Corporate Power
Corporate power is getting out of hand and part of the problem is this thing called media consolidation. [The Fresh Toad will go on about lobbyists another day.] We’ve got a handful of individuals and corporations with right-wing agendas buying up media properties and slanting the reportage and editorialization such that there remain fewer and fewer unbiased sources of news and opinion for an ever more jaded populace to pick from.Now, bad reportage, slanted news and the like is nothing new. What is new is the ownership consolidation that has been allowed to take place. This directly threatens the American way of life because it invests way too much power in the hands of way too few. Witness how people have (apparently) completely forgotten the difficult times that
Reforms like clean water, breathable air, insured bank deposits, worker safety. Each of those societal advances was opposed by conservatives of the time, yet consolidation of media power by conservatives is what people are expected to accept now even though it reduces the diversity of information available and threatens further advances in living quality for all people, not just the rich. It makes no sense, unless you favor investing more political power in the corporation.
I’m not saying we should be all liberal all the time. Conservatism makes a good balance for liberalism because in its true form it keeps a lid on government, discourages squandering, does not reward idleness, encourages economic risk-taking for gain, and provides incentives for creativity. But being all conservative all the time is extremely dangerous to society. And when conservatism is used to make either government or corporations more powerful, everyone needs to be concerned.
What will it take to free the media from the bondage it suffers from? How will people come to realize, for example, that the claim of “compassionate conservatism” is purely a slogan and not based in fact? It won’t happen if the media won’t call anyone on it. The press is one of only two businesses enshrined with specific protection in the U.S. Constitution (the other being religion). But unless the media actually use that power to inform rather than dupe the public, we will be in danger, as a society, of going down the tubes. The American experiment can fail if we allow it to.
Why is this so? It is so because of the nature of the corporation and the lack of oversight corporations enjoy. To whom is the corporate board responsible? To the community? No. To the society? No. To the shareholder? Yes. Only to the shareholder. The corporate raison d’être is the enrichment the shareholder. Period. When a decision has to be made, it is made in light of the bottom line, not in light of what’s best for the ecology or the community or the workers. This is understandable based on for whom the corporate bells ring: They ring for the shareholder – the investor.
However, when it comes to environmental quality or worker safety, to name just two areas of corporate impact, the bottom-line mentality discounts these because paying attention to them adversely affects profitability. Therefore, regulation by the government is necessary. It is right and just and proper and here’s why: corporations are artificial, privileged entities that exist only through government franchise. They are therefore properly the object of regulation and subject to taxation. Corporations should, sensibly, not enjoy the same rights as natural persons.
At the founding of the
The Supreme Court, making use of the 14th Amendment late in the 19th Century, rendered the opinion that for legal purposes the corporation is a person, albeit an artificial one. This was convenient and solved a legal problem that was getting troublesome, but the court did not delineate any limitations to the concept of the corporation as a person. This left people with the idea that corporations have rights, just like natural persons do. That notion opened the door to the ever widening corporate abuse of power, which now threatens our way of life.
By definition, the corporation is a privileged entity. Its officers and directors enjoy immunity from prosecution for their mistakes and immunity from personal liability for losses suffered by the company and it shareholders. This amounts to considerable privilege. Such an entity is rightly taxed for the exercise of such privilege. This principle is well established legally. Rights, on the other hand, are not taxable, else they would not be rights since, as the Supreme Court has stated, the power to tax is the power to regulate.
Therefore, it is the duty of government to regulate and to tax corporate activity. Yet the Congress seen fit to give hundreds of billions in tax breaks to corporations even as the EPA rolls back environmental restrictions on them, even as the tax burden of working citizens is not relieved.
Because corporations, especially large corporations, are able to amass huge monetary resources, they are able to wield extraordinary power. When that power is used to coerce government, society suffers. As long as corporate money can be used to grease the wheels of government, the notion of government of, by, and for the people is an illusion. Instead, we have government of, by, and for the corporation, which is really nothing less than fascism - with a small f, but fascism nonetheless.
