Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The pathetic democracy we call our own

So John Ashcroft is now a lobbyist (the "Ashcroft Group"). What a shocker.

And his firm brought in $269,000 last year. Small potatoes.

And $220,000 of that came from Oracle Corporation*. That's a lot of money from one company. It's almost as though John Ashcroft is Larry Ellison's own personal lobby lapdog.

And what did the singing former U.S. Attorney General (gads, it makes me shutter even to type that. What a farce of a nation we have become...) do for Larry? The Chicago Tribune told us on November 19, 2005 that "Less than a month after Oracle Corp. hired former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's lobbying firm, the Justice Department notified Oracle that an antitrust inquiry into its proposed $5.8 billion acquisition of a rival database software firm had been dropped."

Good deal.

I am embarrassed. Embarrassed to be associated with a company (however indirectly*) that will rely on the likes of Ashcroft to grease the skids. Embarrassed to be a citizen in the "greatest democracy in the world" when that great democracy has allowed its representatives to be entirely and thoroughly coopted (bought) by the same corporations and rich folk who benefit from the twisted laws these "representatives" pass. Embarrassed that I am not doing more and speaking out more about it.

Ah well. Time to go back to writing some more software.

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* Disclosure: I am a little parasite on the great big body of Oracle Corporation. I used to be an employee (1987 to 1992) and now specialize in the Oracle PL/SQL language. I also own Oracle stock.

1 comment:

Gleisson Henrique said...

"Embarrassed that I am not doing more and speaking out more about it."

You are doing a lot more than you think. I didn't know about it, now I know and I am just one of blog's visitor.
I am not saying there isn't a need to pick up a sign and protest anymore, but nowdays there are other ways to spread the word.