Comments
On David Sirota's
New Book: Hostile Takeover
By Stephen Lendman
12 May, 2006
Countercurrents.org
I'd
like to begin my commentary on David Sirota's important new book Hostile
Takeover with my strong endorsement of his fine work. Everyone should
read it to learn what's really going on around us that affects us all
in the most important ways I know and which most people at best only
vaguely understand on many if not most of the major issues. Those who
read it will learn in stunning and graphic detail how large corporations
in league with government at all levels serving their interests and
not ours are destroying the democratic pillars of our society. The result
now evident when we know the facts David presents is a great irreversible
harm to the great majority unless we can collectively act in time to
reverse the destructive path and economically downward trajectory we're
now on - all planned and implemented by our elected officials in service
to their generous corporate benefactors. In his important book, David
lucidly explains the problem in detail and gives us an action plan to
fight back.
Introduction
When I first heard about
David's new book, I was very eager to read it. I had to be as earlier
I wrote and got published a long article by the same title. David's
approach and mine covered some of the same ground but differed as well
including the subtitles we chose. My approach was to concentrate on
the economic consequences of corporate size and dominance to ordinary
people. David did the same, but as was clear from his subtitle, he did
it by documenting in powerful detail "how big money and corruption"
control the political process for their own gain. He also goes further
to show how we can fight back to regain the essential rights we've lost.
I covered some of that myself in an earlier article I wrote called Democracy
in America - It's Spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N. It's posted on my blog
site - sjlendman.blogspot.com. In his book, David gives more than just
an account of how our government was bought. He presents the evidence
in "handbook" form, exposing the lies and myths politicians
and corportions tell us, and gives us an action plan to fight back and
win.
David and I both know that
corporations exist for one purpose only - to make a profit. I explained
in my writing that corporate law mandates that publicly owned corporations
serve only the interests of their shareholders and do it by working
to maximize the value of their equity holdings by increasing sales and
profits. They have to do this and don't have a choice. Should they do
otherwise, the companies would likely face legal consequences and their
top executives dismissal. But David explains that in a democratic society,
government is supposed to serve the people and act as a counterweight
to unrestrained corporate power which left on its own could destroy
society. At times in the past, our elected government actually passed
laws and did that, if imperfectly. But that was then, and this is now
- a brave new world order. It's one with giant corporations literally
running amuck in charge of everything: writing the laws, making the
rules, deciding who governs and how and who serves on our courts. Tey
even have to sign off on it before the nation goes to war. Those wars
have nothing to do with national security threats (we've had none since
WW II), making the world safe for democracy or deposing tyrants. I've
explained this in other writing also on my blog site including exposing
the sham of the so-called "war on terror" which is nothing
more than a bogus scare tactic to get the public to go along with bad
policy. That policy includes waging war, although they're only fought
as a last resort when less extreme methods don't work.
Why resort to war? They're
fought to control markets, vital resources like oil and cheap labor
to help those same corporations make more profits. In that kind of world,
there's nothing to stop them from operating as legalized private tyrannies
(with their own armies we pay for through taxes) exploiting us (and
the planet) for their gain and doing it as another author explained
in his book called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Those who can pay
can play, and those who can't have no say and don't get their way. Money
not only talks, it rules the world.
It all means that the political
game is rigged by and for corporate America to enrich them and do it
at our expense. And they're aided and abetted by the big government
they bought and paid for to do their bidding - a kind of incestuous
relationship for mutual gain. It's a democracy all right, but only for
the privileged few and no one else. Voters at one time may have thought
they had a say when they went to the polls, and to some degree they
did. But today, about half of them understand they're powerless and
don't even bother showing up. Why do it when they know that on election
day the real game is big business and big government playing "let's
make a deal" - "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours."
