The Nation

September 11-Plus-One approaches. And so does remembrance and commemoration. Media envoys will visit with survivors and relatives of those murdered that awful day. Video footage will air, and towers and bodies will fall once more. President George W. Bush will, according to the White House, "talk to the country in a way that is serious" (and do so exclusively on 60 Minutes II with correspondent Scott Pelley). Firefighters, police officers, rescue workers will retell harrowing tales. Rudy Giuliani will shine once more. The traditional start of the off-year congressional campaigns will be overshadowed; politicians will steal what they can of this God-bless-America moment. Some might wonder--but not too many people will do so aloud--what happened to US efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Commentators will share their thoughts--wise and foolish, meaningful and Hallmarkian--on what the attack wrought, how the country has been altered, how the war on terrorism has fared and what lies ahead.

In the shock-ridden and depressing days following 9/11, there was talk that the horrific event would transform the country. That Americans might embrace a stronger sense of community. (Drivers did seem less aggressive for weeks.) That Americans might gain a newfound appreciation for union workers and public servants, after watching firefighters and police officers lose their lives in gallant service to others. Some left-of-center, politically-minded people hoped that out of the ashes and rubble would rise an environment friendly to progressive and populist politicians who pitch for-the-common-good government activism.

Evidence of such change, though, is not abundant. In fact, it is damn hard to find proof that American life--whatever that may be--is much different. Sure, Bush was reborn in the polls, and the political equation shifted. The military budget has become even more untouchable and bloated. In Washington, there are more concrete flowerpots, and the nervous jokes about living in a bull's-eye city remain. But are people in Cincinnati still on-edge? There are indeed new laws, new regulations, new precautions. Several hundred non-citizens apprehended in post-attacks sweeps by federal officers saw their lives dramatically altered. As did Afghan civilians struck by errant US weapons; as did the relatives of US military and intelligence personnel killed overseas. But has 9/11 changed us? Snatched children, corporate scandals, Wall Street's wild ride, rescued miners, Ted Williams' frozen head--American life is, in most ways, what it would be without 9/11.

At precisely the same time that members of the Bush administration and Congress are scrambling to publicly declare their willingness to crack down on corporate wrongdoing, they are working behind the scenes to reward corporate lobbyists with a dramatic victory.

Key members of Congress reached an agreement late Thursday night to give President Bush Fast Track authority to secretly negotiate a sweeping Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. The deal was necessary because, earlier this year, the House and Senate passed different Fast Track resolutions. Last night, representatives of the two chambers cobbled together a "compromise" plan that now faces final votes in the House and Senate.

If the legislation passes, Fast Track authority will be granted to Bush and a new era of trade liberalization will open the door to a dramatic expansion of corporate power in the US and abroad.

A crack in the façade of Congressional congeniality was discovered last week, as Senate Democrats gathered to discuss particulars of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

That bill was passed with overwhelming support from Senate Democrats and general opposition from Senate Republicans. But that does not mean that Democrats really favor reform; for most of them, backing McCain-Feingold was an act of political positioning, as became obvious at last week's closed-door gathering of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

At the session, senators heard from Democratic campaign lawyer Bob Bauer, a favorite of those senators for whom reform is less progress than threat. Bauer delivered dire warnings about the dangers of the McCain-Feingold law -- and of moves by US Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wi., to toughen Federal Election Commission regulations and enforcement procedures.

US Rep. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who has for years been one of the Congress' most consistent critic of corporate excess, is worried about the current controversy about corporate governance. Don't get Sanders wrong: He's delighted that revelations about wrongdoing by executives of Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and other corporations -- not to mention the whole Martha Stewart insider-trading scandal-- has forced everyone from President Bush to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, to recognize that government must reassert itself as a regulator of business behavior.

The problem, says Sanders, is that, while today's corporations are just as bad as the trusts that needed busting at the start of the last century, Bush is no Teddy Roosevelt and Daschle is no William Jennings Bryan. Instead of real reform, Republican and Democratic leaders are proposing half-steps aimed at requiring accountants to produce better balance sheets. While Democrats and Republicans frequently stop Sanders in the halls of Congress these days to tell him they should have listened to his complaints about corporate misdeeds, most refuse to recognize that the corporate crisis is about a lot more than accounting.

"The American people have a much better understanding that members of the Bush administration or members of Congress that this is not just about a few bad rules or a few bad apples. This is about how corporations do business in America today, and about what members of Congress who take immense amounts of corporate money to finance their campaigns allow those corporations to get away with," says Sanders. "Sure, corporations and their accountants have taken advantage of loopholes and lax regulations to inflate their earnings statements, and sure they have used their campaign contributions to make sure that the loopholes stay open and that the regulators let them get away with murder. But if you close the loopholes and increase the level of oversight, that is not going to usher in a new era of corporate responsibility. If all that comes out of this are a few accounting reforms -- necessary as they may be -- most Americans are going to say, rightly, that the corporations were let off the hook again."