we continue to allow our politicians to demagogue this issue, if we allow an irresponsible media to go on promoting aberrant behavior in the name of reporting on it, we do ourselves no good.

Furthermore, if we fail to act effectively to slow down the assembly line, then the very tenets of our free society could soon be ablaze on the altar of order, at any price.

Not much has changed on this front in recent years. Most people are still averting their eyes. Then again, there is this discouraging news about child abuse.

Cantor's Overplayed Hand

The video above is a commentary on the link between the Republican Party's longstanding gross-out-the-voters-to-keep-the-turnout-down tactics and the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street/The 99% movement.

Note: There may be off-the-wall, or even satirical, material included. So don't let that scare you. And, for the record, or just in case you'd rather not view my three-and-a-half-minute film, the script I wrote for it is as follows:

For decades Republicans have been using a low-road tactic that has helped them win elections: They have deliberately tried to make politics seem so frustrating and disgusting that a lot of people have opted to ignore that side of life ... when they can. The process has worked like a charm, because it usually discouraged more Democrats than it did Republicans. It’s no secret that Republicans have seemed to benefit from low turnouts for a long time.

The elections of 2010 provided a good example of what I mean. Lots of liberals were so grossed out by the growling repetition of the Tea Party’s rants, together with what they perceived as the Democrats’ wimpy response, they simply ignored Election Day.

Rather than cite a laundry list of other examples of how this style of gaming elections has worked over the years, usually to the advantage of the GOP, I’m going point out that I sense a change in the air that stems from recent events. Over the summer, to protect the interests of America’s wealthiest one percent, Congressional Republicans threatened to push America into a default, to renege on its debts.

But that time Rep. Eric Cantor and his teammates overplayed their hand so egregiously it became a tipping point. The GOP’s unprecedented brinkmanship blew back into its face. Forget about the phony Super Committee, this time the gross-out strategy helped launch the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.

When some good number of young citizens returned to school this fall, it seems they had lost their faith in governments at all levels in America. Of course, lots of factors caused the OSW/The 99% movement to materialize this fall. What happened in Egypt and in Wisconsin earlier this year surely played a part, too.

Now the seven-week-old movement has already changed the national conversation. A new, free-spirited force seems to be affecting the political landscape. My hunch is that this country’s three-decades-long drift to the right ended abruptly on Sept. 17th, with the birth of this year’s Occupy movement. Wishful thinking?

Maybe, but Mic Checks are changing political vernacular.

Moreover, in a message aimed at Cantor, and other cock-of-the-walk politicians who routinely do the One Percent’s bidding, I’m saying this: The previously scheduled frog-marching of the American culture back to when it was OK to dump Kepone in the James River, back to before Democrats provided Americans their Social Security program -- that forced march back to Gilded Age -- it has been cancelled.

Meanwhile, will the GOP’s propaganda machine stop trying to hold down election turnouts, using whatever means necessary?

Of course, they won’t.

Will that immoral, anti-worker, anti-student, anti-99% strategy keep working forever to serve the 1%?

We’ll see.

The 99% @ City Hall

The footage for this short video piece was shot outside of Richmond, Virginia's City Hall on Nov. 2, 2011. The commentary on the demonstration at City Hall and about the Occupy/99% movement, in general, is by yours truly.

At Mayor Dwight Jones' behest, the Occupy Richmond encampment at Kanawha Plaza had been disassembled by the Richmond Police Department two days before. Nine arrests were made. The charges ranged from trespassing to being in a public park after dark.

More demonstrations in front of local branches of big banks are apparently in the works for Occupy Richmond.

Click here to view an earlier video of mine on Occupy Richmond in Monroe Park.

Occupy Richmond's Halloween Move

Let the record show the 15-day Occupy Richmond demonstration/encampment at Kanawha Plaza was broken up by forces of the Richmond Police Department in the wee hours of the chilly morning on Halloween Day, 2011.

