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Rotton Family
Via Froomkin the Houston Chronicle reports on some earmarking of Katrina funds within the Bush family:
Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.
I don´t know about those laws in the U.S. but in some countries this would be seen as hidden tax-free transfer from a parent to a child to avoid some impending estate taxes.
But that aside, the notion of giving money tax-free to a charity with the demand to spend it on a sons’s company goods is at least very bad taste.
Neil Bush’s company Ignite! sell’s an ugly styled expensive combination of a PC and a VGA overhead projector including some learning software.
The son of course is not a bit better, than the mother:
In February 2004, the Houston school board unanimously agreed to accept $115,000 in charitable donations from businesses and individuals who insisted the money be spent on Ignite. The money covered half the bill for the software, which cost $10,000 per school.
The deal raised conflict of interest concerns because Neil Bush and company officials helped solicit the donations for the HISD Foundation, a philanthropic group that raises money for the district.
But somehow the business still is not as successful as Neil would like to have it, so mama had agreed to do the direct sales job:
Barbara Bush is expected to observe both teachers and students using the Ignite Learning program while touring classrooms, according to the Ignite press release.
During a short reception, teachers and students will give testimonials about the program and Bush will "encourage community business leaders to have a stronger presence in supporting schools and education," the press release said.
What a rotton family.
jdp,
Whenever a good, honest, guy like you isn’t sure where he stands on the issues, well, that should raise an immediate warning flag that something isn’t right.
And when something doesn’t smell right, it is time to step back and re-frame the issue on to a larger canvas, to attempt to contextualize it better within the entirety of our life experience.
Ever since Reagan, the Atwaters, Roves, Carvilles, and Matalins, of this world have been virtual masters of getting people to vote against their interests. Does anyone really think that Carville and Matalin could have married if they actually cared about the issues?
We all agree that this is really about NAFTA, but NAFTA can’t be discussed because the elite favor it. The phrase used is “not politically feasible, at this time.” So, an issue is “invented” (And tested. And yes, I mean “invented” literally. There are thousands of potential issues, very few come up.) to deflect attention away from the elephant in the room. When the inventors are very successful, as they are this time, one doesn’t even see the elephant in the room. It is really quite skillful.
Politics is like magic. It is an arena of legerdemain and illusion crafted to attract our attention onto one thing and away from another. In the poem, The Second Coming, Yeats refers to this process as “the ceremony of innocence.” We watch the masterful magician, who we call Rove, or Bush, or Frist, or Pelosi, and we believe that what we see is real, and our emotions naturally become engaged.
Let’s call this mythical other “invented” issue by a name, a chimera. The brightly colored elusive chimera flys around and around the room, singing and skwalking, cooing and chirping, and everyone rushes to catch him. He is so alluring that they must have him in their grasp. He is so beguiling that no one notices that they have to run completely around the huge silent elephant to get to him.
In this case the elephant is named NAFTA. He is very large and very hungry. He is eating every good job and benefit and environmental protection left in America. Right now he is snacking on the auto industry in your own state. But, no one notices him. They all want to fetch their shotguns and go and hunt the beguiling chimera, who flits back and forth before their eyes. Soon, like Cheney, they are shooting their own friends in the face. Meanwhile, the elephant munches undisturbed, protected by the crafty chimera. I don’t need to tell you that chimeras are rarely, if ever, shot.
An honest politician–or commentator, or talking head, for that matter–would step back and patiently explain the situation to his audience. But the policies of the elite thrive in the compost of ignorance.
So, what we get, what our politics has descended to, is a politics of demagogery, of rage, of blind emotion, and of one disenfranchised faction pitted against another, vying for the ever smaller slice of pie.
Whenever you hear the phrase, “We need a National discussion about…..”, that should set off an alarm that the two parties have again agreed upon another mutually beneficial exercize to raise the National blood pressure, in order to deflect from one issue, and engineer buy-in into the corrupt process which we call politics. People get riled up and actually want to vote. But they are not voting for what will help them. This is why a third party is so threatening to the duopoly: It might actually call out the chimera by its name.
And so what we get instead is Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate:
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstacy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
The elite solution to this condition is to deny the hoi-polloi the vote. And so we get monstrosities like the electoral “college”, or the fact that Senators weren’t even voted for until one hundred years ago. Even today, one can hear George Will huffing up this line.
The real solution is the one I call the Radical solution. The word “radical” means “getting to the root of things.” When we hear the engaging call of the chimera we must learn to step back, and back, and back, until finally, like in some magical drawing, the elephant re-appears in the picture. Only then can we become masters of the jungle which we call politics.
Yes, it is hard work. Organizing and teaching and explaining. It is a continual process. But there is nothing magical about it. We have to stand up to the onslaught of propaganda; we can’t follow the pretty birds.
But the interesting thing, the hopeful thing, is that once you wake somebody up from the Two Minutes Hate, once you disengage them from the spell, they calm down. And when they are calm, even the most uneducated person possesses a remarkable innate common sense, and can again see clearly what is in their interest and what isn’t.
Of course, we are all drunks here, and we all see the pretty chimera fly by, from time to time. But with training, and support from our friends, we, and anyone we work with can awake from the magic show, or what Debord calls, “the spectacle,” and learn to see the world as it truly is.
Then we are in control. We can peer into the jungle with our binoculars, and zoom the frame of vision in and out at will. We can zoom way in and focus on the chimera bird, secure in the knowledge that we can now shoot him dead in one sure shot. Or we can pan away until we see the elephant we call “NAFTA,” or indeed, the whole herd of elephants, with names like “Endless Growth,” and “Unitary Executive,” and “War on Terror,” the young bull, “Imperialism,” and the patient mother of the herd, “Neo-Liberal,” with her two young cows, “Property Rights,” and “Cost-Benefit.” We can even pan way back from the herd, into the forest, to see the Great old sire, scarred but still powerfully muscled, “Capitalism,” running amok and alone in the jungle.
Now that we can see so clearly, we are not as afraid of the elephants trampling us, or as distracted by the chimera bird. We become the masters of the forest, and we start by training others to see clearly too.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 24 2006 16:59 utc | 34
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