Much That Is Hidden

Muley: "Who's the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company?"

Land agent: "It ain't anybody. It's a company."

-- The Grapes of Wrath

Last week I received one of the many documentary selections I’ve queued up from Netflix,* The Corporation. It’s a 2003 Canadian film which chronicles the rise of the corporate entity, chiefly in North America. There is no doubt the film is strongly to the left in its point of view, and so barring some minor shortcomings I of course found it very appealing and engaging.

Quickly, just two beefs: I concur with Roger Ebert's review that, at 145 minutes, the film overstays its welcome like "the dinner guest who tells you something fascinating, and then tells you again, and then a third time." I see now that the directors have released an enhanced version DVD with eight hours of "bonus" footage. Good news for the type of person who makes a career out of attending anti-globalization demonstrations, I guess. The other gripe I have is that the music is in that overwrought style of spooky tones so popular in modern documentaries. I'll cut it some slack as it is a social cause film and not some "voyage of the cute and fuzzy whatevers."

The central themes in The Corporation are that today's companies enjoy the same status in liberty as individuals, and that society is suffering from the privatization of elements traditionally held in common in western society since its emergence from the Dark Ages. Several anti-globalization stalwarts such as Dr. Vandana Shiva and Noam Chomsky are interviewed, along with a few unrepentant capitalists for good documentary measure, like Milton Friedman and some jerky floor trader who unabashedly pointed out how good 9-11 and the Iraq war were for the stock market.

The film posits that corporations are today's dominant institutions, replacing the likes of monarchies and other bygone regimes. One of the film’s primary themes is in assessing today’s multinational companies according to the renowned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM - the bible of the American Psychiatric Association). The latest edition identifies 297 disorders, but the film concentrates on six areas. Dr. Robert Hare, psychology professor and FBI consultant, compares the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath based on the following symptoms:

• Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
• Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
• Reckless disregard for the safety of others
• Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning of others for profit
• Incapacity to experience guilt
• Failure to conform to the social norms with respect to lawful behaviors

The analysis? We’re all going to hell, or at least those of us who can’t squeeze through the eye of a needle on our camels. Okay, lame biblical reference – it doesn’t get that gloomy, but it gives a plethora of evidence to support the notion that we are heading fast in the wrong direction. Good examples of the insidious nature of corporations abound in the film.

Economist Jeremy Rifkin tells us how in the 1980s a scientist for General Electric “invented” microorganisms that ate hazardous waste. GE went to the U.S. Patent Office claiming they had invented these bacteria and needed a patent. The patent office immediately turned down the request citing a living organism cannot be patented. GE corporate lawyers went to court to fight for their patent rights, and lo and behold the patent office was overruled. Rifkin himself appealed this decision by going to the Supreme Court. His argument was that if the verdict was upheld, the blueprints of life would be owned by corporations without Congress or the public's consent. By a ruling of 5-4 Chief Justice Warren Burger upheld the decision, and seven years later the patent office wrote into its laws one sentence that stated any life except a full birth human being can be patented. Rifkin points out that now the race is on in the corporate biotech world to cash in on the Human Genome Project so they can patent the genetic code that causes all known diseases (Ebert aptly comments that Right-to-Lifers should be aghast at the prospects, but "If there is one thing more sacred than the Right to Life, it is the corporation's Right to Patent, Market and Exploit Life"). Rifkin, who is dubbed by his critics as a scaremonger and “the intellectual guru of the neo-Luddites," finishes by stating that within ten years corporations will not only own all human life but that of every other species on Earth. That does sound a tad mongery to me, but Rifkin is a really smart dude and I think he’s perhaps not far off the mark.

One segment that is particularly poignant to me as a journalist shows how a crew at Fox News’ Tampa, Florida affiliate battled with the top brass in New York over their investigation of agricultural giant Monsanto in the late 1990s. Reporters planned on airing an investigative report on the negative effects of the bovine growth hormone Posilac used to boost milk production in dairy cows. Before the story aired corporate lawyers for Monsanto threatened to sue Fox News if the story went on. Fox Broadcasting Company owned 23 separate stations at the time and did not want a loss in advertising dollars, so they agreed to cooperate with Monsanto’s lawyers. After more than 80 rewrites to the story it still wasn’t aired and the reporters were eventually fired. They sued and won $425,000 in damages. The decision was overturned on appeal after Monsanto lawyers found a way to remove the reporters’ “whistle-blower” status on the grounds that falsifying news is not technically against the law. Today, some of the U.S. milk supply still comes from cows that have been modified with Posilac to produce more milk.