But to play, you better have lots of "scratch." It's an arena
where only powerful interests have a say and well paid lobbyists (aka
influence-peddling "bagmen") "grease the wheels"
of big government to make it work for big business in a "snatch
and grab" all you can enterprise that leaves the pubic largely
out in the cold. It's the same story at the federal, state and local
levels although the higher up in the bureaucracy it takes place, the
bigger the stakes are.
The pubic to some degree
knows what's going on and how it's interests have been ignored. At times
it's stood by, watched, likely felt overwhelmed and helpless and done
little to fight back. But maybe because the pain of bad policy has begun
to bite deeply in recent years, David feels that's changing and people
are beginning "to demand answers about why our government is selling
us out." That's why he wrote the book - to give everyone left out
of the political process a way to fight an unfair system and win back
the rights and benefits they've lost. He explains the book's intent
is to do more than just tell the story of how our government was bought
like a commodity available to the highest bidder. It does that and then
goes on in "guidebook" fashion to give us the tools we need
to fix the system so it works for us.
Hostile Takeover Counts and
Documents the Ways the Political Process Has Become Corrupted
David then divides the rest
of his book into explaining the enterprise of government as a wholly-owned
business subsidiary in 10 separate chapters. In each one, he explains
how our so-called elected officials have corrupted their high office
to allow their corporate benefactors to exploit us for their benefit.
The evidence in each chapter shows no matter how you slice and dice
the political system, it always comes out the same way - they win and
we lose: more and more until it's down to the nub, and we've lost it
all unless we can fight back to recoup and save ourselves before it's
too late. David thinks we can do it. First he explains what we've lost,
and then he lays out an action plan to win it back. And throughout the
book, David gives copious and powerful anecdotal corroboration to make
his case for the abuses being committed against us that need redress.
As I explained above, I've
also written about these abuses and understand how our corrupted system
works. I'm a bit less sanguine than David on the public's insight into
the problem or its readiness to act - yet. But David and I are on the
same page, and for me he's preaching to the choir. I believe most others,
however, don't know or understand enough about how they're being abused,
let alone what to do about it. This book is for them and is essential
reading. I endorse and recommend it strongly. And I'll go a step further
and call it a survival manual and a call to arms. I believe things are
even more dire than David explains. I think it essential that the public
en masse must begin to act in its own interest and defense and do it
soon and effectively. Unless it does, what little remains of our tattered
republic and democracy in name only will be lost entirely, and it will
be too late to regain it.
Chapter One: Our Tax System
- Call It Robin Hood in Reverse
Also call it the great tax
scam. David quotes the now indicted and disgraced former Republican
House Majority Leader Tom Delay saying on the eve of the Iraq war in
2003 that "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than
cutting taxes." I wonder what he was inhaling just before he said
that or how stuffed his pockets were with corporate cash. It's hard
deciding whether absurd or outrageous better characterizes such an outrageous
statement. When Lyndon Johnson was president and needed revenues for
his illegal war in Vietnam, he had to raise taxes and still couldn't
get enough to pay for it without running up debt and adding to inflation
which sent the economy into decline in the 1970s.
David then explains that
in today's world as seen through the eyes of Republican ideologues and
most Democrats willing to go along with them, cutting taxes has become
a religion with no regard for the common sense notion that the revenues
only gotten through taxes pay for all the essential services we rely
on like schools, infrastructure and everything else. So it only makes
sense that when government takes in less revenue, it has less available
to provide us with the things we need, expect and rely on in a modern
society.
But that's hardly the end
of the story. Under the Bush administration, not only have there been
large tax cuts, but the ones enacted have caused the "tax structure
(to be) flipped on its head." Call it the great transformation
of a once-progressive system inverted to take from the poor and middle
class and give to the rich. It's a process that began during the Reagan
years. But under George Bush it's exploded to become greed writ large
and has now even been replicated at the state level. The most well-off
who don't need it have benefitted hugely according to the nonpartisan
Citizens for Tax Justice. They report that by 2010 after the Bush tax
cuts have been fully implemented as they now stand, the top 15% of income
earners will have gotten two-thirds of the benefits with the top 1%
getting a $600 billion dollar bonanza. On the other end, the bottom
60% will have gotten an illusory less than 18% of the benefits.
