The disgraceful concentration of corporate power has vanquished the notion of freedom and usurped democracy. The putrescent designs of a transformed unchecked and unbalanced government have handed corporate overlords and their sycophants complete autonomous control of the United States in it's entirety.
Once upon a time,the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the Progressive Movement, the Labor Movement, and the New Deal protected us from this fatal infection. Indeed these measures were effective at buying some time, but the democratic immune system is battered and compromised. Global mega-corporations, much like the HIV virus, has overwhelmed the democratic immune system.
A World under the thumb of the spurious progeny
of self aggrandizing twits
of self aggrandizing twits
Democracy... government of the people, by the people, for the people; may not have perished when Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg. But can that claim be made today? Will it have a shred of resonance tomorrow?America today is a nation of housebroken consumers, brainwashed and trained from a young age, every bit as much so as North Koreans are brainwashed and trained. A plutocratical dominion of oligarchs who have infected every facet of life in these 50 states, and in fact every nation their grubby fingers extend to.
A seamless titanium web of multinational corporations owns virtually all mass media. Everything presented to you through mega-corporation media is carefully designed to elicit the desired response. You will do as you are told.
Independent press? "Liberal" media?
Try Corporatist media.
The 4th estate is removed.
Try Corporatist media.
The 4th estate is removed.
This chart illustrates the usurpation of media up to 2000.
The assimilation and vertical integration continues at an alarming rate.
This military-industrial-media complex President Eisenhower was so disdainful of, determines which politicians rise to power. How? Access to money, as well as how a candidate will be presented is determined entirely by mega-corporations. The policies that our selected officials are permitted to espouse are rigidly defined. National healthcare proposals? Did media mention that every other developed nation on Earth has universal health care for their citizens?
Your tragicomic role in this heinous system is merely to consume. You are a corporate subject. In this materialistic monarchy, lives are devoid of meaning as we are conditioned to work ever harder and go ever deeper in debt to accumulate more and more useless junk as if the collection of shiny beads and cheap goods made by slave laborers were the keys to happiness.
Before dismissing this notion as lunacy or the rant of a madman, history provides plenty of
warnings from notable luminaries.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison persisted in an effort to have an Amendment included in the Bill of Rights prohibiting monopolies. In fact, what became known as the Bill Of Rights were officially proposed on September 25, 1789. Out of these original twelve Articles, 3-12 were ratified. In 1791 these articles became the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The amendment Jefferson and Madison fought for would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” This would make it illegal for a corporation to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise attempt to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states and need to show they were in the interest of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status “artificial persons”, not of natural persons as they do now. This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state in which they were licensed, saw fit to grant them. They would NOT; and could NOT possess the bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under Jefferson and Madison's proposed amendment the latter 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any other provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations.
James Madison -Visionary, Patriot
One can understand the desire of these patriots to have insisted on the inclusion of this crucial protection from tyranny. After all they just overthrew the most powerful government on earth at that time. And largely this war was as much fought against domination of the East India Company (the biggest multinational corporation of the colonial age), as it was against the rule King George. It was the tea of the East India Company that Samuel Adams and friends dumped in Boston Harbor.) The taxes and restrictions on trade that the revolutionaries found unbearable
were the responsibility of the mega-monopoly of the day.
Thomas Jefferson - voice of democracy, futurist
In Thomas Jefferson's own words:
( quoted from The Founders' Constitution,Volume 1, Chapter 14, Document 46
published by The University of Chicago Press)
( quoted from The Founders' Constitution,Volume 1, Chapter 14, Document 46
published by The University of Chicago Press)
31 July 1788,
"I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine states. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from North to South, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to Juries, Habeas corpus, Standing armies, Printing, Religion and Monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modification of these suited to the habits of all the states. But if such cannot be found then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and Monopolies, in all cases, than not to do it in any. The few cases wherein these things may do evil, cannot be weighed against the multitude wherein the want of them will do evil. In disputes between a foreigner and a native, a trial by jury may be improper. But if this exception cannot be agreed to, the remedy will be to model the jury by giving the medietas linguae in civil as well as criminal cases. Why suspend the Hab. corp. in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested may be charged instantly with a well defined crime. Of course the judge will remand them. If the publick safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony in those than in other emergencies; let him be taken and tried, retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving him redress against the government for damages. Examine the history of England: see how few of the cases of the suspension of the Habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham-plots where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the hab. corp. has done real good, that operation is now become habitual, and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under it's constant suspension. A declaration that the federal government will never restrain the presses from printing any thing they please, will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed. The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished, does not give impunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error. The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14. years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression. If no check can be found to keep the number of standing troops within safe bounds, while they are tolerated as far as necessary, abandon them altogether, discipline well the militia, and guard the magazines with them. More than magazine-guards will be useless if few, and dangerous if many. No European nation can ever send against us such a regular army as we need fear, and it is hard if our militia are not equal to those of Canada or Florida. My idea then is, that tho' proper exceptions to these general rules are desirable and probably practicable, yet if the exceptions cannot be agreed on, the establishment of the rules in all cases will do ill in very few. I hope therefore a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government, as they are already guarded against their state governments in most instances."
