(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
As you might have heard, our country just become the United Corporate Entities. Prepare to welcome president Exxon, Vice President Aetna, and Secretary Monsanto.
How bad is it? Well, let’s just follow the implications of this latest SCOTUS ruling to their logical conclusions.
Now that corporations can virtually appoint members of government at all levels, you, the taxpayer, may well become the guarantor of every international corporate scheme of thievery, thuggery, fraud and murder.
Corporations have no loyalty to any one country, let alone its citizens. They have no loyalty to ethics or values. They have to follow laws, but if they ARE the lawmakers, laws will serve corporations and only corporations. And given that we now have transnational corporations, our country isn’t just for sale to the highest American bidder, it’s for sale to the highest international bidder.
What are the bounds of this new “corporate freedom”? It was cute that Barney Frank on Rachel’s show last night suggested that Congress can regulate corporations in other ways. Unfortunately, any law passed now can be dragged before this corporatized Supreme Court. Second, how long, Barney, do you think it will take WalMart or Halliburton or Pharma or the Carlysle Group to replace you and every other populist-minded simpleton with their guy?
Didn’t like the bank bailouts? Those were just the beginning. Prepare to “bail out” Kraft and Blue Shield and Shell and Lockheed-Martin and the Mormon Church and the Vatican when they get frisky in the marketplace, or when board members accidentally “lose” billions of dollars.
This is the good news. The bad news is that Chinese companies can dump enough money into our system to elect Reps who will remove laws against feeding your kids lead and melamine, or even against warning you that they are eating it. Iranian companies can get their thugs to pass laws to force you to buy and subsidize Iranian oil. Hell, if bin Laden created a corporation with his Saudi oil ties, he can put his buddies in the very center of government and force taxpayers to bail out HIS operation!
Like your organic products? Tyson and Hormel can elect enough of their guys to draw enough of your tax money for their corporations to price you right out of your own garden. And that’s if they don’t dream up some “public health” rule to make it illegal for you to buy organic, local products, or to own and sell heirloom seeds. Your local co-op and Farmers’ Markets may soon be subject to FDA crackdowns.
Kiss every law regulating water quality, air quality, soil quality, food quality, product quality and safety, GOODBYE.
Yeah, I’m being melodramatic. Ten years ago it would have been melodramatic to suggest that GWB would institute torture and gulags and extraordinary rendition. The question is, what is to stop these corporations from doing ANYTHING they want? To ANYONE?
This is the kind of treason that impeachment of judges was made for. Unfortunately, the GOP sees this as a temporary cash cow, and right-wingers only and always think sort-term, in terms of what they can steal now.
This problem is bigger than ideology or party. We really need to get this message to anyone who will grab a torch and a pitchfork and put the brakes on this catastrophe before it’s impossible to reign in.
17 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
Maybe we start something along the lines of Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet’s investment company) that we sell shares in and use the money we raise to buy up shares of all the corporations who are corrupting the government and become majority shareholders so that we can dictate policy to them.
We should be able to sell shares all over the world in something like that, and raise enough money to…
how much worse does this ruling make things? I mean, it’s not like President Big Oil and Vice President Haliburton didn’t just do eight fun-filled years. We’ve already got a few secretaries and undersecretaries Monsanto in the ag and FDA/USDA sectors, a Secretary Goldman-Sachs, and so many Pharma shills coming and going through the revolving door that they and the insurance companies got to write their very own bailout – which, incidentally, will require by law (enforced by the IRS) American citizens to purchase particular corporate products that aren’t good for anything. My Blue Dog congresscritter racked up more money from insurers and big pharma in his first two years than any other congresscritter ever, over their entire careers! Guess where he stands on “Health Care Reform” (humorous mistitle). Why do you think the peoples’ supposed representatives are announcing in public that “Bankers own the place”?
Corporate Amerika (and their international divisions) already own our political system. And have been ‘influencing’ elections ever since I’ve been alive, probably longer. Ike warned us specifically of the MIC Beast way back, nobody ever did anything about it. They get us to wage wars for them, they decide who pays taxes and how much, they determine for us all whether or not we’ll be allowed to earn an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, whether or not we can avail ourselves of collective bargaining, how much of a pay cut we’ll have to take this year to keep execs in their golden parachutes.
All the SCOTUS did was recognize this, and remove the last of the minimal and easily circumvented ‘restrictions’ nobody ever enforced anyway. I don’t expect anything to change, though maybe the campaign ads might get just a bit more honest. “Vote for Georgie Tirebiter, the Industry candidate! More money for More Science High, more Shoes for Industry!”
Should at least be good for a laugh… ยง;o)
Might be time to dust those old words off and start using them again.