Yet, even by Michigan standards the breadth and scope of the Monsanto Protection Act (otherwise known as the “Farmer Assurance Provision”) is scary-corrupt. Passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, it allows the Monsanto Corporation to ignore any consumer and environmental laws that currently exist regulating the sale of genetically modified crops, AND immunizes them from any lawsuit from anyone harmed by their products. This bill was snuck into a budget bill as an amendment with no public debate or disclosure, which shows you how much our government is owned by big business.

I hope that all of you will contact your Senator and Representative and let them know how you feel about this law. It may not make a difference to the outcome (unless you are a millionaire or billionaire), but at least it let’s them know we are watching. 

I began thinking again about Orwell’s classic as I reflected on the unfolding scandals involving the IRS and AP investigations, although these incidents are only the most recent and comparatively minor manifestations of our “Big Brother” society. What Orwell wrote about so eloquently was the process and maintenance of a totalitarian society that lacked any privacy or personal liberties. In Smith’s society there was a constant state of war, a fear of external and internal threats of violence and disorder. It was the fear of this vague but ubiquitous enemy (terrorists) that justified the government’s constant and limitless monitoring of personal lives. Fear was what maintained the willingness of people to accept the loss of any privacy or personal liberties.

Orwell could not have written a more prophetic introduction to the Patriot Act or the various defense bills passed by our elected representatives (including Democrats like our own Levin and Stabenow) permitting the virtual monitoring of our lives. Our phone calls, our e-mails, even our travels to and from places are subject to cameras, listening devices and other methods of surveillance. The budget for domestic spying is rumored to be over 70% of the defense budget, although what is being spent remains a secret. The Boston Marathon murderers were caught because of cameras which tracked them literally from the home to the bomb site. Most of us were impressed by the investigative acumen, but consider this: someone in government has access to the same information about you and can monitor you in and out of your home at any time without a warrant. That’s the state of the law today.

Unlike Smith’s society where someone is always monitoring someone else, we like to think that the government has a good reason to monitor us. The AP and IRS scandals are yet another reminder that our trust in government is more often misplaced. 

Even more important to the ultimate success of Detroit would be the planning and development of neighborhoods in these districts. Real neighborhoods with schools, playgrounds, etc. Detroit cannot be revitalized with young people coming downtown to apartments. Sooner or later, they will want a family and a home. In cities such as New York and Pittsburg people are hired to develop an actual plan – a “big picture” plan to sustain growth.

Finally, a great city has to:

1)      Pick up all the garbage and litter;

2)      Provided street lighting to the entire city;

3)      Maintain all the parks and city pools;

4)      Provide a visible and deterrent police presence on the streets;

5)      Shovel the snow.

If we did just that, Detroit would be a really great city again.

I suppose we could write it off as a commentary on how fragmented and isolated we have become as a society. When I was growing up in Oak Park, everybody knew their neighbors. They also knew each others’ business as well, which as a kid who sometimes got in trouble I hated, but as a parent now I appreciate.

But what happened in Cleveland is less a commentary on the isolation of modern society as it is on the disparity of public safety in a class-driven society. It turns out that several times over the years neighbors, and possibly even the victims, had called the police to the house, but the police never responded.  This was a lower class neighborhood and the reality is that the poor (and especially poor women) are often discounted by the authorities. If this had been a complaint in an affluent neighborhood, do you think they would have responded to a complaint about women being abused the first time? Of course.  If a 9-1-1 operator had received the call made by the victim from a rich neighborhood, do you think that the dispatcher would have been as casual, telling the girl that they would send a car around when “one became available”? Of course.

Still, in the end, someone was willing to help these women and (eventually) the police did show up. We should be happy and hopeful for the victims, angry and righteous about their abusers and maybe a bit more willing to help out our neighbors. 

They are all denying (so far) that they don’t want any “boots on the ground”, but that is just a matter of semantics. For example, they want a “no fly zone”, but what happens if a pilot is shot down? However, most Senators simply want to arm insurgents that are not radical Islamists. That’s really where the issue is: they just want to lobby for the arms industry – another multi-billion dollar arms sale for their masters.  To really appreciate the hypocrisy of these Republicans consider the fact that we would need to have “boots on the ground” to run background checks on who can get our weapons when the same Republicans refuse to allow background checks to save American lives.

Not only has their mission to sell weapons for their corporate masters remained the same, so have their tactics, namely – fear of a terrorist takeover of weapons of mass destruction. Republicans claim chemical weapons have been used and are falling into the hands of terrorists to be used against us. Sound familiar? Maybe that is why our allies in NATO are demanding clear evidence before they jump into more American war mongering.  

Banking giants HSBC and UBS have been found to repeatedly violate laws and exploit loopholes to launder money for terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. Repeatedly. The evidence was overwhelming, in the forms of actual memos discussing how to hide accounts and violate regulations. HSBC and UBS – bankers for terrorists and drug lords also happen to be too big to break up, or to prosecute their executives. So the Obama Administration decided to let them off the hook legally. Not once, but twice. Just ask Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer (formerly of Covington and Burling, a law firm that represents big banks like, well, you guessed already)why he chose to undermine the law and the “war on terror”.

Lest you Obama-haters overly focus on his administration, consider that the reach of big money banks extends to Congress, to the extent that they flagrantly wield their power. Take for example Congress passing the STOCK law this past week. Prior to this law it was illegal for every American except Congressmen to engage in insider trading. Representatives and Senators sitting in on, say, a Committee regulating mining subsidies could virtually leave the hearings, call his investment banker and trade stock in mines. Outrageous, right? Well, the STOCK law was proposed to stop this practice. Except after some fine tuning by bank lobbyists, there are two exemptions to this law: congressional aides and investment bankers getting information from them.

Does this make you as angry as it makes me?

