Sheldon Whitehouse on government’s subservience to corporate money

Sheldon Whitehouse points out that recent government regulatory failures are merely symptoms of deep and insidious corruption. The problems go well beyond MMS, as Whitehouse documents in this video. Written excerpts of his speech are here. Along the way, he makes it clear that Citizens United allows the tentacles of industry to reach even further into government, until government is only serving monied interests and not the public interest. He gives many examples along the way, and demonstrates that he absolutely understands the process by which government is being corrupted by corporate money. It's a process that inevitably culminates with the surrender of meaningful government. Whitehouse names names and gives lost of examples. At the four minute mark, he makes clear that the references to "walruses" in oil company reports is not a laughing matter. It is powerful evidence that MMS was a corporate captive. This is a brave and direct statement. Whitehouse makes it clear that, given the extent of the problem, our entire Constitution and our way of life are both at risk.

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Music, math and art

Animusic has been creating some incredibly sophisticated music animations for years. The work is difficult to describe, though when you see an Animusic creation you'll know it was by Animusic. At this Animusic page you can get a sampling of eight creations. My favorite is "Pogo Sticks," but they are all mesmerizing.

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The things our biggest and most nebulous villains have in common

Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time. It is in the top 10 books I have heavily annotated. Here's a sampling of why (although if you search for "Haidt" in the search field of this website, you will find 20 of other posts regarding Haidt's work). In the following excerpt, Haidt discusses what all of our biggest villains seem to have in common:

When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled desperately seeking Satan . With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and a child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of Communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: they are invisible (you can't identify the evil one from appearance alone) their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, were stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some secular good (animals, fetuses, women's rights), and you can't have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
How devastingly "refreshing" that modern villains are so identifiable and that they are doing such tangible damage. We are now looking at a devastated national economy, two expensive and needless wars, a ruined ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, an energy crisis and a helpless political system created by an utterly dysfunctional election system that, for the most part, attracts megalomaniac ignoramuses and repels humble, good-hearted and well-informed people. It remains to be seen whether we will ever be able to let go of our bogeymen and, instead, focus on our real villains. Addendum: See this related post on "The Power of Nightmares."

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