Irony aside, most of the local occupiers left the area when ordered to go by the cops. That, while reports say nine stalwarts were arrested for refusing to move. A meeting in Monroe Park was called for the afternoon.

What’s next?

As cynics have predicted, maybe the movement itself will fizzle, nationwide, as the nights get longer and colder. Then again, the entire Occupy Wall Street/The 99% phenomenon may have taken on a life of its own. So, like an impossible-to-kill monster in a midnight show, it may be mutating into something much more formidable and relentless.

Happy Halloween.

Updates:

• Click here for a report from WCVE-FM.

• Click here to read a firsthand account at Occupy Richmond.

• Click here for a firsthand account at Auspicious Jots.

Cain's past under scrutiny

A story that dredges up something about sexual harassment on the job from Herman Cain's past, when he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association, was published by Politico last night. So far, we don 't have the raw details. Whether this still-developing revelation will turn out to be a loose thread that unravels Cain's long-shot bid to win the Republican presidential nomination, or a false alarm, remains to be seen.

The Cain camp is hitting back, but the language being used is not necessarily a good sign for Cain. Among other things, J.D. Gordon, a Cain spokesperson, said, "...Sadly, we’ve seen this movie played out before — a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics,” Gordon said.

Perhaps Cain's spinner knows that a "liberal" gave the story to Politico. But if he doesn't know that to be true, I have to say it's more likely that a trickster who supports one of Cain's Republican rivals planted this story, a story that isn't likely to go away by simply blaming unnamed liberals and the media.

Stay tuned...

The Pursuit of Extremism

In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-98) famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Now, in the name of defending liberty, Republican candidates are debating one another over who is more against abortion in every case, to the point that some now seem to be opposed to birth control. They argue over who is more willing to allow the environment to be poisoned for the sake of quick and dirty money. They fight over who is more willing to beat up on teachers, veterans and firefighters to protect the fortunes of corporate CEOs and the zillionaires of Wall Street.

In 2011, Republican candidates are striving to top their opponents in the all-out pursuit of extremism … for the sake of extremism.

Through a partisan prism darkly

From its inception, what we’ve seen of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has been shaped in some part by our own point of view. The occupiers hadn’t been in Lower Manhattan long before the gathering movement was being seen through familiar partisan prisms.

Some Democrats rushed to praise the demonstrators, some Republicans rushed to put them down. For the first week, it seemed the mainstream media were rushing to trivialize what was happening in Zuccotti Park. Outside the ranks of party politics and beyond the reach of slanted newsy talk shows there had to have been millions of regular people who were mildly amused and wondered what was going on.

So millions of Americans awoke to find themselves in the midst of a stampede to label the movement as good, bad or insignificant. “What do the protestors want?” demanded a discordant chorus of liberal and conservative pundits.

Since its first week the burgeoning OWS movement that has labeled itself The 99% has spread from Manhattan to cities coast-to-coast, and to other countries. So, most people who want to see for themselves what’s going on can simply take a look by visiting one of many “occupations” in public spaces all over America.

However, for some people, rather than seek out firsthand knowledge of what’s been going on, it’s too easy to project their own feelings.

Conservatives can depend on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to tell them all they really want to know:

(To paraphrase) Occupiers are mostly moochers and lazy good-for-nothings. Plenty of communists and jihadists are embedded within the OWS/The 99% movement, which reeks of George Soros’ money ... and so forth.

Still, opponents of the OWS/The 99% movement aren’t the only ones who are complaining about how the demonstrators seem unfocused and in need of forming a clear agenda. Democrats have been projecting their preconceived notions, as well. Clearly, some want to see today’s demonstrators as resembling Civil Rights marchers and Vietnam War protestors.

Well, from my vantage point, this year’s demonstrations look different from their supposed counterparts in the 1960s. There is no particular overriding law or governmental policy the demonstrators have been citing as the bull‘s-eye for their protests. If anything, perhaps a general opposition to the concept of “corporate personhood” is a popular target.

