atomou.....Like I said, Mr X: There's no honour among crims! Costello is not "standing up" to the banks. He's trying to be a stand up comedian. Big dif.
The difference is strong government standing up to corporations letting them know whose boss otherwise we will be heading down the same situation as America is in. That’s what the US bases are all about. An example of the power corporations wield over government was Rudd’s visit to New York earlier this year to have an interview with Murdock.
The Library of Halexandriah Corporate Rule
Corporations tend to get a bad rap. The good news is that they don’t necessarily receive a lot of bad press. This is because they tend to control the media, and in some cases, are the Media. Clearly the Media companies are corporations, and/or are owned by corporations. Duh. Meanwhile, those individuals who work for corporations, even the Transnational Corporations, may think that it’s not as bad as it appears from the outside. But this may only be a case of a gross inability to see the forest for the trees. (Or simply the wholesale, wanton and irresponsible destruction of the same trees, which when piled up alongside the river bank, inhibit any alternative viewpoint.)
An absolutely fundamental difference between living, sentient beings and corporations is that human beings have unlimited liability, and corporations have limited liability. Human beings can forfeit their freedom, their property, even their lives for everything from libel and slander to mistaken judgment to accidents to intentional acts. Corporations can not even be driven out of business for the most questionable acts -- except perhaps in rare cases of public outrage. The latter, however, is wholly unacceptable in that an uninformed or misinformed public opinion could have been molded by -- you guessed it -- another corporation or group of corporations, also known as the media.
Enter the United States Government, with the where-with-all to curb corporate tyrannies. Unfortunately, this hasn’t worked out too well for anyone but the corporations and their highly paid (bribed?) political operatives. Current campaign financing laws, combined with the “revolving door” between corporations and government, are the means by which corporations control absolutely the politics of nations. The degree to which corporations are out of control is best illustrated by the recent massive theft at the upper levels by CEOs -- aided and abetted by Independent Accounting Firms. As the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange departs after eight years, he takes a mere $168 million home with him! Gee, I hope he can find another job.
Corporate Politics is in all respects the prime mover in the destruction of Constitutional principles and the idealized American way of life. Whether it is Oprah providing aid and soft money (i.e. free, extensive publicity) to the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates -- while ignoring completely the qualified and legitimate third party candidates -- or the international banksters being responsible for the US Bankruptcy, and its after-math, corporations rule the world from the unethical base of the “bottom line”.
About the only saving grace in Corporate Rule is that different corporations have different agendas in many situations, and thus the competition of the greedy keeps some aspects at bay. At the same time, however, organizations which support non-profitable institutions, such as public schools and environmental causes, have a very reduced ability to compete with the 900 pound gorillas.
Corporations not only strongly influence domestic policies within the United States, but also affect American foreign policy, by the simple expedient of an unbridled support of Capitalism by the American Government (or governments, when State governments are included). This in turn leads to tremendous inequities in the way the Military Industrial Complex (which President Eisenhower warned us about so many years ago) treats the people of the world. What we have is a Corporate Pac Man Conglomerate gobbling up resources from countries all over the world, and in the end so infuriating (often rightly so) the people of those foreign lands, that terrorist organizations the world over have easy access to disgruntled and disillusioned individuals. And not just from third world countries, as the presence of American and European proxy-terrorists have made clear.
The American Government’s wholehearted support of Corporate Capitalism, combined with what amounts to general greed, stupidity, and power-at-any-cost, has led to a Crisis of American Government, where The Art of Cover Ups has risen to new heights of sophistication, and Americans and non-Americans alike no longer trust anything the US government says, does, or in which it becomes involved.
The final horror is a situation where the awesome power of the United States, its military and industrial base, and its collective citizenry, is not used to curb Corporate abuse, but instead to aid it in its nefarious agenda to accumulate ever greater power in the hands an elite. Instead, all indication are that governments throughout the world are slowly handing over the reins of power to what can only be called a Corporate State.
So... What are the victims of Corporate tyrannies to do?
As Carolyn Chute, author of the 1985 classic, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, and a staunch corporate abolitionist phrased it: “...if faceless financiers and their tool, the corporation, aren't completely out of our lobbies, out of all our campaigns, and out of our constitution soon, looks like We, the People are going to come in the middle of the night with a can of gasoline in every hand and one fat match."
This is not necessarily a recipe for a Revolution, or even Anarchy on a massive scale. But inasmuch as it might have a deleterious effect on the bottom line of the Corporations, they might consider taking Ms. Chute’s sentiments with a certain amount of concern. Just as labor unions forced their way into the mainstream, despite the government’s assistance to the corporations in attempting to destroy them during the first half of the Twentieth Century, there is a point where it’s no longer profitable to forge the Corporate State.
