Lewis Powell Jr. identified by name only a handful of "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries" as enemies of American business in his now-infamous 1971 memo "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." Foremost among them was consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who, in the soon-to-become Supreme Court Justice's view, was the single most effective antagonist of American business. Nader was a "legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans," Powell wrote. He quoted a May 1971 Fortune magazine piece that cast the leader of Nader's Raiders in abject terms:

"The passion that rules in him -- and he is a passionate man -- is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison -- for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. … He emphasizes that he is not talking just about 'fly-by-night hucksters' but the top management of blue-chip business."

Occupy Chicago and other social justice groups have developed a coalition-built People’s Summit that will be held in the city the week before the May 19-21 NATO meeting. The summit is organized to educate the public about the NATO and Group of Eight (G8) summits, develop workshops for actions of dissent for the weekend and mobilize a mass march and rally on May 19.

“The People’s Summit is an opportunity to participate in education, democracy and debate that is missing from our political system and from NATO,” said Coalition Against NATO/G8 (CANG8) spokesperson Jesse McAdoo. “… While NATO meets behind closed doors, surrounded by riot police, the People’s Summit will be open to everyone.”

Read The Greene Report archive on The Bloomington Alternative.

Dr. William Sammons, an expert on the health and environmental effects of biomass combustion, has traveled to southern Indiana from the East Coast numerous times to testify at public hearings against burning biomass for energy.

Biomass includes everything biological in origin: crops, trees, animals, manure, sewage sludge, and construction and demolition debris, which unavoidably contain heavy metals and fungicides. Burning it produces significant threats to the environmental and human health.

“Biomass is dirtier than coal," Sammons once told citizens fighting proposed biomass combustors in southern Indiana. "Forget it.”

Lewis F. Powell's 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce --- "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" -- may or may not have been the first shot fired in the nation's late-20th-century right-wing revolution. But from the document's title to its ominous conclusion -- "Business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late" -- it was a literal call to the political arms that have subsequently driven the nation's devolution from democracy to oligarchy.

While the then-Richmond, Va., lawyer couched his message in noble-sounding calls for openness, balance, truth and fairness, his overall tone was doomsday and militant. Referring to the enemies that Powell said were arrayed against the Chamber -- largely on campuses, in the media and in the courts -- he used the term attack 18 times; revolt/revolution/revolutionaries five; war/warfare four; assault four; hostility two; destruction two; and shotgun attack and rifle shot one each. The stakes, he said, were tantamount to life and death.

"The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival -- survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people," he wrote just two months before being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Richard M. Nixon.

News Release
Citizens Action Coalition, Sierra Club, Valley Watch, Save the Valley

The settlement filed April 30 at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission between Duke Energy, the Indiana Office of the Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC), Nucor Steel and the Duke Energy Indiana Industrial Group falls well short of what the captive ratepayers of Duke Energy deserve.

Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition (CAC) stated, "We maintain our position that this is an illegitimate power plant that never should have been approved in the first place. This proposed settlement amounts to nothing more than a massive bailout for Duke Energy."

Read The Greene Report archive on The Bloomington Alternative.

Van Jones said in Rebuild the Dream, "For millions of people the thrill of seeing Barack Obama beat the odds to become president of the United States was one of [the] most exciting and uplifting experiences of our lives. The feelings of joy, hope, and anticipation were heady and unforgettable."

If he's going to win the 2012 presidential election, Obama will have to win back the support of many of his 2008 followers who became disgusted by his policies and actions, many of which have flouted promises he made as a candidate. In the 55 brief chapters in Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion editors Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank list some of them. They include his: