The Ones Who Are With Her

Escape from WalMart's Stable, Michelle.

Among the many proofs that giant corporations own even the most populist, well-intentioned portions of our nation is the willingness of American leaders who presumably know better to promote and partner with egregious corporate criminal WalMart.

Bruce A. Dixon at Black Agenda Report, via Firedoglake:

Five or six years ago, Wal-Mart had a big problem. It was the largest private employer in the U.S., but its historic growth model was running up against a wall. There were simply no more small and medium sized towns whose markets could be swallowed, prevailing wages depressed, and whose family-owned hardware, grocery, clothing and other stores could be replaced by a publicly subsidized Wal-Mart. Most of the uncolonized territory, from Wal-Mart's point of view, was in and near large urban areas outside the South, places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The challenge, from Wal-Mart's point of view, was to identify and buy up a brand new bunch of public officials and opinion makers, many of them African American. Wal-Mart had to find and hire black and Latino-oriented advertising and PR agencies to write to write the commercials for those audiences, and stage the events where they handed out scholarships or basketball uniforms. They had to extend their model of public and secret tax breaks, campaign contributions, selective charity, and corporate welfare to a new bunch of elite participants, our own black political class.

Among the first and most prominent Wal-Mart conquests was Tavis Smiley, who at the time was still doing his annual State of the Black Union broadcasts on C-SPAN. And despite his doubtless sincere protestations against poverty, Tavis remains to this day an occupant of the Wal-Mart stable.

The facts are that new retail in existing urban and suburban areas is almost never a net job creator. People don't get more money to spend because there are more stores or different stores to spend it in. New retail, whether it's Ikea, Wal-Mart or whatever, simply diverts business from the places people already shop. Besides that, Wal-Mart's business model of corrupting public officials, lying about job creation numbers, rampant sex and race discrimination, relentlessly low wage and benefit levels, and aspirations to monopoly control of local markets across the country make it a bad neighbor, a worse boss, an unfair competitor and sometimes a criminal enterprise.

Recent news reports that top Wal-Mart officers conspired to hide evidence of how their culture of official bribery operated in Mexico have thrown its practices worldwide and here at home under renewed scrutiny by the public, and even by the Department of Justice. But revealing a corner of Wal-Mart's corrupt practices, which are really pretty much standard stuff everywhere in the capitalist world, and protecting the public against them are two very different things.

Protecting black America against the ravages of corporate capitalism has never been the strong suit of today's black political class. In that class alone, Wal-Mart has many more players in its pocket than just Tavis Smiley. Former Atlanta congressman and mayor Andrew Young was a prominent early sellout to Wal-Mart. Since then the retail giant has acquired hundreds of local preachers and politicians like Chicago aldermen for example, often purchased for what look like embarrassingly small contributions to their churches, political war chests or favorite charities, unless there are other sums of money under the table which the records don't reflect.

Perhaps the biggest single black notable in the Wal-Mart pocket these days is the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

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As the White House's resident advocate for healthy eating and exercise, Ms. Obama has leveraged her image as a priceless asset to Wal-Mart, endorsing its drive to penetrate new urban markets, crush competition, and gobble up even more public tax breaks and subsidies. But in the real world, more urban Wal-Marts, and giving more public subsidies and market share to the amoral company that already accounts for 27 cents of every dollar spent on groceries in this country is not so much the solution to urban “food deserts” as it is the solution to Wal-Mart's problem of how to raise that 27 cents to 30, 40 or 50 cents of every grocery dollar in its corporate coffers. That's the problem Michelle Obama is helping solve, not the problem of accessing decent food at reasonable prices.

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Nobody sensible believes recent reports of rampant corruption in Wal-Mart's board rooms are anything but the smallest tip of a glacier of bribery, conspiracy and criminality. There are competing visions in the land. One is the vision of our black political class, our black misleadership class, of which Michelle Obama is a prominent member. Their vision is about extending corporate power, not protecting us from it. Ultimately it's we who need protection from them.

