Treason
the New World Order
by GurudasChapter VIII
Rise of the Corporate State
“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political
importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the
growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy.”
Alex Carey 1
“To erect and concentrate and perpetuate a large moneyed interest...must in the
course of human events produce one or other of two evils, the prostration of
agriculture at the feet of commerce, or a change in the present form of federal
government, fatal to the existence of American liberty.”
Patrick Henry
While it has been suppressed from our history, in Liggett v. Lee (1933)
Supreme Court Justice Brandeis described how, in the early years of our Republic,
states either wouldn't allow or sharply restricted the formation of corporations
because they limited freedom and opportunity for the people. The people kept the
power to charter corporations strictly in the hands of the legislature. Corporations
were chartered to serve the public good, corporate privileges were often conferred
for a fixed terms of years, and strict limits were placed on the allowed indebtedness. Previously corporations could only be established for specific activities;
permission to incorporate for any lawful purpose was not common until 1875. At
times the corporate privilege was revoked, when the state felt this was best for the
community. For years there were strict limits on the amount of authorized capital
that could be used when a business incorporated. Until 1918 mining companies
could incorporate in Maryland with only up to $3 million.
Many forget that corporations have no inherent right to exist. This is a power
granted by the state. Gradually limits on corporate charters were removed through
corporate influence, money, and lawyers, as judges issued rulings to support
corporations. States competed with each other to raise money by chartering corporations with few requirements. That many corporations today are registered in
Delaware is a vestige of that competition. The movement of large corporations
into thousands of small towns gradually shifted economic and political power from
Main Street to Wall Street, which created a disparity of income and concentrated
wealth. Brandeis said big business limited self-government by eroding the civic
and moral capacities of the people and by controlling democratic institutions. 2
Until the late 19th century the law primarily focused on the rights of
individuals. After the Civil War the role and rights of corporations were gradually
established. The Supreme Court, in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad (1886), said corporations would now be considered “persons” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. A corporation became a legal fiction granted legitimacy by judicial and legislative degree. The revolutionary trends of the 18th
century that began in America and France and promoted individual liberty were
weakened with the introduction of corporate rights.
Increased concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer people
developed after the Civil War. Before the 1880s society was mostly agrarian and
most businesses were directly managed by the owners. Most people were self employed; they owned their own land, produced their own food, and there was little
manufacturing. Gradually people had to work for others to earn money. There
developed an economically powerful elite, and most people worked for others as
laborers. Around the turn of the century, 90 percent of the population was still
self-employed. By 1992 only four percent of the people were self-employed. We
are no longer a nation of shopkeepers, farmers, and independent craftsman. This
change helped make money foremost in people's lives. The new corporate order
meant less democracy and increased concentration of economic power, with business controlling all means of production. The old mercantile aristocracy became
the new corporate elite. With mechanization fewer workers were needed on farms,
so people moved to the cities. The loss of small farmers to the cities meant the
loss of many independent thinkers, which weakened the democratic fabric of our
Republic. Large businesses now dominate agriculture. Aided by the railroad the
frontier disappeared and a truly national economy developed.
The rise of and preoccupation with mass-market consumerism and indulgence
gradually developed after the Civil War, especially in the 1890s. “In the decades
following the Civil War, American capitalism began to produce a distinct culture,
unconnected to traditional family or community values, to religion in any
conventional sense, or to political democracy. It was a secular business and market
-oriented culture, with the exchange and circulation of money and goods at the
foundation of its aesthetic life...The cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new;
the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all
value in society.” 3
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said: “In contrast to the
nineteenth century, in which saving was a virtue, the twentieth century has made
consumption into the main virtue.” The age of mass consumption also brought
with it the dawn of the advertising industry, and people's habits were changed to
consume more. And people were socialized to accept the harsh conditions of mass
production in factories which many workers rebelled against. 4
God was replaced by gain. Caring relationships were too often replaced with a
desire to succeed in business. Instead of having a close relationship with one's
family, a career became more important. Corporate values replaced family values.
One result, of course, is the much higher divorce rate today. One's standard of living became the primary focus and objective in life. Our ideal of freedom became
the ability to purchase and consume. We were no longer proud citizens of a
Republic; we became consumers in a market economy. World War I “had not been
fought for democracy or for nationalism but for industrialism” to ensure that “the
power of production would never again be endangered....”5
“From the 1890s on, American corporate business, in league with key institutions, began the transformation of American society into a society preoccupied
with consumption, with comfort and bodily well-being, with luxury, spending,
and acquisition....American consumer capitalism produced a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a future-oriented culture of desire that
confused the good life with goods. It was a culture that first appeared as an
alternative culture...and then unfolded to become the reigning culture of the U.S.” 6
Aided by the industrial mobilization of World War I, corporations attained an
increasingly dominant role in America.
This new culture was promoted by commercial groups allied with other elites
attempting to accumulate ever greater amounts of capital. Other conceptions of the
good life were pushed aside. Business leaders cooperated with educators, politicians, social-reformers, entertainers, artists, and religious leaders to create a new
economy and culture. American public life was diminished as democratic traditions
and institutions were pushed aside to make way for the new culture. New institutions like the Harvard Business School and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were
recruited to shape the new America. At the turn of the century during the age of
the muckrakers, magazines attacked monopolies and private economic power. By
the 1920s magazines had gone from exposing corporate corruption to praising
business success and the consumer society. The corporate way become the American way partly because big business gained control of the media. Socialism never
succeeded in America because the goals of socialism such as a classless society and
liberty for all already occurred in America, or at least this is what the media told
us.
Inspired by growing incomes and a rising standard of living, many capitalists
and progressive reformers promoted a new form of democracy at once more inclusive and more confining than before. Self-pleasure and self-fulfillment over
community or civic well-being became the norm. Comfort and prosperity became
the cornerstone of life in America. The influential economist, John Bates Clark,
said that despite the growing inequality of life in America, democracy could be
ensured through the free market and the ever growing supply of goods and services.
This new thinking was discussed in The New Democracy by Walter Weyl in
1912. Weyl said: “Democracy means material goods and the moral goods based
thereon....To socialize our consumption we must therefore depend upon the direct
or indirect action of the state....” 7
A new and improved morality, a new ethics of
pleasure would be derived from a new economic order in conjunction with political
democracy. Weyl and other prominent thinkers like Simon Patton, an economist
and professor at the Wharton School of Economics, felt that modern corporations
were moral institutions, and there was nothing wrong with the new emphasis on
money and consumption.
A powerful populist movement arose with many farmers, independent merchants, religious leaders, social-reformers, socialists, intellectuals, economists, and
unionists attacking this new way of life. Previously, democracy was thought to be
partly based on ownership of property and control of one's production. In 1879 the
economist Henry Carter Adams warned: “Either you must establish a more equitable division of properly and produce or the fatal end of democracy will be
despotism and decadence.” Part of the broad appeal of the prairie populist, Rep.
William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska in the 1890s, was a rejection of the new
value system offered by the corporate culture and a call to restore Jeffersonian
grass-roots democracy. Large corporations were often hated and considered undemocratic. The “patriotic role” that corporations supposedly played during World War
I changed this attitude. According to the press, the corporations helped preserve democracy. Intense anti-business sentiment eased during the war because business
produced the goods needed to win the war.
Many religious people at the turn of the century criticized the new values of
the corporate culture. Today many religious groups have closely aligned themselves with the corporate culture. Most people don't realize that millions of
Americans have been captivated and transformed by a corporate culture that was
once considered quite foreign and alien to traditional American political, economic,
and spiritual values.
Citizen involvement that had spawned the progressive movement changed to
citizen apathy. One commentator in the 1920s said “The private life became the all
in all.” The disgust that many now feel towards public office and politicians was
quite common in the 1920s. 8
Apathy and cynicism ruled the day. The public was
too busy trying to get rich to notice or care what the politicians were doing.
In 1924 Samuel Strauss, a political scientist and journalist, wrote an article
about the changes in America that is even more relevant today. “Something new
has come to confront American democracy. The fathers of the Nation did not foresee it....That which has stolen across the path of American democracy and is
already altering Americanism was not in their calculations” and would have been
considered abnormal to them. 9
The Founders could not have foreseen, nor would
they have necessarily agreed with the importance of manufacturing and money in
America.