Harsh words, perhaps, but true. If political power is allowed to reside in entities that have no other driving force than their own bottom lines, there is no hope whatsoever for the citizenry or the environment, since government protection will devolve to the corporation, government’s benefactor. This situation must be redressed.
How can that be accomplished? Not easily, unless and until that 19th-Century mistake on the part of our Supreme Court is reversed. Even that may not be enough. A constitutional amendment to prohibit corporate lobbying would be a step in the right direction. As the system works now, corporate lobbyists write legislation, something akin to putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse. How could anyone imagine that the product of such an arrangement could be beneficial for any but the corporations themselves and their bought-and-paid-for government toadies?
A careful look at the drug reimportation issue should provide all the proof anyone needs to recognize the perversion of corporate power that is taking over America: Government wants to prevent granny from buying the identical drugs at half the cost in Canada for no reason other than the protection of corporate profits. When the government cites consumer safety as the overriding concern, such nonsense insults Canadians and Americans both, as if Canadians were suffering from bad pharmaceuticals that were manufactured in the US!
So, where is a statesman when we need one? Who will sound the alarm? Has everyone gone deaf and dumb? America is only in its adolescence as the oldest constitutional democracy on the planet, but already it is at the crossroads, while the dumbing down of our once-resourceful population of rugged individualists has made it almost a certainty that no one will notice if we take the wrong turn.
All for greed. Another hundred billion in the pockets of the already-rich. Screw the working stiff. Tax the wage earners! A free ride for those who don’t need one! What a legacy!
Shhh, shhh, shhh, there’s a new “reality” show coming on!
No wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re mad. We are.
posted by FreshToad at 3:14 AM
4 Comments:
Dear Sir,
We agree in concept but I doubt our methodology would be the same.
Compared to the neo-cons, traditional Conservatives have become the moderates. Moderation is a good thing for societies, real and constructed. Corporate America is technically a community of individuals, and must be addressed as such, simply because it is the means by which 90% of our population earns sustenance--right, wrong or indifferent.
The government's true role is to moderate between society's differing factions of individuals or community of individuals within a geographical context. It is not to provide nor protect nor command. Unfortunately, we cannot address this issue from a political standpoint as our government has crossed the line and is now a business unto itself.
America has been governed by commerce since the inception of the electoral vote. We are not a democracy. Our government protects the people only when it is in its own best interests to do so--election year--and even then only in advertising, rarely in fact.
I repeat, government IS a business and right now, it is working for corporate communities only--its biggest sponsor—rather than for the private community made up of individuals. In a republic it is not the vote that hires our politicians, it is the size of an individual politician’s pocketbook—hence the size of their marketing budget. We even choose politicians through our primaries based on their “marketability.”
Ergo, as referenced by the Court's designation of artificial personhood, a corporation or a government has the right "to do business". What is key is our individual acceptance of "how" it does business therefore allowing or disallowing an entity, be it government or private, to REMAIN “in business”.
Unfortunately, most of us do not believe we have that choice, and the rest do not choose to exercise it, likely believing their individual choice will not make much difference in the status quo. This would be a good place for the “drop of water and a stone” analogy.
Yes, you are right in that the ownership consolidation in the media has allowed the disconnect. We as a people have relied on "the media" for the last 100 years to be our eyes and ears...to let us know about business' goings-on so we can make informed choices about what business practices to accept.
However, the media is business too...always has been. The media has also begun to "practice business" in a manner unacceptable to the thinking man. Our choice at this point is not to rail at the consolidation of this business. Our choice is simply not to accept this by no longer accepting the media. Cable and the internet have helped further this option.
You are doing this now with your blog. I am doing this now interacting with "your" media. Evidence that social tide is turning is displayed in grand living color through the activism, self-publishing, and information mushrooming throughout the net. As per the description of your page, the new idea has been thought. Now it is not time for thinking but creating.
