Robert Scheer: The New Corporate World Order

[kpete]

Robert Scheer's Columns
The New Corporate World Order
By Robert Scheer

The debate over Republicans’ insistence on continued tax breaks for the superrich and the corporations they run should come to a screeching halt with the report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Those tax breaks over the past decade, leaving some corporations such as General Electric to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.”

...............

Of course it will be argued that multinational corporations have the right to arrange their business as they see fit in order to maximize profit. But if that is the case, do beleaguered American taxpayers have to foot the bill? When those corporations run into trouble overseas because of financial hustles or hostile locals and need the diplomatic and military might of the U.S. government to protect their interests abroad, it is again the U.S. taxpayer who must pay to maintain this new world order. It is an order, as we see with three current wars and a military budget that rivals Cold War highs, that is contributing mightily to the U.S. government debt. More than half of all discretionary spending, the dollars that the Republicans in Congress now want to take out of needed domestic programs, is accounted for by defense spending. That defense spending to support a massive network of military bases and deployed weapons and troops is key to establishing an order in which the interests of American corporations are attended to. If the companies don’t feel that way, let them operate under the flag of Liberia or the Cayman Islands.

No less important than U.S. military muscle is the power of the American government to construct and enforce a worldwide trade and finance structure to the advantage of U.S.-based multinational corporations. That is why the companies spend so much money lobbying Congress on matters ranging from regional trade agreements to international banking regulations. It is precisely the impact of trade agreements like NAFTA that has facilitated the erosion of well-paying jobs. And it was the deregulation of international banking standards, led by the U.S. Treasury Department under the past five presidents, that created the conditions for the recent disastrous housing and banking meltdown.

Big government, the devil that Republicans love to inveigh against, is big precisely because it is so active in so many costly ways in serving the interests of our biggest corporations. Corporate lobbyists attest with their every breath that big government and big business are bedmates in a bountiful venture that impoverishes the rest of us. It is time to admit that we are, in practice if not surface appearance, close to the Chinese communist model of state-sponsored capitalism that sacrifices the interests of ordinary workers, be they in the public or private sector, for the exorbitant profits of the superrich. It is the corporations that need big government to protect their interests, and one would hope they would be willing to pay for the services that their government so faithfully renders to make them obscenely wealthy as it studiously ignores the well-being of the rest of us.

more:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_new_corporate_world_order_20110419/

[upi402]

1. "state-sponsored capitalism "

AKA fascism

All hail the UNIPARTY!

[Vincardog]

2. All hail the UNIPARTY!

[Lorien]

7. And that's exactly what we've got, but few here truly want to challenge the status

quo. Most will vote for the candidates that the Uniparty chooses for them because "the other guy is worse". Sure, the other guy is worse, but that doesn't make the candidate that we're asked to vote for any less of a corporate puppet. Either way we're screwed. Until we say "ENOUGH" and vote for someone who doesn't have a corporate stamp of approval everything will continue to get worse.

[crickets]

3. K&R

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. yeppers! k&r

cheers

[Peace Patriot]

5. Even unto the corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines that tabulate ALL our votes

with virtually no audit/recount controls. One, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--now has an 80% monopoly over these 'TRADE SECRET' code systems. HALF the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL (comparison of ballots to machine totals) because they have NO ballot (touchscreen systems); the other half (optiscan systems) do a miserably inadequate ONE PERCENT audit (99% of the ballots, including mail-in ballots, are NOT counted by human beings--they are fed into a machine and tabulated with 'TRADE SECRET' code).*

And we wonder how this hugely unrepresented Scumbag Congress could have been elected. They weren't!

The corporations even control the minds of our Democratic Party members, voters and DU bloggers, who will tell you that "we have paper ballots in my state." Lord, the propaganda that produces that response is awesome. The comparison that comes to mind is the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages--a multinational corporation whose propaganda was so pervasive, and had gotten such a leech-like hold on the human mind, people could not even see it to question it. It was "the air" they breathed. You must obey the Pope and his cadres of bishops, priests and monks to get to Heaven; otherwise you to go Hell. Fear of missing out on the one and being cast into the other netted this "boys' club" vast properties, and control over kings and armies. They had literally imprisoned the human mind and that is what corporate propaganda has done today to the minds of most voters in the U.S. including most Democrats.**

One.

Private.

Far rightwing-connected.

Corporation.

'Counts.'

80%.

Of.

The.

Votes.

In.

The.

USA.

Using.

'TRADE SECRET'

Code.

With.