Consumptionism produced remarkable changes in America. People stopped
attacking the very wealthy as luxury, comfort, and security became the essential
elements of the good life. Strauss said “The new kind of man sees, not human
beings, but things at the centre of life.” The new man “had no interest in keeping
us free..except as we must be free to consume goods.” 10
Television insures that
we continue to equate consumerism with democracy. President Woodrow Wilson
said: “The truth is we are all caught in a great economic system, which is heartless.”
It was felt all people had an equal right to consumer goods. The revolution in
mass production and growth of consumer capitalism filled stores with goods to
satisfy needs not yet understood to even exist. The present focus in society is how
to develop enough interest in goods that are produced, i.e., how to produce consumers. Good government has come to mean that the government provides the
people with the means to buy more goods. The progressive Senator Robert
LaFollette, Sr. said: “The welfare of all the people as consumers should be the
supreme consideration of government.” [Is it any wonder that this country has degenerated into it's present state,given the length and onslaught of secular propaganda? DC]
We have gone from being a nation of citizens, with rights and responsibilities, to being consumers addicted to more and more goods that the corporations
produce for us to buy even when there is no need. Consumerism had replaced
citizenship. G.K. Chesterton, an English author, made many trips to the U.S. in
the 1920s and 30s. He said: “Americans are good neighbors rather than good
citizens. That pure and positive public spirit has faded from their life more than
from that of any people in the world. What is the matter with America is that
every American has been tacitly or loudly taught that his job is not only more
vital than his vote, but more vital than that virtue of public spirit which the vote
represents.” 11
Critical of anti-democratic business corporations, Chesterton said: “Industrial
capitalism and ideal democracy are everywhere in controversy; but perhaps only (in America) are they in conflict.” Only in America was “industrial progress...the
most undemocratic...The reality of modern capitalism is menacing the
(democratic) ideal with terrors and even splendors that might well stagger the
wavering and impressionable modern spirit. Upon the issue of that struggle
depends the question of whether this great civilization continues to exist....” When
defining our Republic, Chesterton compared the collapse into capitalism to the
collapse into barbarism and the fall of the Republic. He said capitalism is like
feudalism, with people employed and guarded by large corporations much like the
feudal lords cared for and controlled the serfs. 12
The power of the federal government expanded enormously during and after the
Civil War, as a vast bureaucracy developed and the government intervened more in
political, social, and economic matters. The traditional government role of regulating business gradually included serving business. In the 1890s government
intervened to absorb commercial banks' losses, and after 1910 the U.S. Commerce
Department expanded its activities. Business gradually depended on government
guarantees of bank deposits and farm loans. These trends prepared the way for the
New Deal. Led by the press and Washington, people allowed the federal government in league with business to play a more prominent role in their lives. The
New Deal economic reforms represented the political application of economic and
social trends that had been taking place for some years.
There was a nationalization of the political system during the New Deal as
political power shifted from local and state government to the federal government.
In the federal government the executive branch and bureaucracy were strengthened
and freed of party control, while the legislature was weakened as was the people's
sense that they were actually represented by government. Corporations and the two
political parties developed together, each promoting the other, with individual
citizens increasingly removed from the political process.[Ain't that the God damn truth DC]
There was also a shift in constitutional law along with a change in how we
perceived the role of government. Instead of having a government of limited
powers, with a federal government that could only act in certain areas per the
Constitution, a new federal government was born with unlimited powers to tax
and rule in whatever fashion it deemed appropriate. Experts henceforth decided how
we were ruled, as the people learned to follow orders. Supposedly experts who
were above partisan politics would make technical decisions. The controlled media
made sure the people didn't understand what had happened. The corporate culture
became so strong that in 1939 the House Un-American Activities Committee
called Consumers Union, which produces Consumer Reports, un-American.
President Roosevelt said the task of modern government was “to assist the
development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional
order.” The traditional reliance on individual self-reliance was replaced by a new
understanding of individualism, with government regulating the economy and
guaranteeing people protection from the uncertainties of the marketplace. Thus
was the welfare state born. Increasingly, our liberties were defined by the freedoms
the state granted; they were no longer God given as described in the Declaration of
Independence.
Instead of a Constitution that protects our liberties as described in the Bill of
Rights, economic rights became the primary focus. This is another historical basis
for the weakening of our liberties. People have minimum wages and the welfare
state but in the process we also have asset forfeiture laws, no knock warrants, and rule by executive degree. A person can often work at a decent wage but they may
have all their assets seized. We are trading a false sense of economic security for
the loss of our rights.
President Reagan once said: “What I want to see above all is that this remains
a country where someone can always get rich.” The desire and wish for wealth has
replaced the desire and wish for freedom and the preservation of our rights. A much
better goal is that this remain a Republic where everyone always has the God given rights and freedoms that the Founders fought so hard to establish. There is
today in America a new tyranny, with a state religion called the market economy.
The market has succeeded and we are unhappy, materialist, and increasingly no
longer free.
Instead of people relating to each other as individuals something outside ourselves, money, constantly intervenes. Previously money had value because it
represented objects. Now money controls people because it has such a powerful
influence over our lives. Objects are now valuable only in that they represent
money. “W.H. Auden thought that the most striking difference between Americans
and Europeans was to be found in their different attitudes toward money. No
European associates wealth with personal merit or poverty with personal failure.
But to the American what is important is not so much the possession of money
but the power to earn it as a proof of one's manhood!” 13
We are valued for the
money we control not for integrity of character. With the corrupting influence of
money and monetization of feeling we should not be surprised that cheating in
school and rampant crime have become the norm.
Politicians during elections ask if people are better off economically. “The
question is only and always about money, never about the spirit of the laws or the
cherished ideals that embody the history of the people....To the extent that the
wish to be cared for replaces the will to act, the commercial definition of democracy prompts the politicians to conceive of and advertise the Republic as if it were
a resort hotel. They promise the voters the rights and comforts owed to them by
virtue of their status as America's guests....The government...preserves its
measure of trust in the exact degree that it satisfies the whims of its patrons and
meets the public expectation of convenience and style at a fair price.” 14
When
spiritual considerations are active in life one inevitably strives to assist others.
When money becomes the all in all, it is survival of the fittest, and a society
deteriorates.
Increasingly corporate speech has gained First Amendment protection. 15
Corporations are using the Bill of Rights to protect themselves from state and
federal laws especially with the expansion of environmental, health, and safety
regulations. In California a public utility company used the First Amendment to
overturn state regulations that lowered utility rates. Business has long attempted to
gain for corporations the same constitutional rights that a citizen has except for
voting. However, the more corporations have rights like citizens, the less rights
citizens have. Citizens do not have the funds that corporations have, and a corporation can continue indefinitely and in many places. If you sue a corporation, long
distance travel may be required. We are all second class citizens before the power,
wealth, and influence of corporations. When corporations commit crimes, they
wish to be considered as artificial legal entities that cannot be held legally liable
for their offenses. When convicted of crimes they still have all their political
rights, unlike an individual who may lose his right to vote and even his freedom. Corporations should lose their rights of citizenship, or the responsibilities of citizenship that apply to individuals should be vehemently applied to corporations.
During the 20th century there has been a shift from direct financial control to management control of corporations, with the banking community increasingly exerting its influence quietly and in the background. Stockholders rarely have a decisive say in how large corporations are managed, despite what is sometimes claimed. And the large corporations are generally closely associated with each other through joint advisory groups and various social, political, and trade associations. Members of the CFR and TC usually come from the corporate elite.
Large management-run corporations usually operate in an authoritarian, hierarchical, and bureaucratic manner. They are not conducive to democratic thinking. They act increasingly like governments, and increasingly the federal government acts like these large corporations. While there are established checks and balances against unbridled government tyranny, however weakened these limitations have become, there are few real checks on unlimited corporate tyranny. The Republic has gradually been replaced by the corporate totalitarian model, with most people taking orders and having few rights. The Bill of Rights rarely applies in the work place. “Today's rhetorical attacks on 'big government' for interfering with business have largely succeeded in obscuring the fact that it is big business, not big government, that primarily regulates the lives of ordinary Americans.” 16
Today corporate officials play an increasingly dominant role in government. Senior government leaders come from banker/corporate financed think tanks and foundations with an occasional representative from labor. Economic and political power is controlled by the corporate elite, supported by an out-of-control intelligence apparatus. U.S. government economic policy is dominated by the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation. Government supposedly provides a sound infrastructure, stable society, and educated workers while business provides modern technology, a growing economy, and assistance during emergencies such as in a war. This alliance of government and the corporate elite is especially relevant in international affairs, as NAFTA and GATT have demonstrated. Increasingly this alliance means the exclusion of all other groups. Labor unions and universities provide fewer and fewer leaders in the federal government.
