The Black Hillary

“Iowa Chooses Huckabee, Obama.”

That was the headline front and center on the Washington Post January 4, 2008.

Top picture–a beaming Barack Obama with his wife and daughter.

The top two-thirds of the front page is devoted to Iowa results.

But there, on the bottom left, is an article by Steven Mufson titled

“Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry.”

It was a scene right out of The Simpsons.

Exelon Corp. runs the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Kerry Beal was a bit disturbed when he found out that his fellow guards at the facility were taking regular naps in what was called “the ready room.”

He spoke to his supervisors at his company, Wackenhut, about the problem, but he was told to be a “team player.”

Eventually, Exelon fired Wackenhut, which had guarded ten of Exelon’s nuclear facilities.

According to the Post, Exelon has a history of “bad relations with its workers.” (The Washington Post too is unfair to its workers–see details at washingtonpostunfair.com)

But Beal says that Exelon retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on the nuclear napping.

Don’t expect the Black Hillary to come to Kerry Beal’s defense.

The Black Hillary has a nuclear connection–and it’s name is Exelon.

A quick search at opensecrets.org finds that executives from Exelon Corporation, the Chicago-based nuclear power company, have donated $171,350 to the Black Hillary’s Presidential campaign.

The Black Hillary, of course, has a health care industry connection, too.

And the Black Hillary is against single payer, Medicare for all.

Go down the list, from one industry to next.

The Black Hillary is being hemmed in by corporate power.

While idealistic young people are swooning over Obama’s message of hope, faith and change–no one inside the beltway has any doubts about the corporate connections.

The Hill reported earlier this year that three of Obama’s top fundraisers were registered as lobbyists in 2006.

Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post in June 2007 compared Mitt Romney’s foreign policy to Obama’s.

Conclusion–“the similarities dwarf the differences.”

“Both want bigger, not smaller armed forces,” Hiatt wrote. “Obama calls for an additional 92,000 ground troops, Romney for 100,000.”

As he approaches the White House, corporate control over the Black Hillary will tighten.

And he’ll get along by going along.

That’s why they call him the Black Hillary.

America is in a tough spot.

We’re done with hope and faith.

We need independent leadership and action.

“One of the best kept secrets in America today is the extent to which hope and faith are being used as seedy substitutes for action and reason,” wrote DC journalist Sam Smith recently.”As they say in the ‘hood, hope don’t pay the cable. Someone like Obama functions as a political sedative. His message is that we don’t have to worry so much about what’s happening because we can let the future handle it. This is not audacious. It’s either a con or cowardice.”

We need a movement to overcome a culture of corporate crime, corruption, power and control.

We need grassroots citizen action, for a change.

Hillary is not going to cut the mustard.

And neither is the Black Hillary.

RUSSELL MOKHIBER is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.

 

 

Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter..