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Edited on Mon Jan-01-07 06:06 PM by Peace Patriot
are granted by individual states).
1. Busting monopolies
One of the stories of the development of progressive government in the US is the tradition of "trust-busting"--the struggle against over-powerful monopolies. Some people say capitalism itself is the cause of unending woes--especially right now--but it's more the monopolistic practices of corporations that are in fact PREVENTING any kind of real "free trade." Giants like Barnes & Noble, or Office Depot, move into town--and bang, the three little book stores with personal service and their walls lined with cheap second hand books, or the local stationary store, go out of business. Thus, customers have no choices, and the presumed functions of the "free market" (for instance, customer choice of personal service) cannot operate. Choice is PREVENTED by the bigness and power of the monopoly--which, for instance, can absorb losses over a long period of time--and undercut the local prices--in order to drive the competition out, and gain sole control over the market. And that's when they start cutting jobs and services, and raising prices.
The classic example is the railroad barons of the late 1800s/early 20th century, which resulted in a Repub, Teddy Roosevelt's campaign against monopolies ("speak softly and carry a big stick"), and also in populist movements in California and elsewhere. The railroad barons greatly abused the power they acquired from government favors and lack of government action to prevent their large monopolistic control of both rail service and large tracts of land.
Let me put it this way: Corporations are ANTI-capitalist, and you could even say UN-American. The liberal ("laissez faire") philosophy of capitalism was based on COMPETITION--a truly free and open market, in which the best products and best services succeed because they are the best. I remember when you drove into a gas station and FOUR gas station attendants immediately surrounded you with love and care--cleaning your windshields, checking your oil, checking your tires, filling your gas tank and offering you bonuses (a set of cookware, for instance) for choosing their gas station. With the giant monopolies in the oil industry--their control of both the product and the retailing, also collusion among them on prices, and the top investors and CEOS ripping off the bulk of the profits--personal service has ended. They DON'T HAVE TO please customers. And they feel ZERO responsibility to provide local jobs, provide decent salaries and benefits, and to contribute in any way to the good of the community they are selling gas to. In fact, they greedily price gouge, and pollute--and use their enormous power to prevent any reform. And now these gigantic, monopolistic powers own...I don't know, maybe a fifth of the ag land in California, and were behind a bad initiative (Prop 13), which was sold as a law to prevent old people from losing their homes due to increasing property taxes, but was in truth a measure to exempt the OIL COMPANIES from land taxes.
Some feel that corporate monopolies have so egregiously abused the capitalistic system that the system is irredeemable. Indeed, the monopolistic/capitalistic system--a system of global corporate predation--is now killing the very planet we all live on, and killing it very fast. (World Wildlife Fund gives the planet 50 years--50 years to the DEATH of the planet!--at present levels of pollution and consumption.) Their greed and their mindless pursuit of profit are entirely out of control. And think about this: Why were the corporatists in the US so bent upon achieving non-transparent elections here, by the fast-tracking of electronic voting run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations?
I think the answer is obvious. We, the (theoretically) sovereign people of the US, have the power to pull their corporate charters, and/or to bust their monopolies, and/or to regulate them and force them to provide true public service in exchange for the PRIVILEGE of doing business here. Which brings me to the second point...
2. Pulling corporate charters (which are granted by individual states).
Thomas Jefferson was extremely worried about the potential power of business consortiums and monopolies, but he was equally concerned about preventing the central government from acquiring too much power (model of King George III and much of Europe--centralized power leads to tyranny). In the arguments between the federalists (more centralized power) and the states' rightists (more dispersed power), he yielded to the latter on corporate monopolies, and believed that the dispersed power of the states (closer to the people) was a better check and balance on corporate power. So, in the US, only the individual states can charter corporations. Many of them are chartered in New Jersey--no doubt because of its lax laws on what is required of the corporation (i.e., public good) for that license to do business. And federal law has colluded to make these charters good across state borders--so that, say, the people in California have no power over the chartering of a big corporation in New Jersey, which is then free to operate in all states including California, and whatever registering/licensing rules or other regulations there are, beyond the basic charter, have also become lax everywhere. And, as corporations have grown more and more wealthy and powerful--and especially with the Supreme Court marginal note that gave them perpetual life--there is no political will to curtail them--to pull their charters, dismantle them, deprive them of eternal life, deny them rights of an individual, regulate them, seize their assets for the common good, etc. Politicians are bought off. Curtailing private business corporations is COMMON SENSE. Outsourcing jobs, destroying a country's natural resources, dictating its taxation and other laws--even kings did not put up with this. And we, the sovereigns of THIS country, should not either. It is nuts--suicidal, self-destructive--not to regulate big business and keep corporations on a short leash.
Congress, which is OUR specific actor in the federal government--the peoples' forum and lawmaker--represents our SOVEREIGN power as a people. And they have been bought off by the corporations. The president, who should be fulfilling the ancient role of the executive--the king, protector of the land (also protector of the people against lawless rich land barons and others)--has similarly been bought off. No one who does not support massive Corporate Power can even be nominated or elected president. Clinton was a major destroyer of our sovereignty (simply gave away our powers to regulate business, in NAFTA and other trade deals). But Bush takes the cake--the Corporate Rulers, and the war profiteers in particular, directly control him. This is a very upside down/backwards situation. You wonder why so much of the blather that comes out of Washington DC sounds like the Red Queen, in "Alice in Wonderland," ordering the white roses to be painted red? Nuts, in other words. This is why. We, the people, who are supposedly the sovereigns of this land and are entitled to benefit from its resources, with the government as our SERVANT, no longer matter. The Bush Junta doesn't have to care what we think. The Corporations--now, with their TRADE SECRET vote counting--put them there, and keep them there. The People no longer have any say over policy--and, even with the huge Democratic victory in Congress in November (a much bigger win than was planned--the people outvoted the machines, in my opinion), we still can't seem to get OUR views implemented. 70% of the people in this country--70%!--oppose the Iraq War. How soon do YOU think we're going to be out of there, if ever? The war profiteering corporations are setting policy, and we have no say. These gigantic, monopolistic, taxpayer-leaching corporations must be brought back under public control!
How do we do it NOW--now that they have become, in essence, the Corporate Rulers--that is, now that they rule over us with not even the accountability of kings. They are monarchs without borders. They can shift operations and assets around the globe to avoid taxation and regulation, and also to seek out the cheapest labor markets and the most unprotected resources. And they've formed their own powerful, secretive, international organizations--the World Trade Organization, the World Bank/IMF, etc.--with which to enforce their rule in every country where they can get a rich elite to cooperate.
Well, that is the problem that hit home in South America before it hit home here. What THEY are doing is vast grass roots community organizing, AND--very important--serious long hard work on TRANSPARENT elections (by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU monitoring groups and local civic groups and activists). And they are electing leftist (majorityist) governments everywhere--Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador--with big movements also in Peru and Paraguay, and in southern Mexico and Mexico City. Also in central America, Daniel Ortega recently won the presidential election in Nicaragua. And the common themes of all of these governments and huge social movements is anti-neo-liberalism, i.e., anti-US global corporate predation. They are seeking self-determination, regional cooperation toward that end, control of their own natural resources for the benefit of the people who live there, and social justice (empowerment, participation of the vast poor population, at long last).
So one thing we could do is work on TRANSPARENT elections. And, once the vote counting is back in the public venue--and seeable--then we can start electing representatives who will implement other electoral reforms, primarily public financing of election campaigns --and getting rid of the utter pigsty of the campaign donation system, which is primarily for paying for highly expensive--and generally utterly uninformative--TV ads, with most political money pouring into the pockets of super-rich, war profiteering, corporate news monopolies. We need to secure transparent elections and take back our public airwaves for political debate! And then on to regulating and curtailing corporations--perhaps in joint efforts with countries like those mentioned above, and other like-minded leftist (majorityist) governments (Spain, Italy, Germany, South Korea).
It CAN be done! You want to know who the real culprit of the Iraq War is--the war profiteers! --and that includes the corporate news monopolies, as well as military contractors. This is the ultimate outrage of Corporate Rule--unjust, unnecessary, MANUFACTURED war for the purpose of profiteering off the deaths of US soldiers and hundreds of millions of innocent people! This outrage can motivate the needed changes, re: curtailment of corporate power. Outsourcing of our manufacturing capability and millions of jobs have also already stimulated resistance--towns that have resisted Wal-Marts, states (and universities) where anti-sweatshop movements are well under way, Democratic Congresspeople who are looking at rescinding NAFTA. However, the heart of the problem--corporate power, particularly BIG corporate power (multinational oil giants, etc.)--is not yet being addressed directly. We really need to attack them directly, and start looking into their very charters to do business here. And we need to "return to the days of yesteryear," and get out Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick" and start dismantling corporate monopolies.
You think this sounds far out? Well, how far out must it have sounded a decade or so ago, to Bolivians as Bechtel Corp. prepared to take over their water supply, or to Argentinians, whose economy and society was being ripped to shreds by World Bank/IMF policy, or to Venezuelans whose oil elite were pouring all profits from the country's oil into their own pockets with no benefit to anyone else--how must the ideas of grass roots rebellion, and clean elections, have sounded to these exploited people, brutally suppressed over decades and centuries? Somebody, somewhere, thought it wasn't so far out, and started spreading that idea and working on political empowerment of the majority.
Every one of these situations has been dramatically changed, and remedied, by peaceful democratic action. If the South Americans can do it, so can we. We live at the vortex of this evil, and special measures have been taken to propagandize us, to deny us essential information and, above all, to disenfranchise us. We need to know this--that there are reasons for our disempowerment which have nothing to do with our peoples' apathy or stupidity. In fact, I don't buy the "sheeple" argument at all, re: Americans. I think we are special case of disempowerment--a sort of "slow frog boil" disempowerment--and, once we start making those disempowerment measures conscious, we begin to overcome them--whether it's the apparent powerlessness of our vote, or the meaninglessness of the political drivel we hear on TV/radio, or the ugliness of the fascism in all media, and in the White House.
We can have a peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) revolution here, too.
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