Russell Mokhiber, in Corporate Crime and Violence, presented 36 serious cases of corporate crime. In many of these cases numerous people were injured or killed. Fifty suggestions are offered to curb corporate crimes. In U.S. v. Dotterweich and U.S. v. Park, the Supreme Court held that business executives can be held criminally liable for violating the Food and Drug Act. This liability should exist whenever a business violates the law, and there should be stricter laws preventing the destruction of documents when corporations are involved in litigation. As in Australia and England, U.S. prosecutors should be allowed to entrap corporations. State and local prosecutors should become more aggressive against corporate crime because federal laws are so weak and poorly enforced. In 1990 California passed the Corporate Criminal Liability Act which includes possible criminal prosecution of managers if they don't report health and safety problems within 15 days of discovering such problems. 17 Corporate managers should take responsibility for their actions as the law requires of private citizens. Too often, corporate executives are above the law.
A limit should be placed on consent decrees when corporations are sued by the government allowing corporations to not acknowledge violating the law. A court approved consent degree can leave no trace of liability or culpability. This often makes it easier for corporations to hide felonious conduct, and individuals have more difficulty obtaining relief in civil litigation. Convicted corporations should more often be required to repay their victims. There should be better protection for whistleblowers, heavy fines, and forced retirement of an executive from a business upon conviction of serious criminal activity. Lawyers can lose their license when convicted of a felony; the same standard should apply to business executives.
Ralph Nader suggested, repeatedly offending corporations should be fined, lose government contracts, and lose the right to take part in public debate, such as appearing before Congress or lobbying bills. Currently, FBI reports ignore corporate crimes, such as financial fraud and occupational homicide. According to the FBI, about 24,000 people are murdered each year, but 56,000 people die from work-related diseases and accidents. Repeat offenders should be targeted to create more corporate accountability. Such corporations should be forced to sell a unit that continues to violate the law, lose the right to hold certain licenses as in the media, or lose their charter to exist. However, prosecutors often won't prosecute corporations. 18
The law today is used to force compliance to the values of the corporate elite. Corporations often dominate legislatures, preventing laws that would hold businesses accountable or improve safety precautions. When new bills are presented intense lobbying by businesses weakens them. Politicians are afraid to antagonize businesses because of a need for campaign donations, and there is a cultural homogeneity among legislators, judges, and administrators with businessmen. Lax standards towards corporations also exist partly because of biased news coverage. Corporations now define what is right and wrong in our society because they control the media. The norm has become the morality of corporate manufactured news.
People convicted of minor crimes like using marijuana often receive harsh sentences while corporate felons that kill people get no prison time. The public is less resentful towards corporate crimes then direct violent crimes. There are today two justice systems in America—one for individuals and another for corporations. Jail for corporate executives would be a strong deterrent to criminal activities. Just as the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving awakened the public conscience to punish drunk driving, we need to take a much more serious look at corporate criminal activity especially when people are seriously injured and killed.
A classic example of how the federal government bends to the will of business today is the regulation of the meat and poultry industries. Each year at least 6.5 million Americans, and possibly many more, get ill from eating chickens. At least 1,000 people die, with children and the elderly especially at risk. The figure is much higher when you add the illnesses from eating diseased meat. Yet government inspection of the meat and poultry industries has changed little in this century, despite the fact that there now exists more sophisticated methods to inspect food that a few businesses and some European countries now use. The problem is that American meat and poultry industries did not want tighter inspection standards and they are powerfully connected politically. In the fall of 1994 Agriculture Secretary Mike Espry was forced to resign because of “gifts” he had accepted from the poultry industry, and only in early 1995 did the Clinton regime finally agree to establish improved standards of meat and poultry inspection. 19
On October 27, 1994 after three years of denial Prudential Securities finally admitted that it had broken the law by selling limited partnerships in the 1980s. Over 120,000 people suffered losses in this criminal operation. Prudential Securities paid a $330 million fine to conclude criminal charges, and last year it paid $371 million in fines to federal and state regulators to settle civil charges. Although many people suffered and the fines were quite high, no one involved in this scam went to prison. Corporations can do just about anything, yet they are above the law when it comes to serving time in jail. 20
Businesses complain about federal legislation, but they often hide behind the federal government to block state laws they dislike. Business groups want to keep decision making focused at the federal level, where they have a better opportunity to control the outcome. While corporations now control both national political parties, some state governments have become more responsive to the people. From Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development to Industrial Areas Foundation in Texas, many community groups have formed.
The Republican party is trying to federalize laws dealing with negligence and product liability. Again businesses will be able to hide behind the federal government. This needed reform should be done by the states. Federal laws now prevent state and local authorities from taking legal action against deceptive advertising by the airline industry. Only the U.S. Department of Transportation can regulate this area. The result is that the airlines are among the worst abusers of false advertising in the nation, and the federal government will do almost nothing about this. The airlines hide behind the federal government, while the people are cheated.
Typically industry agrees to weaker federal standards if that frees them from stricter state rules. In 1994 banks got new interstate banking laws that overrode state limits on bank branches. Automobile manufacturers have fought to have federal laws replace stricter state standards on issues like auto emissions. When Vermont passed a law requiring credit reporting firms to automatically provide free annual credit reports, banks and consumer lenders worked to get a weaker federal law that would preempt this state law. Under the Constitution, the laws of Congress take precedent over state law, but traditionally Congress usually acted when the states hadn't acted, not to supersede state law. In recent years, this has changed. By 1988, 350 federal preemption laws had passed with 225 of them passed in the last 30 years. Powerful corporate lobbying groups are negating the wishes of people expressed on the state and local levels. Large corporations also turn to the government to avoid the risks of the market, as in defense procurement or public utility regulation.
There is growing anger at the federal government for protecting corporations with preemption laws. New York is trying to enforce its strict lemon car laws without federal interference as car manufacturers would like. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has established a Uniform Commercial Code to have consistent laws for interstate commerce with less federal interference. 21 If state laws offer consumers more protection, such laws should not be preempted. Federal preemption laws should be used only to protect individual rights.
Billions of tax dollars go to farm subsidies, defense contractors, and mining companies each year. The Cato Institute found that almost every Fortune 500 company gets some form of corporate welfare from the federal government. McDonalds has received $1 million and Tyson Foods $11 million for foreign advertising. The Progressive Policy Institute listed corporate tax breaks over five years including $5.9 billion for expanding intangible drilling costs for oil and gas, $5.7 billion tax credits for non-conventional fuels, $5.3 billion tax-exempt, private-purpose revenue bonds, and a $1.7 billion exemption for credit-union income. In the past 10 years up to 1994, $149 billion in farm subsidies was paid out. In Kansas the average farmer received $20,000 to $40,000 a year. In a recent period 50 percent of farmers' aid went to the wealthiest one percent of the farmers. Over $55 billion a year is spent on corporate welfare. Many of these businesses are highly profitable. The Democratic Leadership Council and the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a long list of corporate welfare programs that could save hundreds of billions of dollars. People are increasingly contemptuous of the federal government, partly because it created a welfare state for corporations while giving people the bill. 22
The classic example of how nothing has really changed is the passage of the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act by Congress in 1996. According to the press this would finally cut farm subsidies, but this is a lie. Under the just-ended formula, because farm prices are so high, government welfare to farms would have dropped sharply. Instead, with aid separated from crop prices, farm aid will increase. Read James Bovard article in Barron's to appreciate how this bill protects the corporations. 23
While reducing government welfare payments to people, the 10 point Republican Contract With America did little to reduce corporate welfare. Despite many promises, Congress barely cut corporate welfare. 24 Much corporate welfare originated with the Democratic party, especially during the New Deal and the Great Society. When the Republicans made some proposals to cut corporate welfare, Clinton rejected such efforts. Perhaps one day the labor unions will wake up and realize that neither party represents their interests. Despite all the rhetoric, some corporate welfare has actually increased. The Agriculture Department is spending $110 million to advertise U.S. products overseas which is 30 percent over 1995. Clinton recommended increasing corporate aid by four percent.25 Important consumer protections are being gutted, such as consumer protections against fraudulent financial advisors, while New Deal bank protections and the 1991 Truth in Savings Act may soon end. 26
The book, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes, shows how unfair our tax structure has become. Taxes on corporations have dropped sharply, while taxes on the middle class have risen precipitously. Before, the government taxed the rich. Now, it borrows money from them and pays interest. A General Accounting Office (GAO) study in 1993 said that 40 percent of the corporations doing business in the U.S. with assets of $250 million or more paid income taxes under $100,000 or paid no income tax at all. Another GOA study revealed that 34 percent of all corporations in the U.S. with assets over $100 million paid no income tax in 1989. During the 1950s, corporations in the U.S. paid 23 percent of all federal income taxes. By 1991 this had dropped to 9.2 percent, while the corporate share of state and local taxes stayed about what it was in 1965. 27 In 1945 corporations paid 50 percent of all federal tax revenue; now they pay about seven percent.
