Welcome to the United Corporate States of America

Who’s calling the shots in the BP oil spill? It sure ain’t the US Gov’t. The American gov’t is working hard at the leisure of the BP corporation to control the situation, and by that I mean the PR damage control situation, not the oil spill.

A week ago, NPR’s On the Media aired a piece about reporters trying to cover the spill and literally finding BP “contractors” sitting in seats normally occupied by public service employees telling them where they can and cannot go.

Now, after major denials in that piece about just who is calling the shots (“we do not work for BP”) we find a week later that things are in fact WORSE, not better. In fact, things are so bad Anderson Cooper and CNN are the ones leading the crusade, and if they’re on the case, that means it’s bad enough for the mainstream media to notice (sorry about the audio, but it’s worth the watch):

Of course, the real problem is that this isn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem is that this is just another example of how, with amazing speed, what semblance of control the US gov’t claimed to have is slipping away into the power of the corporate and wealthy interests. I personally think this control has been lost for a long-long time, but now they’re not even hiding it anymore.

A few year ago I read a Chinese diplomat remark that the difference between the US and Chinese gov’t’s was that the Chinese gov’t was more honest with it’s people. Well, Obama promised transparency and change- so that’s what the people of the US are now getting!

Oh, and just to end on a “positive note”-

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