Why the Big Money goes into the Big Lie

[Octafish]

It's not just busting unions. They want to bust Democracy.



The plan spelled out, by a lawyer for Big Tobacco soon-to-turn Supreme Court justice:

The Lewis Powell Memo - Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

Greenpeace has the full text of the Lewis Powell Memo available for review, as well as analyses of how Lewis Powell's suggestions have impacted the realms of politics, judicial law, communications and education.

Blogpost by Charlie Cray - August 23, 2011 at 11:20
Greenpeace.org

Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.

Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”

An astute observer of the business community and broader social trends, Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a board member of tobacco giant Philip Morris and other companies. In his memo, he detailed a series of possible “avenues of action” that the Chamber and the broader business community should take in response to fierce criticism in the media, campus-based protests, and new consumer and environmental laws.

SNIP...

The overall tone of Powell’s memo reflected a widespread sense of crisis among elites in the business and political communities. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” he suggested, adding that the attacks were not coming just from a few “extremists of the left,” but also – and most alarmingly -- from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including leading intellectuals, the media, and politicians.

To meet the challenge, business leaders would have to first recognize the severity of the crisis, and begin marshalling their resources to influence prominent institutions of public opinion and political power -- especially the universities, the media and the courts. The memo emphasized the importance of education, values, and movement-building. Corporations had to reshape the political debate, organize speakers’ bureaus and keep television programs under “constant surveillance.” Most importantly, business needed to recognize that political power must be “assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/

In the process, their greed and lies work to destroy the planet, let alone peace and prosperity.

[PowerToThePeople]

1. It is a war. They WILL try to kill you

It is a war. They WILL try to kill you if you do not condone their philosophy of greed.

[Octafish]

2. Absolute War.

Goes back a ways, as the people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids and they are the ones* screwing America now.

What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.



Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.

* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.

Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained seven times more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- quasi-legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.

And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, their weapon is "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans over the past 33 years, that means getting trickled down upon.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. And maybe that's the difference. We don't have Smedley Butler or FDR because they learn

from their mistakes. I'm not sure I can say that about the rest of us.
& R

[Octafish]

7. Wish more knew that's what the words are for...

When the good leaders get the ziggy -- via bullet, random accident, stuffed ballot box or Mother Nature calling back the loan -- We the People need to know what's going on. That requires a free press, good schools and a sound collective memory.

Unfortunately, as Orwell described through his concept of Newspeak, when the words aren't around, neither are the ideas. And without good ideas, all the People will have to work with are those ideas conceived by their rulers. Cough, trickle down. Cough, tax breaks. Cough, commie. Cough, WMDs.

As you, my Friend, know: Those ideas only benefit the same few rulers at the expense of the community as a whole. It would be obvious to more people, they just don't have a clue as no one is around to talk about it and they don't have, uh, the experiences needed to realize what is being done to them.

[johnnyreb]

11. song: War_on_the_People.MP3

song: War_on_the_People.MP3

from: http://www.clandyken.com

[Octafish]

3. A.K.A. ''The Powell Manifesto''

Here's more on how things got so bad that SCROTUS could install George W Bush of the BFEE.

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”[/font color]

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

This story continues through today, where we have Chief Justice John Roberts shepherding corporate friendly law through the court, let alone appointing nothing but BFEE-friendly pukes to the FISA Court.

[bobthedrummer]

4. Oh yeah-what can be said about the use of legalism when the rule of law doesn't apply to tptb? When

corporations are "people"? K & R. For me, the use of legalism by what became totalitarian dictatorships is important to understanding today-not Britney Spears moving to Las Vegas, the Third Way will save us, or other meaningless stories. We are at war.
Economics of Fascism (Wikipedia entry)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism

[mother earth]

6. & why doesn't rule of law apply to TPTB? One answer, NSA, when there are no protections against

unprecedented surveillance, everyone is subject to lawless tactics. One has to wonder how different the political arena would be without the unprecedented power of a rogue NSA, the intelligence community is shaping the world as we know it, and we are not allowed to know or approve/disapprove of their methods. This is indeed fascism on the stealth under the cover of anti-terrorism, aka carte blanche.

Absolutely we are victims of the economics of fascism. You've hit the nail on the head.

TY, Octafish, TY, bobthedrummer.

[Octafish]

12. Edward Bernays, 'Father of Modern Propaganda,' helped CIA overthrow democracy in Guatemala in 1954.

Please scroll down to pages 10-12 for specifics:

http://www.slideshare.net/PatrickWarren09/use-of-propaganda-in-the-cia-controlled-guatemalan-revolution-of-1954-removed-a-democratically-elected-leader-7291102

As many of the players from that operation would play roles in the various and sundry treasons from Dallas to Vietnam to Watergate to the October Surprise to Iran-Contra to looting the S&L to Selection 2000 to looting the Banks in 2007 to the wars without end of the present day, the story should resonate with those who wonder how the United States now enjoys democracy in name only.

[mother earth]

14. It's gut wrenchingly sickening. It doesn't have to be this way.

I'll save that reading for later, but it's pretty obvious these days, even for those in denial.

TY, Octafish, for your incredible contributions here at DU.

The backlash will come, it always does.

[Octafish]

15. You are most welcome, mother earth! TUC radio has good info on Alex Carey's work...

If you find time, you might enjoy an audio presentation on the late sociologist's work:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda

The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html

Please scroll down or search under "Carey" to the links for the presentations on Carey and Corporate Propaganda.

http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3

Maria Gilardin's TUC radio is outstanding.