The concentration of corporate power in the hands of fewer people has led not only to great economic inequality in income but also to increased control over the work place. It is now harder for workers to organize unions; the company can close and move overseas. The social safety net has been weakened, and it is much harder to attain a good job, food, and housing. There is also more employer surveillance and regulation of employees. Workers, like the serfs of old, are expected to be devoted to a company. Requiring employers to provide benefits like health insurance also increases the protector-dependent relationship. Workers are pressured to be more servile and to snitch on coworkers. Management at the Mazda plant in Flat Rock, Michigan said the workers belong to the company, they don't work for the firm. Workers were pressured to wear Mazda caps. 28
In recent years companies have sued people who publicly opposed corporate projects. Litigation is an effective means to keep citizens from complaining. 29 Peter Montague, an environmental reporter, alleged that a report on dioxin filed by a Monsanto Chemical Co. scientist was fraudulent in methodology and use of data. That scientist is now suing Montague. Once the suit was initiated, press coverage of this alleged corporate fraud ceased. 30
Corporations are increasingly suing or threatening to sue the media. Philip Morris Co. sued ABC for a story on Day One about nicotine in cigarettes. In July, 1994 the Health Care Reform Project, a group of organizations supporting Clinton's health-care reforms, held a news conference and stated that Pizza Hut paid for health insurance for its Japanese and German workers but not for its U.S. workers. Pizza Hut said this was libelous, so four television stations in Washington, D.C. refused to air the story. In early 1994 a reporter for KMOL-TV in San Antonio refused to retract a story that a local business objected to. He was fired. 31 As a result of these suits, California and New York passed laws blocking such corporate suits, and these corporate suits were ruled illegal by the Colorado Supreme Court. 32
Another way in which millions of Americans are suffering from the power of Wall Street is in the derivatives boom. The bankruptcy of Orange County is hardly unique. Many governments and thousands of individuals lost huge sums of money to Wall Street, because the investment banks were allowed to present these complex investment instruments without explaining what was being sold.
Corporations today finance a counterrevolution of ideas to replace political parties and vigilant citizens as the key source of ideas. Corporate-sponsored think tanks increasingly provide expert opinion for government officials and the national media. Dissenting voices rarely speak in the national media. 33 Progressives, like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal, have generally been banned from the national media for years, and now, except for a brief period after the Oklahoma bombing, members of the Patriot movement are also denied access to the national media.
Workers are being pressured to support a company's political goals. In mid-August, 1994 IBM used E mail to 'advise' its employees about how to vote on health care reform. Citizens should be able to vote as they want without corporate pressure. Hundreds of corporate political organizations now organize the agenda and provide the financing that overwhelms the voice of the people. Business political-action committees replaced labor as the largest source of campaign money by the early 1980s. In 1974, labor unions accounted for half of all PAC money; by 1980, they accounted for under one fourth. Corporations have the money to pass laws and follow the regulatory agencies, while private citizens and labor groups cannot match this funding. Corporations have the financial resources needed in our new economic democracy.
Despite the fact that the 1992 election represented the first time since 1981 that the Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, labor achieved none of its goals. Yet many pro-business goals were achieved such as NAFTA and the blocking of health reform. According to the National Library of Politics and Money, in the 1992 election, business groups donated $50.7 million of the $88 million that went to Democratic candidates. Today, the Democratic party represents business interests much more than it does labor. 34
Today, corporations also dominate our culture. “Much of the nation's physical space, outdoors and indoors, is now a private preserve, carrying the messages and culture of the corporations that dominate economic and political life.” 35 The book, Market Madness, provides suggestions to overcome the incessant marketing ads that we constantly face. Ads promote cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and junk food which damage our health, while violence on TV promotes crime and a value system alien to our heritage. Sporting events are surrounded by corporate images. Shopping addiction is a 20th century disease.
“Not only through propaganda and socialization but also through 'good works,' or the appearance of such, do capitalists achieve hegemonic legitimacy. The ruthless industrialist becomes the generous philanthropist....The primary goal of capitalist cultural dominance is not to provide us with nice concerts and museums but to give capitalism's exploitative reality a providential appearance, so that people learn not only to accept, but to admire and appreciate, the leadership and stewardship of the owning class....” 36 People in television and artists in many fields often cannot promote their views or artistic creations if it goes against the corporate view. Libraries, theaters, and performing arts centers are increasingly under corporate control because of the need for money. Our culture and entertainment are increasingly determined by a small number of network executives and distributors. Museums have become “public relations agents for the interests of big business and its ideological allies.” 37
Corporate amusement parks like Disneyland and Sea World and the shopping mall culture are now the norm of society. The town square, as a center for gathering and shopping, has been replaced by the corporate-owned mall. Various court decisions support mall owners' right to prevent distribution of material. Political expression is often banned. In 1985 a New York Appeals Court held that a mall owner could ban political leaflets saying the state's Bill of Rights “governed the rights of citizens with respect to their government and not the rights of private individuals against private individuals.” To this court, a corporation can violate any of our civil rights and the law offers no protection. A dissenting judge protested: “In the past, those who had ideas they wished to communicate to the public had the unquestioned right to disseminate those ideas in the open marketplace. Now that the marketplace has a roof over it, and is called a mall, we should not abridge that right.” 38 New Jersey and several other states have given limited rights to protest in privately owned malls. 39
Corporate propaganda has for decades infiltrated the schools which need money. Schools put ads on buses and broadcast music with commercials, while businesses provide free supplies with ads. Teachers have lost control over the curriculum, and it is hard for students to differentiate between education and advertising. Channel One television with corporate ads now reaches 350,000 classrooms. 40 Corporations and foundations “have altered academic priorities, reduced the importance of teaching, degraded the integrity of academic journals, and determined what research is conducted at universities. The social costs of this influence have been lower-quality education, a reduction in academic freedom, and a covert transfer of resources from the public to the private sector.” 41 Universities and nonprofit organizations provide special services and trained personnel for the corporations. Covert Action said scientific research is for sale to corporate money. 42 Corporate controlled science is confusing the public and influencing the politicians. 43 The cost of higher education rose 170 percent in the past decade, but this is being used to subsidize corporate influence in the universities. Corporate research is more important than teaching as corporate-funded think tanks, endowed chairs, consulting jobs, and research grants become the norm at universities.
Children have become addicted to TV, junk food, and pop music while family interaction and control is increasingly subverted by corporate entertainment. Children are taught to become good corporate citizens by learning to consume, while both parents are forced to work away from the home because incomes keep falling. As wages dropped in the early 1970s, women went to work and the size of families shrank. The deliberate weakening of the family and the sense of community has made it easier to gradually introduce a new system of values that moves our society away from traditional values to suit the needs of corporate America and the new world order.
Even our religious and patriotic holidays have been desecrated by the corporations. Corporations have methodically worked for decades to influence the churches. 44 Christmas has become a contest to see who can buy and sell the most. The love of Christ has become incidental. Lincoln and Washington's birthdays have become Presidents Day, which has become a contest to find the best furniture deals. The Statute of Liberty is now used in a TV ad to sell cars. None of our cultural heritage is safe from the corporate onslaught.
