The Sky is Falling...

or something like that.

Robert Reich offers one of the most comprehensible explanations out there.

The Meltdown (Part IV)

The Dow is see-sawing but the reality is that the Bailout of All Bailouts isn't working. Credit markets are largely still frozen. Despite all the money going directly to the big banks, despite all the government guarantees and loans and special tax breaks, despite the shot-gun weddings and bank mergers, despite the willingness of the Treasury and the Fed to do almost whatever the banks have asked, the reality is that credit is not flowing. It's not flowing to distressed homeowners. It's not flowing to small businesses. It's not flowing to would-be homeowners with good credit ratings. Students are having a harder time borrowing for their tuition. Auto loans are drying up.

Why? Because the underlying problem isn't a liquidity problem. As I've noted elsewhere, the problem is that lenders and investors don't trust they'll get their money back because no one trusts that the numbers that purport to value securities are anything but wishful thinking. The trouble, in a nutshell, is that the financial entrepreneurship of recent years -- the derivatives, credit default swaps, collateralized debt instruments, and so on -- has undermined all notion of true value.

Many of these fancy instruments became popular over recent years precisely because they circumvented financial regulations, especially rules on banks' capital adequacy. Big banks created all these off-balance-sheet vehicles because they allowed the big banks to carry less capital.

Paulson is recapitalizing the banks -- giving them money directly rather than relying on reverse auctions -- largely because he's come to understand that the banks have taken on so much debt that the reverse auction system he told Congress he would use(designed to place a market value on these fancy-dance instruments) will leave too many banks insolvent.

But pouring money into these banks, expecting they'll turn around and lend to small businesses and Main Streets, is like pouring water into a dry sponge. Nothing will come out of it because Wall Street is so deep in debt that the banks are using the extra money to improve their balance sheets. They're hoarding it because their true balance sheets -- considering the off-balance sheet vehicles they created over the past several years -- are in such rotten shape.

In other words, taxpayers are financing a massive effort to save Wall Street's balance sheets from Wall Street's previous off-balance-sheet excesses. It won't work. It can't work. The entire effort is merely saving the asses of lots of executives and traders who got us into this mess in the first place, and whose asses should not be saved at taxpayer risk and expense.

What to do? Immediately require the Treasury to stop the broad Wall Street recapitalization, and require Wall Street to lend the money directly to Main Street. At the same time, force Wall Street to write down its true balance sheets: Let the executives and traders take the hit. Let their shareholders and even their creditors take the hit for Wall Street's collosal irresponsibility. This is the only true way to restore trust. It's also the only way to save Main Street's small businesses, homeowners, students, and everyone else.

Words to live by

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do," [Kit] Bond said." (via GG)

Crashing the system II

I'm happy to see (via M. Thoma) that those who are crashing the systems are at least not making quite as much money.

Change is in the air for financial superclass, by David Rothkopf, Commentary, Financial Times: ...The re-engineering of international finance has been one of the transformational trends of our times – in just a quarter-century, capital flows became massive, instantaneous and controlled by a new breed of traders representing a handful of major financial institutions from a few countries. Their rewards have transcended any in history as shown by an estimate ... that the top hedge fund manager last year made $3bn.

The concentration of power has also steadily grown..., the key executives are in the US and Europe, underscoring the transatlantic nature of this elite. Change, however, is in the air. The history of elites is one of their rising up, over-reaching, being reined in and supplanted by a new elite. Several recent developments suggest that the financial crisis could signal the high-water mark of power for this group.

First, the crisis is prompting a re-regulatory drive. The power of financial elites had been evident in their ability to argue that global financial markets and markets in new securities should remain “self-regulating” (how many of them would hop into a self-regulating taxicab?), then when crisis comes ... these champions of less government involvement have then persuaded governments to cauterise their wounds.

Now, however, there are encouraging, if preliminary, signs of a push towards more effective collaboration between governments – the first steps towards creating the much needed checks on global markets... This could erode the agility of financial elites to play governments off against each other, with the weakest regulator setting the rules.

