Why We Are Totally Finished, In A Nutshell: Corporatocracy Has Replaced Capitalism
Capitalism Fixes Problems & Preserves Democracy: Capitalism is what we should be relying on to fix our problems. Capitalism has it’s own ecosystem, just like biology’s ecosystem. An economic ecosystem that weeds out the weak, has parasites that eat the failures and new bacteria that evolves and grows replacements for that which failed. A system that keeps everything in balance.
The problem is we are no longer a capitalistic society. What we were taught in school is now utter and absolute nonsense. Capitalism is a thing of the past.
As outlined in “It’s Not A Financial Crisis – It’s A Stupidity Crisis”, we created two back to back bubbles. The air out of the Tech Bubble was sucked up for fuel by our next stupidity crisis: The Housing Bubble.
Now, after the second Stupidity Crisis there isn’t a third bubble to inflate. If we still lived in a capitalistic environment the banks and financial institutions that created loans for folks who should have remained renters and then sold those loans as investments to pensions and countries would have been cleansed by capitalism’s ecosystem.
But that isn’t what happened.
Olbermann: U.S. government for sale
With no limits on campaign financing, corporations will take over the government
Jan. 21: In a Special Comment, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann envisions a future United States in which today’s Supreme Court ruling permitting unbridled corporate campaign spending purchase all the power greed can afford
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, ‘Countdown’
hat tip: msnbc.com
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling today in the case titled “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.”
On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner;” a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.
In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.
The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.
“They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Supreme Court Decision Radically Overhauls Campaign Finance Laws in Favor of Corporations
by: Kyle Berlin
hat tip: t r u t h o u t
Thursday 21 January 2010
In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that portends massive changes in campaign finance, corporations will no longer be banned from spending money on presidential or Congressional elections.
The conservative wing of the court, with Anthony Kennedy joining, overruled two long-held precedents in reaching the decision, which said that corporations have the same right to use their own money to fund campaign ads as individuals do.
Kennedy, in his opinion for the majority, wrote that “the Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether.”
The ruling also overturned a segment of the McCain-Feingold Act, which bans the broadcast of ads that mention a candidate for federal office 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary or caucus.
Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the court’s liberal wing, including Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer, read part of his dissent out loud in the courtroom.
In his dissent, he wrote, “although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it.”
Campaign finance experts say the decision will allow freer participation by organizations like labor unions, though direct contributions by corporations to candidates are still prohibited.
Monsanto Sues Germany to Force GMO Food: a study of Megalomania
Hat tip: www.opednews.com
by amicus curiae
Monsanto is now suing the German government (and, by that, the people) to force them to grow their GM Corn. Monsanto files suit against Germany over GM ban:
MON810 maize is genetically engineered to produce Bacillus thuringiensis, which is toxic to the corn borer pest. Permitted in Europe since 1998 for animal feed, it is marketed as a way to save farmers money on insecticides and other pest controls.
However German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner claimed last week that she had “legitimate reasons” to believe the maize to be a danger to the environment – and believes the Environment Ministry to agree with the view. Although MON810 has been permitted in Germany since 2005, she scrapped plans for 3,600 hectares (8,892 acres) to be planted in the eastern states for this summer’s harvest.
Now the biotech giant has hit back, according to a Reuters article, filing a lawsuit against the Germany government in the administrative court in Braunschweig, northern Germany.
The wire quotes a spokesperson for Monsanto as saying the ban is “arbitrary”. A clause in EU law does allow member states to impose such a ban, but Monsanto claims they can only do so once a plant has already been approved if new scientific evidence has come to light.
If the outcome of the lawsuit is in Monsanto’s favour, the cost to the German government has been estimated at between €6m and €7m….
France also invoked the clause on new scientific evidence that cast doubt over its safety last year….
Other countries to implement bans are Hungary and Austria. Last month European ministers voted – for the fourth time – against forcing these countries to lift their bans, despite EFSA’s view.