That's so because to help
offset this handout to the rich, the Bush administration imposed user
fees on various services amounting to billions of dollars that affect
low and middle income people the most. Also, federal grants to states
have been cut and new obligations imposed on them without the proper
funding to cover their cost creating what's called "unfunded (or
underfunded) mandates." To comply, states have had to raise taxes
and fees which again fall disproportionately on lower income people.
For these same people, the result has been "now you see 'em, now
you don't" tax cuts that amount to a net tax increase and effective
loss and lower standard of living for the great majority of the public.
And to make things even worse,
Corporate America has made out like thieves from big tax cuts in various
forms and their ability, especially under this administration, to exploit
legal loopholes and take advantage of lax tax law enforcement. So although
the official corporate tax rate is supposed to be 35%, most corporations
never pay close to that amount. According to the Government Accountability
Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations pay less than 5% of their income
in taxes, and corporate tax payments are the lowest they've been in
60 years. In addition, many of the wealthiest companies often pay no
tax at all and some of them actually get large rebates. They're added
to the already large subsidies most large companies get, otherwise known
as corporate welfare or socialism for big corporations and the rich
and "free market capitalism" for the rest of us. That's also
apparently called "the American way."
The bottom line of Bush administration
fiscal policy has been huge budget deficits caused by these unfair tax
cuts plus big spending increases (off the books) to fund two ongoing
illegal wars plus the new Office of Homeland Security that alone costs
$40 billion a year that we know about. So far these policies have fueled
overall economic growth and big corporate profits as it did in the 60s
and early 70s. But at some point the bills come due and must be paid,
although apparently there's no plan to do it. This is a recipe for economic
trouble or worse down the road. The lesson is always the same that the
price for good times (however gotten or for whose benefit) that were
too good or for reckless (or fiscally irresponsible) behavior that was
too reckless has always been the same: the day comes when you "gotta
pay the piper." Herb Stein, Richard Nixon's chief economic advisor,
said the same thing in his memorable dictum that "Things that can't
go on forever won't." It's called a day of reckoning but thos least
able to cope when it comes (which it will) will be the same ones cheated
by this administration's tax policies.
Because of the length of
my review and eagerness to cover as much of the book as possible, I
won't list David's solutions that he enumerates at the end of each chapter.
I'll just say, he's on the mark and that a government working for the
people and not the privileged few and corporate giants would carefully
consider them all and implement most or all of them. Sadly, today and
under this administration there's little chance of that happening unless
we force them to.
Chapter Two: Wages - Rising
for the Well-Off but Stagnation or Worse for the Rest of Us
The minimum wage in this
country is $5.15 an hour, hasn't been raised since 1997, and is now
at the lowest point it's been since 1949. The people earning it and
no more might get along fine if they have no dependents,
don't mind not eating much, enjoy camping out year round, love old tattered
clothes, never get sick and are able to educate themselves. For the
rest of us, that income level is well below the officially stated poverty
line that no one can live on but which is artificially kept low for
political reasons. That situation is a metaphor for the average working
person in the US who, adjusted for inflation, now earns less than 30
years ago even with modest annual increases.
David points out the widening
gap between low wage earners and the affluent. In my article I had slightly
different data than David and will share it with readers. In 2004, I
wrote the average CEO earned 431 times the income of the average working
person. That was up from 85 times in 1990 and 42 times in 1980 at the
beginning of the Reagan years and the Republicans rise to dominance.
David and I also used a different figure on what the average CEO now
earns annually. He noted $9 million a year and my number was $14.4 million
(mine likely included bonuses and/or stock option benefits not in David's
figure) in 2001 and rising - plus huge supplemental benefits from SERPS
(Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans) that effectively increased
their income by half again and all the other special perks corporate
executives get but the average working stiff never does. Some companies
even pay the income tax for their top executives. I described all this
in one section as the US being the unthinkable and unmentonable - a
rigid class society and one becoming more extreme all the time.