Checks on markets? Gosh, I wish someone had thought about that before.

Obama: Fight Mediocrity and Mediatocracy

Here's, IMHO, the most important part of Obama's victory speech from last night:

This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats . . . This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country. Because we all agree that at this defining moment in history – a moment when we're facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril – we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term. We need change in America. [...]

Yes, we know what's coming. We've seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain – to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.

This is what they will do – no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into [this] race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it. . . .

This is all about media, voice and democracy. It's about the FCC, the FEC; it's about pundits and CEOs. Obama knows this and this is the subtext of his campaign. The media know this too--and they've been fighting back.

The last three weeks have been a virtual blackout of positive Obama news, a blackout of Obama himself. Indeed, Obama was presented only through the filters of the Kristols and the Crowleys, while smiling pictures of Hillary giving motivational speeches were aired.

This period seems to be over and the media has seen the momentum shift for the final time. They saw it on Bill's face last night.

Does this mean the fight against Obama is over? Hardly--the long hard slog is beginning. We will see more of the same: Wright, few excerpts from speeches and first-person Obama, little talk of Obama's incredible and populist fundraising. The media narrative will "stay the course" in that Obama will be portrayed as elitist, disconnected, different, radical and strident, while McCain will be fluffed beyond belief.

Can they keep him off the air? Can they keep him on the defensive? I don't think so, but they will try.

The goal now, short of preventing Obama's election, is to limit his mandate and define what he can talk about.

Get rich and stay that way!

A new article by the Financial Times indicates that the truly rich are weathering the current financial crisis just fine, thank you.

World’s rich shrug off credit crunch

By Daniel Thomas in London

Published: April 20 2008 16:38 | Last updated: April 20 2008 16:38

The ranks of the world’s rich swelled to 8m during 2007 as the wealthy proved immune to the strains across global economies in the latter half of the year.

There was a 4.5 per cent increase last year in so-called “high net worth individuals”, those with assets of more than $1m, according to the 2008 wealth report compiled by Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank, published on Monday.

There was particularly strong growth of wealthy populations in the emerging economies of China and India, as well as those countries that have access to ­natural resources such as Kazakhstan.

Countries such as Brazil, Canada, Australia and ­Russia also each added more than 8,500 wealthy residents in 2007 on the back of the commodity boom.

The report says that the rate of growth of high net worth individuals has outpaced growth in both gross domestic product, and GDP per head, which it believes indicates that the rich are getting richer relative to their respective countries.

“This is not a perfect measure of relative wealth growth across income levels,” it says, “but there is an indication here that the ­plutonomy model retained its strength through 2007 and is in rude health.”

The US is still home to most of the world’s truly rich. High net worth individuals make up 1 per cent of the US population, with 3.1m people claiming to be dollar millionaires, and 460 to be billionaires.

Japan claims the next highest population of the wealthy, with 765,000 dollar millionaires, and then the UK, where there are 557,000.

The UK has seen the biggest increase in billionaires, however. Numbers rose by 40 per cent in 2007, from 35 to 49. China’s high net worth population grew by 14 per cent in 2007, and now number 373,000, almost as many as in Germany.

The report says there was little change in the investment activity of the very rich during the credit crunch in 2007, other than a shift away from structured finance. It says the very wealthy are “weathering the crunch” much better than insti­tutional investors, owing to the diversity of their port­folios.

More than 50 per cent invest in property, which has fuelled a rapid growth in luxury house prices across the world.

I'm not sure what the surprise is here, if any, but it does lend further (albeit circumstantial) evidence to the idea that the neoliberal economic regime will keep the world's weathly wealthy no matter what? Why? Well, if the economic system is tilted towards you and you pull most of the levers, why would capital flows reverse direction? Or, to put it differently, why would those in power do anything to put their wealth at risk?

The Bear Stearns example is pertinent. Rather than let the markets decide, the elite class used its power to subvert the market and pay off weathly stakeholders. Rather than fix the system, they protect themselves.

Sarkozy Judged Harshly..

