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The Corporate Rulers are "God" and we are their subjects, slaves and victims. It should be the other way around. We are the sovereign people of this land, and nobody does business here without our permission and according to OUR rules. That is one of the premises of democracy. Another, and THE most fundamental premise of democracy, is visible, transparent vote counting in the public venue. Instead now we have one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--controlling 80% of the vote counts in the U.S., using 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that we are forbidden to review--with virtually no audit/recount controls. That's how bad Corporate Rule has gotten. Thus, we no longer have the ability to rein in their power, to tax them fairly, to enforce rules and regs, such as environmental protections, and to prevent them from owning our "elected" representatives and writing our laws, not to mention hijacking our military for corporate resource wars. In theory, we charter corporations in the states and can pull their corporate charters, dismantle them and seize their assets for the common good, but in practice they are untouchable, and, with globalization, they have created many other ways to evade the rightful power of democratic nations and their people (moving headquarters abroad, hiding funds/assets, etc.).
So, the Corporate Rulers, for instance, can ease up here, if they decide to, in order to prevent rebellion of one of the potentially most progressive and powerful people on earth--us--maybe re-nationalize some middle class jobs and let us have schools and libraries, but the boot will come down again. The problem is POWER: who has it? In a democracy, these should be OUR choices. They want to do business here? They can't rip us off. Period. End of story. And, believe me, there are plenty of entrepreneurs and creative and energetic people among us who would leap at the opportunity to make useful, delightful and reliable consumer products, create genuine, non-rip off services and provide non-polluting energy, decent food, true medical care and other needs of our population for decent salaries and modest profits. We don't NEED these goddamn monster corporations and super-rich parasites.
The choices should be ours, as a sovereign people. But somehow the rules of our society are made in Dubai or Hong Kong or at meetings of the Bilderburg group or the G-8, or in the programmers' dungeon in Omaha where ES&S chooses the lackeys who parade around as our "democratic representatives."
This was a very big but understandable mistake we made about Bill Clinton and the Clinton "bubble." Most people (except those who protested in Seattle) were unaware that our power as a people was being GIVEN AWAY to multinational, corporate-run institutions like the WTO, by a Democratic Party establishment that had utterly betrayed us and our democracy. The "bubble" was brief and the consequences were dire: war and massive suffering, rigged elections, suborned Supreme Court, multiple tax cuts for the rich, vast war profiteering, further loss of our rights, vast undermining and destruction of our institutions, rules and ideals. We had better beware this time, if another "bubble" is created to fool people about who has the power over our society, government and lives. We need fundamental, structural reform--starting with a REAL 'Boston Tea Party' for the corporate-run voting machines--or our democracy is over and we will become just a ragtag, conquered territory of Corporate Masters who have loyalty to no one.
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