The most moving portion of the film for me was seeing the personal testimony of Raymond L. Anderson, chairman of one of the world’s largest carpet manufacturers. The guy looks like a salty old corporate big wig, and for decades he played the part to a “T,” which makes more poignant his description of an epiphany he had about his company and its contributions to/detractions from the planet. He says that in 1994 he read The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken and realized that his company was creating product at an unsustainable rate and thus harmful to the environment. Hawken’s book, voted in 1998 as the #1 college text on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools, introduced the principle of “comprehensive outcome,” which accounts the entire result of an event or process to all parties, not just the immediate participants. Considerations for natural resource depletion, pollution and the side effects of the production, distribution and consumption processes are key to the calculations. Hawken contrasts this to a merely “culminative outcome” which is simply the obvious result visible to the buyer at the moment and point of purchase, and the profit made therein by the supplier.

So since 1995 Anderson has reduced his company’s waste by a third, and plans to make the company on a completely sustainable platform by 2020. During the first three years of the company's drive toward sustainability it saved $50 million in reduced materials costs, reduced energy costs, and reduced waste. That’s $50 million for their bottom line (and thus more for shareholders) instead of for the atmosphere and the landfill. I firmly believe like my very good friend Al Gore that the key to environmental change is to prove that it pays to go green.

There is a scene where Anderson is speaking to a chamber of commerce group, and he points a finger at the audience and flatly proclaims that not one of their companies operates sustainably, and that the corporate world ignores this at our planet’s peril. The audience was stunned, perhaps not knowing what to think of a speaker who would come to their chamber and not give the standard “cheerleader for growth” speech. Having been an observer to not a few of these meetings myself, I admit to having gotten choked up a bit. Right on, salty old corporate dude!

The Corporation – Three Thumbs UP.




SOURCES:

Fast Company magazine

Speech by Raymond L. Anderson

Wikipedia

OFFICIAL FILM WEBSITE: www.thecorporation.com


* I’ve got to hand it to Netflix. Their selection is incredible and their queue system politely suggests/links other titles which may be of interest to the subscriber. It was thus I perused their numerous documentaries and came across today’s subject film.
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Labels: film, journalism, terms of enragement

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He sped the rural Interstate at 20 over and thought, “Don’t let the blue-light special shine his light on me.”

There’ll be no chance of that inside the perimeter, where the morning commute becomes a moving parking lot at about 50 under.

Damn that old prison song.
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Labels: fiction, law enforcement, violence inherent in the system

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Benny and Hilda sit by the pool at the Super 8. It’s not open – it’s November. “Evah seen one’a dem Amish?” asks Benny. “You know da ones wit da buggies dat don’t like dere pictcha taken?”

“Yes, Ben darling, I most certainly have.”

“I got a book fulla dere souls.”
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Labels: Amish, every blue light cheap hotel, fiction, photography

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She laid her little package down on the bed and turned to pick up one of his accoutrements she dropped near the door. “Let’s get you cleaned up, little man. Big day today.”

“Gabrow agahaiya,” he replied. “Yeanowee unnnnha.”

“Agreed, something light to beat the heat. How about this tie-dye?”
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Labels: fiction

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My last day will be the 10th of next month. Jen and I went over the budget, and although we’ll need to engage in some serious sacrifice, the decision for me to become Mr. Mom is in force. The drive behind this change is the fact that having waited until I was past 40 to become a father makes it eminently desirable to stay home and raise my son, rather than assign a large portion of my paycheck to someone else for doing that. Oh, speaking of paychecks, if it wasn’t already obvious, Jen’s is much larger than mine. She is regretting having to return to work next month, having spent all but about a week since February on maternity/summer break at home caring for the boy. She is jealous of me, and I can’t blame her. I hope she will temper that with her knowledge of how hard the stay-at-home parent job is.

As for work, I will miss two of three things - my duties and my co-workers. I will not miss the company. Their spectre of non-chalance toward our little cog in the machine has in fact brought me to the brink of burnout. Two and a half years is at least a year too long to be in the position I hold. I would likely and gladly have made it a career if it provided career-worthy compensation, but they prefer the turnover of an endless string of baby-step college grads. Miz UV once made a funny list of books she wished had been written, and I laughed hard at the one she dubbed “Don’t Forget To Plan For A Career, Dumbass!” I am thankful for getting hired by the best boss I’ve ever had, because this position affirmed that I am capable of doing something that I love as opposed to being resigned to toiling away my days in a visionless occupation (big bucks or no).