Le Monde has a new poll out that shows Sarkozy's popularity flagging. I don't see this as anything surprising. Sarkozy's cozy relationship with the press brought him into power on his law-and-order populist campaign. Now that the people are seing what he is actually like, they begin to have second thoughts. That will sound familiar to most Americans.

Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, les Français portent un regard critique sur son bilan. L'action du président et de son gouvernement n'a pas permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français, estiment 79 % des personnes interrogées par l'Ifop pour le Journal du Dimanche. Ils n'étaient encore que 59 % à le penser en novembre 2007.

Selon ce sondage publié dimanche 20 avril, 49% des Français estiment même que l'action du chef de l'Etat et du gouvernement n'a "pas du tout" amélioré la situation. Même chez les sympathisants de l'UMP, l'action du gouvernement n'obtient pas plus de 50 % d'approbation.

Une certaine impatience se lit également dans ce sondage, puisque parmi les réponses suggérées à la question posée - " Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, diriez-vous que l'action du président et de son gouvernement a permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français ?" -, aucun sondé (ou trop peu pour être comptabilisé) n'a répondu qu'il était "trop tôt pour juger".

Par ailleurs, la cote de popularité de Nicolas Sarkozy a encore fléchi, pour atteindre son niveau le plus bas depuis son élection en mai 2007. Elle se situe désormais à 36% (- 1 point), loin derrière celle du premier ministre, François Fillon, 52% (- 6 points).

I don't think Sarkozy will be remembered fondly by the French, but that has nothing to do with his power. The thing to remember is this: the press will continue to fluff him up for he is one of them, a creature of sound bites and photo-ops. That said, at least in France oppositional politics function in their dysfunctionality, that is, they allow for some stasis comparatively.

As much as I jump on the MSM for what they write, occasionally they provide an article that allows the average citizen to cut through the crap. The lates revelation from the Times is this piece on the cozy relationship of our teevee and our military:

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, by David Barstow, Message machine, NY Times: In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. ... [...continue reading...]

Telling the truth because of fears of loosing access. Secrecy has many powers, not the least of which is that it creates a group mentality of those who are "in the know," even when that content is dubious. Is it unpatriotic to call these people whores?

I don't think so.

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There, A Trillion Everywhere

Channeling Brad Delong again for this graph:

Military-Leisure-Golf-Industrial Complex

I've been linking to a fair number of articles recently, so I've been intending to put a little more "work" and a little less "link" into my entries. But I couldn't pass this one up:

Back in 1975, Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) decried the fact that the Department of Defense spent nearly $14 million each year to maintain and operate 300 military-run golf courses scattered across the globe. In 1996, the weekly television series America's Defense Monitor noted that "Pentagon elites and high government officials [were still] tee-ing off at taxpayer expense" at some "234 golf courses maintained by the U.S. armed forces worldwide." In the intervening twenty-one years, despite a modest decrease in the number of military golf courses, not much had changed. The military was still out on the links. Today, the military claims to operate a mere 172 golf courses worldwide, suggesting that over thirty years after Proxmire's criticisms, a modicum of reform has taken place. Don't believe it.

In actuality, the military has cooked the books. For example, the Department of Defense reported that the U.S. Air Force operates 68 courses. A closer examination indicates that the DoD counts the 3 separate golf courses, a total of fifty-four holes, at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., as 1 course. The same is true for the navy, which claims 37 courses (including facilities in Guam, Italy, and Spain) but counts, for example, its Admiral Baker Golf Course in San Diego, which boasts 2 eighteen-hole courses, as a single unit. Similarly, while the DoD claims that the army operates 56 golf facilities, it appears that this translates into no fewer than 68 actual courses, stretching from the U.S. to Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

Moreover, some military golf facilities are mysteriously missing from all lists. In 2005, according to the Pentagon, the U.S. military operated courses on twenty-five bases overseas.

