TOWARDS A MORE PERFECT BANANA REPUBLIC

Large corporations owned by the super rich receive government benefits and subsidies that make social welfare programs look like a pittance. Corporate welfare is dispensed in the form of inordinately cheap grazing rights, mineral and timber rights, infrastructure investments, agricultural price supports, and other forms of government largess paid by American taxpayers. Thus, Government works to advance corporate interests and lavishes huge subsidies and concessions on all fronts.

Recently, we have witnessed massive transfers of the nation’s wealth on bailouts and the funneling of trillions in taxpayer dollars to prop up corrupt and/or incompetent businesses while wage-earning citizens see their fortunes decline. Globalization has resulted in trade deals and other concessions that make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate world economies without having any obligation to the people of those nations. Globalization allows American corporations to evade environmental protection and labor laws by outsourcing jobs, manufacturing, and capital to overseas markets. As a consequence, our domestic labor force is coerced into making grim compromises.

Since the first federal income tax was started a century ago, there has always been a progressive tax policy, which treats various income groups according to their ability to pay. Every administration since Theodore Roosevelt, and every Western democracy, practices some form of progressive income taxation. Yet, conservatives attack progressive taxation as 'socialism,' 'communism,' or some Marxist plot. This attitude is best exemplified in the 1992 acceptance speech of Dan Quayle, who asked: “Why should the best people [my bold] be punished?”

Conservative tax initiatives from Reagan to Bush have resulted in massive redistributions of wealth from the middle class to the super-rich, the true centers of economic and political power in America today. The Result? Ten percent of our wealthiest citizens control 75% of the nation’s wealth. To rephrase this another way, 90% of the population shares a mere 25% of the nation’s wealth. Thus, three decades of conservative economic policies have created the world’s largest Banana Republic.

Meanwhile, the corporate PR consultants of K Street and their news media play a central role in providing the “necessary illusions” that make this system appear fair and democratic.  Bullshit in extremis!

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling confers full personhood to these same corporations and removes the last remaining restriction on corporate money in our political life.  If the patient were critically ill before this ruling, the situation has turned terminal.

Time to face facts: Democracy in America is dead. Elections are mere window dressing to mask the fact that Corporate America holds real power in Washington and controls every facet of American life. However, we need not accept this erosion of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; or wait for legislative fixes from a broken government forever mired in Grand Obstructive Partisanship. We must take the initiative and take charge.  Consider this post as a ...


CITIZEN CALL TO ARMS

Move your money from Wall Street to Main Street;

Make a list of corporate bad actors and
their Rhymer Wormtongues in Congress;

Vote with your consumer dollars -
Boycott corporations that abuse the system;

Write letters -
Badger your Congressional representatives.

Here is my partial list of ...

CORPORATE BAD ACTORS
Addidas, Aetna, AIG, Altria Group, Bank of America, Amway/Alticor, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Bristol-Myers Squib, British Petroleum, British American Tobacco, Capital One, Chevron, Cigna, Citigroup, CIT Group, Conseco, Disney, Exxon Mobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Humana, Imperial Tobacco, JPMorgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, Koch Industries, Lockheed Martin, Minerals Management Service, MBNA Corp., McDonalds, Microsoft, Monsanto, Morgan Stanley, Philip Morris, Nike, Northrop Grumman, Pfizer, Premera, Reynolds American, Shell, TIAA-CREF, Union Pacific, UnitedHealth Group, US Bancorp, Verizon, Wal-Mart, Wellpoint, Wells Fargo

Why wait for the Empire to strike back? If you can think of other strategies to counteract this looming menace, please speak up. Any other suggestions?

Recommended reading:

With this post, I am fulfilling a promise made to Southern Beale several weeks ago. The discussion started here and continued over a series of posts ending here.

The Ideology That Screwed The World, Part 1 and Part 2.

The failure of trickle down.

Elizabeth Warren, America Without a Middle Class.