Rather than pursuing specific goals through influencing the government, OWS/The 99% seems to be about the process, itself. It seems to be about refusing to obediently accept the ticky-tacky future the young demonstrators sense is being foisted upon them by the powers that be.

These demonstrations will end, one way or another. Sadly, we have already seen violence break out in some cities. My guess is that brutal police tactics will do little to make the OWS/The 99% movement fold up its tents and go away.

So, this can be read as a heads-up to Richmond’s Mayor Dwight Jones -- don‘t create a problem you can‘t possibly solve. Later on, there will be plenty of time to worry about what precedents are being set and whatever complaints the Tea Party wants to hurl your way.

Still, nobody knows when or what will cause the demonstrations and sleep-ins in public spaces to end. Not in New York, Oakland, or Richmond. However, when they do, what happens next is what this thing is really all about.

That’s my view.

Once all the tents have been folded up and people go home, or wherever, what happens next will depend on what the process has taught the demonstrators. It will depend on what they, especially the youngest among them, take away from their experience as occupiers.

The demonstrators have been learning how to cooperate and how to organize. They are learning about how tedious democracy can be; they are learning civics. Then, too, they are connecting with their counterparts, who empathize with their concerns about the future, all over the world.

What began on September 17, 2011, has set a new force in motion. The most important thing about this force probably isn’t what it demands now, or what shape it will take this week. People who think they already know what effect it will have on 2012’s elections are kidding themselves.

Yes, it’s been disappointing to see some of the local reactions to what Occupy Richmond has been doing in Kanawha Plaza. To scrape the bottom of the barrel there’s Dale Brumfield’s snide Back Page piece for STYLE Weekly, which hardly passes as an analysis of the movement. Rather than an essay, Brumfield offers his readers a heap of low-brow zingers crafted to piss off folks he likes to irritate.

Fortunately, there are ways to follow this movement’s story without having to rely on the likes of STYLE Weekly.

Bottom line: There are times when it's better to rely on your own firsthand knowledge, rather than the labels others might want you to use.

Too many cigarettes

These little drawings (click to enlarge) were part of a pitch I made to the Virginia chapter of the American Cancer Society in 1985, to make a 30-second public service announcement for them in 16mm. Each frame shown here represented a decade, starting with the 1950s. The film was to have used a series of about 10 still photos, one fading into the next. Essentially, it was about women smoking too long.

My aim was to make the act of smoking cigarettes look less stylish. The last scary frame (not shown here) of the PSA would have depicted the brunette in a hospital bed with tubes going into her face. 1985 was the year after my mother had died of lung cancer. The executive director of the ACS turned me down, saying she liked it, but it just couldn't be done ... not in Richmond, Virginia. So, the little film was never made.

Lou DiBella on the stadium issue

In response to this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the Richmond Flying Squirrels' managing partner put out a statement via press release. Here is Lou DiBella's statement:

“The Flying Squirrels will continue to provide the quality of baseball, entertainment and community impact that the Greater Richmond area has grown to expect from us. We are not actively looking to other locations at this time, but we have always maintained that our long term success is dependent upon a new facility that our terrific Front Office Staff [sic] can maximize for the benefit of the entire metro region. We believe that the RMA and its’ [sic] stakeholders share this same desire and that we will collectively work towards accomplishing this common goal sooner rather than later.”

A new JRFJ piece

To read my piece about midnight shows in the James River Film Journal click here.

OWS/The 99% Is Already Winning

Occupy Wall Street/The 99% is already transforming the political landscape. In ways that matter the demonstrators have already started to win. Tired of waiting for politicians to affect change, the energy emanating from Lower Manhattan is being felt by young people all over the world.

On Saturday, September 17, the “occupation” in Manhattan began. Wishful thinking aside, no one really knew it would spread to other cities in the USA, then across the world. But it has. No one knows for sure what it will lead to next, or when it will end. After all, the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon’s agenda is coalescing, but it says here that the genie is out of the bottle; this thing now has a life of its own.