A closer look, however, indicates that the military apparently forgot about some of its golf courses -- especially those in unsavory or unmentionable locales. Take the unlisted eighteen-hole golf course -- where hot-pink balls are used so as not to lose them in the barren terrain -- at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Also absent is the army's Tournament Players Club, a golf course built, in 2003, by army personnel in Mosul, Iraq. Another forgotten course can be found in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, at Kwajalein, a little-discussed island filled with missile and rocket launchers and radar equipment that serves as the home of the U.S. Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. Similarly unlisted is a nine-hole golf course located on the shadowy island of Diego Garcia, a British Indian Ocean Territory occupied by the U.S. military and long suspected as the site of one of the CIA's post-9/11 secret "ghost" prisons. But even courses not operating on secret sites, in war zones, or near prisons and possible torture centers have been conveniently lost. For example, while the Pentagon lists the navy's Admiral Nimitz Golf Course in Barrigada, Guam, in its inventory of overseas courses, it seems to have skipped Andersen Air Force Base's eighteen-hole Palm Tree Golf Course, also on the island. And you'd think the Pentagon would be proud of the USAF's island links; after all, it was the runner-up, in 2002, for the title of "Guam's Most Beautiful Golf Course."

None of this is surprising. It's just a constant surprise to see the multivariate forms of empire.

Tag Cloud Poetry: Fed Reserve Helps Bear Stearns Buyout

motherf****** elite billionaires theft bailout crony capitalism
a**holes bear stearns class billionaires fed buyout collusion
jerks bear stearns profit federal reserve mutual help
employees bear stearns federal reserve collaboration
media public reponsibility fraud
corporatocracy

Puzzling Evidence

Mike Wallace wants my body.
Elvis meets Nixon.
Tri-lateral commision.
Suburban soul-sucking.

The greatest movie ever made:

Concentration Camping!

As you all knew, the Bush administration has been concentrating on concentration--conentration camps, that is.

From the comments section of Latina Lista:

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0108/096b.html
Forbes Magazine
Monday, January 8, 2007
The Best Of The Best

Business Services & Supplies

Corrections Corp. Of America

Crime pays. At least for John Ferguson, chief of $1.3 billion (sales) Corrections Corporation of America (nyse: CXW - news - people ), the nation's largest privatized prison operator. If there's one thing Ferguson can rely on, it's that criminals are never in short supply and there aren't enough bars to put them behind. Ferguson's 23-year-old firm, in Nashville, Tenn., is the oldest company of its kind. And it has cells to spare. "We have seen this percolating demand for many years that we didn't sense other people saw," he says. "This company has prepared itself." Earnings per share are up 130% over the last 12 months.

Ferguson insists on staying ahead of demand, even if that means the occasional empty cell block. A strong balance sheet and steady cash flow buttressed $120 million in 2006 spending to expand existing slammers and build new ones. One 1,600-occupant prison opened this year in Arizona; as many as 10,000 beds are planned for the next year and a half. "[Its] business development pipeline continues to amaze us," says Jefferies & Co. analyst Anton Hie. Bring on the bad guys: These big houses have plenty of room.

This comes on the heels of reports like this one from Latina Lista...

Privatized Immigrant Detention Facilities for Families Revealed to be Modern-Day Concentration Camps

One of the more disturbing stories that surfaced after the Swift meat plant raids was how too many children were left without a parent and/or farmed out to friends and families with no immediate word on how they will be reconnected with their mami and papi.

But if news filtering out of one of the newly designated immigrant detention centers for families is any indication, no undocumented parent is going to open their mouth and claim their children if the whole family is going to be subjected to what is becoming known as the first known concentration camp on American soil in the 21st Century.

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas (on the outskirts of Austin, Texas) is a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America. It and a smaller center in Pennsylvania are the only two facilities in the country that are authorized to hold non-Mexican immigrant families and children on noncriminal charges.



What does this mean?

It means that at the Taylor facility of the 400 people "held" there, 200 are children. And all are families that can be held there for whatever length of time without due process conducted in a timely manner.

To top it off, as long as the men, women and children are held there, the facility's operator draws a daily profit - per person.

It's not a conspiracy...