I’m not sure what will become of the relationships with some of my co-workers. This is the smallest workforce I’ve ever been a part of – less than a dozen people, and other than a very good friend I met three jobs ago, I’ve never been one to go beyond some occasional post-workday libation with the people I work with. But here about half of us took to hanging out successfully, though I’m not sure if the bonds have become permanent or even if they’re supposed to (if that makes any sense). I’m mindful that the success was pre-baby, with most of it in the admittedly shallow form of fun, so I suppose time will tell if there is to be continuance in the midst of infant parenthood, i.e. much less time for fun. Another aspect is that I was the newcomer among them, and interestingly enough the strongest bond for me has been with another guy who came after me, leaving me to wonder on occasion if there is some hierarchy yet unrealized. There has also been some upheaval and drama with the recent sudden breakup of one fellow and his wife. Their abode was kind of the social nerve center of our group, and it was gone in a virtual flash, leaving all of us in a bit of a flounder with the awkward social implications that are part of most every divorce. The re-group has been interesting, especially since I am the second among what is certain to be three persons leaving their position. Anyway, life will go on, and like so many other capsules of time in one’s life there will at the very least be some good memories. So thanks, folks (if any of them still read my highbrow blog).
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Labels: friends, parenthood, work

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Word of the Day :

triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun:

A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th.

Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft. plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month.
-- Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967

Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13.
-- "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday", Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996

Triskaidekaphobia is from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, thirteen (treis, three + kai, and + deka, ten) + phobos, fear.

In Christian countries the number 13 was considered unlucky because there were 13 persons at the Last Supper of Christ. Fridays are also unlucky, because the Crucifixion was on a Friday. Hence a Friday falling on the thirteenth day is regarded as especially unlucky.

Some famous triskaidekaphobes:

* Napoleon
* Herbert Hoover
* Mark Twain
* Richard Wagner
* Franklin Roosevelt
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Labels: fun facts, superstition, words

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Once in a while those crafty Libertarians come up with a good idea to go along with their decidedly dicey positions on immigration and privatization. David Boaz of Cato@Liberty posits that there are two questions sure to flummox conservative Christians:

1. Would you support a presidential candidate who is divorced, has estranged relations with his children, never sees his grandchildren, rarely attends church, strongly opposes a law to ban gays from teaching school, and as governor signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law?

2. Would you support him if you knew his name was Ronald Reagan?
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Labels: dead presidents, paradox, politix

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I couldn't post yesterday (see me after class for a complete list of excuses for the week) as I was standing guard, water hose in hand, keeping vigil against my house burning down at the hands of drunken young redneck neighbors. Damn if I'm not that guy I used to laugh at.

But today I get to another notable national birthday on July 4, that of the Freedom Of Information Act, known in jargonese as FOIA (I don't know why 'of' gets in on the acronym action. Government thing I guess). Yes, the FOIA is 40, and ACLU executive director and chief brainiac Anthony D. Romero writes about her mid-life crisis in HuffPo.

The Act can trace its origins to the time of Joe McCarthy. In March 1954, newsman Edward R. Murrow set into motion the downfall of the demagogue senator, using McCarthy's own words to show America his dark side.

Murrow warned that McCarthyism was a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. National security concerns about Soviet espionage and global expansion were building into wildfires of public hysteria. Farmers in the Midwest, socialites in New York -- all were terrified of the Red Menace, a terror made even more acute by the advent of nuclear weapons.

Frightening times, I'm sure. Then and now seem pretty cozy. Of course one of mankind's favorite pastimes is predicting its demise, and 10 years probably never passes anywhere in the world without some good freak out to get the juices flowing.

So within a decade of McCarthy's death Lyndon Johnson gives up fighting Congress and signs onto FOIA. Of course it's become a mess, and the Act is hobbled further with White House Resident Bush (its a longer, insult-free title I can live with) giving it the Nancy Kerrigan treatment with his 9-11 tire iron.

To the rescue are some libertarianish Republican Senators with the Open Government Act.

The bill would require the government to create a tracking system for FOIA requests and would provide greater specificity in how the agencies may redact or exempt documents from disclosure.

I wish them all the best, as apparently one of their own is playing footsie with it in committee (damn but are they going to get anything done?). Beyond giving them the BOTD I guess until I look at the damn thing or hope to have it explained to me on C-SPAN, all I'm gonna be able to envision filed under examples of "greater specificity" is this:



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Labels: gummint, politix

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Wow, time flies. We had a great vacation, with a visit from Auntie Julie and train and boat rides. Among our more mundane adventures were the basics of eating soft foods and bathing:

Labels: Max