As The 99% movement grows many are cheering it on, even some are joining in on it. Some are puzzled by it, even flabbergasted. Others are ignoring it, even laughing at it. Still others are thoroughly peeved by it, even afraid of it.

Eventually, books will be written about what is happening, telling us who did what to set it in motion. No doubt, some Americans who stand in support of Wall Street’s billionaires, against OWS, will find nefarious conspiracies and villains in the shadows. But how it started will be much less important to people in the future than where it’s going.

Yes, I’m one of those who is already convinced that this movement -- OWS/The 99% -- is going to reshape politics in America. How much impact it will have on the rest of the world is anybody‘s guess.

Enemies of the movement and others baffled by it ask, "What do the demonstrators want? What's all the fuss about?

My answer is one word -- dignity.

Although it can’t be said that all of the demonstrators are liberals, or Democrats, this explosion of outrage in the streets is going to embolden frustrated liberals within the Democratic Party. In the next year it is going to put pressure on Democratic candidates to embrace some of what the movement is talking about.

Furthermore, I’m expecting it to eventually reverse the gradual drift to the right that America’s politics has been suffering from for 30 years. Yes, something had to do it, and I think this is it.

One thing OWS/The 99% has already given us is the “human microphone.” Born out of necessity, to sidestep New York’s law about electric amplification, it is spreading fast.

Each speaker at a General Assembly meeting talks in brief bursts, sentence fragments, so their listeners can repeat what they heard to amplify it to allow others further away from the speaker to get the message. This improvisation apparently started in Zuccotti Park/Liberty Park in New York. It has already spread to Richmond and probably most of the similar protests in other cities.

For those who can adapt their speech-making to this style, it works like a call and response style in a church. I suspect we will be hearing this human microphone way of speechifying for a long time.

In my view, the Occupy Wall Street/The 99% movement became inevitable with the infamous Supreme Court decision that ratified the Wall Street-friendly notion of “corporate personhood,” which the Court expanded with its Citizens United decision of Jan.21, 2010.

People have families; they have parents, siblings, children and friends. They have business associates and colleagues. Those are ties that bind to form a collective sense of duty and morality that comes to bear on most people. Untethered from such connections to life itself, rather than being born corporations are invented. The purpose of their existence is to make money for the stockholders. The corporate veil conveniently shields those owners from responsibilities and liabilities in a way no one enjoys as an individual human being.

You can’t put a corporation in jail.

While right-wingers are happy to make war on America’s students and public education system, on the health of the nation’s workforce, on trade unions, on needy veterans and our voting rights, on everyone’s firefighters, on the planet’s environment, even on your grandma, who really thinks a little symbolic class warfare from some peaceful demonstrators is such a bad thing?

Mic check ... MIC CHECK: You know ... YOU KNOW ... The answer ... THE ANSWER ... To that one ... TO THAT ONE.

-- 30 --

The Unregulated, Kepone Truckin’ Blues

With the economy struggling Republicans are demanding lower taxes on so-called job creators and less government regulation. They want the feds off of the backs of the energy industry, Wall Street, etc. Although history tells us they‘ve been calling for the same things for a hundred years -- no matter what else was going on -- it hasn’t stopped Tea Party devotees from pretending those are fresh, tailor-made solutions to current problems.

So, the GOP would want job-creators the likes of BP and Massey Energy to worry less about government regulators. Never mind those corporate citizens' recent records for disasters.

Conservatives of a certain stripe still like to claim the marketplace will always take care of correcting for problems, mistakes and so forth. They say consumers will buy what proves to be the best medicine, dog food and automobile every time. Such conservatives blithely ignore the effects false advertising and withholding scary product information can have on their precious marketplace. So, it's a snap to go own pretending that when capitalists fail the system reacts quickly to correct for the dangers that stem from blunders and bad luck.

To bring it closer to home, consider how easily Allied Chemical’s top dogs got off for deliberately flushing truckloads of a powdered pesticide, Kepone, into the James River (1966-75). Production was suddenly shut down when employees packaging the stuff for shipment were discovered to be alarmingly sick -- some of those workers were trembling so badly they couldn't work.

