Source Code

So, last week we found out that today's ubiquitous propaganda-churning think tanks were spawned (like a nest of crocodiles) as a result of
Mr. Lewis Powell's 1971 memorandum written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying organization. 
But let's move on to the lighter side:  what was the inspiration for the title of Frank Zappa's 1970 record, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh"?  Haven't you wondered?
Classy as ever, Frank borrowed it from a 1956 issue of Man's Life magazine.  He reportedly asked artist Neon Park if he could re-make the illustration, but do it even worse!  The original cover art was pretty awesome in its genre, I think, and I hope the artist, if still alive, enjoyed his work's second life.
And the title of "Burnt Weeny Sandwich," which was released about the same time, also had me wondering...the explanation is that Frank just liked burned Hebrew National hot dog sandwiches slathered with mustard.
Life would be so much better today without think tanks, but we were lucky to have had Frank around.  He was like Bugs Bunny with a mission.
 

Postscript



I just found this on Ran Prieur's blog;
it makes
a perfect illustration for
 the second paragraph of
'Criminal Intent'



Criminal Intent

Lewis Powell, Jr.

Do you try to buy from small, craft producers of products, or avoid, if you can (you can't), supporting giant-killer-squid corporations with the disposal of your after-tax income?
I'm not sure it's possible beyond a small scope.  The most common brand of "organic" milk is just a label from a large corporation.  Tom's natural products from Maine (the toothpaste has been around long enough it inspires nostalgia for 1970), as well as Burt's Bees various balms, are now each part of Fortune 500 companies.  The devotion to "Free Trade" that is supposed to benefit every one of us with increasing prosperity is actually all about destroying competition and creating monopoly.  It worked for the robber barons during a previous Republican era, and works even better today.
The advances made during the on-and-off Progressive years of the 20th century were really wearing the patience of the leaders of the largest corporations in the late 60s.  Ralph Nader was saying that CEOs belonged in jail and they were guilty of fraud, poisoning and carelessly selling dangerous products.  And the kids were mouthing off.  Something had to be done.
Eugene Snyder, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked corporate lawyer par excellence Lewis Powell, Jr., of Virginia (a year before his appointment to the Supreme Court by Nixon) for his thoughts on a campaign to counter all this for-the-people nonsense going on, and he responded with a memorandum which changed the direction of the United States as much as the Civil Rights and Voting Acts (more irritants, surely).  Entitled "The Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," it advanced the strategy of blasting critics relentlessly and presenting corporations as heroes.
And it worked all too well.
Funded beyond anyone's wildest estimates, lobbyists and "think tanks" were established to defend the "merchants of death" (the tobacco companies, originally) with cover-ups, junk science and a spectacularly successful assault on the evils of regulation.  The Cato, Heritage, Hoover, American Enterprise and hundreds more pretend-scholarly institutions were set up and enriched to dominate every aspect of American life and governance.  They set their sights, based on Powell's analysis, on the articulate minorities in academia, the media and intellectual journals, as well as liberal politicians and those scurvy artists and scientists.  Constant surveillance of textbook and media content worthy of the East German Stasi was developed in order to change public opinion rightward and eventually purge all "left wing" elements (they're still screaming "socialist" and "communist" at everyone indiscriminately despite the fact that first, hardly anyone is, and second, an American liberal is what the rest of the world considers a centrist or even conservative). They used their mastery of advertising to manipulate the public (first as consumers, then as voters).  As evidenced by the backlashes of 1968 and 1980, they have successfully moved large portions of the populace to believe and vote against their own interests.
Bill Black points out that the business leaders conflated unrestrained corporate power with free enterprise.  Market dominance and wealth always allows the cheats to have a growing competitive advantage which increasingly squashes the competition (while cynically sending all our jobs overseas thus pulling the floor out from beneath us).  Only big business, not that Beast, democratic government, has the power to destroy free enterprise and the U.S. Chamber's and Powell's plan was exactly about how to do that.
They missed the irony that a legal system (from the Supreme Court down) that supports them in contravention to the Constitution and a moral code that exalts their greed looks just like the operation of the Communist Party apparatus in the former USSR and its remains in contemporary Russia -- which quickly devolved into organized crime.
Their wholly owned subsidiary, the Supreme Court, has not only finished the job by declaring corporations to be real persons with more rights than us, they have relentlessly supported the deregulation agenda to all of our economic disadvantage.  The deregulation of the airline industry has just about ruined it, for example.  But did you know, way back in 1978, the USSC ended the federal predatory lending law so banks could issue credit cards to almost everyone charging 25% compounded interest (29% on cash advances).  By the way, credit unions were restricted to a 15% ceiling so the banks could run ahead with this one.  Common sense, moral sense, as well as every religion, rejects the abuses of usury, but not the black-robed wise men.  The result of this rapid accumulation of wealth at the top is monopoly rather than healthy competition, of course:  the top three card issuers own most of the game. 
The absurd 25% rate, along with new lower repayment minimums, meant that the original debt would be paid back many times over and indeed will grow until it can never be retired.  But loan-sharking is illegal. Because it is not perpetrated by banks.
If you borrowed today's average credit card balance ($10,679) all at once, in 20 years of minimum repayments, you will have paid $56,660 while still owing $13,016!  Looting is illegal if committed by individuals --  who are of course, less of a person than a corporation.
 