It reminded me that the most important or compelling aspect of a terrorist attack like this is not the cowardice of the bombers. It is the heroism of those who respond to acts of terror. It would be understandable for people to flee – to run away as fast as possible. Yet, in Boston people ran TOWARD the victims. Ordinary people as well as first responders ignore the alleged “terror” of another bomb to help victims of the first bombs.

Another reminder is how destructive and despicable cable news media coverage of these events can be. Within minutes of the bombing cable news began reporting the bombing with a tag line and somber musical themes. I watched MSNBC coverage for one half hour and saw video coverage of the bombs exploding 42 times! It was not much different on other media outlets. I am shocked no one has called it the Boston Massacre yet…

Maybe they think seeing unending footage of explosions and blood stained sidewalks will somehow lessen the fear, but I doubt it. The media exploits fear and terror. It’s good for ratings – destructive for a free society, but good for ratings (profits). Now we can continue to be bombarded by endless hours of pundits being asked questions about what MIGHT have happened, or who MIGHT be responsible. The boogey man will be around every corner until (and if) the investigation bears fruit.

Frankly, the media coverage and the reactions of right wing politicians is what worries more than the bombings. 

The roots of his prophecy were planted with the final speech of a Republican President – Dwight Eisenhower. In a tradition consistent with that set by George Washington who warned of establishing an imperial presidency, President Eisenhower warned of the emergence of a “military-industrial complex”. He warned that “every gun manufactured or ship launched is money taking away food for the hungry and shelter for the homeless”. He warned of an economy that would be dependent on war and the dire consequences for our nation and all of mankind.

President Kennedy, was constantly struggling against the demands of the Pentagon and the influence of industries such as Steel and Aerospace in Congress. Some say that he was assassinated for refusing to invade Cuba, negotiating for a test ban treaty and signing an executive order to end our involvement in Viet Nam just 2 weeks before he was murdered. Viet Nam escalated, missile production escalated (even though we had a huge advantage over the Soviets) and profits escalated for the arms industry. President Johnson institutionalized the defense budget into the economy of the United States. It became the official policy of the United States to prioritize the ability to make war over the ability to uplift the poor.

It was against this historical trend and in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement that King took his heroic stance to oppose not only the War in Viet Nam but to the entire military-industrial complex. Popular discontent with the War and the “Great Society” was the historical moment where, as Rev. King put it, the nation lost its soul. One cannot over-estimate the power of the military-industrial complex. Trillions of tax dollars have been paid to them versus a few billions on Americans to lift them out of poverty. Consider this: the last three national figures who publicly resisted the military-industrial complex were assassinated. Since RFK, no candidate for the Presidency has ever proposed cutting the Defense budget.

Today, war is a permanent part of our economy. The “war on terror” is an ongoing process with no definable end. There is a reason why we are at war not with a nation or a person, but a word. We spend more money on defense than the next 16 nations combined (including Russia and China) and American companies are the largest exporters of weapons in the world, yet we spend less per capita on programs of “social uplift” than 60 other countries.

I encourage all of you to listen to King’s speech at the following link, and put his words in the context of our society today. Like the prophets of Israel, it is a prophecy of doom for our Country.  

This past week the big news in science was that the first direct evidence of dark matter was revealed. Positrons, the result of dark matter collisions had been discovered by an instrument in space, consistent with the theory as proposed by physicists and mathematicians. We live in a time of unprecedented scientific breakthrough. For example, scientists have identified the Boson Particle (the “God particle”) which is a key building block to all matter. We almost routinely are discovering planets outside of our solar system that could support life similar to Earth’s. Our lives have been revolutionized by the application of scientific principles to information processesing. In fact, we are on the verge of building the first cellular computer – a living computer built by living cells and far more powerful than any computer currently existing.

Yet, in the midst of all this scientific progress we have people, like my friend, who deny scientific discoveries such as the Big Bang, or laboratory techniques that determine the age of artifacts – in fact all of the science that is routinely encountered in every day life! Now many of these people can simply be dismissed as ignorant or uneducated (or simply Republican). Yet how do we explain someone like my friend who has a faith incompatible with reality? Some say that religious faith is inconsistent with intelligent, educated people. Certainly there are a large number of Americans that fit that description – otherwise known as the religious right.

Getting back to my friend, the Baptist minister, I felt bad for him in the sense that his faith seemed so fragile that he had to deny science and the practical applications of science in his everyday life. I was left shaking my head when he went on and on about talking snakes, Adam and Eve, etc., etc. etc.

All I could tell him was that I was glad that my faith did not depend on denying reality. There is nothing inconsistent about faith and science. But there is something destructive about a faith that denied science.    

In the space of a week or so, we had Republican Congressman Don Young discussing the issue of immigration and relations with Hispanic-Americans in as sensitive a manner as he could muster using the term “wetbacks”. When Party leaders denounced his use of the racial slur (Sen. Rubio was notably silent), Congressman Young refused to apologize, but did offer the sensitive explanation that the racial slur used to be acceptable when he was younger. Many of the old angry white men in the Party agreed.

Michigan Republicans further cemented their reputation as being a safe harbor for bigots later the same week when one of their own, Congressman Agema, used his official Facebook page to sensitively communicate a hateful diatribe against gays, including such notable lies as attributing nearly half of all murders being attributable to gays. After all, Agema argued, it was not a position inconsistent with their Party Platform (he is a member of their Platform Committee).While some national leaders in the GOP denounced the bigoted actions of Agema, they have not removed him from his Committee position. Michigan Republicans for the most part have been supportive of Agema. For example, the Party Chairman has refused to call for an apology or resignation, saying it was all up to Agema and his family. Agema remains the most tangible sign that the GOP remains the party most inclusive… of all bigots.

This “communication” thing they have may need some fine tuning.