John Cougar Mellencamp for Senate ! On the anti-corporate ticket !

Here's Reason magazine's "Hit and Run" section, on a movement to have Seymour Indiana's favorite son John Cougar Mellencamp run for the U.S. senate. 

Don't get me wrong about what follows.  I love me some Mellencamp, especially the later stuff.  His Life, Death, Love and Freedom is in the CD changer of the Blackened Whitedmobile at this very moment. 

But Here's a statement from a Mellencamp supporter:
Mellencamp for Senator from Indiana! He's heartland rocker who tackles corporate power on behalf of family farmers/fighting foreclosures.

Corporate power?  Are the Mellencamps of Seymour, Indiana, oppressed by corporate power?  Here's Matt Welch, of Reason: 

According to the good folks at the Environmental Working Group, who maintain an eminently searchable database of farm subsidies, there were 34 recipients with the last name of "Mellencamp" between 1995-2003. Of those, a full 22 come from the Hoosier State, including 12 in the small town of ... Seymour! Here's a list of Seymour's subsidized Mellencamps:

$383,673.00 James A. and Michael Mellencamp
$249,590.95 George Mellencamp
$157,219.56 David K. Mellencamp
$152,639.65 Mark Mellencamp
$152,424.00 Gary W. Mellencamp
$110,052.72 Mary Mellencamp
$46,172.47 Elsie Mellencamp
$30,527.87 Matthew Grover Mellencamp
$10,929.31 Frederick J. Mellencamp
$2,582.14 Jerry Ross Mellencamp
$1,015.00 Victor H. Mellencamp
$420.00 Andrew Mellencamp

Compare those corn subsidies (1.14 million dollars) to those received by your family.  

The Mellencamps have met the corporate power ! !  And it is them ! ! 

One other thing.... As Mellencamp has grown older, the obsession with "corporate power" has popped up more and more in his interviews, especially during his support of the John Edwards campaign.   
Well, here's a video of Mellencamp shilling for the biggest corporate power of them all - The U.S. Government's Automobile Division, formerly known as Chevrolet. 



The lesson from all this?  There's a much bigger power out there than corporations, and that's the U.S. government.  John Cougar Mellencamp And Company ®  have done very well by their association with it. 

Oh, but ain't that America, kickbacks for me,
Ain't that America, something to see baby
Ain't that America, Big Subsidy,
Little green payoffs for you and me....



Mellencamp is a great performer, a brilliant songwriter, and a crappy crusader.  Physician, heal thyself.