After writing the previous post which takes apart a local economist’s claim that high gasoline prices are the normal result of the law of supply and demand, I thought about the American oil industry which has been unsavory since its beginning. Begun by John D. “Robberfeller”, its first act was to buy up and dismantle public transportation systems nation wide, forcing on us our automobile culture which has turned the United States into a monstrous environmental polluter. And thinking of Robber Baron “John D” cannot help but lead one to thoughts of Exxon Mobil and the travesty it has engaged in, with the complicity of the American judicial system, in trying to avoid paying the 4.5 plus billion punitive damage judgment leveled against in for the Valdez’s oil spill in Alaska. In the eighteen years Exxon Mobil and its lawyers have dragged this case through the courts, who knows how many of the original plaintiffs have died and how many more will die before the case is finally settled. Not satisfied with the appeals court’s reduction of the judgment by half, Exxon Mobil now claims that it should only have to pay 25 million, which in 1989 dollars comes to about 16 million--less than a quarter of the retirement package Exxon Mobil paid its former CEO. My mind wandered to the Pledge of Allegiance and its “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Walter, doesn’t this make you want to puke?

You see, in looking at things available on the internet, I came across the name of the attorney pleading Exxon Mobil’s case. Whoa!, I said. Not the Walter Dellinger I knew three decades ago when we served together on a criminal code revision commission? Not the democratic VIP who worked in the White House as an advisor to Bill Clinton? Not the guy who served as Solicitor General? And certainly not the Walter Dellinger who advised the democratic party to recapture the moral high road? But, alas, it is the same Walter Dellinger.

So Walter, how can we tell our Democratic congressmen, Mrs Pelosi, Mr Kennedy, Mr Reed, Mrs Clinton—you know their names—not to sell their votes to the special interests who are willing to pay when you, a bigwig Democratic player, think nothing of talking trash for cash from corporate giants, even evil corporate giants, to enable them to avoid their responsibilities to the people their actions have injured? Although there are a few conscientious lawyers and students involved in the Innocence Project, there are others like you, apparently, who are too busy extracting money from deep corporate pockets to be available for people in need.

Where were you when your university’s lacrosse team was falsely indicted, tried, and convicted in the press by a corrupt Durham county prosecutor? Busy preparing an Exxon Mobil appeal, or trying to find some sophistic Constitutional argument to justify the abject failure of the American judicial system and the shameful actions of the nation’s courts. Whatever happened to that moral high-road you advised the Democratic party to take?

Perhaps the United States never was a nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people” “with liberty and justice for all,” but why have people like you allowed it to become a corrupt nation for special interests involving growing tyranny and injustice? Are you so overwhelmed by greed that even Exxon Mobil looks good to you? Is money so important to you that your dirty hands will find their way into any deep pocket? Is this how you have taught your law students to succeed in life?

Perhaps! After all, Duke University itself exists only because of ill-gotten money from the murderous tobacco industry founded by Washington Duke. I doubt that Mr Washington was much interested in founding an ethical institution, and perhaps that’s why, even its current president quickly abandoned his lacrosse players in the face of their trial in the press. No backbone there either. Justice be damned; protect the image! Pretend to be a decent human being and hope the world doesn’t catch on.

So now I know what has happened to the Democratic Party; once the party of the working man, the champion of the people fighting for their rights against the party of business. (Remember Calvin Coolidge?) It has been subverted by a Republican 5^th column of people like you, Walter, who talk the Democratic talk but walk the Republican walk. Thanks to the help of people like you, as the Republicans have become more like National Socialists, the Democrats have become more like Republicans.

It used to be said that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good to do nothing.” What can we say about a nation in which those who proclaim to be good engage in evil?

So when you go to bed at night, think of all of those poor Alaskan fisherman whose livelihoods were destroyed by Exxon Mobil who have died waiting for their compensation which you have helped prevent them from getting, and think of all that will die before this matter is settled, and think of the peanut shells, (peanuts extracted by lawyers like you), that the few survivors will receive. Perhaps you’ll have a little difficulty in sleeping.

©2007 John Kozy, Jr.