Attention Deficit Democracy

A society not alert to signs of its own decay, because its ideology is a
continuing myth of progress, separates itself from reality and envelops
illusion.

One yardstick by which to measure the decay in our country's political,
economic, and cultural life, is the answer to this question: Do the
forces of power, which have demonstrably failed, become stronger after
their widely perceived damage is common knowledge?

Economic decay is all around. Poverty, unemployment,
foreclosures, job export, consumer debt, pension attrition, and
crumbling infrastructure are well documented. The self-destruction of
the Wall Street financial giants, with their looting and draining of
trillions of other people's money, have been headlines for two years.
During and after their gigantic taxpayer bailouts from Washington, DC,
the banks, et al, are still the most powerful force in determining the
nature of proposed corrective legislation.

"The banks own this place," says Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), evoking
the opinion of many members of a supine Congress ready to pass weak
consumer and investor protection legislation while leaving dominant
fewer and larger banks.

Who hasn't felt the ripoffs and one-sided fine print of the credit card
industry? A reform bill finally has passed after years of delay, again
weak and incomplete. Shameless over their gouges, the companies have
their attorneys already at work to design around the law's modest
strictures.

The drug and health insurance industry, swarming with thousands of
lobbyists, got pretty much what they wanted in the new health law.
Insurers got millions of new customers subsidized by hundreds of
billions of taxpayer dollars with very little regulation. The drug
companies got their dream-no reimportation of cheaper identical drugs,
no authority for Uncle Sam to bargain for discount prices, and a very
profitable extension of monopoly patent protection for biologic drugs
against cheaper, generic drug competition.

For all their gouges, for all their exclusions, their denial of claims
and restrictions of benefits, for all their horrendous price increases,
the two industries have come out stronger than ever politically and
economically. Small wonder their stocks are rising even in a recession.

The junk food processing industry-on the defensive lately due to some
excellent documentaries and exposes-are still the most influential of
powers on Capitol Hill when it becomes to delaying for years a decent
food safety bill, using tax dollars to pump fat, sugar and salt into the
stomachs of our children, and fighting adequate inspections. Over
seven thousand lives are lost due to contaminated food yearly in the US
and many millions of illnesses.

The oil, gas, coal and nuclear power companies are fleecing consumers
and taxpayers, depleting and imperiling the environment, yet they
continue to block rational energy legislation in Congress to replace
carbon and uranium with energy efficiency technology and renewables.

Still, even now after years of cost over-runs and lack of permanent
storage for radioactive wastes, the nuclear industry has President
Obama, and George W. Bush before him, pushing for many tens of billions
of dollars in taxpayer loan guarantees for new nukes. Wall Street won't
finance such a risky technology without you, the taxpayers,
guaranteeing against any accident or default.

Both Democrats and Republicans are passing on these outrageous financial
and safety risks to taxpayers.

Congress, which receives the brunt of this corporate lobbying-the carrot
of money and the stick of financing incumbent challengers-is more of an
obstacle to change than ever. In the past after major failures of
industry and commerce, there was a higher likelihood of Congressional
action. Recall, the Wall Street and banking collapse in the early
1930s. Congress and Franklin Delano Roosevelt produced legislation that
saved the banks, peoples' savings and regulated the stock markets.

From the time of my book, Unsafe at Any Speed's publication in
late November 1965, it took just nine months to federally regulate the
powerful auto industry for safety and fuel efficiency.

Contrast the two-year delay after the Bear Stearns collapse and still no
reform legislation, and what is pending is weak.

Yet the entrenched members of Congress, responsible for this astonishing
gridlock, are almost impossible to dislodge even though polls have
Congress at its lowest repute ever. It is a place where the majority is
terrified of the corporations and the minority can block even the most
anemic legislative efforts with archaic rules, especially in the Senate.

Culturally, the canaries in the coal mine are the children. Childhood
has been commercialized by the giant marketers reaching them hour by
hour with junk food, violent programming, video games and bad medicine.
The result-record obesity, child diabetes and other ailments.

While the companies undermine parental authority, they laugh all the way
to the bank, using our public airwaves, among other media, for their
lucre. They can be called electronic child molesters.

We published a book in 1996 called Children First!: A Parent's Guide
to Fighting Corporate Predators in the Media. This book is an
understatement of the problem compared to the worsening of child
manipulation today.

In a 24/7 entertained society frenetic with sound bites, Blackberries,
iPods, text messages and emails, there is a deep need for reflection and
introspection. We have to discuss face to face in living rooms, school
auditoriums, village squares and town meetings what is happening to us
and our diminishing democratic processes by the pressures and controls
of the insatiable corporate state.

And what needs to be done from the home to the public arenas and
marketplaces with old and new superior models, new accountabilities and
new thinking.

For our history has shown that whenever the people get more engaged and
more serious, they live better on all fronts.