But along with stagnating
wages, essential social services are being cut, especially since Bush
took office in 2001. That too is part of the plan to transfer wealth
to the rich from the rest of us. It's created a crisis in some areas
like vital health insurance needed at all times but crucial to have
in the face of the rising cost of health care services and less of them
being provided for the needy (and to those of us like myself on Medicare)
by a government intent on fighting wars, helping the rich get even richer
and destroying the social safety net including the pillars of Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So-called "free trade
agreements" like NAFTA and CAFTA have just made it worse. These
and the alphabet soup of other trade agreements were sold to the public
in the countries adopting them as a way to grow their economies and
increase jobs. The result years after implementation has been hundreds
of thousands of jobs lost and the realization that these plans were
never intended for that purpose in the first place. They were and still
are plans for the US and dominant Global North nations to be able to
craft a set of binding trade rules overriding the sovereignty of all
member states to benefit giant corporations at the expense of working
people in those countries. It's worked like a charm, and the terrible
carnage it's caused is proof positive. Instead of creating jobs in the
US and other Global North countries as promised, jobs have been outsourced
or exported to low wage countries including many thousands of higher-paying
manufacturing and high tech ones. Even a low-wage country like Mexico
has suffeed as jobs once sent there have since been lost to even lower-wage
paying countries like China, Bangladesh and Haiti. And Mexico's small
farmers have been devastated by US heavily subsidized agribusiness that's
driven many thousands of them out of business and has done the same
thing in India and elsewhere.
The result in the US is services,
like jobs at Walmart and McDonalds, now account for nearly 80% of all
business while manufacturing has declined to about 14% and total manufacturing
employment is half the percentage of total employment it was 40 years
ago and falling. Our low unemployment rate the Labor Department reports
monthly only disguises the damage done. In the view of some economists,
if the rate today was calculated the same way it was during The Great
Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% of the working population,
the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the most recently
reported 4.7%. The current calculation method includes part-time workers
who work as little as one hour during the monthly reporting period.
It also excludes discouraged workers who wish to work but who've stopped
looking because they can't find jobs.
As he does in all his chapters,
David goes on to note and explain the myths and lies the public is told
to hide a bad and deteriorating situation concluding again with a set
of sensible solutions unlikely to be adopted unless the public fights
for them.
Chapter Three: Jobs - The
Good Ones Are Vanishing and the Poor Ones Don't Pay Enough or Provide
Needed Benefits
In this chapter David goes
into more detail on what he discussed in the previous one under wages.
He provides lots of ammunition to show how much trouble we're really
in. One example was from University of California researchers who estimated
in 2004 that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing."
An even more stark assessment came from Gartner Research that predicted
as many as "30% of high-tech jobs could be shipped overseas by
2015." If they're right, does that mean that formerly high-paid
software engineers will now be ringing up the few purchases most people
will be able to afford at the Walmarts of the world. Not a pretty picture
nor one most readers of David's book or this review would wish to look
forward to - unless they love the idea of living in a nation heading
for third-world status and run by a government aiding and abetting the
downward trajectory.
David also goes on to explain
that our government ignores the plight of good jobs being lost and,
in fact, effectively endorses the loss through the large subsidies it
makes available to the companies doing the exporting. In addition, the
safety net of unemployment insurance has been gutted through budget
cuts so fewer of the unemployed now receive benefits they need which
are available for a shorter period of time. Besides that, the budget
for job training to help the unemployed has been severely cut over the
past 25 years. Currently 84% of what was available back then no longer
is. David documents it all with powerful and graphic anecdotal examples
of the terrible damage done and a government that allows it to happen
showing it no longer cares about ordinary working people.