Virtually.

No.

Audit/recount.

Controls.

Think about it. It is not the only thing wrong with our election system. But it is the LATEST AND WORST thing wrong. The FINAL coup for the FINAL looting while we stand helplessly by. The ONE THING we need to have a CHANCE at reform. The bottom line of democracy: transparent vote counting.

Our right to vote is gone! But the good news is that it is still recoverable by a peaceful, legal protest movement. The Anthrax Congress (which did this to us) failed to mandate that local/state jurisdictions buy these election theft machines. The whole thing was accomplished by filthy lobbying (their $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle). There is NO federal law forcing these machines upon us. So-o-o-o, your local county registrar, local county board of supervisors and state election officials and legislators can still choose REAL vote counting--counting of ALL the ballots in PUBLIC VIEW (or a publicly owned OPEN SOURCE CODE system, where anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated), if they are sufficiently pressured--a campaign that is still doable.

The evidence that the corporate "Reich" has taken over governorships and state legislatures, with ES&S/Diebold (s)elected officials, is very worrisome, of course. The "window of opportunity" for restoring transparent vote counting is narrowing. But local/state officials are still more vulnerable to popular opinion than anyone in Washington DC. Your local county registrar, for instance, may live right down the street from you. Most Americans don't live that far from their state capitols. It is still POSSIBLE at this level to restore our right to vote. It is NOT possible at the federal level.

----------------------------

*(Experts whom I respect say that 10% is the MINIMUM audit necessary to detect fraud in an electronic voting system. Venezuela--which uses OPEN SOURCE CODE electronics--code that anyone may review--does a whopping 55% audit (comparison of ballots to machine totals). Venezuela's election system was created with the help of international election monitoring groups, as are most of the systems in Latin America--which is why they are electing leaders who represent the interests of the majority against 'organized money' (as FDR put it), in the huge leftist democracy movement that is sweeping the region. They have bad corporate media, too. But they've been able to elect leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and--until the U.S.-aided rightwing coup d'etat--in Honduras. The VOTE COUNTING SYSTEM is the KEY. It gives the grass roots and ordinary people a CHANCE against "organized money" and corporate control of the 'news.' The grass roots and ordinary people have seized that chance in Latin America, but all their effort would be for naught, if ES&S/Diebold were counting their votes and if a movement for honest elections hadn't preceded these leftist (majorityist) victories. You've got to do the basic work of democracy first.)

**(I don't think this is true of most of Democratic Party leaders, however. They give us blank looks when corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' vote 'counting' is mentioned, but they know what's going on. Some are fearful. Some are collusive. Virtually all have betrayed us in the worst way possible--they have betrayed democracy itself. They are not willing to subject themselves to real scrutiny by the public. They are content with the ever-shrinking pool of "liberal" officials, as long as they are one of the "chosen" and they do their dance to the right in order to get chosen. ES&S--a corporation with far rightwing connections that would make your hair stand on end--controls their fates, too, by their surrender to this corpo-fascist power. As for Obama, I believe that he was, in fact, elected, by a far bigger margin than we know--on the hopes and dreams of the American people for social justice and peace--but it is only a belief. It has not been, and cannot be, verified. I also believe that he was PERMITTED TO BE elected--possibly as the result of a deal he made not to investigate/prosecute Bush Junta war crimes (and maybe other deals as well)--and that is the problem. ES&S has that power. They can easily--EASILY!--give the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" to any candidate in the country, for any office, and that decision--whoever is making it--will be corroborated by the corpo-fascist press, which writes the narrative for these hidden decisions. The corpo-fascists who are running things can thus put a tamed "liberal" in the White House for whatever scenario they are playing out--for instance, to be able to blame a "liberal" for the Bush Junta-induced Depression, and thus put Bush Junta II in the White House in 2012. The "narrative" thus far points that way. It is very scary. We think it can't get worse than Obama toadying to corpo-fascist interests? It can.)

[Peace Patriot]

6. Great article! My one argument with Sheer is that he equates the USA with the world.

Our corporate/war profiteer rulers certainly have great power and hold sway in many places, but not in Latin America. Their hold over Latin America has been broken, by the simplest and most obvious opposing force: The voters of Latin America.

