"All the World's a Stage We Pass Through" R. Ayana

Showing posts with label rich vs poor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rich vs poor. Show all posts

Saturday, 17 January 2015

America Is the Same Ol’ Oligarchy It Was over a Century Ago - And so is just about everywhere else


America Is the Same Ol’ Oligarchy It Was over a Century Ago
And so is just about everywhere else


History Lesson: America Is the Same ‘Ol Oligarchy It Was over a Century Ago




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When Americans see charts like this one which illustrate that virtually all the food on grocery store shelves basically comes from no more than 10 megacompanies, or hear statements like this one from US Attorney General Eric Holder who told the Senate Judiciary Committee that some banks are just too big to prosecute, or check out studies like this one out of Princeton which openly declare we are not a democracy but an oligarchy…it’s kinda hard to believe we aren’t an oligarchy (because we are).

Come on, even our Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen (you know, the lady that runs the place that prints our money and sells it to us with interest) has basically admitted it.

But are things really getting worse these days or is this just par for the course — the same course we’ve been on for over a century now?

Tinkering around in an old bookstore in a small Texas town, we came across a set of old books on democracy; we got the first seven volumes of a set entitled, The March of Democracy: A History of the United States written by James Truslow Adams — the guy who coined the term “The American Dream” — for a mere $20.



marchofdemocracy


The first book’s copyright is 1932. The last book ends in 1958.

Fascinating stuff…

For example, in volume four “America and World Power,” the book discusses how “Gradually and quite naturally, there grew up the belief in a great conspiracy on the part of the very rich to ruin the poor.”

Read this and tell me — does any of it sound even the least bit familiar to you?

Most strikingly in the public eye were the great Titans of the new business era, the coal and meat “barons” and the copper, railway, steel, and other “kings,” men of the type of the elder J.P. Morgan, of James J. Hill, William H. Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Frick, William H. Clark, and Rockefeller. Such men had certain broad traits in common, differ as they might from each other as individuals. They were men of wide economic but intensely narrow social vision, and of colossal driving power and iron wills. They could lay their economic plans with imperial vision in time and space, but for the effect of their acts on society they cared nothing whatever. They claimed the right to rule the economic destinies of the people in any way that would enure their own personal advantage. Illogically, they insisted upon the theory of laissez-faire for all except themselves, while they demanded and received every favor they wished in the way of special privileges from the government, as in the tariff and the silver purchase Act. The whole machinery of government must be at their disposal when desired — legislation, court decisions, and Federal troops. They combined their business units into “trusts” and combinations of almost unlimited power, yet they insisted on “freedom of contract” when dealing with labor, whose organization in any form they almost wholly refused to sanction.

They never taught you any of that back in school, did they?

That was written, by the way, in 1940; the author was discussing how America was run back in the late 1800s.

Not only is the emphasis on Democracy a distortion of the fact the nation was founded as a Constitutional Republic, where rights are preserved rather than subjected to the whims of the majority, but these passages demonstrate the familiar snow job surrounding the all-but-official banker’s oligarchy that has ruled this country and many others for some time.

In fact, in volume five, “The Record of 1933–1941,” Adams records the death of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as the end of the era of this great wealth — never to occur again.

On May 23, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., died at the age of 97. Owner at one time of the largest fortune in the world, his lifespan had covered the entire history of American business from before the Civil War… Nearly $350,000,000 are handled by three of the Rockefeller Foundations for education, medical research and other uses. Whatever may be thought as to the methods of accumulating the beginnings of the fortune in a period of different business ethics and social outlook, no other man through his financial gifts has ever so widely benefited mankind. With our income and inheritance taxes no other such fortune will ever again be accumulated, and his death marked the end of an era in American history.

And so that’s the end of the story, kids…

Everything ended happily ever after.

Well, not quite.

Despite appearances, the shift on the part of the Rockefellers and other Robber Barons of the day from outright monopoly to “philanthropic” “non-profit” charity work was not an end to the dominance by the super-rich of the early 2oth Century, but an intensification of their undue influence. The taxation of the wealthy as well as the anti-trust actions of the day, which included busting up megacorpses like Standard Oil and AT&T, were perhaps well meaning but fundamentally failed to reign in the disparity of power.

