In the world according to Romney
In this land of milk and honey
Selective memory is best
When belief is put to the test
Though now Mitt’s berated
For saying it’s jobs he created
When in fact he destroyed them
And pensions were crème de la crème
Still, he denounced us as envious
And not himself as devious
All the recent political theater of the Republican primary season makes Broadway and Hollywood seem real. One must suspend disbelief in order to endure a single debate and watch them each push and shove to enter and exit stage far right. Finally, on last Sunday’s performance, “Bain” and “Romney” were used to form a sentence. Romney has touted his extraordinary ability and experience in creating jobs. Let us look at that startling claim to see where it could possibly have arisen. His competitors questioned Mitt’s boast and yet it has been the lynch pin of his campaign. What happens when a company like Bain enters the door of a struggling corporation? It depends. If you are speaking about Bain Venture Capital, then Bain might provide money to expand business or encourage new sector entry or growth. On the other hand, if it is Bain Capital Private Equity at the door, look for a leveraged buyout by a known raider. Also look for the dark side of capitalism where employees are merely pawns that might be fired to enrich Bain. Bain will acquire and then disassemble the company and sell the pieces. It will also examine those assets for potential changes. Normally, a pension fund is a liability in accounting terms since that money is owed employees at some future date. Private equity firms don’t view pensions that way. Those firms, or vulture capitalists, as Rick Perry called them, see pension funds as assets to be saved from the clutches of employees and used for Bain’s profits. That is what happened when Bain bought GST Steel in Kansas City. Bain took much of the pension money for its profit and then the government agency Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation had to bail out the pension fund at the expense of American taxpayers. This should not be used as a boast, but a source of shame for Bain and Romney. Is it capitalism to push liabilities to the government or is it greed and corporate socialism?
The current Romney charge that criticisms of his profiteering are “envy” and not righteous indignation pours salt in the wound that he created. It actually condemns criticism and makes it appear that anybody noting the pain he has caused in thousands of families is due to envy of the people so affected and not to Romney’s unique ethics. In effect, he is also claiming that criticism of his ethics is a criticism of capitalism itself. It is not. It is a criticism of Phony Capitalism that pretends to be taking risks to generate profits, but instead is transferring risks to workers and to the government. It is also heartless because those were real people whom he fired and they supported real families living real lives of suffering and pain that Romney has never experienced. His attempt to express identification with people getting pink slips by saying that he feared a pink slip in his life is an creepy joke given that he has never had to fear any economic threat. Let me cite a few examples.
GST Steel eventually lost all 750 jobs in Kansas City and in no small part because Bain and Romney saddled CST with debt and Bain and Romney essentially confiscated $44 Million from the CST pension fund that later had to be made up by taxpayers through the US government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). That is a federal bailout going into profits for Bain and the loss of jobs for the steelworkers. Think about it. While corporations normally regard pension funds as liabilities that must be funded, Romney’s Bain saw pension funds as an asset. In accounting, they are on opposite sides of the ledger. In reality, not all the money Romney took was returned by PBGC, so workers each lost about $400/month in their eventual pension benefits. No wonder Romney likes firing people. It means money in his pockets. Romney boasted of creating 100,000 jobs, (80% through Staples), although Bain has never verified that number. He speaks of net/net meaning that all losses have been subtracted from spinoff jobs “created.” Hmm. Romney neglects to mention that the 750 jobs at GST Steel resulted in a cascade of lost jobs at the energy companies and the supply companies that did business with GST. Look closely. Bain and Romney issued bonds after purchasing GST (changing the name from Armco). While making improvements, they also took $36 Million as a dividend to Bain. That is the nature of private equity. Private equity does not create jobs. It creates profit unrelated to jobs. Venture capital is completely different. It may actually create jobs. The jobs lost at GST, were lost by Bain Capital Private Equity, the vulture side of Bain. To show you the balance of business, only about 2.3% of Bain’s business is done by Bain Venture Capital. In other words, vulture capital does over 97% of the business for Bain. Romney has not differentiated between the two nor has he indicated the huge imbalance toward vulture capitalism. Additionally, Bain took its profits directly while socializing losses (as in socialism) by increasing local taxes, increasing borrowing costs for others and using the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to pay greatly reduced pensions to fired workers Was it legal? Yes. Was it ethical? Hmm. Did it create jobs? Probably not here in the USA.
