"Wherever it has emerged over
the past thirty-five years, from Santiago to Moscow to Beijing to Bush’s
Washington, the alliance between a small corporate elite and a right-wing
government has been written off as some sort of aberration—mafia capitalism,
oligarchy capitalism and now, under Bush “crony capitalism.” But it’s not an
aberration; it is where the entire Chicago School crusade with its triple
obsessions — privatization, deregulation and union-busting—has been leading."
Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine.
"...this empire that we’ve created really has an emperor, and it’s not the
president of this country. The President serves, you know, for a short period of
time. But it doesn't really matter whether we have a Democrat or a Republican in
the White House or running Congress; the empire goes on, because it’s really run
by what I call the corporatocracy, which is a group of men who run our biggest
corporations. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. They don’t need to conspire. They
all know what serves their best interest. But they really are the equivalent of
the emperor, because they do not serve at the wish of the people, they’re not
democratically elected, they don’t serve any limited term. They essentially
answer to no one, except their own boards, and most corporate CEOs actually run
their boards, rather than the other way around. And they are the power behind
this." From John Perkins
interview with Amy Goodman
June 5, 2007
" The most effective way to restrict democracy is to
transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions:
kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or
modern corporations."
Noam Chomsky
"We have reached the point in the United States where corporatism has nearly triumphed over democracy.
If events continue on their current trajectory, the ability of our government to respond to the needs
and desires of humans - things like fresh water, clean air, uncontaminated food, independent local media,
secure retirement, and accessible medical care - may vanish forever, effectively ending the world's second experiment with
democracy. We will have gone too far down Mussolini's road, and most likely will encounter
similar consequences, elements of which we have already experienced: a militarized police state, a government
unresponsive to its citizens and obsessed with secrecy, a ruling elite drawn from the senior ranks of the
nation's largest corporations, and war." From Thom Hartman's book
Threshold
pg 202
"The power of our private
managers over our public servants was exemplified by the ability of business
lobbyists to persuade Congress to nullify the 1993 attempt by the
Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to require stock options to be
expensed in corporate earnings statements. In June 1993,
Senator Joseph
Lieberman introduced a bill condemning the FASB’s attempt, which passed
the Senate overwhelmingly. He later introduced a side bill that would have put
the FASB out of business if it implemented its option-expensing initiative.
The FASB had little choice but to retreat, a sad example of legislation
interfering in accounting decisions." John C. Bogle in The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism pg 39
"Despite the much vaunted Corporate Responsibility Act and the highly
publicized round up of a few of the most heinous offenders, the awful truth is
that the corporate tricksters have pillaged the U.S. economy and gotten away
with it. They're still living in their gargantuan houses, still feasting on
their wildly inflated salaries, and engorging themselves on staggering sums of
stock options, while the rest of America tries to figure out how to rebuild
for retirement. or send a kid to college on a worthless stock portfolio."
Arianna Huffington, Introduction to Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate
Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America (2003)
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an
invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task
of the statesmanship of the day."
Theodore Roosevelt
(April 19, 1906)
"Corporations have been enthroned
and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money-power of the
country will endeavor to prolong its reign
by working upon the prejudices of the people
until all wealth is aggregated in few hands
and the republic is destroyed."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the Aristocracy of our
monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength,m
and bid defiance to the laws of our country. "
Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Q: "What do you see as most fundamental obstacle to a functioning and
socially-just democracy in America?
Well the most pressing obstacle was one of the themes of the leading
American social political philosopher of the 20th century, John Dewey. He
pointed out that, as long as we live under what he called industrial
feudalism, rather than industrial democracy (by industrial feudalism he meant
the corporate, capitalist structure) then politics will be nothing more than
the shadow cast by business over society. Industrial democracy would mean
placing economic decisions and workplaces under democratic control. And yes,
that's true. As long as there's a very high concentration of private power,
essentially unaccountable to the public and overwhelming influence in state
policy, then yes, politics will be the shadow cast by business over society.