More recently, corporate greed has infected medicine as HMOs interfere with the rights and judgments of doctors and patients. Doctors often have to get permission from accountants before they can recommend expensive treatments. A patient's health is determined by the all-powerful dollar. 45
“The diminution of public expression and influence that can be found is not the consequence of a decline in national creativity or some other organic disability. It is the result of deliberate and successful efforts to reduce, even eliminate, the public realm in favor of the corporate sector....The corporate envelopment of public expression and creativity has been a direct outgrowth of the enormous expansion of corporate wealth and power in the postwar decades....The phenomenal growth of American capitalism in the years after 1945 helps to explain the deep penetration of corporate values and influence in American politics, law, education, culture, and life overall.” The corporations also led the way into international alliances which were never a part of our history. 46
“The drive to privatize and bring under corporate management as many elements of economic and social activity as possible in the last half century has tipped the balance of democratic existence to an uncomfortable precariousness ....There is no assurance that the corporate governors in America are inoculated against the fascist (strong state) solution to a politically threatening crisis.” There has been “the erosion of democratic principle and practice in the informational cultural sphere. Given this weakening of the national democratic fabric, the advent of the coercive state is hardly precluded.” 47
Various political commentators have warned that unlimited and unaccountable corporate power is not compatible with our traditions of constitutional government. The Founders understood that each class would press for too much power,so institutional checks were necessary to balance the various segments of society. Madison said the diffusion of power among a multiplicity of factions helped guarantee that no one special interest group could ever gain control of the federal government to control the rest of society. Different groups counterbalanced each other. Madison and Hamilton were especially influenced by Montesquieu's and Aquinas' notion of separating and dividing powers throughout society. The Founders feared concentrated economic power, so only 40 corporations were charted when our Republic was established. Just as the shared power between the states and federal government has been broken by the dangerous growth of federal power, the corporate elite have now gained so much power that the counterbalancing power of other interest groups is not sufficient. Pluralism, the interaction of conflicting interest groups, no longer works. You cannot have a free society when one segment of society becomes so dominant, and we cannot depend on the federal government to be a balancing arbitrator. This is the heart of our predicament.
The traditional pluralist model of many different groups and citizens actively involved in politics presenting a counterbalance to each other is no longer valid in corporate-controlled America. “A substantial part of government in the U.S. has come under the influence or control of narrowly based and largely autonomous elites....The distinction between the public and the private...has been compromised far more deeply than we like to acknowledge....The very idea of constitutionalism sometimes seems to be placed in question.” 48
“Today's emerging tyranny emanates from a New King, from a nonliving power center composed at its core of monolithic corporate entities encased and protected by endless layers of government bureaucracies....The New King's principal means of control is the media that sells us the myths of freedom....A New King was crowned when we capitulated to a regime that was no longer sensitive to people but to non-people—to corporations, to money, and to power.” 49
“The growth of corporate...enterprise has produced a social milieu in which individual liberties or freedoms are not highly valued....” There has taken place “a constitutional change of the greatest magnitude—the fusion of economic and political power into the corporate state, American style....In the corporate state, control by the citizenry is not possible. Nor...is control of the apparatus of the state by legislative organs....Legislators act less as a check on the bureaucracy than as a part of the decisional process. In so doing, they do not represent the citizens of the nation.” They represent various interest groups. “The elite has never been reluctant to use violence when considered necessary to stamp out threats, internal or external.” Attacks on the labor movement have certainly demonstrated this. If full repression takes hold in America, it will be announced under the banner of freedom. Huey Long once said if fascism is ever introduced into America it will be used in the name of anti-fascism. 50
“The new partnership (between government and business) is emerging at the same time that a vast conglomerate merger movement concentrates a larger portion of our national wealth in the hands of a smaller group of corporations. The two forces accentuate each other, producing a unique brand of corporate state in which the government and private sectors threaten to coalesce in a way that could be antithetical to democracy itself. Countervailing forces—in industry, government, and even in organized labor—are meshing in power alliances that can signify the formation of an elitist group with the power to determine the course it wishes to follow quite independent of the customary processes of popular democratic participation.” 51 Calvin Coolidge once said: “The business of government is business.”
Many large corporations have laid off thousands of workers despite the growth of profits and sales. 52 High unemployment is now accepted as the norm because the corporate controlled press tells us this is acceptable. Millions of Americans have been forced to accept low-paying jobs. The percent of Americans working for Fortune 500 companies has dropped from over 20 percent of non-farm employees in 1973 to half that in 1994. It remains to be seen if the political influence of these corporations will also drop as they abandon America.
There is too much centralized and unchecked corporate power today for any Republic to survive, especially if the people are to have a voice in government. Every modern industrial society must learn to control the power of the large corporations and still protect the rights of its workers. During the New Deal many felt that a large federal government would resolve this problem. Recently Arthur Schlesingler, Jr. warned that to weaken the federal government will not return power to the people, but will instead transfer power to the large corporations. 53 Liberals such as John Kenneth Galbraith, in American Capitalism: The Theory of Countervailing Power, said competing corporations balanced each other. In past years many felt the labor unions were a counterbalance to big business, but that clearly is also not true.
To restore competition many large banks and conglomerates should be broken up with stronger regulation and antitrust laws; otherwise, political intrigue against our government and way of life will continue. Tighter rules should be established to limit the ability of ex-government officials to work for corporations, especially as lobbyists, while government regulations that weaken labor unions should be removed. Restoring state sovereignty and having the states work together would weaken corporate power, because the corporations would then have to work with 51 governments instead of one central government which they now dominate. The federal government must not be allowed to continue as a vehicle to expand corporate control over our lives.
Investor activism and boycotts to influence corporate policy are constructive. People from labor, environment, minorities, and local communities should be on the boards of large corporations, and employee ownership, as with United Airlines, is helpful. By the 1970s, seven European countries required employees to be on corporate boards. This has resulted in less labor trouble, improved productivity, and generally has not limited corporate profits. Such a policy should be required by law in the U.S. Corporations must be made accountable to the community and workers and not just to stockholders. The huge sums of money in pension funds should be used to support the infrastructure and community investment and should not be used for leveraged corporate buyouts and mergers. Some stockholder rights and profits should be transferred to workers, and society should insist that corporations remain out of the political arena.
As long as there was not too much government interference in people's daily lives and living standards continued to rise, people believed, as the media assured us, that the corporate elite believed in the political values that have been the basis of our constitutional government. Except during the populist era and the great depression, people weren't loo concerned about growing corporate power. Today, this has changed and more people are very concerned about how the corporations and banks dominate politics and all aspects of society.
The goal of corporations is to make money not to enrich the ethical, cultural, and social fabric of society. Recently various groups have formed to curtail corporate power. Some want to require federal corporate charters to have minimum standards of corporate conduct. That path would further enhance federal and corporate power. Instead the Constitution's commerce clause should be used to require minimum standards that states must meet when they charter a corporation involved in interstate commerce. The Boston-based Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy wants to again require limited corporate charters, reestablish the people's control over corporations, and remove corporate constitutional rights. In extreme cases, when a corporation repeatedly violates the law, as recently happened with a Japanese bank in New York, its right to exist should be revoked as was often done in the past. Once again corporations must prove that they exist to serve the public welfare. 54
C. Wright Mills spent many years studying the “power elite” in America concluding that the corporate elite make the key political decisions while political parties occupy a secondary middle level. 55 The corporate elite represent a private economic and political power that is unaccountable to the people. Since the 1994 election it has been understood that the American people want less federal government control. In time it will be equally understood that the people are also tired of being controlled by large corporations, as is increasingly happening in the new world order.
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Rise of the Transnational Corporations
footnotes page 279@
http://www.metaphysicspirit.com/books/Treason%20-%20The%20New%20World%20Order.pdf
During the 20th century there has been a shift from direct financial control to management control of corporations, with the banking community increasingly exerting its influence quietly and in the background. Stockholders rarely have a decisive say in how large corporations are managed, despite what is sometimes claimed. And the large corporations are generally closely associated with each other through joint advisory groups and various social, political, and trade associations. Members of the CFR and TC usually come from the corporate elite.