Without going through all the details, Bain essentially did the same maneuver on Ampad by going in and charging Ampad for consulting and having them purchase lots of other office supply companies. In 1992 Bain bought Ampad for $5 Million. In 1993, Ampad had debt of $11 Million. By 1999, Ampad was in debt by $400 Million. Highly leveraged? Worse, Ampad was paying Bain high management fees along the way. Hundreds of employees were laid off and Ampad was put into competition with Staples for the same market while having less purchasing power. Who bankrolled Staples? Why it was Bain, of course. Conflict of interest you say? Not exactly, if your sole interest is making money, there can be no conflict of interest. Are not layoffs and bankruptcy problems? Not for Bain. Bain sold stock and the nearly 400 layoffs were simply a cost of bad management for which Bain was highly rewarded with a profit of over $100 Million. Jobs were outsourced and Bain made money without creating a US job.
Taxes? The Congress in its wisdom taxes profits from raiding companies like Bain Capital Private Equity at 15% not the 35% that you might assume. You may be wondering why “Mittens” has not divulged his tax returns despite calls to do so. He has compared his situation to that of the late Ted Kennedy who had his money in a blind trust meaning that if he divulged his tax return, he would have to reinvest his money in order to avoid interest conflicts in his Senate decisions. Mittens holds no government position so that, even if he had a blind trust then there would be no conflict of interest. How dare you ask? Besides, what if he paid no taxes? That is none of your business.
Now we hear cries from Senator McCain and others that attacking Mittens Romney is directly attacking our fundamental capitalist economic system. I don’t think so. Even the idea that Romney was picking winners and losers while having taxpayers pick up the tab flies against the advertised strength of capitalism of being rewarded for risk without government. Romney has scalded Obama for bailing out GM and Chrysler and yet jobs were saved and workers shared in the process of reducing demands to ensure survival instead of another bankruptcy. He has yet to take responsibility for his heartless creating of weak companies and then devouring the highly leveraged carcasses he created. Employees had no role except as victims. Crony Corporate Socialism as practiced by Romney and Bain should not be confused with Capitalism. Mussolini would love Romney for his corporatism, but we must call it what it is and it does not create jobs. It is essentially high finance with other people’s money. Remember Wall Street that was too big to fail but was bailed out by GW Bush? Conservatism or Corporatism?
Mittens says that any criticism is Romney Envy? No, he really does not get it. Maybe people felt fear or even hate, but envy? Maybe people envied their outsourced jobs? Governor Romney paid corporations incentives for moving to Massachusetts at the expense of taxpayers and the losing states. Mittens needs to level with us and admit that he created lots of profit for himself and Bain, but please, spare us the phony economics lesson on jobs. Just think of this on a national scale. Ouch.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
13 January 2012
Showing posts with label corporatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporatism. Show all posts
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Sunday, March 27, 2011
GE: No Tax Special
If I hadn’t just read it, I’d never believe it. G.E.—you remember, the company Ronald Reagan used to shill for; the company that built many of the nuclear reactors now under suspicion; the company whose CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was recently appointed by President Obama to be his liaison to the business community, as well as to head up the President’s “Committee on Jobs and Competitiveness” (slated to discuss corporate tax policy, the Pres. says, so as to LOWER the corporate tax rate)—last year “reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion,” $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. And its American tax bill? ZERO. No tax paid. “In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion,” writes David Kocieniewski in the 3/25/11 New York Times.
How can this be? you might ask. The government is crying about its indebtedness. Republicans and even Democrats are calling for austerity—i.e. cutting spending, i.e. cutting the benefits to the neediest members of our society, with plans to cut even more. And one of the richest corporations in America is paying NO TAX? Could it be that America doesn’t have a spending problem, that it has an INCOME problem because the richest individuals and corporations are paying less and less each year??? Do you think? Listen to what Kocieniewski writes, after recounting how G.E. spends a fortune in lobbying ($200 million over the last decade), and on a G.E. tax department headed by former IRS employees and lawyers numbering no less than 975 individuals! who do nothing but work on how to take advantage of tax breaks so that G.E. pays NO taxes:
Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.
Did you get that? Corporations—the alleged lifeblood of our economy, the ones who were just given permission, as PERSONS, to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—not long ago paid nearly a third of the U.S. tax burden, but now pay less than a tenth and may soon pay less than a twentieth.
Ah but, they keep saying, we need to be competitive. What’s good for us is good for America and American workers. Oh really? Here’s the truth:
Since 2003, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States, while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.