Read the whole thing.

It has been barely four decades since corporations seeking the kind of political influence criminals like WalMart now take for granted would be laughed - if not tarred, feathered and railroaded - out of town.

The knowledge and moral center that enabled such political independence from corporations resides in living memory. It is not quite yet a lost art.

Michelle Obama rejecting WalMart would make huge strides toward restoring that independence.

Barack and Michelle's Christmas Message

Read the full transcript here.

Brains, Soul and Guts to Match, Too

We are amazed Barack Obama ever gets anything done.



h/t Page One Kentucky.

Harnessing the Power

The Obama campaign is still and again dunning its supporters for donations.

Donations to charity.

This holiday season, the grassroots movement you helped build can make a big difference for those in need.

I hope you will join me in supporting your favorite charity or contributing to causes that are especially meaningful to me and my family.

While many of us will spend the holidays counting our blessings and sharing dinner with loved ones, millions of people around the country won't be so fortunate. Donating to your local food bank will help provide a holiday meal to people in your community who can't afford one.

Talking with the families of deployed troops was one of the most rewarding experiences I had during the campaign. Giving to Operation USO Care Package is a great way to send members of our military stationed around the world a reminder that someone back home is thinking of them.

This is a time to celebrate our blessings, the new year, and a new era for our country. But it's also a time to come together on behalf of those who need our help.

Do what you can to help today by locating your local food bank and giving your support:

http://my.barackobama.com/foodbanks

Or send a care package to an American in uniform:

http://my.barackobama.com/carepackage

Thank you for all that you do and have a very happy holiday season,

Michelle

Republican Marriage Envy

Remember how during the Clinton impeachment, we all suspected that what was really motivating the repugs' foam-at-the-mouth derangement was Fellatio Envy?

Now a piece at Huffington Post on the Obama's marriage makes we wonder if one thing driving John McCain's obvious anger at the Democratic nominee is envy of the strong, healthy relationship McCain himself has never had.

One of the greatest benefits of an Obama presidency is hidden in plain sight: the relationship between Michelle and Barack. They provide a great role model of a healthy relationship, at a time when such models are sorely needed.

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Michelle and Barack do something we've never seen before in a presidential couple: they actually look directly at each other when they're speaking to each other. They also laugh at each other's humor, and they allow their sexual attraction for each other to be visible. Contrast that with other presidential marriages, in which the sexual attraction to each other was not visible but their sexual attraction to others became highly visible ... Michelle and Barack talk openly about their feelings for each other. They're real.

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Over the last fifty years there's been a parade of not-so-great relationship models in the White House. They range from idol-worship (Nancy's perpetually-adoring glaze, oops we mean gaze, at Ronnie) to the sternly maternal façade of the first Mrs. Bush ... We've witnessed White House marriages strained to the breaking point by secrets.

SNIP

Have you ever seen the current occupant of the White House speak, much less listen, to his wife in public? For example, do we ever get to hear from the real Laura Bush, the one who disagrees completely with the far-right views of her husband on such matters as women's reproductive rights? No, because she's been muzzled, like most of her predecessors, and sealed off behind the glazed smile of the Perfect Presidential Wife.

It's high time we got to see an honest, loving, real relationship in the White House. If you're like us, you probably don't want to spend the next four years hearing how much the perfectly-coiffed Mrs. McCain has spent on her outfit, which of their nine houses they're weekending at or which of their thirteen cars they're wheeling around in.

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The question is: are we as a nation ready to end our national addiction to duplicity, phony adoration and Stepford wifedom in the White House? If not, we're going to get what we deserve.

The authors never say so explicitly, but isn't it obvious that the McCain marriage is about as far from role-model healthy as possible? Hard to imagine Barack offering up Michelle as a participant in a stripper contest the way John did Cindy, but even harder to imagine ever seeing a glimmer of genuine warmth between the McCains.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.