God and Country
by PHIL JONES
Welcome to the United States of Corporate America. On January 21, 2010, a day that will live in infamy, five activist judges on the United States Supreme Court voted to allow corporations to directly support or oppose political candidates, and thus destroy the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. Those five – John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy – were all appointed by Republican presidents.
To give you a snapshot of what has happened here, consider this simple fact. Remember that extremely expensive presidential campaign we just finished? The one where the winner raised and spent more than double what the previous winner had raised and spent in 2004? If Exxon/Mobil were to spend just 2 percent of their corporate profits on the next presidential election, they would outspend both of the 2008 presidential candidates. And Exxon/Mobil is just one corporation.
Corporations have been given the status of citizens of the United States, but with one little catch. They have a lot more money than any private citizen, including Bill Gates. Oh wait, there’s one other little catch. Many of the most powerful are multinational, meaning they don’t necessarily care a flip about the United States of America, except as a means to an end. In the end, the only thing corporations care about is their quarterly profits.
The corporate takeover of the United States government means you will get all the health care reform the insurance companies want you to have. You will get all the banking reform Wall Street wants you to have. You will get all the climate change relief the oil companies want you to have. And so on.
Political candidates don’t need to raise money any more. Like country western singers, they can make it big, just by signing with a corporate sponsor. Or two. Or three. Corporations will soon own every member of Congress, on both sides of the ever more meaningless aisle. Every aspect of life will be politicized, right down to the products we buy at the grocery store.
But it’s much worse than just that, boys and girls. The corporations will soon be in control of the police and the military, including the entire U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. Once they get their hands on all that awesome firepower, you can count on them to use it in service of their own profit and the Free Market God they worship. Your sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, will be drafted to fight and die, and be maimed and mangled, for the greater glory of multinational corporations.
The Democrats have had about nine months do to something about this. They have done nothing, unless you count whining.
American democracy has been on life support for at least 18 years now. It has only a few breaths left. There are many corporations, and they are not yet working in concert. There will be fierce competition between them, and a round of mergers and acquisitions the likes of which has never been seen. For the first time in history, an entire country is at the disposal of private, profit-making entities – and not just any country, but the most powerful country on earth. It is a prize over which they will fight fiercely.
God save the United States of America from the corporate takeover that is closing in.