And what does earning all that money overseas do for G.E.? Well several things. This is because the other big change in G.E.’s business has been a shift from producing goods (like lightbulbs and all the “good things G.E. brings to life”) to providing financing for its products. “GE Capital” is the name of this finance division and more than half of G.E.’s profit recently has come from financing. Then the company managed to muscle changes in the tax laws that allow multinationals “to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income.” This is known as “active financing.” It means that “if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.” G.E. has been diligent in doing this, that is, booking a huge percentage of its profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Singapore and keeping them there, a practice that, according to one tax economist, has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” In the past year, in fact, to ZERO. No, less than zero, because it got a benefit of $3.2 billion!
So, in effect, G.E. has said to the United States and its people: “fuck you.” It manufactures more and more of its goods abroad, thus destroying American jobs, makes and keeps its profits abroad, and then gets tax benefits for all this that are applied to the little tax obligation (from goods still manufactured in the U.S.) it hasn’t found a loophole to worm its way out of. G.E. explains this by saying it has an obligation to its shareholders to “legally minimize its costs.” Some would call it more like “corporate welfare” (I would call it corporate thievery.) And what I’m wondering is, How is it that Americans who can barely buy food are pilloried as “welfare queens,” and made to work for their benefits, while these big time welfare queens get lionized, deferred to in every way, and even appointed to the President’s inner circle of advisers?
It’s called corruption, folks, and because of it the United States is looking more and more like one of those banana republics we used to laugh at in the old days, but no more. And if there’s a question left, it can only be: how long can such wanton pillaging of a nation go on? The answer is simple: as long as we the people let it.
Lawrence DiStasi
How can this be? you might ask. The government is crying about its indebtedness. Republicans and even Democrats are calling for austerity—i.e. cutting spending, i.e. cutting the benefits to the neediest members of our society, with plans to cut even more. And one of the richest corporations in America is paying NO TAX? Could it be that America doesn’t have a spending problem, that it has an INCOME problem because the richest individuals and corporations are paying less and less each year??? Do you think? Listen to what Kocieniewski writes, after recounting how G.E. spends a fortune in lobbying ($200 million over the last decade), and on a G.E. tax department headed by former IRS employees and lawyers numbering no less than 975 individuals! who do nothing but work on how to take advantage of tax breaks so that G.E. pays NO taxes:
Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.
Did you get that? Corporations—the alleged lifeblood of our economy, the ones who were just given permission, as PERSONS, to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns—not long ago paid nearly a third of the U.S. tax burden, but now pay less than a tenth and may soon pay less than a twentieth.
Ah but, they keep saying, we need to be competitive. What’s good for us is good for America and American workers. Oh really? Here’s the truth:
Since 2003, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States, while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.
And what does earning all that money overseas do for G.E.? Well several things. This is because the other big change in G.E.’s business has been a shift from producing goods (like lightbulbs and all the “good things G.E. brings to life”) to providing financing for its products. “GE Capital” is the name of this finance division and more than half of G.E.’s profit recently has come from financing. Then the company managed to muscle changes in the tax laws that allow multinationals “to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income.” This is known as “active financing.” It means that “if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.” G.E. has been diligent in doing this, that is, booking a huge percentage of its profits in low-tax countries like Ireland and Singapore and keeping them there, a practice that, according to one tax economist, has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” In the past year, in fact, to ZERO. No, less than zero, because it got a benefit of $3.2 billion!
So, in effect, G.E. has said to the United States and its people: “fuck you.” It manufactures more and more of its goods abroad, thus destroying American jobs, makes and keeps its profits abroad, and then gets tax benefits for all this that are applied to the little tax obligation (from goods still manufactured in the U.S.) it hasn’t found a loophole to worm its way out of. G.E. explains this by saying it has an obligation to its shareholders to “legally minimize its costs.” Some would call it more like “corporate welfare” (I would call it corporate thievery.) And what I’m wondering is, How is it that Americans who can barely buy food are pilloried as “welfare queens,” and made to work for their benefits, while these big time welfare queens get lionized, deferred to in every way, and even appointed to the President’s inner circle of advisers?
It’s called corruption, folks, and because of it the United States is looking more and more like one of those banana republics we used to laugh at in the old days, but no more. And if there’s a question left, it can only be: how long can such wanton pillaging of a nation go on? The answer is simple: as long as we the people let it.