You're No Fun Anymore



What happenend as FB policy changed, and you didn't constantly
adjust your settings

 No, not you; you're fine.  It's just that Facebook has gone too far and the organization wasn't that savory in the first place, either.
After looking into how much we're watched by government and business, I thought about what to do about it.  I'm not about to commit a crime or a fraud, or even speed, but you can never be sure that those digging and spying have the law as their guide or your interests at heart.  Internet communication and e-mails are scanned for key words, for example, and the list of those goes on for pages.  If you use the word "extremist," (oops, just did) for example, you just exposed yourself to being considered dangerous and requiring scrutiny.  During WWII, Alexander Solzenihitszyn was arrested while serving at the front for criticizing Stalin in a letter.  For this word crime, he was beaten and sentenced to eight years in labor camps.
Think it will never happen here?  Remember the Patriot Act provision to keep tabs on your library check-outs.
I realized from the beginning, before signing up, that FB was just a device to gather information on individuals to resell it for use in targeted advertising, and that founder Zuckerberg was icky and unethical.  But even though there was a cost -- being an unpaid provider of crowd-sourced infomation -- I fell for the idea that all this fun playing with others was "free."
The first irritation arrived with some application I clicked on; immediately a screen appeared demanding access to all my information to be used in any way or at any time.  Pretty stiff requirement for some silly thing that really didn't do anything and was awfully jejune too.  I just recently deleted all the apps and "likes;" it was like keeping a lot of trash in the trunk of your car.
Reading the terms of service, buried in layers of increasing obfuscation, you discover that FB states that they own your personal data, but it's clear they don't want you to know the details about how much is available and to whom.  Think about all the developers of those 1/2 million applications out there:  are they motivated or competent to keep this information about you secure?
And guess what, if you "deactivate," FB and the apps will keep your data anyway.  If you decide to can the whole thing (and miss out on what antics your friends are up to!), you must select "delete" to close your account through the link in "on line help" and then the action is several more clicks away.
I'm almost to that point; it seems that there is no good way to continue playing on this field fairly.  Recently I went to the Internet Tools section of Windows Explorer to delete the cookies inserted every time I logged into FB (this is their entry, which I wanted to shut); they did not like that one bit.  Now, they send me a text (I don't have texting, so it costs .25 each time) with a code number allowing me to log in, even though I have repeatedly identified this as my home computer and the one authorized (by me) entry point.
It's a hard decision to give up my main avenue of social contact.  Well, Thoreau only needed a little, and still had intelligent things to say.  But I'm probably not Thoreau.
 

Eustace, the Black Monk

"No one can live for a long time who has bad intentions all his days."

So ends the 1284 verse drama, mostly fiction and fancy, based on the tumultuous and violent life of the former Benedictine monk Eustace, son of the lord of Boulogne.  He was, as they say, bad as he wanted to be.
He served no master, king or God with any faithfulness.  It is said Eustace studied black magic in Toledo, Spain, before entering a monastery in Calais where he was known for his swearing and gambling, not his piety.  He left to avenge the murder of his father when about twenty, but the matter came to a duel which his champion lost; his adversary was then considered innocent.  With no prospects for justice, he somehow crossed the Channel and met King John of England, who must have been impressed, for the King gave the adventurer command of thirty ships to attack his former possessions in Normandy.  Losing John's support, probably due to intrigue by his enemies in Boulogne, his status changed from King's man to pirate.  He and his brothers established bases on the Channel islands of Guernsey and Sark, raided and plundered, and the Robin Hood-like legend grew.  Rumor had it that Eustace had made a pact with the devil to render his ships invisible, that he was capable of shape-shifting and employed impenetrable disguises.
When the French ejected him from the islands, he went over to their side.  Taking advantage of civil war in England in 1215, Prince Louis attempted an invasion to claim the throne the following year, sailing in one of Eustace's ships.  It failed, and in a second expedition the English attacked fiercely, boarded the flagship, and beheaded the Black Monk then and there.  A subsequent treaty required Louis to give up his claim to the English throne and remove Eustace's brothers from their lairs on the Channel Islands, which passed to English control.
Five hundred years later, the pirate Blackbeard had a quite similar life and death.  Had the Black Monk returned?

It Was Ever Thus

With candidate "Psycho Rick" Santorum whipping up the evangelicals, the nightmare of a return to the Dark Ages where church and state are bound together in a frothy mix, and all safety and hope are lost, looms.
More insane things have happened over the centuries than any writer of fiction could conceive.  The prospect of going through them again horrifies.

An example:  there was a pope named Formosus ("good looking") who reigned in Rome from October 891 to April 896.  His successor (a lovely fellow -- he had been defrocked twice) was gotten rid of after a mere fifteen days by the Spoleto family faction, who put Stephen VI on the throne.  He was in turn imprisoned and strangled in August 897, but not until after conducting something known as the Synod Horrenda in January of that year.

Vicar of God on Earth Stephen had Formosus' corpse exhumed eight months after death, had it dressed in the vestments and propped up on the throne, so the poor thing could be put to trial.  Our dead friend was appointed counsel, who was wise enough to remain silent.  While accused of returning to Rome when he had promised not to, and of accepting the bishopric of Rome while still bishop of the diocese of Porto, the actual complaint was that Formosus had crowned an illegitimate descendant of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor after doing the same earlier for a candidate of Stephen's faction (one Guy of Spoleto).  The popes continued in this deadly engagement in temporal politics within their spiritual domain until a really ticked-off H.R.E. thoroughly sacked Rome in the 1500s.  They then focused on killing heretics, native Americans, witches and Protestants rather than tangling with well-armed states, and thus survived.

Poor Formosus, though, was not just condemned at his trial and forgotten.  The three fingers of benediction on his right hand were chopped off, he was stripped and  thrown to the mob in the streets who dragged him to the Tiber River.  Some fishermen or a monk (stories differ after 1,000 years) retrieved the corpse, reburied it, and it eventually ended up back in St. Peter's Basilica (for a while).  All his ordinations, acts and appointments were alternately reaffirmed or rejected again by succeeding popes, culminating with Sergius III re-exhuming his body again to retry and then behead it.  Later it was declared he was never a pope at all (after all that effort to humiliate him).

All these fine leaders of us mere mortals were declared infallible by Pius IX in 1870 in Council, even though that idea had already been declared heresy in 1324.  Pius also stated that among the 80 Errors that his flock could never accept were rationalism and liberalism!