Latin Americans have worked hard for honest, transparent elections, and it has paid off, in the election of leftist (majorityist) governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala (and--until the U.S.-aided rightwing coup d'etat--in Honduras*). These governments have rejected the U.S.-pushed "neo-liberal" model and U.S. domination. And the leaders of the biggest economy among them--Brazil--have specifically and repeatedly rejected the advice of "the blue-eyed wonders of Wall Street." Venezuela--the pioneer of this movement--was recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (something the corpo-fascist press will NEVER tell you). They didn't do this by following "Wall Street" dictates. They did it by replicating the "New Deal" model--government acting in the interest of the majority. And life is being improved for the vast poor majority all over Latin America, where leftist governments have been elected.

What is more, these countries have allied with each other in a very strong way, on their common goal of "raising all boats" within their countries and in the region and have created a formal structure for economic/political cooperation in South America--UNASUR (an EU-type organization)--with another formal structure in the Central America/Caribbean region--the barter trade group, ALBA.*

Venezuela led this revolution which was then joined by more than ten countries, including Brazil, whose leader, Lula da Silva, met monthly with Chavez to devise a common strategy with common goals. Lula's handpicked successor--his former chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff--was just elected president in Brazil, and is showing every sign of being of the same mind as Lula on South American unity and on rejecting U.S. domination, including rejecting U.S.-dictated fiscal policies such as de-regulation, privatization and squeezing the poor to make the richer richer and permitting multinational corporations to extract resources without benefiting the people who live there. (Brazil followed Venezuela's lead on Brazil's new oil find, by insisting on Brazilian government control of the enterprise with a major percentage of the profits to benefit the poor.)

What has turned the tide left in the most recent leftist victories in Latin America--for instance, Paraguay--are the ADVANTAGES of economic/political UNITY among these once squabbling and oppressed countries. Peru may join them shortly with the election of leftist Ollanta Humala as president. He is in the lead. Peru has been cursed with a Bushwhack-designed U.S. "free trade for the rich" agreement (inflicted by Peru's current and very corrupt leadership). The vast majority of Peruvians have not benefited and live in dire poverty. Meanwhile, Peru's natural resources are being rapaciously plundered by multinational corporations. "Neo-liberalism" DOES NOT WORK. This has been proven time and again, in country after country. That is why Latin America is in massive revolt against it.

Even the new rightwing leader of the utterly ravaged, blood-soaked, U.S. client state of Colombia is distancing himself from the U.S. and moving toward Colombia's neighbors (including--most remarkably--Venezuela) as trade partners and on security issues. The U.S. brought nothing but the grossest kinds of corruption and violence to Colombia and isolation from its natural allies--other South American countries.

Now consider these paragaphs by Robert Sheer:

---

"No less important than U.S. military muscle is the power of the American government to construct and enforce a worldwide trade and finance structure to the advantage of U.S.-based multinational corporations. That is why the companies spend so much money lobbying Congress on matters ranging from regional trade agreements to international banking regulations. It is precisely the impact of trade agreements like NAFTA that has facilitated the erosion of well-paying jobs. And it was the deregulation of international banking standards, led by the U.S. Treasury Department under the past five presidents, that created the conditions for the recent disastrous housing and banking meltdown." --from the OP

---

This is all true but it is myopically focussed on the U.S. "Trade agreements like NAFTA" are precisely what South America has been rejecting, with the election of so many leftist governments (and it is the vortex of the struggle in the Central America/Caribbean region*--the U.S. corporate/war profiteer "circle the wagons" region). "Deregulation of international banking standards" is precisely what Lula da Silva was rejecting (in his statement about the "blue-eyed wonders of Wall Street"). And South America DID NOT HAVE a "disastrous housing and banking meltdown" precisely BECAUSE they had elected strong leftist governments in time to prevent it. They have landed on their feet. And they are doing what the U.S. should be doing--what FDR did--pouring government revenues and resources into the economy and holding the line or improving social programs.

They have suffered mere recession. They could not have avoided it. And this, of course, is evidence of the power of corporations, banksters and war profiteers over the U.S. government which in turn serves their interests around the globe. But they are not talking "austerity" in South America. They are talking "NEW DEAL." (Central America/the Caribbean are more under the U.S. boot but are starting to fight back. See my note*.)

---

Sheer:

"Big government, the devil that Republicans love to inveigh against, is big precisely because it is so active in so many costly ways in serving the interests of our biggest corporations. Corporate lobbyists attest with their every breath that big government and big business are bedmates in a bountiful venture that impoverishes the rest of us."

---

True, we have "welfare for the rich" in the U.S.--"big government" serving them alone and impoverishing the rest of us. But the reverse is true in most of South America which is following the "NEW DEAL" model of government SERVING THE PEOPLE, however "big" it must be to do so. They vary in how they are doing this--and on how much of a "New Deal" they are implementing--but the principle is the same: Democratic government exists to serve the many not the few. The national government implements fair taxation, and extracts revenues from corporate, joint government-corporate or nationalized enterprises, and distributes most of the money in democratically-selected projects--public education, universal health care, job training, job creation, help for small business, pensions for the elderly, school lunches for poor children, food subsidies, etc., and all the infrastructure that everyone needs--including big and small business--to prosper. The task of government is to help create a decent society. The rich, the greedy, the corporate will never do so. And, quite importantly, this new leftist movement in Latin America includes environmental consciousness--of the kind we used to have here--often led by the newly empowered Indigenous. (Bolivia and Ecuador, for instance, have included the rights of Mother Nature in their constitutions).

"Big government" is NOT the enemy. The enemy is transnational corporations--built on our labor, our infrastructure, our educational systems, our legal system, our tax incentives--into global monsters that now have loyalty to NO ONE. The enemy is their power to hijack our military for corporate resource wars. The enemy is their power to write our laws. The enemy is their power to make money = free speech. The enemy is their monopolistic control of 'news' and opinion. The enemy is their 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--their ultimate tool for putting their servants into office.

"Big government" was beneficial once--when it created Social Security, when it created Medicare, when it began to help fund public education, when it created the CCC and other jobs programs with millions of people out of work, when it took control of the banksters and investment regulations, when it protected Savings & Loan institutions (small savers), when it passed national labor protection laws, when it supported the black civil rights movement in the South with federal enforcement, and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

"Big government" can help create a decent society IF it is democratic! We have proven this here. Much of Latin America is proving it again now. "Big government" is only evil when it ceases to reflect the will of the majority and--by whatever means--becomes a tool of the few.

"Organized money" (as FDR termed it) is very powerful. It REQUIRES a strong counter-force to keep it within the bounds of decency and a good society. That has never been truer than today, with "organized money" grown more powerful than it has ever been in history, and with "organized" money having gone "global." Never before have we so badly needed our national governments to be strong in our defense--in defense of the majority. Never before have we so needed alliances between democratic governments to deal with transglobal "organized money"--as the Latin American left has realized and is remedying by banding together in their own region and reaching across the oceans in "south-south" alliances.

Just imagine this: The U.S. government, the Canadian government and Latin American governments all banding together in a unified front against the corporate powers, the banksters and the super-rich--forbidding sweatshop (slave) labor, anywhere, refusing to trade with countries that permit it, equalizing wages, promoting land reform and putting the millions of displaced small farmers back on their farms before it's too late (before their knowledge of farming is lost forever, before the western hemisphere drowns in pesticides, before we lose the planet), and easing the migration of displaced farmers into urban squalor; fairly taxing corporations and the rich by common policy, jointly acting against tax scofflaws and off-shore banks, jointly creating a clean energy economy; creating FAIR trade; creating a REAL marketplace (not this monopolistic monster that we have now); defending REAL democracy.

It CAN happen. Latin America is showing the way. But it is dependent upon democracy being restored in the U.S. Without democracy here, Latin America will go its own way. This will be "Latin America's century." They have the resources and the motivated work force--inspired by democracy, by access to education, by empowerment, by their belief in social justice and peace--and they have the strong central governments attending to the interests of the MANY. We can join them, or we can atrophy, decline and fall like the Roman Empire--with our fatcat billionaires and CEO's stuffing their faces at tawdry banquets and sending their "cannon fodder" out to fight and die for the luxury of the rich.

It's my opinion that we have to start with the "TRADE SECRET" voting machines. We have a lot to do. Vote counting that everyone can SEE and understand is the only way we're going to get the rest of it done--reclaiming our country and its once shining promise.


-----------

*A LONG NOTE ON CENTRAL AMERICA/THE CARIBBEAN

The struggle for democracy, and for national and regional sovereignty, has largely been won in South America. The great majority of countries has rejected U.S. domination and "Neo-liberalism" (fake democracy, run by corpo-fascists). The struggle has moved mostly to the Central America/Caribbean region This is the U.S. corporate/Pentagon "circle the wagons" area, against the collective clout of the unified leftist democracies to the south of it. One of the reasons that the U.S. government--acting in the interest of transglobal corporations and war profiteers--hates Hugo Chavez so much is that he was instrumental in forming ALBA--a Central America/Caribbean barter trade group and rival to CAFTA. Indeed, it was largely Honduras' decision to join ALBA that got President Mel Zelalya kidnapped and removed from the country at gunpoint, with a stop for refueling at the U.S. military air base at Soto Cano, Honduras.