Large management-run corporations usually operate in an authoritarian, hierarchical, and bureaucratic manner. They are not conducive to democratic thinking. They act increasingly like governments, and increasingly the federal government acts like these large corporations. While there are established checks and balances against unbridled government tyranny, however weakened these limitations have become, there are few real checks on unlimited corporate tyranny. The Republic has gradually been replaced by the corporate totalitarian model, with most people taking orders and having few rights. The Bill of Rights rarely applies in the work place. “Today's rhetorical attacks on 'big government' for interfering with business have largely succeeded in obscuring the fact that it is big business, not big government, that primarily regulates the lives of ordinary Americans.” 16
Today corporate officials play an increasingly dominant role in government. Senior government leaders come from banker/corporate financed think tanks and foundations with an occasional representative from labor. Economic and political power is controlled by the corporate elite, supported by an out-of-control intelligence apparatus. U.S. government economic policy is dominated by the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation. Government supposedly provides a sound infrastructure, stable society, and educated workers while business provides modern technology, a growing economy, and assistance during emergencies such as in a war. This alliance of government and the corporate elite is especially relevant in international affairs, as NAFTA and GATT have demonstrated. Increasingly this alliance means the exclusion of all other groups. Labor unions and universities provide fewer and fewer leaders in the federal government.
Russell Mokhiber, in Corporate Crime and Violence, presented 36 serious cases of corporate crime. In many of these cases numerous people were injured or killed. Fifty suggestions are offered to curb corporate crimes. In U.S. v. Dotterweich and U.S. v. Park, the Supreme Court held that business executives can be held criminally liable for violating the Food and Drug Act. This liability should exist whenever a business violates the law, and there should be stricter laws preventing the destruction of documents when corporations are involved in litigation. As in Australia and England, U.S. prosecutors should be allowed to entrap corporations. State and local prosecutors should become more aggressive against corporate crime because federal laws are so weak and poorly enforced. In 1990 California passed the Corporate Criminal Liability Act which includes possible criminal prosecution of managers if they don't report health and safety problems within 15 days of discovering such problems. 17 Corporate managers should take responsibility for their actions as the law requires of private citizens. Too often, corporate executives are above the law.
A limit should be placed on consent decrees when corporations are sued by the government allowing corporations to not acknowledge violating the law. A court approved consent degree can leave no trace of liability or culpability. This often makes it easier for corporations to hide felonious conduct, and individuals have more difficulty obtaining relief in civil litigation. Convicted corporations should more often be required to repay their victims. There should be better protection for whistleblowers, heavy fines, and forced retirement of an executive from a business upon conviction of serious criminal activity. Lawyers can lose their license when convicted of a felony; the same standard should apply to business executives.
Ralph Nader suggested, repeatedly offending corporations should be fined, lose government contracts, and lose the right to take part in public debate, such as appearing before Congress or lobbying bills. Currently, FBI reports ignore corporate crimes, such as financial fraud and occupational homicide. According to the FBI, about 24,000 people are murdered each year, but 56,000 people die from work-related diseases and accidents. Repeat offenders should be targeted to create more corporate accountability. Such corporations should be forced to sell a unit that continues to violate the law, lose the right to hold certain licenses as in the media, or lose their charter to exist. However, prosecutors often won't prosecute corporations. 18
The law today is used to force compliance to the values of the corporate elite. Corporations often dominate legislatures, preventing laws that would hold businesses accountable or improve safety precautions. When new bills are presented intense lobbying by businesses weakens them. Politicians are afraid to antagonize businesses because of a need for campaign donations, and there is a cultural homogeneity among legislators, judges, and administrators with businessmen. Lax standards towards corporations also exist partly because of biased news coverage. Corporations now define what is right and wrong in our society because they control the media. The norm has become the morality of corporate manufactured news.
People convicted of minor crimes like using marijuana often receive harsh sentences while corporate felons that kill people get no prison time. The public is less resentful towards corporate crimes then direct violent crimes. There are today two justice systems in America—one for individuals and another for corporations. Jail for corporate executives would be a strong deterrent to criminal activities. Just as the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving awakened the public conscience to punish drunk driving, we need to take a much more serious look at corporate criminal activity especially when people are seriously injured and killed.
A classic example of how the federal government bends to the will of business today is the regulation of the meat and poultry industries. Each year at least 6.5 million Americans, and possibly many more, get ill from eating chickens. At least 1,000 people die, with children and the elderly especially at risk. The figure is much higher when you add the illnesses from eating diseased meat. Yet government inspection of the meat and poultry industries has changed little in this century, despite the fact that there now exists more sophisticated methods to inspect food that a few businesses and some European countries now use. The problem is that American meat and poultry industries did not want tighter inspection standards and they are powerfully connected politically. In the fall of 1994 Agriculture Secretary Mike Espry was forced to resign because of “gifts” he had accepted from the poultry industry, and only in early 1995 did the Clinton regime finally agree to establish improved standards of meat and poultry inspection. 19
On October 27, 1994 after three years of denial Prudential Securities finally admitted that it had broken the law by selling limited partnerships in the 1980s. Over 120,000 people suffered losses in this criminal operation. Prudential Securities paid a $330 million fine to conclude criminal charges, and last year it paid $371 million in fines to federal and state regulators to settle civil charges. Although many people suffered and the fines were quite high, no one involved in this scam went to prison. Corporations can do just about anything, yet they are above the law when it comes to serving time in jail. 20
Businesses complain about federal legislation, but they often hide behind the federal government to block state laws they dislike. Business groups want to keep decision making focused at the federal level, where they have a better opportunity to control the outcome. While corporations now control both national political parties, some state governments have become more responsive to the people. From Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development to Industrial Areas Foundation in Texas, many community groups have formed.
The Republican party is trying to federalize laws dealing with negligence and product liability. Again businesses will be able to hide behind the federal government. This needed reform should be done by the states. Federal laws now prevent state and local authorities from taking legal action against deceptive advertising by the airline industry. Only the U.S. Department of Transportation can regulate this area. The result is that the airlines are among the worst abusers of false advertising in the nation, and the federal government will do almost nothing about this. The airlines hide behind the federal government, while the people are cheated.
Typically industry agrees to weaker federal standards if that frees them from stricter state rules. In 1994 banks got new interstate banking laws that overrode state limits on bank branches. Automobile manufacturers have fought to have federal laws replace stricter state standards on issues like auto emissions. When Vermont passed a law requiring credit reporting firms to automatically provide free annual credit reports, banks and consumer lenders worked to get a weaker federal law that would preempt this state law. Under the Constitution, the laws of Congress take precedent over state law, but traditionally Congress usually acted when the states hadn't acted, not to supersede state law. In recent years, this has changed. By 1988, 350 federal preemption laws had passed with 225 of them passed in the last 30 years. Powerful corporate lobbying groups are negating the wishes of people expressed on the state and local levels. Large corporations also turn to the government to avoid the risks of the market, as in defense procurement or public utility regulation.
There is growing anger at the federal government for protecting corporations with preemption laws. New York is trying to enforce its strict lemon car laws without federal interference as car manufacturers would like. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has established a Uniform Commercial Code to have consistent laws for interstate commerce with less federal interference. 21 If state laws offer consumers more protection, such laws should not be preempted. Federal preemption laws should be used only to protect individual rights.
