“In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.”
August 24th, 2009Via: Huffington Post:
The American government — which we once called our government — has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “economic royalists,” who choose our elected officials — indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.
This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment’s hesitation, they took our money — yours and mine — to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don’t care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as “useless eaters.”
But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?
“A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.”
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: “And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis — the Great Depression — was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy.”
This is nonsense.
The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did — knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) — was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight — and we’ve all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.
Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.
Obama’s failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.
Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Read Rockefeller’s words again. He actually admits to working against the “best interests of the United States.”
Need more? Here’s what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order.” They’re gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us.
Remember Krupp in Nazi Germany? Welcome to the Fourth Reich!
Larry, I hate to say I had the exact same thought. Nazis are alive and well and right where they want to be.
This piece is concisley and clearly written. I hope more and more ‘sleepy heads’ are exposed to this and begin to wake up. Thanks for the excellent post Kevin.
The alphas always control human government, the same as the alpha controls the destiny of any animal species: the most statuesque buck, the most ferocious lion, the canniest coyote. The only power of the common man is just as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence, and as John Locke clarified in his Second Treatise on Government: when the alphas veer too much off the path of that desired by the ordinary people, the ordinary people depose the alpha, usually by violent means. But what is the path desired by the ordinary people? Security mainly. “The opportunity to improve one’s condition” in modern democracies, which really only means the sense that one is more and more able to buy more and more stuff. So what is the problem with corporations ruling America? None at all to the average person, since corporations want the same thing as the average person. Like the corporations, the average majority is in it for the money, and the majority rules. Look at the unions. As soon as they got what they wanted their leaders turned fat and their members went on buying sprees. Absolutely no sense of authentic experience–just trade money for stuff, money for stuff, until you die. The problem is not corporations; the problem is the ordinary human who by nature is a clueless consumer. Consider how easy it is to trap any but the canniest animal with food. The alphas trap the average clueless consumer with the promise of increased consumption. Those few humans cannier than the average person, who long for authentic experience, spend their lives writing philosophy, literature, painting, making music, or retreating to a simple space away from it all. Why? To distract or distance themselves from the fact that they are stuck in a physical form that requires them to share basic survival needs with average people who elevate corporations to positions of absolute power.
Peregrino: Your last paragraph (to distract etc.) made me sad. I think you precisely described the feelings of a certain part of humanity.
Maybe this distraction helps them to survive more troubled times and maybe (i hope) it will cure some diseases in our society in the long run.
Peregrino- great distillation of the problem.
Anyone interested, please check out Jerry Fresia’s
1988 book “Toward an American Revolution-Exposing the
Constitution & Other Illusions” online at:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
Also get a copy of John Gatto’s “Weapons of Mass Instruction”
and a hiliter – you’ll need it to mark all the thoughts in this
book !
Peace.