What It Is All About

Trey Smith

Seven vinyl banners draped this month along one of Chicago's most iconic bridges, advertisements some have dubbed "a visual crime" and "commercial graffiti," are reviving a debate about how governments raise money in tough economic times.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, a public school district in Colorado is selling ads on report cards and Utah has a new law allowing ads on school buses. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration, straining to fill a $600 million budget hole, is looking to raise $25 million from ads on city property — including bridges, electrical storage boxes and garbage cans.

The effort kicked off this month with Bank of America ads on the 81-year-old Wabash Avenue Bridge, which crosses the Chicago River and has appeared in movies including "About Last Night" and "The Dark Knight."

"I think it's disgusting," Chicago resident Linda Rosenthal said recently, shaking her head as she surveyed the signs. "The architecture in Chicago is stunning. To see this awful advertisement angers me."

The white ads with blue lettering and Bank of America's logo are posted on limestone bridge tender houses, which hold the equipment used to raise the bridge when tall boats pass beneath. Bank of America paid $4,500 to put seven signs on the bridge for about a month, said city spokeswoman Kathleen Strand.
~ from Cities With Budget Woes Sell Out to Highest Bidder by Carla K. Johnson ~

Why is our national economy in shambles? The above article offers one of the ugly clues: The corporate elite wants to get their fingerprints on everything! In the corporatist mind, nothing is off limits.

Naomi Klein writes about this phenomena in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Not only do the wealthy elite want to pull the public infrastructure out from under the rest of us for pennies on the dollar, but they want to pollute and adulterate for profit whatever they can't buy outright.

It is a sickness that public officials have bought into. Believe you me, unless the people rise up to put a stop to it, we will have only seen the bare tip of the iceberg. Before we know it, our children will be attending Bank of America Elementary School^TM during the week before heading off to the First Baptist Church of Goldman Sachs^TM on Sunday and planning for the family's summer camping trip at the Walmart Grand Canyon^TM!