Billions of tax dollars go to farm subsidies, defense contractors, and mining companies each year. The Cato Institute found that almost every Fortune 500 company gets some form of corporate welfare from the federal government. McDonalds has received $1 million and Tyson Foods $11 million for foreign advertising. The Progressive Policy Institute listed corporate tax breaks over five years including $5.9 billion for expanding intangible drilling costs for oil and gas, $5.7 billion tax credits for non-conventional fuels, $5.3 billion tax-exempt, private-purpose revenue bonds, and a $1.7 billion exemption for credit-union income. In the past 10 years up to 1994, $149 billion in farm subsidies was paid out. In Kansas the average farmer received $20,000 to $40,000 a year. In a recent period 50 percent of farmers' aid went to the wealthiest one percent of the farmers. Over $55 billion a year is spent on corporate welfare. Many of these businesses are highly profitable. The Democratic Leadership Council and the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a long list of corporate welfare programs that could save hundreds of billions of dollars. People are increasingly contemptuous of the federal government, partly because it created a welfare state for corporations while giving people the bill. 22
The classic example of how nothing has really changed is the passage of the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act by Congress in 1996. According to the press this would finally cut farm subsidies, but this is a lie. Under the just-ended formula, because farm prices are so high, government welfare to farms would have dropped sharply. Instead, with aid separated from crop prices, farm aid will increase. Read James Bovard article in Barron's to appreciate how this bill protects the corporations. 23
While reducing government welfare payments to people, the 10 point Republican Contract With America did little to reduce corporate welfare. Despite many promises, Congress barely cut corporate welfare. 24 Much corporate welfare originated with the Democratic party, especially during the New Deal and the Great Society. When the Republicans made some proposals to cut corporate welfare, Clinton rejected such efforts. Perhaps one day the labor unions will wake up and realize that neither party represents their interests. Despite all the rhetoric, some corporate welfare has actually increased. The Agriculture Department is spending $110 million to advertise U.S. products overseas which is 30 percent over 1995. Clinton recommended increasing corporate aid by four percent.25 Important consumer protections are being gutted, such as consumer protections against fraudulent financial advisors, while New Deal bank protections and the 1991 Truth in Savings Act may soon end. 26
The book, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes, shows how unfair our tax structure has become. Taxes on corporations have dropped sharply, while taxes on the middle class have risen precipitously. Before, the government taxed the rich. Now, it borrows money from them and pays interest. A General Accounting Office (GAO) study in 1993 said that 40 percent of the corporations doing business in the U.S. with assets of $250 million or more paid income taxes under $100,000 or paid no income tax at all. Another GOA study revealed that 34 percent of all corporations in the U.S. with assets over $100 million paid no income tax in 1989. During the 1950s, corporations in the U.S. paid 23 percent of all federal income taxes. By 1991 this had dropped to 9.2 percent, while the corporate share of state and local taxes stayed about what it was in 1965. 27 In 1945 corporations paid 50 percent of all federal tax revenue; now they pay about seven percent.
The concentration of corporate power in the hands of fewer people has led not only to great economic inequality in income but also to increased control over the work place. It is now harder for workers to organize unions; the company can close and move overseas. The social safety net has been weakened, and it is much harder to attain a good job, food, and housing. There is also more employer surveillance and regulation of employees. Workers, like the serfs of old, are expected to be devoted to a company. Requiring employers to provide benefits like health insurance also increases the protector-dependent relationship. Workers are pressured to be more servile and to snitch on coworkers. Management at the Mazda plant in Flat Rock, Michigan said the workers belong to the company, they don't work for the firm. Workers were pressured to wear Mazda caps. 28
In recent years companies have sued people who publicly opposed corporate projects. Litigation is an effective means to keep citizens from complaining. 29 Peter Montague, an environmental reporter, alleged that a report on dioxin filed by a Monsanto Chemical Co. scientist was fraudulent in methodology and use of data. That scientist is now suing Montague. Once the suit was initiated, press coverage of this alleged corporate fraud ceased. 30
Corporations are increasingly suing or threatening to sue the media. Philip Morris Co. sued ABC for a story on Day One about nicotine in cigarettes. In July, 1994 the Health Care Reform Project, a group of organizations supporting Clinton's health-care reforms, held a news conference and stated that Pizza Hut paid for health insurance for its Japanese and German workers but not for its U.S. workers. Pizza Hut said this was libelous, so four television stations in Washington, D.C. refused to air the story. In early 1994 a reporter for KMOL-TV in San Antonio refused to retract a story that a local business objected to. He was fired. 31 As a result of these suits, California and New York passed laws blocking such corporate suits, and these corporate suits were ruled illegal by the Colorado Supreme Court. 32
Another way in which millions of Americans are suffering from the power of Wall Street is in the derivatives boom. The bankruptcy of Orange County is hardly unique. Many governments and thousands of individuals lost huge sums of money to Wall Street, because the investment banks were allowed to present these complex investment instruments without explaining what was being sold.
Corporations today finance a counterrevolution of ideas to replace political parties and vigilant citizens as the key source of ideas. Corporate-sponsored think tanks increasingly provide expert opinion for government officials and the national media. Dissenting voices rarely speak in the national media. 33 Progressives, like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal, have generally been banned from the national media for years, and now, except for a brief period after the Oklahoma bombing, members of the Patriot movement are also denied access to the national media.
Workers are being pressured to support a company's political goals. In mid-August, 1994 IBM used E mail to 'advise' its employees about how to vote on health care reform. Citizens should be able to vote as they want without corporate pressure. Hundreds of corporate political organizations now organize the agenda and provide the financing that overwhelms the voice of the people. Business political-action committees replaced labor as the largest source of campaign money by the early 1980s. In 1974, labor unions accounted for half of all PAC money; by 1980, they accounted for under one fourth. Corporations have the money to pass laws and follow the regulatory agencies, while private citizens and labor groups cannot match this funding. Corporations have the financial resources needed in our new economic democracy.
Despite the fact that the 1992 election represented the first time since 1981 that the Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, labor achieved none of its goals. Yet many pro-business goals were achieved such as NAFTA and the blocking of health reform. According to the National Library of Politics and Money, in the 1992 election, business groups donated $50.7 million of the $88 million that went to Democratic candidates. Today, the Democratic party represents business interests much more than it does labor. 34
Today, corporations also dominate our culture. “Much of the nation's physical space, outdoors and indoors, is now a private preserve, carrying the messages and culture of the corporations that dominate economic and political life.” 35 The book, Market Madness, provides suggestions to overcome the incessant marketing ads that we constantly face. Ads promote cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and junk food which damage our health, while violence on TV promotes crime and a value system alien to our heritage. Sporting events are surrounded by corporate images. Shopping addiction is a 20th century disease.
“Not only through propaganda and socialization but also through 'good works,' or the appearance of such, do capitalists achieve hegemonic legitimacy. The ruthless industrialist becomes the generous philanthropist....The primary goal of capitalist cultural dominance is not to provide us with nice concerts and museums but to give capitalism's exploitative reality a providential appearance, so that people learn not only to accept, but to admire and appreciate, the leadership and stewardship of the owning class....” 36 People in television and artists in many fields often cannot promote their views or artistic creations if it goes against the corporate view. Libraries, theaters, and performing arts centers are increasingly under corporate control because of the need for money. Our culture and entertainment are increasingly determined by a small number of network executives and distributors. Museums have become “public relations agents for the interests of big business and its ideological allies.” 37
Corporate amusement parks like Disneyland and Sea World and the shopping mall culture are now the norm of society. The town square, as a center for gathering and shopping, has been replaced by the corporate-owned mall. Various court decisions support mall owners' right to prevent distribution of material. Political expression is often banned. In 1985 a New York Appeals Court held that a mall owner could ban political leaflets saying the state's Bill of Rights “governed the rights of citizens with respect to their government and not the rights of private individuals against private individuals.” To this court, a corporation can violate any of our civil rights and the law offers no protection. A dissenting judge protested: “In the past, those who had ideas they wished to communicate to the public had the unquestioned right to disseminate those ideas in the open marketplace. Now that the marketplace has a roof over it, and is called a mall, we should not abridge that right.” 38 New Jersey and several other states have given limited rights to protest in privately owned malls. 39
Corporate propaganda has for decades infiltrated the schools which need money. Schools put ads on buses and broadcast music with commercials, while businesses provide free supplies with ads. Teachers have lost control over the curriculum, and it is hard for students to differentiate between education and advertising. Channel One television with corporate ads now reaches 350,000 classrooms. 40 Corporations and foundations “have altered academic priorities, reduced the importance of teaching, degraded the integrity of academic journals, and determined what research is conducted at universities. The social costs of this influence have been lower-quality education, a reduction in academic freedom, and a covert transfer of resources from the public to the private sector.” 41 Universities and nonprofit organizations provide special services and trained personnel for the corporations. Covert Action said scientific research is for sale to corporate money. 42 Corporate controlled science is confusing the public and influencing the politicians. 43 The cost of higher education rose 170 percent in the past decade, but this is being used to subsidize corporate influence in the universities. Corporate research is more important than teaching as corporate-funded think tanks, endowed chairs, consulting jobs, and research grants become the norm at universities.
Children have become addicted to TV, junk food, and pop music while family interaction and control is increasingly subverted by corporate entertainment. Children are taught to become good corporate citizens by learning to consume, while both parents are forced to work away from the home because incomes keep falling. As wages dropped in the early 1970s, women went to work and the size of families shrank. The deliberate weakening of the family and the sense of community has made it easier to gradually introduce a new system of values that moves our society away from traditional values to suit the needs of corporate America and the new world order.