The Founders Tried To Warn Us
by Jon Faulkner
www.opednews.com
The U.S, for the last few decades, has been seriously hurt by the leadership Americans chose. Obama will very likely be defeated in 2012 by a landslide victory of the G.O.P. The new ultra rightist government will renew its attacks upon the U.S. Constitution, and whatever still exists of the Constitutional protections once afforded Americans will be further diminished. Social programs, including the big one, Social Security, will be dissolved and whatever is left of the trust fund will be handed over to private investors. Old folks should be making plans for other health and living arrangements. The U.S. will descend into true Third World status, and its influence in the world will diminish further. Unless that is, the rightist government begins a new era of imperialist aggression beginning with any nation unable to defend itself.
The question will be how much the world will allow U.S. imperialism to advance before a collective effort, probably led by Russia and China, is launched to contain the U.S. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been too profitable for U.S. Corporations to ignore future adventures in foreign lands. Evildoers are remarkably easy to find, particularly when one looks for them. Bush prepared the ground when he informed the nation that endless war was necessary.
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” … James Madison
What was once the world’s strongest economy is now drowning in debt, and the corporations with their magical free market wizards are being rewarded with vast amounts of taxpayer dollars for sinking the economy. It’s provident for them that American taxpayers didn’t get the same tax breaks they did. Otherwise there would be little money to give them. The big banks, investment firms and insurers are busy, with full political support, finishing off what little is left of the U.S. economy. Obama knows what is necessary to fix the nation’s headlong plunge into economic oblivion, but he hasn’t the courage or the political support to fix a flat tire, never mind the economy.
The American people have been the victims of their own self righteous morality. They have been lazy and guilty of unbelievable ignorance. The warnings were everywhere, but they were far too comfortable with their baseless opinions to see them. The “We Report, you Decide” crew did a fine number on them, and they’re still being jerked around like a marionettes on a string.
“Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.” … David Korten
The Big Business/Big Government Axis Of Evil
Editor’s note: What he said…
Self-proclaimed “conservatives” love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the “free enterprise” system. In the name of “capitalism,” they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business—especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself “free trade.” Furthermore, these same “conservatives” will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called “global economy.”
Needless to say, in the name of “free trade” millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And leading the charge for “free trade,” outsourcing, and the “global economy” is the international cabal known as Big Business. But Big Business does not play this game alone. Joining Big Business is its pernicious partner, Big Government.
Together, Big Business and Big Government form a tyrannical tandem that is squeezing the breath out of our once-great republic. In fact, people need to understand that what is passing for “capitalism” in America today is nothing more than “Corporatism.”
We Can’t Make It Here Anymore
“We Can’t Make it Here”
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one’s paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget’s stretched so thin
And there’s more comin’ home from the Mideast war
We can’t make it here anymore
That big ol’ building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can’t make it here anymore
Obama—President Of Special Interests
By Paul Craig Roberts
February 16, 2009
The Bush/Obama bailout/stimulus plans are not going to work.
Both are schemes hatched by a clique of financial insiders. The schemes will redistribute income and wealth from American taxpayers to the shyster banksters, who have destroyed American jobs, ruined the retirement plans of tens of millions of Americans, and worsened the situation of millions of people worldwide who naively trusted American financial institutions. The ongoing theft has simply been recast. Instead of using fraudulent financial instruments, the banksters are using government policy.
Move to End “Internet Neutrality”: Blow to Bloggers. “Ten Pin Strike against Political Freedom”
by Sherwood Ross
Global Research, January 26, 2009
If the cable and phone companies that transmit Internet data are allowed to charge higher rates to some producers for faster service the result will be “a ten pin strike against political freedom,” a prominent legal authority warns.
That’s because the change will enable the wealthy to “quickly take over the high speed transmissions (for their trash commercial content) just as they completely monopolize radio and TV, and just as their incredibly greedy profit-seeking has had a very deleterious effect on print journalism,” writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.
Velvel’s plea for “internet neutrality” comes in his new book “An Enemy of The People,” subtitled “The Unending Battle Against Conventional Wisdom(Doukathsan).” Essentially, he writes, the proposed change is an “attempt by the wealthy to make the internet into yet another repository of their power…”
