OAAA supported the law because it realized that regulation was better than an outright ban on billboard advertising. If you are fed up with the rampant commercialism that has swamped the cities and suburbs, fleeing to the country won't do you any good. Rural areas are being overrun by industrial corporations looking for compliant populations to accept their toxic pollution and waste, by prison corporations and by ugly strip mall developers and fast food outlets that have paved over suburbia and are looking to condemn ever more of the natural landscape into neon America. Millions of public school children are force fed Channel One. Corporations are flooding cash-strapped public schools with study guides, magazines, posters and books.
Some schools even sell ad space on the public school buses.
Somerby blames much of our unhappiness and social problems on the commercialism that has swamped every aspect of our society. There is a time and place for everything. The place for corporations is in the market, out of the public's space. The time to begin again to enforce the separation is now. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter .