From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sun Jul 05 2009 - 16:12:51 EDT
Whose Country is it anyway? A political-economic oligarchy has taken over
the United States of America
By Prof. John Kozy
Global Research, July 4, 2009
A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America.
This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects businesses
at the expense of not only the common people but the nation itself.
CNN interviewed a person recently who was seriously burned when his vehicle
burst into flames because a plastic brake-fluid reservoir ruptured. Having
sued Chrysler, he was now concerned that its bankruptcy filing would enable
Chrysler to avoid paying any damages. A CNN legal expert called this highly
likely, since the main goal of reorganization in bankruptcy is preserving
the company’s viability and that those creditors who could contribute
most to attaining that goal would be compensated first while those involved
in civil suits against the company would be placed lowest on the creditor
list since compensating them would lessen the chances of the company’s
surviving. This rational clearly implies that the preservation of companies
is more important than the preservation of people. Of course, similar cases
have been reported before. The claims of workers for unpaid wages have
often been dismissed as have their contracts for benefits.
But there is an essential difference between a business that lends money or
delivers products or services to another company and the employees who work
for it. Business is an activity that supposedly involves risk. Employment
is not. Neither is unknowingly buying a defective product. Workers and
consumers do not extend credit to the companies they work for or buy
products from. They are not in any normal sense of the word
“creditors.” Yet that distinction is erased in bankruptcy proceedings
which preserve companies at the public’s expense.
Of course, bankruptcy is not the only American practice that makes use of
this principle. The current bailout policies of both the Federal Reserve
and the Treasury make use of it. Again companies are being saved at the
expense of the American people. America’s civil courts are notorious for
favoring corporate defendants when sued by injured plaintiffs. Corporate
profiteering is not only tolerated, it is often encouraged. The sordid
records of both Halliburton and KBR are proof enough. Neither has suffered
any serious consequences for their abysmal activities in Iraq while
supplying services to the troops deployed there. Even worse, these
companies continue to get additional contracts from the Department of
State. “A former Army chaplain who later worked for Halliburton's KBR
unit . . . told Congress . . . ‘KBR came first, the soldiers came
second.’" [http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/deyoung.html] Again,
it’s companies first, people last. But Major General Smedley Butler made
this point in 1935. [See http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html]
And everyone is familiar with the influence corporate America has over the
Congress through campaign contributions and lobbying. For instance, “the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce has earmarked $20 million over two years to kill
[card check].”
[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-card-check4-2009jun04,0,7195326.story?track=rss]
Companies expect returns on their money, and preventing workers from
unionizing offers huge returns. And on Thursday June 4, 2009 USA Today
reported that, “Republicans strongly oppose a government run [healthcare]
plan saying it would put private companies insuring millions of Americans
out of business. ‘A government run plan would set artificially low prices
that private insurers would have no way of competing with,’ Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said . . . .” (Kentucky ranks
fifth highest in the number of people with incomes below poverty. Why is he
worried about the survival of insurers?)
The profound question is how can any of it be justified?
President Calvin Coolidge did say that the business of America is business
and the American political class seems to have adopted this view, but the
Constitution cannot be used to justify it. The word “business” in the
sense of “commercial firm” occurs nowhere in it. Nowhere does the
Constitution direct the government to even promote commerce or even defend
private property. The Constitution is clear. It was established to promote
just six goals: (1) form a more perfect union, (2) establish justice, (3)
insure domestic tranquility, (4) provide for the common defense, (5)
promote the general welfare, and (6) secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity. Of course, the Constitution does not prohibit
the government from promoting commerce or defending private property, but
what happens when doing so conflicts with one or more of its six purposes?
Shouldn’t any law that does that be unconstitutional? For instance,
wouldn’t it be difficult the claim that a bankruptcy procedure that
protects business and subordinates or dismisses the claims of workers and
injured plaintiffs establishes justice? How can spending trillions of
dollars to save financial institutions and other businesses whose very own
actions brought down the global economy be construed as establishing
justice or even promoting the general welfare when people are losing their
incomes, their pensions, their health care, and even their homes? These
actions clearly conflict with the Constitution’s stated goals.
