Couple of interesting articles on the web today about the corporate takeover of our government. First, Chris Hedges post on Truthdig, The Corporate State Wins Again (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_corporate_state_wins_again_20110425/) discusses how and when the corporate takeover of our political system began. It is definitely worth a read. The second article is from Fast Company and discusses how the USDA is going to allow Monsanto to conduct the environmental impact studies for it’s GMO crops (http://www.fastcompany.com/1749695/monsanto-now-allowed-to-police-itself). Both of these articles point to how corporations work their way into the governmental system. Corporation and their lobbyists have gone from lobbying politicians to writing legislation to actual regulating their own products. The state is being taken over slowly and insidiously by the corporate sector. We need to wake up and realize that what is put before us in elections as a choice between Democrats and Republicans is now just political theater. The choice is false and nonexistent.
Corporations are doing what they are designed to do. They are trying to maximize profits and one way to do that is to be able to use the environment as a free input and reduce their labor costs. The problem is that this hurts the worker and the citizen. It creates external costs that we all pay collectively as poverty and pollution. Which is why we are suppose to have a collective body to protect society and move us toward a more socially efficient point. But if you look at actions of our collective body, government, today it becomes apparent who they are actually working for and it is no longer the citizenry. Case in point, John Boehner can’t decide if he is for or against oil subsidies. He voted for maintaining the subsidies less than two months ago but came out yesterday with a statement that these subsidies need to be on the table and possibly cut and then his spokesperson released a statement that Boehner doesn’t support doing away with the subsidies. This is political theater where politicians have to appear to be working for the “people” while protecting those that they actually work for, corporations. It is insane that as the big oil companies are raking in record profits they are also receiving subsidies (negative taxes) from the taxpayers of this country.
Will the free market give you products to buy as a consumer? Yes, it will and probably more choices than you actually need. But what it will not give you is a clean environment, a living wage, a safe job, vacations and weekends, an educated populous, a childhood or a retirement. These are things that must be demanded and taken by a collective body. To protect these things we need to realize that under threat and will be taken from us under the “Of, for and by the Corporation”. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to live under this flag!
mad political economist 