Lawrence DiStasi
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Forget Shame
As I watched Michael Moore deliver a white hot speech in Wisconsin a few days ago, and heard the voices of his audience—state workers protesting the concerted Republican assault on public sector unions by yelling “Shame! Shame! Shame!”—it occurred to me. This time, folks, shaming those in power isn’t going to be enough. Though it was enough to bring down two presidents—Johnson and Nixon—in the 60s and 70s, and to eventually stop the Vietnam War, it won’t make even a dent in the armor worn by today’s ruling class. I mean, just think of it: two short years ago, the country seemed so disgusted by the overt criminality of Bush and his gang in the White House that his name was too toxic to even mention. The entire Republican Party was said to be near extinction, while a Prince of the Left had been elected to the White House. And yet, today that same prince is in retreat on every front, groveling before the right, while the worst yahoos ever seen in public office are screaming for the blood of gliberals and their devastated constituency. So we can forget tears, forget revulsion about war, murder, the evisceration of the social net so laboriously put in place over several generations, the enslavement of the newly impoverished, and all the rest. The power mongers and their lackeys in office are simply not susceptible to these common human emotions. Like their forebears in the Germany of the 1930s, they seem to rather enjoy the suffering of those beneath their boot heels. And they’ll do anything, from dirty tricks to the crippling and/or poisoning of workers, to the poisoning of the entire planet, to protect what they view as “theirs.” Hence, we have this so-called Representative from New York, Peter King, our era’s Joe McCarthy, opening hearings on the “radicalization of the Muslim-American community by Al-Qaeda,” impervious to the tears of Congressman Ellison testifying about the sacrifice of one of these “terrorists” who died trying to save his fellow Americans on 9/11, and begging for the hearings to focus on a wider population than this already terrorized minority. And we have this punk governor of Wisconsin along with his newly-empowered Republican majority, ramming through in secret, when he couldn’t persuade by reason, the bill to strip unionized state employees of their collective bargaining rights. Shame? This crude piece of plastic doesn’t even register the stuff in whatever constitutes his innards. All he registers is the coin he gets from the likes of David Koch, the energy baron who’s the largest funder of anti-global-warming science in the world (even larger than Exxon) and the main bankroller of the Tea Party. I haven’t been able to find out if Koch is involved in ‘hydrofracking,’ the latest darling of energy bandits—see the NY Times, Feb. 27, for information on what ‘horizontal hydraulic fracturing’ does to the huge volume of water needed to “frack” the natural gas out of rock, and the corrosive salts, carcinogens, and yes radioactive elements like radium polluting that water when it drains into nearby rivers and aquifers used for drinking—but I wouldn’t be surprised.
So here’s what we’re up against now. These billionaires who brought the country to its knees and emerged richer than ever have now been given even greater power to control politicians and laws than they had during the Gilded Age. The gap between them and the rest of us has grown in the last thirty years—since that corporate shill Ronald Reagan began his assault on graduated income taxes and regulations keeping the corporate rape of the rest of us within some bounds—to a level of inequality in the distribution of wealth and power that rivals Arab sheikdoms. A few of these mandarins control more wealth than whole counties, whole states, whole regions of us. And they will do anything, corrupt any politician, commit any crime, decimate whole countries, whole planets, to keep it.
Shame them? It doesn’t even merit discussion. The only thing that impresses these robots is force. The force of millions of people screaming for their heads. The force of organized and constant pressure outing them and their crimes. The public employees in Wisconsin have begun this movement. So have a few thousands in states like Michigan and Indiana, where similar bills have been passed or are pending. But it is quite clear from the Wisconsin experience that more, far more, is going to be needed. There’s going to have to be not just a few victories over crumbs; a few compromises like “carbon trading” and extended unemployment; there’s going to have to be systemic change. And as far as I can see, that’s not going to happen unless these bastards are made to fear not only for their fortunes, but for their very existence. How is this to happen? I have no specific solutions; besides, it’s a project for the young. But as Michael Moore pointed out in Wisconsin, and as the people always seem to forget: there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. That’s what terrifies them in the night. They know that if the people ever wake up, if the people ever become conscious of their power and use it, the game, the game whereby the corporate pooh-bahs have not only seized obscene amounts of wealth and power, but used it to exploit and blight everything that makes life itself possible, is over.
I’m putting my money on an awakening. But it had better happen soon, because the damage is accelerating so fast that before long there won’t be much left to save.
