Corporate Rule and Wars for Oil

Corporations are a threat to democracy! In fact, they are THE THREAT to democracy. (Of course, by ‘democracy’ I mean the Trotsky version rather than the less legitimate and historically American DeTocqueville variant.)

Demonizing the corporation is a basic tenet of the left's ideology. From fighting new Walmart locations to proposing windfall profit taxes on Big Oil, (ironically as punishment for high gasoline prices), to revoking the laws of incorporation themselves, the left sees busineses and corporations as nefarious enterprises which are hurting people and usurping the role of government.

On one level, it's that corporations are in fact making the fundamental decisions that shape our society. They determine essentially what work we do, which technologies get developed, which production methods are used as opposed to other productions methods. They are constantly pushing the concept that production has to expand, and from that comes wealth, liberty and freedom. Most of the decisions that they make are essentially beyond the public's ability to interfere with. They have increasingly, through the law, got their decision-making to be declared private property. ~Challenging Corporate Power, Richard Grossman

So then, the government should be deciding what work we do and what products are developed?!

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to me. Virtually every liberal issue finds some justification rooted in this simple premise. It is the prism through which every liberal issue is viewed.

Even the War on Terror and the War in Iraq for instance, what is it but a corporate war for oil? Amazing isn't it? Despite the fact that if we wanted more oil from Saddam we would have had sanctions removed.

Thou shalt not covet

The truth is that the left covets corporate power. To the left, private power is rival power. Don't doubt that this does not trickle down to individual power and rights as well. It is not incorporation that is at stake here, but liberty. The left sees business as a competitor to their hallowed institutions. When your ultimate goal is for government to be the provider of nearly everything it is inconvenient for people to be able to get it on their own. Hence the more that business provides the less reason there is for government to provide those very same things.

Giant corporations govern. In the Constitution of the United States they are delegated no authority to make our laws and define our culture. Corporations have no constitutions, no bills of rights. So when corporations govern, democracy flies out the door. ~Challenging Corporate Power, Richard Grossman

Is money corrupting politics?

A good example of the kind of 'campaign finance reform' that the true believers would like to see enacted everywhere in order to 'restore democracy' and 'stop the corporate corruption of our electoral process' is the the passage of Humboldt County's Measure T in California's June 2006 election.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Voters in Humboldt County, California, passed Measure T, an innovative ballot initiative repealing the legal status of corporations as 'persons', limiting corporate influence on politics... ~Green Party

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But the county's Measure T, on the ballot Tuesday, would carry more weight than a stern municipal harrumph. If it passes and then survives an almost inevitable legal challenge, it would bar donations to local candidates or initiatives by any out-of-town corporation.

That would cover almost all of the world's companies. As defined in the measure, a "non local" corporation is one with even a single employee, director or shareholder outside the county. However, the measure would allow labor unions with just one Humboldt County member to donate freely. ktla news

 

Yes, you heard right. Corporate money bad. Union money good. I wonder why they don't mind out-of-county Union money corrupting the political process in local elections?

Another reason our democracy is having a difficult time right now is because of the influence of money in our political process. People watch the process from afar, and they see the special tax breaks & loopholes that special interests are able to obtain.

Our founders feared that economic power would one day seize political power. Frankly, that fear has been realized with the Bush administration. The largest corporations and wealthiest individuals benefit from tax cuts that are bankrupting the states. They reward the largest political contributors at the expense of today's middle class, whose property taxes are skyrocketing.

Meanwhile, the oil companies write our energy policy, big pharmaceutical companies draft Medicare reform; and Halliburton is awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq. It is a government of, by, and for the special interests. The only way the American people are included in the process is that we are left to pay the hills.

issues200.com, Source: Winning Back America, by Howard Dean, p.123-4 Dec 3, 2003

 

Is there any doubt about the true agenda of this crowd? Try using the terms proletariat and bourgeoisie, it clarifies things greatly.

[H]egemonic Word count: 822

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