More Slimy Behavior from the South and Corporate Sleazeballs. EchoStar Communications Corp., operator of the DISH satellite TV service, has bribed a Texas town to change its name, permanently, to DISH (all caps) in exchange for 10 years of free satellite TV for the (existing?) residents. The Texas state legislature should revoke that act of inexcusable sliminess.
+
(The same detestable corporation, Colorado-based EchoStar, is running a hideous commercial using the viciously antisexual expression "sucks" over and over. No decent person uses the sexual expressions "suck" or "blow" any more than "fuck" in polite conversation, and broadcasters should crack down on such usages.)
+
Already there is talk, according to the Associated Press, of other towns renaming themselves in exchange for corporate bribes.

Across the nation, small communities are being courted by large corporations who say renaming a town provides a marketing buzz that can't be bought in television ads. Though some worry about corporate America's increasing influence in local government, many towns seem eager to accept.

There has never been a shortage of prostitutes. Nor of people willing to take bribes.
+
Often, states have to step in to clean out local corruption. Texas needs to slap down, hard, the scumbags in Clark, Texas, who have disgraced themselves and their state by taking a bribe.
+
Let's define "bribe":

Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct. [American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition)

That the bribe went to everyone in the town, not just to themselves — tho presumably they personally will also receive that benefit, valued at $4,500 per household — does not in any way alter the fact that Clark's two-member town council (in a settlement of 55 households) took something of value in exchange for an act of legislation.
+
Our entire civilization is being contaminated by corporate bribery and name-branding. Here in New Jersey a public-private partnership built an arena for basketball and hockey in 1981, and named it after the State's governor (who was from my county, Essex), the Brendan Byrne Arena. Fifteen years later, Texas-based Continental Airlines paid $10 million to have the facility renamed the Continental Airlines Arena. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a public entity, permitted that scandalous dishonor to the former governor and to the honor of the State of New Jersey. Some of us would like New Jersey to feel a sense of honor, but all too often this state has disgraced itself with corruption. Apparently Texas has passed us on the public-corruption ranking, with entire towns selling themselves.
+
The Texas State Legislature should tell the greedy citizens of Clark "If you want to sell yourselves, stand on a streetcorner — and then we'll arrest you and throw you in jail with other people who have lost all sense of personal honor." The state government should not allow Clark to "dish-honor" Texas.
+
Corporations are poisoning our civilization, and we've got to draw clear lines: this far but no farther.
+
It used to be that major skyscrapers were named for the individual who built them or built the company that paid for them. Then a corporate name started to apply to the structure the corporation built; then to a structure in which a corporation would be the major tenant; then to a structure in which that company was just the largest of many small tenants. Then corporations started buying up names of public structures, whether they built or occupied them, or not: the Staples Center in L.A., Fleet Center in Boston, etc., which have no connection but greed with the corporations whose name they bear.
+
Now corporations want entire towns to change their name. What next? The State of General Motors? United States of Sony? It's got to stop.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,085.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:50 AM