Excerpt: "The federal government is certainly complicit in the oppression of the 99%. And the people are rightly upset. Congressional approval is now in the single digits, which is the lowest in recorded history for CBS/New York Times pollsters."
Traders on Wall Street react with concern as the markets tumble, 08/04/11. (photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
The Corporatocracy Is the 1 Percent
01 November 11
Reader Supported News | Perspective
n October of 2003 Steve Jobs first learned that he had pancreatic cancer. His doctors and family members urged, even pleaded with him to have surgery, but he opted instead to try alternative and natural remedies. It was a decision he would later regret. America is faced with a similar dilemma.
Recently, an article by Llewellyn Rockwell, a former Ron Paul chief of staff, antagonized the federal government elite as the "1 percent" that's wronged the other 99% of Americans. Rockwell eschews the "impoverishing ... taxes, regimentation" of the state while encouraging the Occupy movement to leave the other 1 percent alone - CEOs and bankers - as they are, "Some of the smartest, most innovative people in the country."
Rockwell's writing has a lot of truth to it. The federal government is certainly complicit in the oppression of the 99%. And the people are rightly upset. Congressional approval is now in the single digits, which is the lowest in recorded history for CBS/New York Times pollsters. The Federal Reserve's first audit showed trillions in secret bailouts to the same Wall Street banks foreclosing on our homes and laying off thousands, as well as trillions in bailouts to banks outside of the United States. And if that wasn't enough, it appears that the Fed is letting Bank of America dump $74 trillion in derivatives into taxpayer-insured FDIC accounts. President Obama's support for Occupy Wall Street seems hollow when such rampant greed and corruption is allowed to continue under the nose of our supposed regulators.
But antagonizing the state as the sole culprit for our grievances is disingenuous. The state enables the unrestrained greed of corporate and financial titans to push millions into poverty worldwide. Toothless agencies, staffed with former executives of the companies they're supposed to be regulating, were complicit in the BP oil disaster by letting the companies write their own rules. Corporations are now breaking apart pieces of the Earth's mantle to draw natural gas, free to pollute water supplies without fear of government regulation. President Obama's re-election team just hired a senior adviser who formerly lobbied for TransCanada - the same company pushing the White House to approve their Keystone XL oil pipeline that would pillage the land for oil destined for other countries. Even Sen. Dick Durbin admits that banks "frankly own the place." Our government has become a subsidiary of industry.
The truth in Rockwell's piece lies in his description of the corporate 1 percent that he praises as "smart and innovative." Indeed, these men are smart, but their intelligence should be seen as cold and calculating, not praised. Corporations don't care about helping America succeed. Corporations as they exist now exist solely for profit, not public good. If the government stands in the way of their profit potential, they can legally purchase new politicians through unlimited, undisclosed campaign donations. If the salaries of their employees, or even the planet, stand in the way, they'll eliminate them to appease an economic system that values unsustainable growth over all else. This system of collusion and oppression is why Americans of all colors and backgrounds are Occupying.
In a recent segment on Democracy Now!, Glenn Greenwald noted that mere legislative demands from Occupiers would be insufficient to address the grievances of the 99 percent taking the world by storm. If Congress is so rife with corruption that they'll even vote down creating 300,000 jobs for teachers and first responders to protect millionaires from even a .05% tax increase, then the system is beyond saving through conventional means. The real battle must be waged nonviolently in the streets, even in the face of excessive oppression by an emerging police state.
The cancer eating America alive right now is a corporatocracy where cozy relationships between the power elite dictate policy for the 99%. Americans must surgically remove the corporate cancer from government through direct action and the voting booth, and cultivate new leaders from within the movement. When the people lead, our leaders will have no choice but to follow.
Carl Gibson, 24, of Lexington, Kentucky, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. He graduated from Morehead State University in 2009 with a B.A. in Journalism before starting the first US Uncut group in Jackson, Mississippi, in February of 2011. Since then, over 20,000 US Uncut activists have carried out more than 300 actions in over 100 cities nationwide. You may contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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It looks increasingly like things are irresistably heading that way.......
We must hold on through the Winter, because when resisting overwhelming force, small, energetic and dedicated groups are the ONLY effective opposition. By standing firm past Corporate America's expectations and patience, we can move mountains.
I am a 75 year old cripple who will be somewhere in those ranks. I urge you to join me in whatever city may be convenient. If you can't stay, bring food, drink and your old warm clothing. Just be a part of the change for which we all voted in 2004 and which we can make happen in 2011/2012.
Spread the word.
If the system was not gamed so well now, we would not be in the fix we are in now. With banks. With government collusion in the banks and what they want. With Republican local groups in each state imposing rules that will make it harder for largely Democratic voters to register or vote. This is all to a purpose. Watch what happens in 2012.
YES, work like hell to get Progressives elected. But keep in mind that the system that you are electing them into, forces most into bondage with banks, corporations, and other large political donors like the Koch brothers holding the leash.
And we know that maybe as many as one half of representatives are millionaires!
Occupy Wall Street, form that new party now and not later!
WE are the change. Change IS coming. It is US. the seeds of change are the ideas of life on earth lived for the good of the all the people and our planet Earth. they were emplanted in the people of the United States by the enlightened men wno enframed our Constitution and wrote our Declaration of Independence, long ago.
Right now there is a petition on the web to cut off campaign support for those three Democrats in the Senate and who knows how many in the House who oppose the American Jobs Act. You and I can sign that petition and urge our friends to do so. When 10,000 have signed, it will be hand-delivered to the campaign committees. It includes a pledge to make a donation, but only when action is taken. Check it out at http://signon.org/sign/democrats-must-support?source=c.fwd&r_by=226791
They are driving this kleptocracy.
The corporations only cashed the checks our politicians (Read Obama/Pelosi/Re id/ Bush ...) gave them.
Of course a looter like Durbin will say anything to redirect blame away from him self and his fellow looters - How dare those greedy corporations cash those government checks we gave them...
Its obviously time [whether we're overburdened with Info-overload or not] for we the people/citizens to pick up the slack and make our own accountable/tra nsparent institutions (OWLS, for example, has already launched thousands) and structural reforms as need be (be it at the local, state, national level, or WHEREEVER things aren't right or should be improved).
“'Well, Doctor, what have we got— a Republic or a Monarchy?'
'A Republic, if you can keep it'.”
- Benjamin Franklin's response, at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, from the notes of Dr. James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Convention, 1st published in "American Historical Review", vol. 11, 1906, p. 618.
The democratic and republican parties are corporations - they are special interest groups and they are a government protected monopoly.
As Adam Smith observed in the 'Wealth of Nations' - Monopolies are the enemy of good management and monopolies require government protection to last.
Is there not a better definition of [or way to always ensure] ever-lasting PLUTOCRACY than the above concept? We have been and will be 'under the thumb' of such 'aristocracy'/' plutocracy'/'ba nkster oligarchy' (whatever you want to call the small group of men) until we the people/citizens make it perfectly clear that we are no longer fooled by such assumptions and other traditional trickeries upon which They have depended.
Smithian 'classical' propaganda about the need for COMMODITY (Private Plutocracy) money is pretty much the bread & butter of the past several centuries of Aristocracy/Oli garhcy-run gov't and society.
Its the information/kno wledge Age now, and we SHALL overcome.
It was shown during the election of 2000 how easily these machines could be programmed to steal votes, or how easily the data bases could later be hacked into via telephone to *change* votes before the final tallies were transmitted to the mainframe computers.
Investigators brought Diebold voting machines before Congress to demonstrate the fact that, when a voter entered one vote (in this case, for Gore) the machine actually registered three votes for W. Diebold tired to pass this off to Congress as a "program glitch".
You can guestimate for yourself the whole load of nothing that Congress did with all of *that* information.
People in many States then demanded accountability in the form of a voting machine receipt - a paper trail.
A large number of Republicans in various States quickly swung into action passing laws that would actually make it *illegal* for a voting machine to render a receipt - or a "paper trail". This incredibly transparent admission of guilt *alone* should tell you *all* you need to know about the "sanctity" of your vote via machine.
To paraphrase an old '60s banner, "Voting for change is like copulating for chastity".
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