That's a major obstacle. You can't have a democratic society, a functioning
one, where the major decisions are out of public control." From an
interview with Noam Chomsky.
...[The] "corporation enjoys
the same rights as a living person under Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. This concept was held in 1886 by the Supreme Court in Santa
Clara County v. Southern Pac Railroad Company and has been a fact of law ever
since ...d I emphasized... the corporation should be required to accept the
same responsibilities as those expected of a person; it too should be a good
citizen, an honorable, ethical member of the community. In the case of
international corporations, that community has to be defined as the world.
In actual practice, corporations are the opposite of good citizens. They bribe politicians to
write laws that cheat society on a mammoth scale, most significantly by
allowing them to avoid paying many of the very real costs incurred in
conducting their businesses. What economists refer to as “externalities” are
left out of pricing calculations. These include the social and environmental
costs of destruction of valuable resources, pollution, the burdens on society
of workers who become injured or ill and receive little or no health care, the
indirect funding received when companies are permitted to market hazardous
products, dump wastes into oceans and rivers, pay employees less than a living
wage, provide substandard working conditions, and extract natural resources
from public lands at less- than-market prices. Furthermore, most corporations
are dependent on public subsidies, exemptions, massive advertising and
lobbying campaigns, and complex transportation and communications systems that
are underwritten by taxpayers; their executives receive inflated salaries,
perks, and “golden retirement parachutes,” which are written off as tax
deductions." John Perkins: The Secret History of the American Empire
Boston Globe reports that financial industry contributed heavily in Mass.
Senate race to block Obama's reform plans: "In a six-day span just before
the US Senate election, Republican Scott Brown collected nearly $450,000 from
donors who work at financial companies, a sign the industry is prepared to
spend heavily in the upcoming midterm elections to beat back new controls and
taxes President Obama wants to impose ... The Financial Services Roundtable,
one of the industry's most influential groups in Washington, has been
increasingly vocal in opposing [the House financial reform bill] ... its chief
lobbyist, Scott Talbott, said both donations and activity have picked up more
recently..."
Ronald Reagan gutted anti-trust enforcement and helped corporations bust
unions. (Did you know the right to form a union is part of the UN Declaration of
Human Rights ?)
When Republicans
deregulated, what they did was allow
corporations to do almost anything that
they wanted. What we got was a carnival of corruption including massive theft
from companies like Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, with complicity from Arthur
Anderson, major banks, brokerages. In addition, these same Corporations bought
political favors, special legislation, pollution permits, tax breaks, and
access that allowed them to control the agencies that were supposed to be
regulating. Since big money controls our press, we get only corporate
news. Mussolini (and some dictionaries) defined fascism as control of the
government by corporations. We've got that.
Because Republican partisans manufacture voting machines they took the
election, then because they controlled the Congress
there was no oversight, because they own the media they
installed right-wing cheerleaders for war. We went to war in
Iraq on false pretexts and there was no
accountability for war profiteering. Corporate profits soared.
Corporate representatives were inducted into regulatory agencies to further
serve their industries...not the people. For example see Robert F Kennedy's book
"Crimes against Nature".
Wal-Mart is a prime example of a
monopsonist: a company which is such a
powerful buyer that it can pressure its suppliers into suicidal terms. The only
way suppliers could meet Wal-Mart's demands was by moving manufacturing to third
world countries. The US has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs since the
beginning of the Bush regime. Not only has Wal-Mart helped strip the
manufacturing base from this country, the US trade deficit has soared, and
overseas
sweatshops have flourished. It's not all bad though, we exported the
pollution associated with manufacturing abroad as well.
Wal-mart has devastated thousands of small
towns,
vigorously opposed
labor unions.
pushed their minimum wage employees onto the
public dole,
strained public health facilities. Those low prices are not without cost. See Wal-Mart.