And that leads us back to our current situation.  No more rationalism or liberalism, says Rick...and no taxes, no civilization, and surely no public secular education.  He was born a millenium too late!

I hope.

  

Don't Fade Away

After privately made postal cards were legalized in 1898, they were a craze, up to 1912.  Photographers and tourism sites benefitted.

What a difference colorization makes.  They were often done in Italy or India, and the actual colors were not known, so imagination reigned.

Stock or old B&W photos were colorized beginning in 1893.

"Dear Honey,
This is supposed to be down here some place But I don't know where
--Snitz"

On the postcard's face side is a glossy black-and-white photo of Laurel Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Snitz got around.

He was Paul B. Johnston, who called Dalmatia Pennsylvania home (it's due north of Harrisburg along the river), but by the postcard record he and his family left behind from the 1940s through the 1960s, home was where their hats were.  You wouldn't think that ordinary small town folks would have been such travelers, but over the years they visited Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ausable Chasm in New York State, the Big Apple itself (including the Empire State Building and the U.N., of course), the St. Lawrence Seaway, a cabin in Sullivan County, PA (I've been in one there, and on the covered bridge depicted), Alabama, Philadelphia, Niagara Falls, Waycross, GA, Florida many times ("it was about 120 degrees!") , and even Booger Hollow, Arkansas, which claimed a population of 7 countin' one coon dog.

World War II brought a lot of people out of their isolation in the countryside or within a square mile of a city, and took them to places they had never heard of.  Some, with cars newly available and small travel trailers, wanted to see this bigger world after 1945 and enjoyed sending back pictures of where they were to the home folks and how they wished they were there too.  Some G.I.s had passed through Hawaii or California, and didn't go home at all after discharge -- they wanted to live that postcard picture.

Paul B. spent 1944 at Camp Croft, South Carolina, writing to Mrs. Paul B. (mother? wife? hard to tell); the last one was obviously written in a hurry and began, "Honey get the coffee & Hot Dogs on the stove I'll be there to eat them before you know it tell Butchie to watch the Busses & I'll surprise him & step off of one..."  The area is a peaceful state park now, but was an infantry replacement training center then, whose graduates could well have expected short careers (the vets often survived, the green replacements didn't).  Paul B. got lucky somehow and returned home to those hot dogs and many memorable vacations.  A year earlier, in 1943, one L. A. Johnston sent a card home from the U.S. Naval Training Station at Sampson, NY, advising Paul "if they call you, you better join the Navy."  The last military-related card was sent in 1961, when the family received it from SGT Michael Weiss at Grafenwohr, Germany, saying he missed being home for Christmas, but appreciated their card.

Paul B. might have worked, when not traveling, for Capitol Iron & Steel in Harrisburg since a pocket memo booklet from that company was with the bag of old postcards all these were in.  The writer kept gas mileage records and three pages are taken up with notes on car purchasing: a Dodge with vinyl roof (1970s?) and air conditioning, payments after trade-in of $88 a month at 5.5% interest.  A "four-door automatic," brand unknown, at Keith Motors in Newport, PA was also under consideration.  It sported undercoating, a hood pad, plus the radio and light groups; $2250.  Whichever one, it probably was on its way to Florida within the year.

I wish there were a date on a unique nine-panel panoramic super post card depicting, in saturated full color, Bayfront Park in Miami.  It was more of a souvenir, not written on or meant to be mailed.  Surely, the printed caption deserves a quote:  "The great Pan American Airways System has its terminal here.  Its huge Clipper Ships make regular trips to the countries of South America, Havana and the West Indies.  Miami is truly a City of Allurement, whose spell enthralls all who have proved its charms and joy of life."  (Produced by the Eli Witt Cigar & Tobacco Co., Miami).  They could have used an editor at Witt, but the photo is luscious.

Believe it or not, a major postcard dealer has a card sent by Paul B. Johnston in 1966 depicting the Hershey Chocolate plant (Lotsofcards.com).  It's yours for $1.

Snitz sure got around.