A few days over a year ago, or to be more precise on January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court handed over what little was left of this nation’s pretensions to democracy on a silver platter to the Big Banks and the US Chamber of Commerce. The case was titled Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and the Court’s decision removed all limits on corporate campaign contributions. Elections are now a sham proceeding at every level US government. The vast majority of the American people who no longer participate in the electoral charade are the smartest among us. The willfully ignorant and delusional still cling desperately to their faux-alternative Democratic politician or their Tea Party Republican politician with the tin-foil hat.
The Big Banks are running the show. Not the banks, there are 956 of those operating in the US and 950 of them lost money last year. Its the Big Banks headed by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and the six of those made so much money last year that the banking industry as a whole turned a handsome profit. Goldman Sachs, the top campaign contributor to Barack Obama, decided that he rather than John McCain would take over for George W. Bush in January 2009 and also dictated that there would be essentially no changes in the direction of the United States. And the transformation has been seamless.
The Big Banks count on their partners in the US Chamber of Commerce to share the load of governance. The Chamber’s far-right wing embodied by the Koch brothers has generated the Tea Party, the working class shock troops that are necessary if fascism, a term that describes the corporate-state, is to actually function in the US. And the Chamber launders the money of the Chinese, German, Japanese, Indian, Saudi and other foreign corporate entities seeking to advance their interests in the US political arena. After demonstrating the extent of their control in the elections of 2010, Chamber President Thomas Donohue assured a nervous and shellacked-feeling Barack Obama that he would be allowed a second term in the role he enjoys so, President of the United States. “The chamber has not, does not and will not participate in presidential politics,” Donohue told reporters. “And it is not our intention to participate in any activity to weaken the president for his re-election. We are not seeking any activity that would limit the president’s ability to advance his own re-election.” Obama then genuflected to the bosses, bringing JP Morgan Chase’s William J. Daley and General Electric’s Jeff Immelt into his Administration.
Just who are the corporate “people” whose free speech rights the US Supreme Court established in the Citizens United Decision and who are now unleashed to do as they please. Let’s look at some snapshots from the Chamber’s Annual Picnic last year.
Over there in pavilion eight, why it’s the murders of Nataline Sarkisyan and thousands of other Americans who must go without basic life-saving medical care for the sake of CIGNA HealthCare profits. And look in the next pavilion over the murders of 29 mineworkers at the Upper Big Branch Mine in southern West Virginia, Massey Energy Co., when basic safety concerns were set aside for profits sake. There in three pavilions in close proximity, the criminal corporate syndicate of BP, Halliburton and Transocean that executed the crime of the century beginning with the murders of 11 oil workers on the Deepwater Horizon and ending with the poisoning death of the Gulf of Mexico. Not far away, the five corporate media giants, Newscorp (Fox), Time Warner (CNN), General Electric and Comcast (NBC, MSNBC), Disney (ABC) and Viacom (CBS and MTV), that helped the Obama Administration bury the crime in a massive PR blitz.
And there were the Chambers foreign guests in happier times, like the fellows from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), who were happily operating their General Electric designed nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi despite warnings, according to Wikileaks, from the International Atomic Energy Commission and even US diplomats that the flaunting of safety concerns invited catastrophe. But ignoring the warnings was good for business so the catastrophe is upon us all multiplied to the tenth power. The world’s third largest economy is mortally wounded and it is not out of the question that Japan is now destroyed and will have to be evacuated. The only hope for Japan rests on the shoulders of TEPCO workers who are volunteering for suicide missions against the ongoing nuclear reactor meltdowns to give their working class brothers and sisters the chance to survive into a civilized future, the chance to deal with those corporate ghouls who profited from cutting corners and falsifying reports.
Then Saudi Aramco was there too. The state owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia stands watch over the heart of global capitalism. Who knew then that in a few months they would send their troops in the guise of the Gulf Cooperation Council into neighboring Bahrain in a vain attempt to hold back the revolutionary human tsunami sweeping across the Middle East. Soon Saudi oil will be as difficult to extract as Libyan oil is now and then?
Well then the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission will be placed where it belongs in history–on the compost heap of American’s backyard food gardens.