Before Ronald Reagan there might have been
anti-trust
enforcement for Wal-Mart,
but ...Republicans don't enforce anti-trust. It's part of their race for the
bottom. Since Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Wal-mart, it's a pretty good bet that she won't
either.
US corporate
governance needs re-examination. For one thing there is a
revolving door between government and the private sector which everyone is
rewarded...except the public.
Yesterday I had a post on how
K Street is no longer shunning Democrats.
Thomas
Frank explains the significance of the K Street Project in the New York
Times:
K Street is not neutral. From all its complex machinations emerges a
discernible political project best described by Joseph Goulden in “The
Superlawers” back in 1972, when the lobbying business was so many acorns
beside today’s forest of towering oaks. The “Washington lawyers,” Goulden
wrote, had over the years “directed a counterrevolution unique in world
economic history. Their mission was not to destroy the New Deal, and its
successor reform acts, but to conquer them, and to leave their structures
intact so they could be transformed into instruments for the amassing of
monopolistic corporate power.” (Goulden, by the way, is no radical: he is a
former director at the very conservative press watchdog Accuracy in Media.)
K Street’s bright young men fill the top posts at federal agencies; K
Street’s money keeps wages low and prescription drug costs high; K Street’s
“superlawyers” fight to make our retirement insecure; K Street’s
deregulation gurus turn our electric utilities into the plaything of Wall
Street. What K Street wants from government is often the opposite of what
the public wants. And yet what K Street wants, far too frequently it gets —
if not by the good offices of Bob Ney, then by the timely disappearance of
the now useless Bob Ney.
Whether we are Republicans or Democrats, we are all aware of how much
more power corporations hold over everyday life than they used to. “Those
who own the country should govern the country,” John Jay used to say, and
thanks in large part to K Street they do.
Written by Ron Chusid
Condoleezza Rice comes to mind. "The United States," she said, "is
determined to keep an international focus on the travesty that is taking
place in Burma." What she is less keen to keep a focus on is that the huge
American company, Chevron, on whose board of directors she sat, is part of a
consortium with the junta and the French company, Total, that operates in
Burma's offshore oilfields. The gas from these fields is exported through a
pipeline that was built with forced labour and whose construction involved
Halliburton, of which Vice-President Cheney was chief executive. From John Pilger (the
Guardian 10/27/2007)
See
http://www.faireconomy.org/reports/2006/ExecutiveExcess2006.pdf
for the Institute for Policy Study’s 13th Annual CEO’s Compensation
Survey titled “Defense and Oil Executives Cash in on Conflict.” It notes
that since 9/11, the average pay for the 34 top military contractors has
increased from $3.6 million to $7.2 million. While the average army
private makes $25,000/year, the average military contractor CEO makes
$7.7 million.
Better pay can be an incentive for better performance. Much as Republicans
favor this concept, there ought to be some limitations dictated by common sense.
Examples: When Merrill Lynch revealed a $7.9 billion loss
on subprimes in 2007. It fired its CEO, Stanley O'Neal, but not without giving
him $161.5 million parting gift first. The same happened for ex-Citigroup CEO
Chuck Prince, who walked with $140 million. Even as $17.5 billion disappeared
from Citigroup's books in just six months. And $34.6 billion vaporized from
Citigroup's outstanding shares. These are enterprises too big to fail, so,
though it is kept quiet, there'll be considerable taxpayer money used to keep
them solvent. And so it goes. There are many others and they seem to point to
problems in corporate governance. Are these examples of pay for performance ?
CEOs that rip the red meat from their companies have
become a commonplace in the US. It is but one more of the symptoms that
substantial reform of corporate governance should be a high priority. There
should be severe limitations on corporate control of media...particularly news
media. .
An aggressive program leading to shareholder democracy
would be a good start. Workers should always be represented on the Board as they
are in Germany.
New Internet Tool for Executive Pay Comparisons: The Securities & Exchange Commission
launched its on-line tool that enables comparison of executive compensation
for major corporations. http://www.sec.gov/xbrl