Honduras has the misfortune to be of central importance to this U.S. "circle the wagons" region. It is the traditional U.S. steppingstone to aggression against Honduras' neighbors--notably Nicaragua and El Salvador, both of which now have leftist governments. It has an important U.S. military base and more are being established as we speak. It has Chiquita, Gap and other U.S. transglobal slave labor operations. John McCain and others have telecommunications interests there. Zelaya offended all of these interests--for instance, by raising the minimum wage. He said that alliance with the U.S. was of no use to Honduras' vast poor majority and joined ALBA (from which he received significant advantage for Honduras in cheap oil from Venezuela, and one of the things he did with that advantage was to lower the price of bus tickets for poor workers). The Obama administration tried to pretend that the U.S. had nothing to do with the rightwing coup d'etat in Honduras but they were lying through their teeth.

Not new. The U.S. has been doing this kind of crap to Latin America forever. What IS new was Brazil's reaction. Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, led the opposition to the U.S.-supported coup government. He even gave Mel Zelaya refuge in the Brazilian embassy as Zelaya sought to be restored to his rightful office. And virtually all of Latin America stood behind Lula da Silva, demanding restoration of democracy in Honduras. And although they failed, in the immediate situation, to restore Zelaya to his office, and although Obama/Clinton managed to chip away at this powerful new alliance against U.S. meddling--by getting a few of their client states, like Panama, to defect--Honduras was evicted from the OAS, and the powerful influence of this new coalition can be seen in the U.S.-installed Honduran government's concessions. For instance, they are now going to allow a plebiscite on reforming the constitution--something that Zelaya had advocated in alliance with labor unions. There is hope for early restoration of democracy in Honduras because of the unity and adamancy of the leftist majority that now rules most of South America and about half of Central America.

This new leftist alliance went into action back in 2008 and prevented the U.S. funded/organized white separatist insurrection from succeeding in splitting up Bolivia. They also strongly backed up Ecuador and Venezuela, when the U.S./Colombia dropped 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on a FARC camp just inside Ecuador's border, killing 25 sleeping people, including the FARC's chief hostage release and peace negotiator. They have been very successful in South America in fending off U.S. interference but not so successful in the U.S. "circle the wagons" region.

And it's interesting what a Honduran military general said about their coup. He said that their coup was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." The U.S. considers the Central America/Caribbean region as its bulwark against social justice and democracy. (Venezuela is not a communist country, but it IS democratic and socially just--not incidentally with the help of "big government"--a strong central authority attending to the interests of the many.)

One other thing of great importance that I should mention is that the U.S. "war on drugs" is being used to create the atmosphere of murder and mayhem that favors fascism and militarism--over the last decade in Colombia, and currently in Mexico. The "war on drugs" is not only the Pentagon's excuse for establishing military bases and "forward operating locations" in what it calls the "Southern Command" (Latin America, wherever they can get their boots down) and for reconstituting the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, and for placing a USAF base on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast, and for infiltrating Latin American police and military forces. In addition to all this, the U.S. "war on drugs" has the very evil purpose mentioned above: social mayhem. In Colombia, it is the Colombian military--funded by $7 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer money--that has been murdering trade unionists and others--human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists, peasant farmers--in bloody prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich."

This, too, is being REJECTED by the new leftist leadership of South America. Ecuador threw the U.S. military base out of the country. Bolivia threw the DEA out of the country and legalized coca leaves (not cocaine). Paraguay rejected U.S. military aid. Venezuela did that long ago. Though there are still some forms of cooperation with some leftist countries--Brazil, for instance--even Brazil sees the danger. When the U.S. reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, Lula da Silva said that it "is a threat to Brazil's oil." (Everybody south of the border knows that it is a threat to Venezuela's.) And even rightwing leaders have grown wary. Former presidents of Mexico, for instance, called for the legalization of marijuana and re-thinking the whole "war on drugs." The revelation that the ATF has been supplying arms to the drug gangs in Mexico has everyone scratching their heads--except those who realize what the U.S. "war on drugs" is really for: fostering social mayhem to gain favor for fascism and militarism, to get corpo-fascists elected and also to justify war profiteering. (The "war on drugs" is the U.S. war machine's backup gravy train.)

[kentuck]

8. kick

and rec - excellent read.

[bobthedrummer]

9. The faceless fascism is on the rise-either fight it headon or die n/t