Chapter Four: Debt - It's
High, Rising, and Becoming a Great Burden for Ordinary Working People
Many of us may know something
about how the Bush administration turned a budget surplus into huge
deficits with little if any relief in sight for years to come. They
also should know a good bit more about mounting private debt, especially
if they're one of the many millions burdened with their own debt obligations
and have a hard time figuring out how to repay them while simultaneously
adding more.
The problem stems from a
society weaned on the notion that we should buy now and pay later regardless
of whether our debts from borrowing must be serviced which means paying
high interest carrying charges. That's especially true in the case of
the main way consumers run up debt - on their credit cards where David
explained that the predatory credit card industry makes out like mega-thieves
pocketing $24 billion in 2004 from late usury-level penalty fees alone
which made up the bulk of their $30 billion in profits. Like all other
major industries, this one has friends in high places, and it freely
"scratches their back" with lots of "scratch" to
get legislation favorable to its interests - namely, letting them get
away with grand theft. The result, as David reports, is the tragedy
of US consumers being $2 trillion in debt with the average household
carrying and servicing through monthly interest payments an unpaid credit
card balance of about $7,500. That's debt hell for these afflicted consumers,
but prfit heaven for the credit card bandits. I personally know how
these companies work and always have. As a result, I pay my monthly
bills in full and have never paid the few credit card companies whose
cards I carry one cent in interest since getting my first credit card
about 40 years ago. I'm also sensible and restrained in my spending
so my monthly balance is never onerous. My advice to others on how to
beat these thieves who thrive on your excesses is do as I do, and they'll
never know what hit them until it does.
Making matters far worse
for the public, already plagued by stagnating wages and good jobs exported
to cheap labor countries, is the new bankruptcy legislation. It gutted
consumer protection making it much harder to get that protection when
it's most needed. The new law gives the predatory credit card companies
license to steal even more than they're now doing by making it much
harder for ordinary people to seek the bankruptcy protection they used
to have. The law was passed through lies and deceit about consumer abuse
of the system that needed correcting. In fact, Harvard University researchers
found that 90% of personal bankruptcies result from illness, unaffordable
medical bills for people without insurance to cover them, job loss,
death in the family or divorce - hardly conniving people trying to rip
off the credit card companies or lending agencies.
David then once again goes
on to explain in detail the lies and myths about who benefits and who
loses under the new law, the economic conditions for most people making
them more vulnerable when trouble strikes, and much more including his
sensible solutions to the problems now created.
Chapter Five: Pensions -
Workers Actually Could Count on Them Once - But That Was Then, and This
Is Now
A major part of the American
dream is that after a lifetime of work we can look forward to a comfortable
retirement and secure future. Long ago, things turned out that way for
most ordinary working people who had good, high-paying jobs with essential
benefits, like those in manufacturing now lost. They also had strong
union protection which won them the rights they were able to enjoy while
still working and after they retired. No longer in today's hostile world
where our government officials in league with big corporations are rewriting
sacred rules allowing these companies the ability to evade their obligations
to workers once thought to be inviolable.
So even though these companies
once agreed in union negotiations to legally binding contract obligations
regarding worker benefits to be paid to retirees, they're now seeking
legal protection through the courts to back out of them. The courts
today are stacked with corporate-friendly judges, but even when companies
have no justification for redress, they're able to drag out legal cases
for years through appeals so that even if they end up losing, many retirees
will have died off waiting and the companies will save millions even
after legal expenses which aren't cheap.
Besides fraudulent corporate
lawsuits to welsh on their obligations, companies are ingenious in coming
up with new ways to cheat their employees. The AP reported one such
way in 2002 which was the quiet conversion of the retirement plans of
eight million workers to so-called "cash balance" schemes
by hundreds of companies. As David explained, these new plans were and
are nothing more than a con to let these companies back out of their
guarantee to give their workers a lifetime monthly pension and instead
offer them one lump-sum payment. The companies getting away with this
scam are able to save many millions of dollars because that payment
amounts to far less than the original promised benefits which is why
they devised this scheme in the first place.