Even our religious and patriotic holidays have been desecrated by the corporations. Corporations have methodically worked for decades to influence the churches. 44 Christmas has become a contest to see who can buy and sell the most. The love of Christ has become incidental. Lincoln and Washington's birthdays have become Presidents Day, which has become a contest to find the best furniture deals. The Statute of Liberty is now used in a TV ad to sell cars. None of our cultural heritage is safe from the corporate onslaught.
More recently, corporate greed has infected medicine as HMOs interfere with the rights and judgments of doctors and patients. Doctors often have to get permission from accountants before they can recommend expensive treatments. A patient's health is determined by the all-powerful dollar. 45
“The diminution of public expression and influence that can be found is not the consequence of a decline in national creativity or some other organic disability. It is the result of deliberate and successful efforts to reduce, even eliminate, the public realm in favor of the corporate sector....The corporate envelopment of public expression and creativity has been a direct outgrowth of the enormous expansion of corporate wealth and power in the postwar decades....The phenomenal growth of American capitalism in the years after 1945 helps to explain the deep penetration of corporate values and influence in American politics, law, education, culture, and life overall.” The corporations also led the way into international alliances which were never a part of our history. 46
“The drive to privatize and bring under corporate management as many elements of economic and social activity as possible in the last half century has tipped the balance of democratic existence to an uncomfortable precariousness ....There is no assurance that the corporate governors in America are inoculated against the fascist (strong state) solution to a politically threatening crisis.” There has been “the erosion of democratic principle and practice in the informational cultural sphere. Given this weakening of the national democratic fabric, the advent of the coercive state is hardly precluded.” 47
Various political commentators have warned that unlimited and unaccountable corporate power is not compatible with our traditions of constitutional government. The Founders understood that each class would press for too much power,so institutional checks were necessary to balance the various segments of society. Madison said the diffusion of power among a multiplicity of factions helped guarantee that no one special interest group could ever gain control of the federal government to control the rest of society. Different groups counterbalanced each other. Madison and Hamilton were especially influenced by Montesquieu's and Aquinas' notion of separating and dividing powers throughout society. The Founders feared concentrated economic power, so only 40 corporations were charted when our Republic was established. Just as the shared power between the states and federal government has been broken by the dangerous growth of federal power, the corporate elite have now gained so much power that the counterbalancing power of other interest groups is not sufficient. Pluralism, the interaction of conflicting interest groups, no longer works. You cannot have a free society when one segment of society becomes so dominant, and we cannot depend on the federal government to be a balancing arbitrator. This is the heart of our predicament.
The traditional pluralist model of many different groups and citizens actively involved in politics presenting a counterbalance to each other is no longer valid in corporate-controlled America. “A substantial part of government in the U.S. has come under the influence or control of narrowly based and largely autonomous elites....The distinction between the public and the private...has been compromised far more deeply than we like to acknowledge....The very idea of constitutionalism sometimes seems to be placed in question.” 48
“Today's emerging tyranny emanates from a New King, from a nonliving power center composed at its core of monolithic corporate entities encased and protected by endless layers of government bureaucracies....The New King's principal means of control is the media that sells us the myths of freedom....A New King was crowned when we capitulated to a regime that was no longer sensitive to people but to non-people—to corporations, to money, and to power.” 49
“The growth of corporate...enterprise has produced a social milieu in which individual liberties or freedoms are not highly valued....” There has taken place “a constitutional change of the greatest magnitude—the fusion of economic and political power into the corporate state, American style....In the corporate state, control by the citizenry is not possible. Nor...is control of the apparatus of the state by legislative organs....Legislators act less as a check on the bureaucracy than as a part of the decisional process. In so doing, they do not represent the citizens of the nation.” They represent various interest groups. “The elite has never been reluctant to use violence when considered necessary to stamp out threats, internal or external.” Attacks on the labor movement have certainly demonstrated this. If full repression takes hold in America, it will be announced under the banner of freedom. Huey Long once said if fascism is ever introduced into America it will be used in the name of anti-fascism. 50
“The new partnership (between government and business) is emerging at the same time that a vast conglomerate merger movement concentrates a larger portion of our national wealth in the hands of a smaller group of corporations. The two forces accentuate each other, producing a unique brand of corporate state in which the government and private sectors threaten to coalesce in a way that could be antithetical to democracy itself. Countervailing forces—in industry, government, and even in organized labor—are meshing in power alliances that can signify the formation of an elitist group with the power to determine the course it wishes to follow quite independent of the customary processes of popular democratic participation.” 51 Calvin Coolidge once said: “The business of government is business.”
Many large corporations have laid off thousands of workers despite the growth of profits and sales. 52 High unemployment is now accepted as the norm because the corporate controlled press tells us this is acceptable. Millions of Americans have been forced to accept low-paying jobs. The percent of Americans working for Fortune 500 companies has dropped from over 20 percent of non-farm employees in 1973 to half that in 1994. It remains to be seen if the political influence of these corporations will also drop as they abandon America.
There is too much centralized and unchecked corporate power today for any Republic to survive, especially if the people are to have a voice in government. Every modern industrial society must learn to control the power of the large corporations and still protect the rights of its workers. During the New Deal many felt that a large federal government would resolve this problem. Recently Arthur Schlesingler, Jr. warned that to weaken the federal government will not return power to the people, but will instead transfer power to the large corporations. 53 Liberals such as John Kenneth Galbraith, in American Capitalism: The Theory of Countervailing Power, said competing corporations balanced each other. In past years many felt the labor unions were a counterbalance to big business, but that clearly is also not true.
To restore competition many large banks and conglomerates should be broken up with stronger regulation and antitrust laws; otherwise, political intrigue against our government and way of life will continue. Tighter rules should be established to limit the ability of ex-government officials to work for corporations, especially as lobbyists, while government regulations that weaken labor unions should be removed. Restoring state sovereignty and having the states work together would weaken corporate power, because the corporations would then have to work with 51 governments instead of one central government which they now dominate. The federal government must not be allowed to continue as a vehicle to expand corporate control over our lives.
Investor activism and boycotts to influence corporate policy are constructive. People from labor, environment, minorities, and local communities should be on the boards of large corporations, and employee ownership, as with United Airlines, is helpful. By the 1970s, seven European countries required employees to be on corporate boards. This has resulted in less labor trouble, improved productivity, and generally has not limited corporate profits. Such a policy should be required by law in the U.S. Corporations must be made accountable to the community and workers and not just to stockholders. The huge sums of money in pension funds should be used to support the infrastructure and community investment and should not be used for leveraged corporate buyouts and mergers. Some stockholder rights and profits should be transferred to workers, and society should insist that corporations remain out of the political arena.
As long as there was not too much government interference in people's daily lives and living standards continued to rise, people believed, as the media assured us, that the corporate elite believed in the political values that have been the basis of our constitutional government. Except during the populist era and the great depression, people weren't loo concerned about growing corporate power. Today, this has changed and more people are very concerned about how the corporations and banks dominate politics and all aspects of society.
The goal of corporations is to make money not to enrich the ethical, cultural, and social fabric of society. Recently various groups have formed to curtail corporate power. Some want to require federal corporate charters to have minimum standards of corporate conduct. That path would further enhance federal and corporate power. Instead the Constitution's commerce clause should be used to require minimum standards that states must meet when they charter a corporation involved in interstate commerce. The Boston-based Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy wants to again require limited corporate charters, reestablish the people's control over corporations, and remove corporate constitutional rights. In extreme cases, when a corporation repeatedly violates the law, as recently happened with a Japanese bank in New York, its right to exist should be revoked as was often done in the past. Once again corporations must prove that they exist to serve the public welfare. 54
C. Wright Mills spent many years studying the “power elite” in America concluding that the corporate elite make the key political decisions while political parties occupy a secondary middle level. 55 The corporate elite represent a private economic and political power that is unaccountable to the people. Since the 1994 election it has been understood that the American people want less federal government control. In time it will be equally understood that the people are also tired of being controlled by large corporations, as is increasingly happening in the new world order.
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Rise of the Transnational Corporations
footnotes page 279@
http://www.metaphysicspirit.com/books/Treason%20-%20The%20New%20World%20Order.pdf
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