In the end, it seems this amendment was not adapted by congress because a majority felt anything not specifically outlined as a federal power in the constitution was the domain of state government to regulate, that already existing state laws would sufficiently prevent corporations from becoming a threat. Jefferson remained concerned about the expanding influence of corporate power until his death in 1826. Even the conservative founder, John Adams harbored serious misgivings about unchecked corporate power.
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." -John Adams
(A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law - John Adams 1765)
"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain." -Thomas Jefferson 1809 "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson, 1816
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... 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 a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, in The Lincoln Encyclopedia, by Archer H. Shaw).
"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain." -Thomas Jefferson 1809 "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson, 1816
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... 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 a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, in The Lincoln Encyclopedia, by Archer H. Shaw).
Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges... which are employed altogether for their benefit. - Andrew Jackson
Who Let The Dogs In?
Only few years after Jefferson’s unsuccessful effort to incorporate this amendment into the Bill of Rights, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Marshall, unilaterally claimed the Court’s right to judicial review in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Marshall established the precedent that allows The Supreme Court to have sole unchecked power to determine what the Constitution meant. Jefferson was appalled that an unelected branch of government, not subject to the will of voters, immune from the check of elected branches of government was now completely responsible for determining the meaning of the Constitution -the very nature of the political system. Jefferson warned “The Constitution has become a thing of wax to be molded as the Court sees fit”.
(Only one Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached—none have ever been convicted and removed)
Jefferson’s dual Constitutional nightmares became reality in 1886. This is the year democracy was derailed in this nation. Not only this nation but across the globe as other nations mimicked this disastrous example, or have fallen to our multinational corporations. As a direct result of not heeding Jeffersons warnings, the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad became the fount that allowed corporate entities to have the same rights as "actual," or in legalese -"Natural" persons. (Jefferson had argued for “artificial” personhood to be the legal status of American corporations.) Who hosed us? Well the Supreme Court had actually declined to rule on the case but J.C. Bancroft Davis, who was the Clerk of the Court, (suspiciously was also a former railroad company president. The railroad owners, aka robber barons were the largest corporate entities at the time.) Davis simply used his position to write a conclusion into the head notes which summarized the case. Ever since this damnable event... this dupery, effectively the Constitution was rewritten granting corporations the status of “actual” persons whose rights are fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.
This was Jefferson's worst nightmare- the 2 issues he felt were threats to democracy had unitedto stage a coup rendering the world at large mere targets and cannon fodder for a new mega-corporate tyranny. The Supreme Court has not acted to repudiate Davis’ rewriting of the Constitution. The fraud stood. A legal precedent was established. The “thing of wax” nightmare
Jefferson feared, had aided and abetted the ascendancy of a despotic corporatism.
Consider the tragic consequences -Flesh and blood persons, or "natural"persons are arguably somewhat equal in general legal attributes but a corporation can possess MILLIONS of times greater resources than any “natural” person, or any other group of persons. Labor unions do not have the same rights as a person, nor does an environmentalist group, a consumer advocacy group, etc.
No other group possesses this attribute of "personhood". We fundamentally and intrinsically are unable to compete against corporate “persons.”
The Military Industrial Complex -in context
President Eisenhower warned America and the world
of the danger of allowing the collusion
of industrialists, military, and government.
Wake Up Americans!
So who is to blame for the Bill Of Rights becoming a Bill Of Sale? The founders?President Eisenhower warned America and the world
of the danger of allowing the collusion
of industrialists, military, and government.
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Wake Up Americans!Of course not. Their foresight has managed to do keep the wolves at bay for the better
part of the the nation's existence. The greedy monopolists? Not really, it is their nature to usurp and subjugate. Who then? ...We the people. Yes, we have failed to use the tools provided us by the founders to protect and preserve this democratic republic from destruction. We have failed to heed the warnings of the founders of the feast. We have allowed the wool to be pulled over our eyes and we have shirked not only our duty to protect our nation; but our responsibility to our children and their children to live free from oligarchic tyranny.
Today, according to polls, barely more than half of Americans would vote for the Constitution (including the Bill Of Rights) if it were on referendum. This demonstrates how the Bush administration could get away with obvious unconstitutional claims to executive power. This explains how a docile herd could so easily be sheered of the integrity of their votes, the aggregation of the 4th estate into a meaningless Orwellian propaganda consortium, and the wholesale abandonment of the principles upon which a free people exist.
The illusion of a red herring "culture war" is another highly successful tactic which the oligarchy uses to distract and deflect attention from the reality of their parasitic hostile takeover.
With every election the public discourse gets more ludicrous. Yet brainwashed denizens of this postiche matrix happily heed the jerk of the marionette string. Providing much needed entertainment, and a few sporting wagers for the rarefied few and privileged obscenely opulent.
"You will do as you are told, until the rights to you are sold..." -Frank Zappa(Lyrics from "The Slime")