Even the Bush administration
tried getting into this act by rolling out what David rightly calls
"the granddaddy of all pension rip-off schemes : privatizing Social
Security." I've called it the grandest of grand thefts if they're
ever able to pull it off. It hardly matters to this administration that
this magnificent plan has been "the most successful government
initiative" ever in our history and which has lifted many millions
of working people out of poverty and made it possible for them to have
a decent retirement that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. What
the Bush administration proposed doing was to turn this program over
to the sharks on Wall Street and let them run it and be able to skim
off a bonanza in big fees from retirees who would be their victims and
end up with less than they now receive. A University of Chicago economist
did the math and estimated that Wall Street would earn between $400
billion and $1 trillion in broker and administrative fees under the
Bush mega-ripoff scheme. Tankfully the public balked strongly enough,
and for now at least, the administration has backed off. But you can
bet they're likely plotting their next move to resurrect what will be
their dream scheme if they ever do pull it off. And when they launch
their next attempt, it's almost certain they'll again try using the
canard that the system is in danger of going bankrupt and only privitizing
it can fix it. So far the public hasn't bought this deceit and hopefully
won't the next time they try selling it. But David makes it very clear
that the future security of millions of working people is in jeopardy
through pension and Social Security "reform" (meaning scamming
the public to steal our future for corporate gain) unless we the people
are vigilant and take steps to fight back. David shows us how.
Chapter Six: Health Care
- Present Plans or Lack of Them Are Hazardous to Our Health
Although the government may
ignore and deny it, it's beyond dispute this country has a major and
unforgivable health care crisis that continues to get worse. Presently
46 million or more people here have no insurance coverage at all, millions
more have far too little, and David dramatically points out that 82
million Americans had no health insurance for some period of time between
2003 and 2004. This is happening in a country that spends almost 2.5
times the median average for the industrialized world, and yet the World
Health Organization (WHO) ranked the US 37th in the world in "overall
health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care. Moreover,
every developed country in the world except the US and South Africa
provide free health care for all its citizens paid for though taxes.
David dramatically points
out that we may have the best doctors and most advanced medical facilities
in the world, but what good is it if they're unavailable to a vast number
of the people living here because they can't afford to use them. David
goes on to detail much more, explaining that despite the inadequacy
of our health care system, the providers of it are some of the most
profitable companies in the country - such as the HMOs, the other big
insurers and the big drug companies. He also explains that a key reason
why we spend so much and get back so little overall is that 15 cents
of every dollar we spend on health insurance is skimmed off for "administrative
expense." That's just code language for private industry very high
profits. Compare that to our government run programs like Medicare which
only spends 4 cents of every dollar on these expenses. I'm on Medicare
and am very pleased with it except that recipients are being forced
to pay an increasingly greater amount for it. The idea is to enale the
government to welsh on its obligation to us to divert even more funds
to its corporate allies - our loss for their continuing gain.
At the end of WW II, Harry
Truman unsuccessfully tried to get Congress to pass a universal health
care government run program. He never had a chance to get it through
the Congress as the dominant health care industry companies and the
legislators shot down his proposal and every new one that came along
later to extend universal coverage to everyone. It's not because of
the cost, although we were told that's the reason. It's because government
owes its allegiance to its big corporate benefactors that won't do anything
to deny themselves the right to control the health care delivery process
and be able to charge whatever prices they wish for their products and
services. They certainly have taken full advantage of that, and the
result is the dismal state of our health care system and the high industry
profits resulting from it.
As in his other chapters,
David does a fine job exposing the lies and myths the public is told
to justify a bad system. And he ends the chapter again by offering the
kind of common sense solutions a responsible government serving the
people would have jumped on and enacted long ago. It's now up to the
public to rise up and demand they do it.
