Corporate America has been encroaching on our government for decades. Slowly, but steadily increasing its reach within our legislative, executive, judicial and regulatory institutions. Our congress passes laws written by corporate lobbyists, appoints regulators who have deep and ongoing industry connections and allows the regulated to write their own regulations. I am not sure about you, but I have a problem with this.
We are experiencing wars, high unemployment, racial and religious intolerance, a deteriorating environment, crumbling infrastructure, disease, poverty. We have enough trouble just getting by on a day to day basis without having to worry about our government and the interests it is promoting over our own. While we should always be concerned and active in our democracy we really shouldn’t have the added concerns presented by corporate influence on our government. Our founding fathers knew this. We have been warned countless times by past presidents and other wise and respected persons throughout our history what would happen if we allow it. Yet here we are giving over our democracy to corporate control. To to me what is most amazing about it is the masses of corporate drones who have been duped in to wrapping themselves in the flag as they pull our democracy out from under us.
Laws and regulation exist to protect us from each other, organizations with criminal intent and the many other dangers that lurk in dark places within our society. Do we want our employers and wealthy members of society to have the reigns of government power knowing what they would do if they did?
Say for instance you work in a high rise office building in a downtown area and you know that the company you work for practially owns you. How about adding concerns that the building was constructed using faulty materials or techniques so the builder could save a little money? How about that electrical wiring? It could be faulty, the fire suppression and warning systems may not be working, the exit door may blocked by a thousand pound book shelf or even chained shut. You get the idea, don’t you?
Now with everything else that is going on you are working in death trap. Should something happen the hospital that will treat you may administer drugs that have not been not tested for safety or effectiveness, may perform procedures that are not vetted by peers, use testing equipment that may not work, the doctor may not be qualified, the hospital may not be clean or safe or the medical staff could treat you for diseases or injuries you are not suffering from just so they can bill the insurance company, or you, more money.
So you made it through the emergency safely, now it is time to drive home. Your car and those of your fellow commuters hasn’t had to pass any safety tests. You get home to a house on a street that isn’t built on a safe foundation, to a house that is held together by glue and hug your family who just spent their day in similar death traps facing the same risks. It goes on and on and on.
Seriously, is this what we really want? Do you think that the wealthy owners and managers of these businesses or companies care one bit about anything but their bottom line? Still with all of the warning and consequence this is where we are headed if we do not regain control of our democracy.
Well, now you can add another Supreme Court Justice. Nothing ceases to amaze me anymore…
What seems almost unbelievable is that there was a time when Orwellian governments were fictional.
Today, we have an Orwellian news network which is, in Orwellian style, intertwined as a propaganda arm for an Orwellian political party AND an Orwellian “grass roots” movement founded and financed by billionaire corporate entities.
It’s hard to write science fiction or satire about corporations taking over our government because it’s pretty much already happened (see Citizens United).
Unfortunately, I think the only way there can ever be a purge of corporations from our government is after the corporations have so oppressed the 99.5% of Americans who aren’t millionaires or billionaires that there is a real and sustained grass roots revolt that demands their democracy back.
Until then, we have the moronic, emotional and short-term-thinking Swing Voters so easily manipulated into giving corporations more domination over them in our society and democracy.
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.”
– Lincoln
You can imagine how silent the “Party of Lincoln” is when I post this.
They actually get pissy and attack me instead.
Two from a dam Roosevelt:
Excellent commentary, BassetDad. I’ll comment more later if I can think of anything smarter than “ditto” to write.
BD – back in the Reign of Bush there was a Diatribe Against Liberalism that was, in fact, the opposite. It followed one man awakening to clean water for his shower, affordable electric rates and government provided rights of way for transmission; pure food for breakfast, highways to get to work – and on and on. It was brilliant. Here YOU have recorded the precise opposite, and it’s equally compelling and important. Where are our sloganeers who can put the same pizazz in OUR messages that the Right does on theirs? What you’ve said is so important as a message to the American populace, and who other than we will read such a great summary of “attack legislation”, the assault on the American people?
On the issue of “lobbyists writing legislation” – well, I am one. Been there, done that. Big difference is that I have not a shred of profit motive behind what I’ve helped to write. NO self interest whatsoever. So I’d like to see the profit whores OUTED, but I’m a bit wary of banning us all entirely. (We always see ourselves as the Good Guys – I’m sure the people who oppose my work think I’m horrible.) So I’m of two minds about that. My status is identical to that of a Chevron lobbyist legally – I am no more or less than they. So without cutting my own throat, I am unclear how you get the bozos out of our business.
Thank you for raising all this up, BD. We are losing our national reason for existence. Creepy, creepy, we erode our democracy, and we don’t even see it.
Thank you all so much for your commentary, I appreciate it along with the great quotes from wise men.
Hi Choicelady, I am not against lobbying per se, but as you point out the profit driven that get concessions on legislation and regulation to the detriment of the general populace is, as far as I am concerned, corporate over reach and wrong. If Lincoln, Jefferson and many of the others could see what we have become they would have a coronary. We have become everything they warned us against.
I think Molly Ivins said it best – the only people who should be engaged in campaigns are those who can actually VOTE. The corporation as fictitious person has had resonance since 1886 BUT not as an element in the Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific RR. Nope. Not a word of that in the decision – only in the PREFACE and summary written by a CLERK. So upon that, our law now hangs.
Can we GET any more stupid?
Back to basics. Democracy is about human beings, NOT about corporations. After the Revolutionary War and adoption of the Constitution, corporations were permitted to come into existence for one reason – to harness capital in the interest of society’s well being. Period. Well, that promise lasted about thirty seconds until the ink dried. And from that point on, we have had the eternal battle between REAL persons and fictious ones.
It is past time that the real ones won out. That’s my mantra – America for human beings. Corporations must either be tightly regulated in the service of us all or abolished as a form of doing business. There simply is no other choice if we are to survive as a democracy.