Oh, yes, you were offended that Entergy Corporation had donated a work of art. For the life of me, I can’t see how that’s an offensive act. Wherever wealth is gathered, its eventually given out again, just look at Bill & Melinda Gates. Are they “Trying to look like good guys” by donating a few billion bucks here and there? Is The Evil Giant Microsoft trying to buy back its reputation by putting a shifty backspin on some public relations lie, one that just happens to save maybe 10,000 lives next year with those billions?

Public giving by private entities is as old as Western Civilization, where the Roman man of substance was called upon to provide public works, libraries, sports arenas, et. al. out of his own pocket, to earn the right to serve in government. Our own Carnegies, Pews and Rockefellers were all corporate wealth creators, who gave back, out of a simple sense of civic duty.

Entergy provides a mundane public commodity, does it cheaply, cleanly, and responsibly, and since it has a corporate sense of civic duty, it gifts environmental projects, accepts grant applications from ordinary doers in all the communities it serves, and yes, it maintains a website where it attempts to convey its corporate intentions and trustworthiness to the public.

Its not a plot, unless it’s a “plot” to be a responsible member of the community. Those who pander to the “Hate All Businesses” mentality are hawking a post-civilized world with no muscle, no sinew, a living re-enactment of John Lennon’s “Imagine”, complete with white robes, garland wreaths on every head, and Crosby Stills & Nash eternally singing “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” in the background.

As a fable, its great. As a philosophy, it’s pure anarchist pipe dream. I would hate to drive over to Cortlandt Town Center tomorrow, and find that A&P had closed its doors, having seen its own corporate evil , and thus left me, J. Gooljar, and a thousand others with no food to eat. How about if the evil Archer Daniels Midland agri-giant shuts down, for the same reasons? Will J. Gooljar be out on the streets of Hartsdale with a hoe, planting corn for us next morning? I highly doubt it.

Fact is, the decent corporations provide us with the world we know. Almost all colleges are corporations. Most hospitals are corporations. All travel is provided by corporations, and most jobs available are corporate jobs. Even the large municipal works, like highways & bridges, are simply given over to the competent local works corporation to be done. Municipalities are considering corporatizing police & fire services, and corporations like Waste Management inc., with its 18 Wheelabrator garbage burning plants, have relieved 18 municipalities of what had been for those governments an undoable environmental task, and now do it for them instead, quite cleanly & handily.

If the Democratic National Committee, (and the Republican) had as clear a vision of its own ethics as do most corporations, our once great nation would not be slipping away from us into chaos & failure. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.

And just for the record, I’m not paid to comment here, and I’m certainly not directed what to say. I just feel obligated to speak up, when ordinary life gets over-dramatized by badly targeted punditry.

Entergy donated a painting.

Big deal!

I find our Congress is hopelessly corrupt, existing primarily to distribute cash earmarks and various tax advantages to well positioned insiders. I find the so-called “policies” of all the main presidential contenders consist of nothing more than opposition to the incumbent. I find the country overrun with unstoppable illegal immigration, rampant destructive land development, and I predict the squalid urbanization of the entire North American continent within 50 years, plummeting downward to resemble the Indian subcontinent within a generation.

In the face of this paradigm shift, I find both the main political parties philosophically helpless, with less than a clue about America’s future, its survivability as a cohesive entity, and its rightful place in the world.

I find this murky defeatism strongly aided and instigated by a Bimboized press, merest purveyors of sport betting scores, soft core sex and celebrity titillation.

I find the steered, groomed, overprepped politicoes stuck raving about such faux non-issues as Indian Point, Gay marriage and creationism, and I find the public drifting away from it all into a low-level hedonism that can only lead to a foreign hegemony covertly taking over the nation’s more serious business, and running it from offshore.

I see players such as your beloved George Soros already positioning themselves as arbiters of my inevitable disenfranchisement. And I see your “political” efforts, as attempts to position yourself to be of use to any such arbitrager who should notice your “correct attitudes”.

How right am I so far?

The reason government may not live up to our expectations is because of the conservative ideology to starve the beast. This allows corporations to step in and look like the good guys and it allows them to be “efficient”. Let’s privatize everything because government can’t do it right right? Entergy does not give out of the goodness of their hearts. No corporation really does. It’s about helping their brand.

Entergy is trying to look like the good guys in the face of real opposition as well. I notice every time I blog about Entergy I get a reply. That’s because they are really hyped up on their PR efforts.

I’m not buying it.

NGO’s are great. Non-profits are great as well. But that does not mean that they operate in place of government. Government is there to operate for we the people. We should never allow Reaganites to tell us the worst words to hear are “I’m from the government and I want to help”. Government is ours and we have to ensure that it works for us.

Wal-Mart should never have been allowed to be the saviors during Hurricane Katrina. The saviors should have been our government.

People acting strongly and clearly together, as in a corporation, can do much more good more directly than any political entity. Look at the world of NGO’s, entering crisis regions easily, aiding people in ways that our governments are too internally strapped to do.

Look at the UN, with Kofi Annan and his own son deeply involved in corruption in the oil for food affair. As it turns out, governments ( and quasi governments like UN) just get in the way.

Entergy is powering your laptop for you as you write, Mr. Gooljar. It is powering my Mac as I reply to you. Last night, a rather cool night for July, Entergy heated my house, and ran my intrusion alert system. Entergy also powers all your local first responder agencies, and has in fact donated several first responder alert centers to the community, on its own initiative. The emergency room at Hudson Valley Hospital, which Entergy donated to us all, stands ready to take us in and save our lives, should we ever need it.

(Please note that the publicly run Westchester Medical Center stands embroiled in bankruptcy, union featherbedding, competency questions, and all the oh-so-familiar detritus accompanying all governmental entities.)

These are not faux donations, as you imply. These real gifts are really given. Aside from all the gifts, Entergy’s electrical power is indeed in your very home, providing safety and comfort every instant of every day. Entery buoys you up, with all your political aspirations, and all your intellectual searching, to be the best you that Jason Gooljar can be, not in some third world shanty town, bereft of power, bereft of wealth, bereft of opportunity, but in a vibrant first world community, one that takes care of what government can’t do, on its own, via its own success agencies, its corporations.

This overwrought striving to paint Entergy black just will not wash. I know these people. They are wonderful people, and are doing good things for you, and me, without any plea from us to do so, simply as a cheap paid service in commerce.
It is not an evil plot. The extras, the PR trappings, are just icing on the cake. The cake itself is the good solid service, using the best technologies known.

Yes, I suppose Entergy could burn cow dung over at its Indian Point facility, and perhaps you might feel a bit more comfortable with dung-electric rather that atomic-electric. However, it would undoubtedly stink, and add to pollution, and would fail in the end by not being the best method available. The extremely clean, emissionless carbon-free atomic reactor at Indian Point has more future inside it for all of us, than a billion cows, all struggling mightily to dung us into the realization of our dreams.

I personally prefer the atomic technology.

You should, too.