Chapter Seven: Prescription
Drugs - The Best Advice Is to Stay Well and Not Need Them - Their Cost
May Make You Sicker
Here are some of the facts
David reports on what I like to call Big Pharma. This industry is one
of the most profitable in the country making about 18 cents profit on
every dollar of sales; it's aided by government using our tax dollars
to fund about one third of all research on new drugs the industry gets
at no charge; the industry spends about twice as much on advertising,
promotion and administrative costs as they do on R & D to develop
new drugs; the prices charged for prescription drugs in the US are inordinately
high compared to the rest of the world and are rising at about four
times the rate of inflation; these rising costs plus those for most
all health services are rising so fast, companies are forcing their
employees to pay a greater share of them or are reducing overall health
care benefits; and the industry has one of the most powerful and effective
trade associations representing their interests (PhRMA - that I spelled
a different way above to refer to the companies and not the association)
seing to it that elected officials are well lubricated with campaign
contributions and more personal benefits to assure that any legislation
hostile to their interests never sees the light of day.
The bottom line is a Congress
acting like a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the drug industry
and consumers paying dearly for it. And just like other industries covered
in the book, the drug giants try to justify their consumer-unfriendly
policies with deceit and lies like claiming charging lower prices would
mean less innovation and fewer new drugs. They also never mention that
easier regulations have allowed them to come to market more quickly
with new drugs that later turned out to be unsafe and in some cases
resulted in deaths. One drug giant's Vioxx is a stark case in point
and one in which the company is now involved in large class-action litigation
on behalf of 10,000 consumer plaintiffs plus a second class-action suit
on behalf of insurers and HMOs.
The drug industry will also
profit handsomely from the new Medicare legislation that is so bad it
could only be passed in the middle of the night and then only after
enough lawmakers who first voted against it were coerced or bribed to
change their mind - a testimony to this industry's influence. Under
the plan, Medicare's bulk purchasing power was neutered so the drug
companies could charge full, undiscounted prices for their products.
The hidden details of this prescription plan for seniors are bad enough
to make it worthless for many on Medicare like myself. But the plan
is a likely bonanza for the industry and may net them hundreds of billions
of dollars including about an extra $139 billion because the government
can't negotiate lower prices.
David goes on to list other
abuses the drug industry is allowed to get away with by our government
that should be working for us but isn't. I'll mention just one more
which is an attempt by the industry to prevent consumers from buying
their drugs from other countries like Canada on the false pretext they're
unsafe - even though they're the same drugs. So much for honesty and
fairness. Once again David shows us how we can fight back and win.
Chapter 8: Energy - Try to
Think of Another Industry with Closer Ties to Those Now in the Administration
The Bush administration is
run by a cadre of high level officials formerly involved with energy
companies before they came to government including the president and
vice-president. Now try to think of another industry that will be better
treated by those in government than this one. There is none, although
there are lots of others who get their full share and aren't complaining.
There are good reasons why
energy prices are high today, and we either don't hear about them or
enough about them. The main reason is we're a profligate nation with
5% of the world's population that consumes 26% of the world's daily
oil production and about 23% of total natural gas production. The reason
we're so wasteful is the industry wants it that way and the government,
in full support of the energy giants, encourages consumption and discourages
conservation. The reason is obvious. Our bad habits are good for business.
David's book didn't have
some industry figures I now have to show how good business really is
in a time of sky-high oil prices. I'll do it by citing the operating
results of the oil giant I most like to pick on because they make it
so easy for me to do it - Exxon-Mobil. In 2005, this company showed
it's currently the largest corporation in the world. In its annual report
to shareholders and Wall Street investors, it reported the highest annual
profit ever earned by a publicly traded company. It was a breathtaking
$36 billion on sales revenue of $371 billion. But that's not the end
of the story. The good times just keep rolling for this oil giant as
it recently reported its operating results for its 2006 first quarter,
and they're better than ever: profits were up 7% from last year to 8.4
billion (their highest ever for a first quarter) and sales were up as
well by 8.4% to $89 billion. Now to put all that in perspective, based
on its 2005 sales volume, Exxon-Mobil is so large that if this company
werea country it would rank in size ahead of nearly 75% of all countries
in the world. They can thank the Bush administration for a lot of their
success. Guess who their top executives will be voting for in November
and the top officials of the other energy giants as well.
