5-20-06, 9:47 am

In the midst of probably the greatest crime wave in history the target of the Bush Surveillance State is obviously misplaced.   The greatest enemy of the US Constitution and the American middle class way of life are not citizens, but US global corporations. The threat posed by abandonment of labor standards through out-sourcing and illegally (wink-wink) actively promoting an invasion of cheap labor threatens the very lifestyle of America where historically, high wages differentiated our system from those outside our borders. By encouraging innovation and capital investment, high wages led to the creation of the largest consumer market in the history of the world--now gravely in danger.

Massive looting of pension and retirement funds, the destruction of the middle class and a return to wholesale corporate polluting of the air, water and soil-- is accompanied by shameless monopolization of all infrastructure essentials including water, energy, health care and insurance almost assuring that competitive business in the US has become impossible. Global corporations and their cheerleader stockholders are the greatest threat to Americanism, ever.

But the drug war has been used as a pretense to install the Surveillance State long before 'radical' Arabs  associated with the Bush family in mutual investments became 'terrorists'. Now both are used to justify a series of wars and a wholesale dismantling of checks and balances.

If these corporate cheerleaders insist that there is noting wrong with being under constant surveillance ('if you have nothing to hide')--they shouldn't mind if the Surveillance State is expanded to their neighborhoods.  So far they have largely avoided the jack-booted thugs in the night who are an even bigger plague than the drug dealers who slum neighborhoods but don't wreck and arbitrarily confiscate property without practically any review at all.  The only real lasting legacy of the drug war inside the US is that a myriad of small time sheriffs, court-house lawyers and federal agents who mysteriously have become millionaires virtually overnight.

The secret is that the global corporate cheerleaders are the greatest drug users of all in their gated country club communities. Perhaps the greatest proponent of their lifestyle, Rush , summed up their perdicament when years before his own drug arrests he proposed summary executions for drugs dealers--but nowadays is quiet on the drug topic altogether.

Why not put bugs and cameras in every corporate structure, country club, bank and other corporate hangout in the country. Why not set up police roadblocks at every gated and corporate executive neighborhood community throughout the US --checking prescriptions and cross-referencing them against medical records.  Since the dollar value of corporate cheerleader crime exceeds blue collar crime by multiples of 100, 1,000 or more confiscate all corporate paper trails and monitor all corporate phone calls?

Why not reqire daily drug tests for all corporate executives and their political hirelings in legislatures, the Congress, and the White House?  For that matter since our country is being looted of pension funds and our economy systematically dismantled and out-sourced, why not a mandatory daily affirmation by corporation executives and their politico hirelings--that they are not breaking laws and illegally converting federal and corporate funds to personal use?

If this Surveillance State is not an instrument of oppression on the part of these stateless and lawless global corporate bosses and their hacks against the middle and underclasses, it's time for a little equity in the targeting of the neighborhoods where these tactics are employed.