PS: Thank you for the kind words, mother earth, infinitely.

[Octafish]

8. In war, the safest place is the middle.

As Harry Harrison noted in "Bill the Galactic Hero": In modern war, the troops on the front lines get shot by each other. The people on the home front get bombed by the other side. The only ones safe are the jokers running the show hanging out in-between.

It's a great theme of world storytelling: Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" goes along the same lines, with the Samurai bodyguard working the two warring criminal gangs off against each other. Sergio Leone ripped the idea off -- scene by scene -- for "Fistful of Dollars" with the Baxters and the Rojos killing one another off to the point where one side's extinct and the other so weakened that the single fighter can beat the odds and the remaining House.

It makes for great myth. And that is why the financial and political elite -- the TPTB or the BFEE -- do all they can to create the information environment. From the little the public knows about what's what and who's who, their plan is working.

[Cal33]

9. We've known for a long time that corporations are doing their best to turn our nation into a

dictatorship - with themselves as the leaders. But let's face it, Democrats have
never taken this too seriously, perhaps we believe that democracy has been
too long entrenched in this country, and therefore, "too big" to fall?

We've seen enough examples of "too big to fall," haven't we? Maybe even some
of our Democratic leaders might begin to wake up now -- the dumbasses!!

[Octafish]

10. Well said, Cal33. CEOs are the new Royals.

A most prescient observation, yours and Mr. Davies' from 1998:

CORPORATE ROYALTY

We've all come to accept the legitimacy of mega-corporations. We don't even question their right to exist. But we should. Our country (USA) was founded by people who questioned the authority of British corporations--the colonies and trading companies--to exist. See http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ , especially papers by Richard Grossman.

Thomas Paine put it this way: `...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first formidable outcry in defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.` (http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Paine/CS-Frame.html -- Common Sense 1776) Paine was specifically questioning the right of British royalty to dominate the colonies, but the manifestation of royalty in the colonies was the corporations which royalty had chartered to plunder the colonies (see Grossman).

Just for laughs, download/copy the Declaration of Independence < http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/declaration.html > and do find and replace for `They` (corporations) for `He` (King George), `have` for `has,` and `their` for `his.` Try thinking of the `bodies,` `jurisdictions` and `offices` as being the various administrations and bureaucracies of GATT and WTO--as well as state and federal regulatory agencies. King George is back.

Corporations are like royalty in that they demand and receive tribute from their taxpaying subjects in the form of corporate welfare: up to $500 billion per year, depending upon how you count it. (I'd include at least half of military expenditures and at least the same percentage of interest on the national debt--in addition to all the other subsidies and tax breaks.) See < http://www.envirolink.org/issues/corporate/welfare/ >.

SNIP...

It's no wonder the royal oil corporations are so comfortable dealing with the Saudi, Kuwaiti and other royal families. The same could be said for the royal money center banks in regards to the whole world. Their alliances with local elites have enabled them to exact tribute from 80% of the world's population in the form of `structural adjustment programs` through their royal collection royal agency, the International Monetary Fund. See http://www.igc.org/trac/corner/worldnews/other/other83.html.

The up and coming royal corporate family is the agri-chemical- genetic engineering group. They intend to have the whole world eating their genetically mutilated, pesticide-laden, factory farm foods. And they expect farmers around the world to pay them tribute in the form of license fees for their seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. This and all forms of corporate arrogance are simply astounding.

CONTINUED (Most good, a couple o' bad links, though)...

http://www.ratical.org/corporations/CorpRoyalty.html

It's also why so many who point this out get derided -- and, thanks to the SCROTUS ruling that money equals free speech -- only one side gets heard.

[woo me with science]

13. K&R

[Octafish]

17. Not on TV much if at all: NSA Admits to Spying On Congress

NSA Spying Enables War Party to Blackmail Congress

The NSA Is Spying On Our Elected Representatives

Posted on January 4, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

After Senator Bernie Sanders asked the NSA whether it spied on members of congress, the NSA responded:

NSA’s authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of US persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons. NSA is fully committed to transparency with Congress. Our interaction with Congress has been extensive both before and since the media disclosures began last June.

In other words: yes, we spy on members of Congress, just like all other Americans.

SNIP...

The Bigger Question: What Is NSA Doing With the Info?

But the bigger question is what the NSA does with that information. Remember, the Guardian reported in September that not only might the NSA be collecting information on Congress, but that it was sharing unfiltered information with a foreign nation … Israel:

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

***

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. “NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection”, it says.

***

A much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to “destroy upon recognition” any communication “that is either to or from an official of the US government“. Such communications included those of “officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)”.

In reality, there is quite a bit of evidence that NSA is using information gained through spying to blackmail Congress.

SOURCE: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/nsa-pretty-much-admits-spying-congress.html

Thanks for grokking, woo me with science. The corrupted press is helping destroy democracy, freedom and justice.

PS: You know I love you and love your name every time I see it in print on DU.

[woo me with science]

16. Kick

[Octafish]

18. What's NEVER on TV: The Last Gasp of American Democracy

From Chris Hedges, a must-read and must-share:

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014

EXCERPT...

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.

The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Thanks to Corporate McPravda, most Americans haven't a clue. Thank you, woo me with science, for giving a damn.