I don't really believe much in conspiracies. Sure, they exist. But most things like, say, the killing of Allende by Pinochet supporters with strong help from the CIA, or the promotion of Curveball within the U.S. "intelligence" network, are actually done in the open. To call them conspiracies would be to deflect attention from the very real power of social networks and the (in)human actions that take place thanks to hierarchical and peer systems.

That's why I found the following a fun read. Corporations, especially in the last 50 years, have gone viral. The belief system they promote (to the disadvantage of many struggling humans) has spread far and wide, infiltrating the deepest core of our beings.

Is the consumerist totalization of this country and the world really a conscious plot by a handful of powerful corporate and financial masters? If we answer "yes" we find ourselves trundled off toward the babbling ranks of the paranoid. Still though, it's easy enough to name those who would piss themselves with joy over the prospect of a One World corporate state, with billions of people begging to work for their 1,500 calories a day and an xBox chip in their necks. It's too bad our news media quit hunting with live ammo decades ago, leaving us with no one to track the activities and progress of what sure as hell seem to be global elites, judging from the financial spoor we find along every pathway of modern life.

In our saner moments we can also see that it does not take dark super-centralized plotting to pull off what appears to have been accomplished. Even without working in overt concert, a few thousands of dedicated individual corporate and financial interests can constitute a unified pathogenic whole, much the same as individual cells create a viable dominant colony of malignant organisms -- malignant simply by their anti-human, anti-societal nature. We don't see GM, Halliburton, Burger King and CitiBank lobbying the state for universal health or clean rivers, do we? But mention unions or living wages, and the financial colony within our national Petri dish shape shifts into a Gila monster and squirts venom on the idea and shits money all over Capitol Hill. I looked at all this as coincidence for years until the proposition finally strained credulity so much that I threw in the towel and said, "Fuck it. There is only so much coincidence to go around in this world. [Source: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/12/somewhere_a_ban.html h/t: http://www.electricedge.com/greymatter/archives/00007254.htm]

NSTA: Teachers Owned by Corporations

Ah, thanks, National Science Teachers Association. I just got an email back from you about your refusal to distribute--for free--"An Inconvenient Truth." Here's what you said:

Dear Colleague:

Thank you for your recent e-mail expressing your opinion about the National Science Teacher Association’s decision in regard to the DVD “An Inconvenient Truth.” We value each and every comment we have received from our members and friends.

First and foremost, we want to ensure that you have the most current and accurate information about the issue. Ms. Laurie David, producer of AIT, asked NSTA to distribute 50,000 copies of the movie to its members. The NSTA Board of Directors stood by its 2001 NSTA policy prohibiting endorsements and decided not to mass distribute the DVD to members without their consent or request because it would constitute an endorsement.

As you will see in the letter that NSTA sent to Ms. David on Thursday, November 30, 2006 (http://www.nsta.org/main/pdfs/20061130LetterToLaurieDavid.pdf) we provided her with several options to publicize the availability of the DVD to both our members and the wider universe of science educators worldwide via our communication channels. We also invited Mr. Gore to participate at the NSTA National Conference in March.

This information and more is available on our website at www.nsta.org. We encourage you to read these documents.

Sincerely,



Linda Froschauer
President 2006-2007
National Science Teachers Association

Gerald Wheeler
Executive Director
National Science Teachers Association

It's really nice of you to write back, but you still don't explain why it would be an "endorsement" if you simply took the donation of the films. It doesn't explain how that "endorsement" would differ from your two full pages of corporate sponsors (pages 22-23 of your 2003 annual report). It doesn't explain why you take money from Exxon and Chevron, but you refuse a free donation from Laurie David. It doesn't explain how a physical or intellectual gift that you redistribute to your members is any different from monetary gifts you receive and redistribute to your members in the form of services for their membership.

I am not surprise by your letter however, given your board of corporate advisors:

Richard Schaar
Texas Instruments

Edwar Ahnert
Exxon Mobil Foundation

John Anderson
Toshiba America

Alfred R. Berkeley III
NASDAQ

George Borst
Toyota Financial Services

Mark Emmert
Louisiana State University

Stacy King
Clear Channel

Len Roberts
RadioShack Corp.