Lawrence DiStasi
So here’s what we’re up against now. These billionaires who brought the country to its knees and emerged richer than ever have now been given even greater power to control politicians and laws than they had during the Gilded Age. The gap between them and the rest of us has grown in the last thirty years—since that corporate shill Ronald Reagan began his assault on graduated income taxes and regulations keeping the corporate rape of the rest of us within some bounds—to a level of inequality in the distribution of wealth and power that rivals Arab sheikdoms. A few of these mandarins control more wealth than whole counties, whole states, whole regions of us. And they will do anything, corrupt any politician, commit any crime, decimate whole countries, whole planets, to keep it.
Shame them? It doesn’t even merit discussion. The only thing that impresses these robots is force. The force of millions of people screaming for their heads. The force of organized and constant pressure outing them and their crimes. The public employees in Wisconsin have begun this movement. So have a few thousands in states like Michigan and Indiana, where similar bills have been passed or are pending. But it is quite clear from the Wisconsin experience that more, far more, is going to be needed. There’s going to have to be not just a few victories over crumbs; a few compromises like “carbon trading” and extended unemployment; there’s going to have to be systemic change. And as far as I can see, that’s not going to happen unless these bastards are made to fear not only for their fortunes, but for their very existence. How is this to happen? I have no specific solutions; besides, it’s a project for the young. But as Michael Moore pointed out in Wisconsin, and as the people always seem to forget: there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. That’s what terrifies them in the night. They know that if the people ever wake up, if the people ever become conscious of their power and use it, the game, the game whereby the corporate pooh-bahs have not only seized obscene amounts of wealth and power, but used it to exploit and blight everything that makes life itself possible, is over.
I’m putting my money on an awakening. But it had better happen soon, because the damage is accelerating so fast that before long there won’t be much left to save.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Why Does W Hate our Freedom?
In the Good Book it’s stated
That evil’s to be hated
But for those with no conscience
This is all nonsense
For Greed is Good
In their neighborhood
And the birth of Nations
Is through the Corporations
For the uninitiated, the last six years seem to be an aberration where we are being told that we need to give up our rights of habeas corpus, and our 4th Amendment rights. In other words, we must to give up our freedoms to stay free. There are several points to be made and surely I will miss a few, but let me try.
When corporations broke the law by spying on each of us that uses electronics like telephones, but including TV, cell phones, Internet, pagers and blackberries, the President insisted on providing retroactive immunity for the telephone companies, including Big Brother Bell. Now this is from a president that in April 2004 (at Buffalo) stated:
“…Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, Constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution….”
According to Mark Klein, the whistle-blower who reported this NSA operation, the facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco (Room 641A) was built in 2003, well before Bush spoke in Buffalo. Qwest refused to participate in this illegal spying on Americans and was soon prosecuted by the Federal Government for unrelated charges. Now is that ironic or what? Big Brother Bell can spy on us illegally and without the record of a FISA court order and be paid for it, but it is an offer you had better not refuse. Qwest refused. Collaborators can use the information and will be protected retroactively from prosecution and lawsuits. Clearly, the President was disingenuous at best in suggesting that he got court orders. Direct lie?…”Not exactly” as the Hertz ad goes. What is most revealing about this set of transactions is that the telephone companies unanimously agreed to obey the law and stop spying when the government fell behind in making payments. As long as they were being paid, they were OK with breaking the law. Not incidentally, this high-speed fiber-optic arrangement went far beyond spying on foreign nationals. It was/is called the Total Information Awareness Program headed up by Vice Admiral Poindexter (of Iran Contra fame). Poindexter is an experienced, recycled and ethics challenged operative. Are you shocked? If we pay, they spy on us.
This is one example of how Bush has embraced corporatism. Others abound, including outsourcing the Hurricane Katrina disaster aftermath (we cannot call it a recovery effort. Want to buy a toxic trailer?). He outsourced intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib and myriad additional activities in Iraq to the tune of 180,000 non-military, including Blackwater, on our government corporate payroll for the Iraq adventure alone. He has outsourced much of our military health care to corporate contract labor and eliminated military positions. Our State Department mercenaries are also above the law. As I have reminded you before, Cheney is still on the corporate payroll for Halliburton, but this does not suggest a conflict of interest. Instead, it demonstrates a primary corporate interest. Similarly when creating an energy policy, Cheney met with energy companies who proceeded to run up the energy charges in California and laugh about it. If it were not for audiotapes showing their disdain for the law as well as Californians, we might have to guess that Cheney had a hand in the process. Bush enacted a drug policy that eliminated competition in pricing for government drug programs and established blocks and penalties for prescriptions coming in from Canada. This alone costs Americans billions of tax dollars each year, but it protects corporations from competition by a government that talks constantly about free trade and open markets. Bush has surrounded himself with cronies and incompetents who are protected from scrutiny and as long as the circle of contributions to Bush and favors to corporations remains unbroken, the curtain shall not rise. Daylight and transparency tend to discourage the growth of these viruses, but they flourish in darkness.
Even in the days following Katrina, Bush sought to eliminate union wage scales for the cleanup work and cheap imported labor was quick to the scene. Unions seem to be feared by the Bush administration. Who knows, they might limit the profit potential of corporations or shrink the circle of contributions to the Administration?
Another area of concern is the merging of Church and State. Not only have we endured the scandals at the Air Force Academy pushing evangelical Christianity, but we have had Major General Boykin caught preaching to congregations while in uniform and then “punished” by promotion to Lieutenant General. Blend these signs with the “Faith Based Initiative,” and you have the makings of a cozy relationship not seen with western governments since the twenties and thirties in Italy.
In fact, that brings us to other chilling parallels with the ultimate corporatist, Benito Mussolini. Military adventurism for Il Duce culminated in the botched invasion of sovereign Ethiopia. Does that parallel the invasion of sovereign Iraq? Too often, amateurs have equated Fascism with Totalitarianism. They are independent variables. Mussolini himself defined Fascism as corporatism. He also kissed up to the Pope and called Italy, “Catholic.” Benito Mussolini also hated freedom because he saw that as a threat to Italy and he claimed to give the people only enough “elbow room” for them not to revolt against the state. Dissent is discouraged. And is it not poetic, that we have the freedom to shop, but not to get involved in state policies? Another distraction is the use of a scapegoat or a boogeyman so that all the people have a common enemy. Elitism and corporatism go together for he ultimate good of the state. The corporate leaders become the elite and therefore the ordinary citizen does not have to concern himself with civic affairs except that we must all be very afraid of the boogeyman. Be very afraid of “Islamofascists” that represent an absurdity in terms since they are, by nature, the antithesis of corporatism. That gives us a boogeyman just as effective as the Socialists and Communists of Mussolini’s Italy.
Remember that dissent was the enemy of the Fascist state and that efforts were made to root out dissent. Benito was a uniter and not a divider. There are other characteristics of the fascist state that may not yet have materialized. Rigged elections, for example, were common in Mussolini’s Italy. Thank goodness that they have not happened here. Why does W hate our freedom? Freedom simply cramps his style. That is where dissent comes from, too. So if you lose your right to habeas corpus and privacy and security of your person and property, maybe the boogeyman won’t come…but then, maybe he is already here. Look up the definition of Fascism. It is fascinating.
“Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Think “Ma Bell” becoming Big Brother Bell. We can still vote in frequently fair elections. Work to make elections fair and Vote, damn it, Vote.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
That evil’s to be hated
But for those with no conscience
This is all nonsense
For Greed is Good
In their neighborhood
And the birth of Nations
Is through the Corporations
For the uninitiated, the last six years seem to be an aberration where we are being told that we need to give up our rights of habeas corpus, and our 4th Amendment rights. In other words, we must to give up our freedoms to stay free. There are several points to be made and surely I will miss a few, but let me try.
When corporations broke the law by spying on each of us that uses electronics like telephones, but including TV, cell phones, Internet, pagers and blackberries, the President insisted on providing retroactive immunity for the telephone companies, including Big Brother Bell. Now this is from a president that in April 2004 (at Buffalo) stated:
“…Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, Constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution….”