For example, do we watch Fox News to find out how the war is really going? No, we watch Fox News to see how far off the mark they are. It has become a game between the government and the internet community with media being the government’s mouthpiece. On the net, we each are our own. Who needs a statesman?
In a perfect world, yes, the media "should" be unbiased to provide accurate information and watchdog support for those sheeple not able to access the internet. However, this is not a perfect world so we must find ways to deal with what "is" now. The media is lost to us. A continued fight for restoration is liable to be a battle of attrition and the victory, pyrrhic.
We must find other methods for getting information to the sheeple, without walking the same path media has walked, from reliance on the sheeple’s pocketbook and opinion to groveling for a piece of corporate/governmental pie. The internet is the haven of the thinking man but we must work to open its doors, or at least doors to the ideas presented there as alternative, to those still living in the ignorance perpetuated by the narrowness of accessible information windows available to the disenfranchised.
Where do we go from here? How do we take the change that is blooming in cyberspace and transplant it to temporal space? Revolution. The divine right of the individual to disagree. Will it be bloodless? Let us hope so but even if not, let it come.
One, whether individual, corporation, or government, cannot make choices for another—even when vastly disagreeing—we can only help people make their choices based on best possible information. Corporations lobby Government and no grassroot movement will be able to compete in that arena; we need to figure out how to lobby each other for change in manner beyond what is now possible with the web.
My disagreement is that we should not desire the media to return to its natural role of balance. It is just another corporation and we should deal with it as such and take our business elsewhere, loudly and profoundly—by our collective cyber voice, by our individual pocketbooks and by bullhorns, if necessary. Our cyber voice and our pocketbooks are our sling-and-stone if we will only believe it.
However, corpulent Big Business may be it is still that which feeds the populous—ignorant and enlightened alike. Although the bottom profit line cannot become more important than the humanitarian line, those with liberal lean often come across as anti-business.
Business is not an unavoidable evil; it is a necessary check to feudalism (an ideology as potentially perilous as fascism).
I wish there was a seamless merge of liberal ideology with libertarian. Let us act as corporations ourselves and write off that which provides poor service and quality at the highest prices. The corporate media is only as necessary as we, as individuals, allow it to be.
Rather than looking to fix the media and so fix the faults of society, I would look to society itself. We are living in a paradigm that is beyond our ken. We are doing the best we can to adapt but I cannot help thinking that trying to return to what worked in the past--the days of watch dog media--is not the answer. That is to set up society to re-run the gauntlet only to end in the same place another 50 years down the road. Look around; is it just me or is anyone else getting tired of this sickening sense of déjà vu?
We do not need to fix the old mousetrap now that we know its lifecycle of usefulness. We need to build a better mousetrap. It is time to move forward into the realm of imagination instead of clinging fearfully to the experiences of our past. Only then will we truly be able to learn the lessons of time and not carry them into the future.
Let us build a new future different from that which has gone before. There comes a time when it is right and proper to reinvent the wheel. One cannot reach the stars on wheels.
We will make mistakes of course, but at least it will not be THE SAME mistakes our fathers, grandfathers and forefathers, time immemorial, have made. Let us try foresight rather then hind.
All things have a natural lifespan and I think this love affair for outside media is cold. Trying to revive the corpse will cause quality of life clashes between the liberals (who want controls on business, top down, so that humanity is not squashed under the progress of man) and the libertarians (who look to the individual to develop progress built AROUND man, bottom-up).
With the antichrist of our current governing power seemingly in charge of the new roman empire of corporate excess, those who desire a higher path will need to find commonalities and forgive clashes of methodology.
Unfortunately, knowing that does not mean one also knows how to go about DOING it.
One day at a time. One individual at a time. Ourselves, our neighborhood, our city, our state, our country, our world. Bottom up.
With respect for your opinion I am,
Sincerely,
Mickie B. Whitley
Brooklyn, NY
Dear Mickie,
Thank you for your cogent commentary. I agree with you that it is not the job of government to fix the society, rather it is the responsibility of the individuals who make up the society to advance the society and correct its flaws.