I have no doubt that Toyota and Exxon were thrilled to hear about Gore's movie, so it must have been your other friends that threw down the gauntlet. Let me just say that this makes you look bad. In fact, I'm tempted to call you whores.

Whores!

I'm also VERY impressed that NSTA has people from Clear Channel on its board. They produce so much serious scientific programming and are so well known for providing their clients with a docile and demographically defined audience to advertise to through their numerous outlets. They are also known for their liberal attitude toward freedom of thought and speech, those hallmarks of progress.

I'm disappointed that, in your letter, you are neither honest about one of the obvious reasons you refused Laurie David (you're afraid of losing your corporate sponsorship) nor do you admit that this is a loss for students who would have been better educated and better served by that documentary than by those produced by Exxon that are available for free to teachers.

Thanks. Thanks for nothing.

Disney to Offer Cell Phones: Dangerous

Of Tinkerbells and Republican Values

Disney will begin marketing a nationwide wireless phone service that will enable parents to manage their children's cell phone use. Be very afraid, especially if you have a child, are a child. Be even more afraid if your child is female.

Although Disney markets itself as a trustworthy company that provides innocent, family-friendly products, in truth the Disney Corporation seeks neither to promote "family values" nor to adhere to them. It seeks to make money by the most efficient means possible.

Since its inception, Disney has been a "pioneer" in animated film because it brought the assembly line to animation production. In so doing, it has consistently sought to crush unions, or severely limit them. How else do you think they earned 32 billion dollars last year? This lack of scruples has made them one of the largest owners of media in the world, fighting every battle to keep control over copyrights and extending patents into the indefinite future. We could also mention Walt Disney's sexism and his love of Hitler serious flirtations with fascism, but that is for another time...

"Yes, but I like Disney movies. They're safe and non-threatening" you say. Well, unfortunately, Disney movies are anything but. Remember, Disney is a corporation with the power to make any film it wants, yet it continues to make films like the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast in which female heroines are in one way or another deprived of a voice. "But Belle was smart and read a lot," you say. She may have been, but that did not stop her from being captured, forced to put up with a violent male, and ultimately find "happiness" being married to him. The subtle message is "if you are nice to a mean man, he will eventually be nice to you." If you don't believe me, listen to children say it on Mickey Mouse Monopoly.You will see that little girls learn that being nice and subservient is the way to keep a man. It's probably a great way to learn how to stay in an abusive relationship too, but is that what you want your children to do?

You want to know more? Go read about Dumbo, Song of the South, Jungle Book, Aladdin and more.

Speaking of depriving females of a voice and objectifying them at a young age, did you hear about the guy in Homeland Security who was trying to find an opportunity to sexually assault a minor? Well, Disney is a major player in an entertainment industry that sexualizes young chilldren. Here is a good example. It's a photo I took at Disneyland last year.

Notice where the image leads your eyes. How is that for innocent? Think about this. Disney plans their marketing meticulously and they choose to portray women and children in derogatory ways.

The sexualization of young females is bad enough, but it also leads to their objectification and thus exploitation by men like Doyle. I suppose it also leads to men like Lewis Libby, who says, in The Apprentice: "At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest." What is in your popcorn?

Those are Republican family values for you, and these are corporate values that sell.

But let's get back to Disney.

What embodies the transition to innocent whore better than the mouseketeers? Nothing. Let's take a look at one of the most famous graduates from the mouseketeers, Britney Spears:

Note the childlike pose, but the woman-like attitude "Do it one more time." A rather provocative juxtaposition if there ever was one.

Is it any surprise that she also sings "Slave 4 U":

What is important here is that Brittney is not only a Disney product, but a product of Disney.