This bizarre episode dealt a serious blow to Virginia’s seafood industry for years. Moreover, a lot of that now-banned pesticide still rests on the bottoms of the James and the Chesapeake Bay. So, we Virginians hope nothing, dredging or a storm, will stir up the old poison.

In the late-70s, as some millions of dollars changed hands, nobody at Allied ever did a day in jail for what Kepone did to harm innocent Virginians in a myriad of ways, some we’re still finding out about.

Recent news from France offers evidence that Allied’s recklessness dramatically increased the chance its employees, who stood ankle deep in Kepone as they shoveled it into bags, would get prostate cancer. The Journal of Clinical Oncology published findings last year that bear on this matter:

Although it was totally banned in the USA in 1976, from 1973 to 1993 chlordecone (Kepone) was used as an insecticide to fight banana weevils in the French West Indies. A significant number of the population of Martinique and Guadeloupe were directly exposed to chlordecone for years. The JCO cites a telling study which says chlordecone is responsible for at least half of the epidemic of prostate cancers found on the two islands.

One is left to wonder at what point does a reckless disregard for the health of others become criminal? Is there some point where the wanton poisoning of the planet is so egregious it should be considered criminal?

Moreover, how did the marketplace do anything to react to the problems Kepone in our water presented?

Nobody said, "I'm buying a different pesticide because Allied's stuff is too nasty for the environment." If its production hadn't been outlawed by the government in 1976, nobody knows how much more Kepone would have been dumped into the James before the marketplace would have made a correction.

Here’s a serious question that should be considered by lawmakers: If a big cheese at Allied Chemical had pulled a year or two for poisoning the Bay, how much might it have changed the culture in this country?

If that episode of bad acting had been criminalized, how much would that have curbed some would-be polluters over the last 35 years? For instance, would the explosion at Massey Energy's mine in West Virginia that killed 29 have happened? Is it possible the BP oil rig explosion that killed 11 and caused the spilling of untold zillions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico wouldn’t have happened?

Instead of less government oversight, doesn’t society need more federal protection from the next batch of risky shortcuts the most aggressive capitalists -- the Allieds, Masseys and BPs -- have always been willing to take?

Of course, if you think miners have always been killed on the job, so it doesn’t matter, then such questions may not concern you sufficiently to open your eyes to reality. If you don’t believe pollution is anything to worry about, not when it takes one dollar out of a billionaire’s clutches, then your answer to the question in the paragraph above is “no.”

Mic Check at Monroe Park

In case you missed the Occupy Richmond discussion/meeting at Monroe Park, today, this short video report I've thrown together is for you.

The Occupy Richmond meeting was held on what was a spectacular sunlit afternoon. With the Richmond Folk Festival drawing overflow crowds to the river bank -- just a mile away -- in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, the folks in Monroe Park were deciding where their local occupation would take place. Cops watched from a distance; all was peaceful.

A decision was eventually made by the collective that moved many of those assembled further downtown to Kanawha Plaza. Now we'll see what Richmond's powers that be will do with an "occupation" aimed at embarrassing banks.

Click here to read the Richmond Times-Dispatch's story.

This mostly young and idealistic crowd is about to get its first dose of how the establishment tends to react to such challenges to its authority. No doubt about it, there's something happening here...

Justice for Wall St. Swells

The swells of Wall Street who created the economic meltdown of 2008 should be brought to justice. If Eric Holder can’t find those culpable, the USA needs a new attorney general. It's time for some powerful people to face the music.

Moreover, the notion of corporate personhood is not only absurd, it is poisonous. Rather than being a person, a multinational corporation is more like a Frankenstein Monster, jacked up on speed. With no sense of family, community or morality, such an entity exists only to make money. Its nature is to devour our common resources and destroy anything else in its way ... including our environment, including us.

Wise up.