blog.arithm

Is the ancient Chinese curse upon us?

And then we deregulated.

Follow up to her appearance on the Daily Show last year.

Steven Seidenberg peers into the future and reports back on the inevitable conclusion to last week’s Supreme Court ruling.

So now corporations now have the same rights as people. Insulated, of course, from the pesky liabilities to which we mere mortals are exposed.

Welcome to the United States of Exxon Mobile. The United States of Merck. The United States of Haliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater. The United States of Goldman Sachs.  Where your government is brought to you be these fine sponsors.

Olbermann sums it up with customary eloquence:

Although he is assuming here that the Obama administration wasn’t already, to a large extent, purchased. We’ll see just how far the President’s strong words carry.

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore exposes the American plutonomy.  Leaked Citigroup documents outlined in the film reveal that investment institutions are trending away from the “mass” market and focusing, instead, on the American plutonomy: That top 1% who control an increasingly larger portion of the wealth. Under “Risks — What Could Go Wrong”, the authors argue:

Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks… [T]he rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was – one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich.

In other words, the greatest risk to the plutonomy, as pointed out by the authors, is democracy. What better way to eliminate this risk than by replacing the democracy with a plutacracy?

Which, over time, last week’s ruling will virtually guarantee.

In Hoodwinked, John Perkins explains this as reverse fascism. Rather than the government nationalizing industry, we are seeing instead the privatization of government. Far more subtle. Far more difficult to fight. Where, in the long term, elections are decided both from the voting booth as well as at the checkout counter.

In the short term, however, there is already a movement to ensure that the freedom of speech is reserved for people; not corporations.

In the very short term, I’d like to find out who owns the five Chief Justices who have sold us out.

From last week, but this just hit my radar. Ron Paul advises that we take out the strong arm of the American Corporatocracy.

Ron Paul proposes getting ready for the inevitable.

Just saw Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.  In retrospect, nothing in it should have been surprising, and yet almost every scene was jaw-dropping just the same.  Absolutely a must-see.

I was struck by two scenes in particular.

The more sensational of the two was long lost film footage, discovered by Moore’s team, of FDR’s January 11, 1944 Fireside Chat:  FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights” Speech, meant to be a “Second” Bill of Rights guaranteeing Americans, not only certain intellectual freedoms, but a concrete standard of living.

Would that FDR had lived to see this through.  He believed that “necessitous men are not free men”.  That the hungry can be controlled,  can be manipulated, and that only a nation of economically secure individuals can lead to a truly free and prosperous nation.

Contrast this with a scene from more recent history.

Early in the film Moore highlights Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” broadcast of July 15th, 1979.

I vaguely recall this being on television. I was five years old. There was something mesmerizing about the President’s speech. My parents watched in silence.

Now that I am seeing it again, and can truly understand what President Carter is saying, I find it insightful and shockingly honest; like nothing I have experienced from American leaders in my entire adult life. And I think it goes without saying that President Carter’s warning has gone unheeded. America as a nation has let materialism and it’s root cause, unchecked capitalism, get the better of Democracy.

And though President Carter implores us to call on faith to right the nation, I agree with Michael Moore that perhaps only a return to the ideals of FDR — a longing for what is truly right, by the people and for the people — will keep us afloat.