Disney is interested in capturing a youth audience that spends billions and Britney is the perfect example of a transitional product--transitional in the sense that young girls, whose parents had been making purchases for them, will be attracted to the (pseudo)"independence" of a Britney and want to emulate her and buy her products as they move from dependent child to "independent" teen. The downside is that they learn to be "slaves" and sexual objects in the process. Thus, independence is only perceptual because they are learning subservience to men, and to the corporation. Disney could change this, but easy profits seem to dictate otherwise.

Disney has the power to change its theme parks too. But it doesn't. Here is a picture from the jungle safari.

If you are a minority, you probably know exactly what this means. What you see here is not a funny representation of history, however, but a reinforcement of social hierarchy that some people happen find funny. The black men are portrayed as scared and are made to look stupid. The while male is scared too--but who do you think most visitors to Disney laugh at, the white man or the black men? Racism is pervasive in their films too (Jungle Story, Song of the South, Lady and the Tramp, etc.), but I won't go into that here.

Beyond the cultural cues Disney instills in young people, there are other reasons not to trust Disney. According to Information Week,

"Parent-friendly features in Disney Mobile include being able to set spending allowances and track usage for voice minutes, text messaging, picture messaging and downloadable content...In addition, parents can decide on the hours of the day and days of the week kids can use their phones, program restricted and always-on phone numbers, prioritize family messages and locate kids' phones through their global positioning systems. The controls will be accessible via the Disney Mobile website.

Disney has already violated the right to on-line privacy for children. By signing up for the phone service, my guess is that you will also sign away many rights to information about your child. You will also be subjecting them to the Disney advertising machine every time they open up their phone. Let me repeat: Disney is neither harmless nor innocent. Every time you go online to Disney to control your child's phone access, you are inadvertently giving information about your own morals and ideas, and an insight into your child's. Do you think Disney will use this information to protect your child, or do you think they will use it to find even more subtle ways to communicate to them? I would err on the side of caution and suspect the latter.

In a word, by avoiding a Disney cell phone service, you will avoid having to compete with Disney for parenting rights for your child. Indeed, one of the fundamental ideas of freedom is not only the freedom to do something, it is the freedom to be free from something. Unfortunately, in a world where the average child sees 40000 advertisements per year, it is now a luxury to be free from advertisement. There is "no space," as Naomi Klein says, children need a place where they can simply be without being forced to see themselves through the lens of advertisement and commodities. Henry Giroux states it well:

Intent on defining itself as a purveyor of ideas rather than commodities, Disney is aggressively developing its image as a public service industry. For example, in what can be seen as an extraordinary venture, Disney plans to construct in the next few years a prototype school that one of its brochures proclaims will "serve as a model for education into the next century." The school will be part of 5,000 acre residential development, which according to Disney executives, will be designed after "the main streets of small-town America and reminiscent of Norman Rockwell images."[H. Giroux]

It is important for parents to understand, as Disney does, that in today's economy ideas are a commodity, and perhaps we should not buy them all, for they can be deleterious to the family. Indeed, when Americans think that to be a good parent they need to conform to the ideas Disney presents, then it is time to ask questions. Why should Disney be an intermediary between ourselves and our parenting goals? Why should I give important information about me and/or my children to Disney who will then have the power to use it in advertising research? Why should I trust a company that portrays young women as subservient, sexualized and objectified beings? Why should I subject myself or my child to more advertisements? Why should I buy a phone from Disney when many of the features offered are offered by other providers, just in a different package? Ask yourself these questions.

In classes I teach, I have noticed that students will often defend Disney and other corporations as if they were a member of the family. In fact, students will often find nothing wrong with Disney but will speak for hours about how terrible their parents were. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of corporate behavior and the role of parents. Unfortunately, childrens' perception of what a company is and what a parent should be are often formed by listening to TV, and to Disney. Parents' voices are drowned out by the corporate noise. So, again, just one more reason not to buy the latest product from Disney.

If all my shouting and preaching hasn't convinced you yet, then I have just one more picture of Disney's philosophy, the one they want to instill in you anyway. You can find it on the trash cans at Disneyland:

[Note: Updated and edited for spelling, formatting and clarity.]