Instead, new tax laws, in reality, acted to restrict new wealth from reaching the heights of the oligarchy, allowing “the elite” the keep their own, and initiate new members as desired. The tax-free status of many institutions – including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Ford Foundation – allowed the incredibly wealthy to a) shield their fortunes from taxation, b) appear to do good works and boost public opinion of their principle members while c) influencing, writing and developing official public policy through the steering mechanisms of its own tax-free grant making, think tank and research powers. Much social engineering has taken place – with far too little public notice – through these bodies. Additionally, d) many of its directors and board members were in “respectable” positions to shift into official government positions through the revolving door without appearing to be acting on behalf of their corporate masters.

The Reece Committee Hearings, conducted in 1953, attempted to probe the role of tax-free foundations in public life and uncovered many outrageous and conspiratorial actions taking place, including very apparent agendas advancing a one-world corporate-dominated government. However, it did not succeed in a general public understanding of what was taking place, nor did it reign in their powers.

Yesterday, the markets in gold, silver, oil, steel and other commodities were successfully cornered by the Rothschilds and other top bankers. Under Wall Street direction, and through the powers of the then newly-created Federal Reserve, these titans were able to officially dominate nearly all the important areas of public life, including great expansions in consumer spending and government agency powers. The icons of this magnificent and terrible wealth were John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, E.H. Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt and a handful of others.

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Today, those icons of wealth are the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, Larry Ellison, the Koch Brothers, Michael Bloomberg, Steve Jobs (now deceased), the Walton family descendants of Walmart and, again, a handful of others who are largely known for their role in the age of computers, the Internet, telecommunications and electronic devices.

The real wealth, from older robber barons accumulated in land, resources, banking and investment and commodities are still there, but remain under reported on the Forbes’ list of the world’s richest, instead ruling largely from the shadows and influential but secretive groups such as Bilderberg.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the Gates-Buffett led billionaires’ “giving pledge” are keeping in stride with the groundwork laid and continued by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. Heavily funded initiatives to push vaccines, birth control, population control, Western-oriented “education,” GMO and corporate-dominated agriculture and the like remain some of the most consequential and troubling policies done in the name of “good” by tax-free entities wielding enormous, nearly incalculable wealth and power.

In short, the myth of “democracy” and freedom in the United States – the beacon around the world – perpetuates, despite a few blemishes. But in reality, the Oligarchy took hold some time ago, has not let up and perhaps never will.

Let that sink in, kids. Take a good look, and let it all sink in.

And don’t forget to read Charlotte Iserbyt’s revealing and TRUE work, loaded with documents and footnotes, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.

It helps to explain why you don’t know this stuff, why the reigns of power have been stolen from us, and why things are not soon going to get better.

Unfortunately, the late comedic genius George Carlin was all-too-right when he explained the owners of America and why the education system is broken:

And like Carlin said of James Truslow Adams’ American Dream,



“The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”


From Truthstream Media @ http://truthstreammedia.com/history-lesson-america-is-the-same-ol-oligarchy-it-was-over-a-century-ago/

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Monday, 1 February 2010

Corporations Rule

Corporations Rule


   

The United States Supreme Court has ruled (last Jan. 21st) that corporations are people and therefore are guaranteed the same rights to free speech under the United States Constitution as people. They can spend as much money and exert as much influence as they want on political campaigns. President Obama strongly disagrees. He issued the following statement from the White House following the ruling by the Supremes:

With its ruling , the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. 

This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

(There’s that ‘bipartisan’ word again. I would have thought that word would be out of his lexicon by now. Bless his heart.)

I wish the President luck. Otherwise, the future leaders of our country will be selected by the huge corporations. The Republicans think they are seeing Fascism now. Just wait.
P.S. The Court ruling was 5-4, with conservative justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy ruling in favor of the corporations.

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The Court’s Blow to Democracy

 

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding. 

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations. 

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. 

They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is indeed likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns. 

These would be important steps, but they will not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they can rescue democracy.

From - First Door on the Left - http://www.esoterically.net/weblog and The New York Times editorial - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html

  
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