Listening to a right-wing caller on the Thom Hartmann show recently, reminded me of a key element from the right-wing authoritarian message machine. They make false claims about government, but the real problem is: massive corporate servitude. From any contract we sign that forces us into arbitration if we are harmed – arbitration that favors the corporation, to medical care costs set by the corporate “chargemaster,” to corporate commercials selling us things we don’t need, to corporate sponsored ALEC writing our state laws, to thousands of corporate lobbyists in our capital, to exorbitant corporate campaign donations, multinational corporations govern our lives. And they have the resources to sue anyone if anything impacts their profits.
“Excessive [corporate] intrusion” into all areas of our democracy is the major problem we are facing today. Corporate governance, which is only accountable to a few major stockholders, has replaced our representative governance, which is now only loosely accountable to its citizens. Remember the polls showing 90 percent of the public wanting limitations on guns sales and the 45 Senators that voted against that law? But no one’s talking about this problem because the right-wing authoritarians are pushing a false problem which they have manufactured and which supports their only reason for existence – to prove they are right.
Remember, you won’t find ‘protecting and empowering citizens’ in any corporate charter or by-laws. Protection and empowerment is the moral responsibility of nurturant parents and representative government.
Corporate governance diminishes our liberties and freedoms. Women are losing their liberty to choose – unless they can afford ‘safer’ for-profit facilities. Citizens are losing their right to vote unless they can pay a for-profit government contractor for a voter ID. Some of us still don’t have the freedom to walk our streets – just for the sake of maintaining gun manufacturer profits.
Corporate servitude IS replacing equal protection and empowerment of citizens by its representative government – except for the ONE%, who can afford their own protection and empowerment. One day, corporations will be selling our children to the wealthiest bidder.
Andy Hailey