Shouldn’t they have been declared unconstitutional? Although the
Constitution does provide people with the right to petition the government
for a redress of grievances, it does not clearly provide that right to
organizations or corporations and it certainly does not provide to anyone
the right to petition the government for special advantages. Yet that is
what the Congress, even after its members swear to support and defend the
Constitution of the United States, allows special interest groups to do.
Where in the Constitution is there a justification for putting the people
last?
How this situation could have arisen is a puzzle? Haven’t our elected
officials, our justices, our legal scholars, our professors of
Constitutional Law, or even our political scientists read the Constitution?
Have they merely misunderstood it? Or have they simply chosen to disregard
the preamble as though it had no bearing on its subsequent articles? Why
have no astute lawyers brought actions on behalf of the people? Why indeed?
The answer is that a political-economic oligarchy has taken over the
nation. This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects
businesses at the expense of not only the common people but the nation
itself. Businessmen have no loyalties. The Bank of International
Settlements insures it, since it is not accountable to any national
government. (See my piece, A Banker’ Economy,
http://www.jkozy.com/A_Bankers__Economy.htm.) Thomas Jefferson knew it when
he wrote, “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does
not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their
gain.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild knew it when he said, "Give me control of
a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." William Henry
Vanderbilt knew it when he said, “The public be damned.” Businesses
know it when they use every possible ruse to avoid paying taxes, they know
it when they offshore jobs and production, they know it when the engage in
war profiteering, and they know it when they take no sides in wars, caring
not an iota who emerges victorious. IBM, GM, Ford, Alcoa, Du Pont, Standard
Oil, Chase Bank, J.P. Morgan, National City Bank, Guaranty, Bankers Trust,
and American Express all knew it when they did business as usual with
Germany during World War II. Prescott Bush knew it when he aided and
abetted the financial backers of Adolf Hitler.
Yet somehow or other the people in our government, including the judiciary,
do not seem to know it, and they have allowed and even abetted businesses
that have no allegiance to any country to subvert the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the Constitution does not define such action as treason.
America’s youthful students are regularly taught Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address and are familiar with its peroration, “we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” If that
nation ever existed, it no longer does. And when Benjamin Franklin was
asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” he
answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” We haven’t. What we have
ended up with is merely an Unpublic, an economic oligarchy that cares
naught for either the nation or the public.
To argue that the United States of America is a failed state is not
difficult. A nation that has the highest documented prison population in
the world can hardly be described as domestically tranquil. A nation whose
top one percent of the people have 46 percent of the wealth cannot by any
stretch of the imagination be said to be enjoying general welfare
(“generally true” means true for the most part with a few exceptions).
A nation that spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined
and cannot control its borders, could not avert the attack on the World
Trade Center, and can not win its recent major wars can not be described as
providing for its common defense. How perfect the union is or whether
justice usually prevails are matters of debate, and what blessings of
liberty Americans enjoy that peoples in other advanced countries are denied
is never stated. A nation that cannot fulfill its Constitution’s stated
goals surely is a failed one. How else could failure be defined? By
allowing people with no fastidious loyalty to the nation or its people to
control it, by allowing them to disregard entirely the Constitution’s
preamble, the nation could not avoid this failure. The prevailing economic
system requires it.
Woody Guthrie sang, “This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land,” but
it isn’t. It was stolen a long time ago. Although it may have been
“made for you and me,” people with absolutely no loyalty to this land
now own it. It needs to be taken, not bought, back! America needs a new
birth of freedom, it needs a government for the people, it needs a
government that puts people first, but it won’t get one unless Americans
come to realize just how immoral and vicious our economic system is.
John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on
social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army
during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and
another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal
logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial
magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His
on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed
from that site's homepage.