Perhaps, in our society, we can accomplish that at least partially through government, i.e., by ourselves as the electorate lobbying our representatives to make changes. However, this will not occur until we, as individuals, toss out our collective addiction to the so-called "mainstream" media and start thinking for ourselves again. In this regard, I believe we agree.
Let me be very clear: I am not anti-business. I understand that most of us make our livings as employees of corporations. I also understand that our consumer oriented economy is due much of the credit for bringing our standard of living as high as it is.
But I also understand that unchecked corporate power has an adverse effect, not only in our personal lives but also in the quality of the environment, even our food and water, and government policy as well. As large corporations, particularly multinational corporations, amass enormous fortunes, they come to wield extraordinary influence on government.
As long as corporations are permitted to influence government through political activity, especially the financing of political campaigns and hiring of professional lobbists, it is unlikely that the populace at large will ever have the coordinated resources to raise a collective voice that will be heard in Congress above the din of the corporations.
Even if everyone suddenly came to their senses and stopped listening to Fox News and stopped reading the New York Times, where would the economic and political muscle come from to push a more equitable legislative agenda? With corporate money funding political campaigns and with lobbyists well funded and well organized and actively pushing a corporate agenda, the citizen has no chance.
Perhaps an office of public lobbyist could be created that corporations with registered lobbyists are required to fund to the same extent that they fund their own lobbyists. That would at least level the field somewhat. Of course, the Congress would first have to accept the need for such an arrangement.
Or perhaps we should move to a system of publicly funded campaigns, where each candidate for a particular office is granted exactly as much money as every other candidate for that office, with the amount depending on the number of voters for that office. Candidates would be limited to spending only that much money and no more. That would help level the field and would keep corporate money out of elections.
Perhaps a combination of these measures would be best, or even an outright ban on lobbying Congress. That would probably require a constitutional amendment - something I would not suggest lightly - but could be well worth the effort.
Regardless of the methods chosen to redress the imbalance of influence, a critically thinking citizenry will be necessary. Toward that end, the novel media we are participating in right now is an important step. In this, we certainly agree. We are entering a new era of information where the small players, like you and me, can finally have some impact on policy.
With equal respect for your opinion,
and thanks for your commentary, I am
The Fresh Toad
Ralph Huntington
Albany, New York
Hi all,
I just have a few seconds to comment and so I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, but I do want to say I had a rude awakening as I watched Katrina victims walk, swim, boat, wander, get bussed or just drown. And I bet the leap from Katrina to neo-cons seems like a huge leap, but truly, it's the only leap that makes sense.
People have definitely become so enthralled with what government "can do" that we have allowed our system to "teach" they can't get along without George or someone like George, to fix the problem government created.
I moved to small town America 8 years ago and have begun to see, first hand, how deeply entrenched the idea of dependency has become. I finally began to really look the makeup of any size government- city, state federal...and truly wondered what could be done to make a difference.
I was definitely naive, still am to a great extent and only now am beginning to grasp the enormity of it.
We can talk about what the government "IS" or what it represents, but the truth is unless we can find a way to get those who mindlessly follow power to understand they can take better care of themselves, nothing will change.
Even in this small town the trappings of the plastic society that's been created have put mufflers on people ears and minds...they follow the crowd and and don't listen to the details, but collect the warm fuzzy feeling from being told how special they are at election time.
While debating what's going on in political American or Corporate America, someone ought to start wondering how to undo what's going on next door to your house.
How do you get people to think independently? That's the basic success of any political system...wipe out the will of the people so they think they need to be swaddled in promises that don't turn into lies until later and you can sell them anything you want.
Dear JB,
You ask, How do you get people to think independently?
The only way I know is to think independently yourself and provide others with that concrete proof of a way other than what they are taught by those political systems you pegged so aptly.
Many humans lack the imaginative powers to "create" in a vacuum but let them "see" someone else doing something and they get the idea that they can as well.
Lead by example. The hardest but only way I know.
Happy living and thanks for thinking.
Mickie
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