[corp-focus] Bud Bowl III

[Robert Weissman]

Bud Bowl III
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman	

Our families like it when we go off to cover a presidential debate.
 
That's because when we come back from one, we bring back bags full of
goodies.
 
After the second debate, we drove home from Winston-Salem with a C-Span
canvas bag that included Matchbox racing cars (paid for by 3Com),
Budweiser beer mugs (from Anheuser Busch) and a handful of ATT pre-paid
long distance phone cards ("proud technology sponsor of the Presidential
Debates").
 
>From the Boston debate, we came back with t-shirts, baseball caps, a
canvas bag, reporters notebooks, pens, key chains.
 
The food and beer at the debates are being provided by Anheuser-Busch.
Post-debates, the Starbucks coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts are on the
house. (Why would any reporter in his or her right mind choose to walk a
half a mile through police lines, horse manure and pepper spray to cover
hundreds of young people protesting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's
exclusion from the debates and forgo watching the Yankees in the playoffs
while sipping a cold Budweiser?)
 
The Ford Motor Co. logo is emblazoned on the plastic press pass holder.
 
In Boston, before slipping the Ford press pass over over our heads, we
held a moment of silence for the hundreds of innocents killed while riding
unstable Ford sports utility vehicles on frayed Firestone tires.
 
We guessed Jim Lehrer wouldn't ask the corporate candidates on stage
whether or not they favored a criminal homicide investigation of these two
companies and the responsible executives for the deaths of these
innocents. He didn't.
 
Remarkably, the hundreds of reporters covering these debates think little
of the corporate sponsorship of the debates. (Or if they are thinking
about it at all, few choose to express their thoughts in print.)
 
Thirteen years ago, the two major parties hijacked the presidential
debates away from the League of Women Voters, after the League made the
mistake of opening the debates to third party candidate John Anderson in
1980.
 
To replace the League, the two parties set up a front called Commission on
Presidential Debates (it is run out of a political consulting firm's
office off of Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.) to set rules that would
effectively exclude third party candidates.
 
Big companies -- Anheuser-Busch, U.S. Airways and 3Com -- put up big money
to sponsor the debates. Anheuser Busch, for example, paid $500,000 to be
the "exclusive" sponsor for the debate in St. Louis.
 
Not coincidentally, the only two candidates who seriously question the
power of giant corporations over our political economy -- Nader and Reform
Party candidate Patrick Buchanan -- have been banned from the
conversation.
 
The Commission says that there are more than 100 candidates for president
this year and you can't fit them all onto the stage, and that's why they
set the bar at 15 percent in the polls. Candidates polling less than 15
percent are excluded from all three of the Commission debates.
 
But such a standard would have excluded Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler
whose debate success catalyzed his victorious gubernatorial campaign, from
the debates in Minnesota. A more reasonable standard would be five percent
in the polls, which would cut the field to two, three or four. Or you
could ask the public who they would like to see in the debates. (More than
half want to see Buchanan and Nader in.)

But far be it for us to complain. We say -- bring on Bud Bowl Three. Can't
wait to see what we get in our canvas bags in St. Louis.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common
Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman