The Crooked Corporate Elite (fantastic article!!)

[Nancy Waterman]

http://www.opednews.com/lee1003CrookedCorporateElite.htm


And while it is a conspiracy theory to claim that all corporations are evil, it is a simple fact that there is a class of multinational corporations which operate on pure greed and hold more power than most states. And while not every large multinational is run so amorally, the survival of the fittest principle is very much in operation, and it is not likely for a company to rise to the level of a Halliburton, Bechtel, or Enron without having slit a few throats on the way. And while many such corporations are linked by common board members and social circles, it is probably more accurate to call it a sub-culture. They believe, amongst other things, that corporate America is America, and that as the avant-garde of capitalism, or the market, they are the true epic movers of history. To run the government is the natural extension of all of this, particularly in foreign policy and tax code.

<snip>

But above all it is the CCE’s unnatural marriage to another group, social conservatives, that has put them into power. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has jumped into the culture war because the tiny portion of America that is the CCE realize that they can hijack this division of American culture and manipulate it to vote them into power. So while the larger social conservative block sings that the weak shall inherit the earth, those in charge of the Republican Party are working tirelessly to ensure that never happens.

<snip>

The unholy marriage was forged in the depths of the Jim Crow South when it was harnessed by Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats in a way that would serve as an example for Republicans for decades to come. The approaching Civil Rights era was a threat to the cultural fabric of the South, but contrary to popular conception, it was not the primary threat driving the Dixiecrat presidential campaign. The real threat to these rich white businessmen was the solidification of labor across color lines.

<snip>

... the concurrent reorganization of the Republican party around a watered-down and increasingly subtle version of Thurmond’s platform, also coincided with another epic tool of manipulative politicians: the Red Scare. Republicans made particularly good use of this device, wielding it most disgracefully during McCarthyism but using it continuously up to and throughout the Reagan years as well. They morphed a legitimate fear of nuclear holocaust into a belief that any call for a more equal and humane distribution of wealth was quite simply evil.

This was probably the single most important acheivement of the right in the second half of the 20th Century. It inoculated the greedy factions of the Republican Party from obvious attacks on the morality of their policies, and convinced much of America that capitalism, as the opposite of “Satanic” communism, went hand in hand with Christianity. To this day calls of “class warfare” quiet Democratic criticisms more potently than any actual argument, and to this day Texas Republicans refer to the idea of universal health care as an idea “born in the depths of hell”.

[revcarol]

1. Greedy corporations and republicans mad for power

are all for the widow giving up her mite to corporations.

[KoKo]

2. Nancy, this is an excellent article! More pieces of the RW connection to

corporate ideals exposed, but with hope that we have a chance of stopping this and bringing the "house of cards" down.

[Mokito]

3. Fantastic article indeed!

edit: Let me rephrase that. EXCELLENT article!

[jody]

4. Excellent article and add to it this piece from the WSJ.

QUOTE
After winning Congressional approval for cuts in taxes on dividends, capital gains and for certain business investments, and after navigating a raft of corporate accounting scandals that shook the investment community, President Bush seems to have won over many financial executives, who are now strongly supporting his re-election campaign.

A study to be released today shows that the financial community has surpassed all other groups, including lawyers and lobbyists, as the top industry among Mr. Bush's elite fund-raisers. The list of those generating $100,000 and $200,000 now includes chief executives like Henry M. Paulson of Goldman Sachs, John J. Mack of Credit Suisse First Boston and Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, whose firm has already raised twice the amount for Mr. Bush's re-election that it did during the entire 2000 campaign cycle.
UNQUOTE

The "one half percenters" own 42% of our financial wealth and with Bush's support, in a few decades they may own 70 to 80 percent of our financial wealth. They claim to be religious but they worship mammon.