According to Mark Klein, the whistle-blower who reported this NSA operation, the facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco (Room 641A) was built in 2003, well before Bush spoke in Buffalo. Qwest refused to participate in this illegal spying on Americans and was soon prosecuted by the Federal Government for unrelated charges. Now is that ironic or what? Big Brother Bell can spy on us illegally and without the record of a FISA court order and be paid for it, but it is an offer you had better not refuse. Qwest refused. Collaborators can use the information and will be protected retroactively from prosecution and lawsuits. Clearly, the President was disingenuous at best in suggesting that he got court orders. Direct lie?…”Not exactly” as the Hertz ad goes. What is most revealing about this set of transactions is that the telephone companies unanimously agreed to obey the law and stop spying when the government fell behind in making payments. As long as they were being paid, they were OK with breaking the law. Not incidentally, this high-speed fiber-optic arrangement went far beyond spying on foreign nationals. It was/is called the Total Information Awareness Program headed up by Vice Admiral Poindexter (of Iran Contra fame). Poindexter is an experienced, recycled and ethics challenged operative. Are you shocked? If we pay, they spy on us.
This is one example of how Bush has embraced corporatism. Others abound, including outsourcing the Hurricane Katrina disaster aftermath (we cannot call it a recovery effort. Want to buy a toxic trailer?). He outsourced intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib and myriad additional activities in Iraq to the tune of 180,000 non-military, including Blackwater, on our government corporate payroll for the Iraq adventure alone. He has outsourced much of our military health care to corporate contract labor and eliminated military positions. Our State Department mercenaries are also above the law. As I have reminded you before, Cheney is still on the corporate payroll for Halliburton, but this does not suggest a conflict of interest. Instead, it demonstrates a primary corporate interest. Similarly when creating an energy policy, Cheney met with energy companies who proceeded to run up the energy charges in California and laugh about it. If it were not for audiotapes showing their disdain for the law as well as Californians, we might have to guess that Cheney had a hand in the process. Bush enacted a drug policy that eliminated competition in pricing for government drug programs and established blocks and penalties for prescriptions coming in from Canada. This alone costs Americans billions of tax dollars each year, but it protects corporations from competition by a government that talks constantly about free trade and open markets. Bush has surrounded himself with cronies and incompetents who are protected from scrutiny and as long as the circle of contributions to Bush and favors to corporations remains unbroken, the curtain shall not rise. Daylight and transparency tend to discourage the growth of these viruses, but they flourish in darkness.
Even in the days following Katrina, Bush sought to eliminate union wage scales for the cleanup work and cheap imported labor was quick to the scene. Unions seem to be feared by the Bush administration. Who knows, they might limit the profit potential of corporations or shrink the circle of contributions to the Administration?
Another area of concern is the merging of Church and State. Not only have we endured the scandals at the Air Force Academy pushing evangelical Christianity, but we have had Major General Boykin caught preaching to congregations while in uniform and then “punished” by promotion to Lieutenant General. Blend these signs with the “Faith Based Initiative,” and you have the makings of a cozy relationship not seen with western governments since the twenties and thirties in Italy.
In fact, that brings us to other chilling parallels with the ultimate corporatist, Benito Mussolini. Military adventurism for Il Duce culminated in the botched invasion of sovereign Ethiopia. Does that parallel the invasion of sovereign Iraq? Too often, amateurs have equated Fascism with Totalitarianism. They are independent variables. Mussolini himself defined Fascism as corporatism. He also kissed up to the Pope and called Italy, “Catholic.” Benito Mussolini also hated freedom because he saw that as a threat to Italy and he claimed to give the people only enough “elbow room” for them not to revolt against the state. Dissent is discouraged. And is it not poetic, that we have the freedom to shop, but not to get involved in state policies? Another distraction is the use of a scapegoat or a boogeyman so that all the people have a common enemy. Elitism and corporatism go together for he ultimate good of the state. The corporate leaders become the elite and therefore the ordinary citizen does not have to concern himself with civic affairs except that we must all be very afraid of the boogeyman. Be very afraid of “Islamofascists” that represent an absurdity in terms since they are, by nature, the antithesis of corporatism. That gives us a boogeyman just as effective as the Socialists and Communists of Mussolini’s Italy.
Remember that dissent was the enemy of the Fascist state and that efforts were made to root out dissent. Benito was a uniter and not a divider. There are other characteristics of the fascist state that may not yet have materialized. Rigged elections, for example, were common in Mussolini’s Italy. Thank goodness that they have not happened here. Why does W hate our freedom? Freedom simply cramps his style. That is where dissent comes from, too. So if you lose your right to habeas corpus and privacy and security of your person and property, maybe the boogeyman won’t come…but then, maybe he is already here. Look up the definition of Fascism. It is fascinating.
“Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Think “Ma Bell” becoming Big Brother Bell. We can still vote in frequently fair elections. Work to make elections fair and Vote, damn it, Vote.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
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