High energy prices (and specifically
oil prices) are also the result of at least two other factors which
David discusses. One is the effect on competition by massive consolidation
in the industry, especially among refiners. He noted the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) approved 413 mergers during the Clinton years and another
520 in the first three years of the Bush administration. Fewer companies
mean less competition, and that's led to higher prices. David also reported
that Consumers Union in 2004 found that higher prices were mostly from
higher charges at refineries. And those increases were the result of
lax federal regulation which allowed refiners to create artificial bottlenecks
in supply driving up the cost of gasoline at the pump. There's a nasty
word for this never used. It's called price fixing, and our government
watchdogs are allowing it with their winks and nods to their oil giant
friends. The consuming public is forced to pay the price and is lied
to by the government and industry tryig to justify it.
To top it all off, it's well
known, especially by those who try to deceive us, that energy supplies
are finite. With that in mind, you'd think the government would be encouraging
or even mandating the industry to make a determined effort to find alternative
sources to replace our dwindling resources that won't last forever.
And you'd also think laws would be passed requiring conversation especially
by raising fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and enacting other
measures to lower energy consumption. But if you thought that, you'd
be wrong. Although the need is urgent, doing these sensible things are
bad for business. And as we see repeated industry after industry, our
government will even pursue reckless policies to support their corporate
friends and funders, and in the process ignore the needs of the public.
Nothing will ever change until we demand it, and that's what David is
trying to convince us to do.
Chapter 9: Unions - They
Once Were Strong and Won Great Benefits for Their Members - No Longer
David observes, and I strongly
concur, that there's no clearer expression of corporate America's hostile
takeover of government than how elected officials treat ordinary working
people. Above all, that means their right to organize and be represented
by strong unions that will fight for their rights. Large corporations
especially hate unions and always have. But a golden age of worker rights
emerged during The Great Depression in the 1930s when economic conditions
became so dire the Roosevelt administration and enlightened business
leaders knew they had to make big enough concessions, like it or not,
to avert a possible worker's revolution similar to what happened in
Russia in 1917. The key legislation enacted for workers was the passage
of the Wagner Act that established the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) that guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively on equal
terms with management.
Things began to change in
the post WW II era beginning with the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley
Act that was the first major shot across the bow by corporate America
to curb the power of organized labor. But things really picked up steam
adversely during the Reagan years when that administration showed its
contempt for working people. It began in 1981 with the firing of 11,000
striking air traffic controllers, jailing its PATCO leaders, fining
the union leaders millions of dollars and finally "busting"
the union. The Reagan administration also used federal tax dollars to
finance strike-breaking, worked to reduce worker health and safety protections
and campaigned to change federal statutes guaranteeing worker rights
to organize and bargain collectively.
From Ronald Reagan to George
W. Bush, things have gotten progressively worse as the social contract
the government once had with the people has been systematically dismantled.
It's been done program by program, year after year with the ultimate
goal of the Bush administration and all politicians beholden to business
to make all ordinary working people "self-sufficient" with
little or no safety net for protection and the power of union representation
effectively neutered. We see the result in how union membership has
declined through the years. Whereas in 1958 about one third of the work
force belonged to unions, today it's under 13%. That shameful figure
is the lowest in the industrialized world to the detriment of all ordinary
working people here.
Corporate America in league
with government has shamelessly campaigned against unions in an effort
to demonize them to discourage workers from understanding how membership
benefits them. The rhetoric used is hostile, deceitful and contrary
to the facts which David lists: average union workers earn about one-third
more in total compensation than nonunion members; 89% of union members
have employer-paid health care benefits compared to 67% of nonunion
members; employers pay a greater share of union member health care premiums
than they do for nonunion members; over two-thirds of union members
have short-term disability insurance compared to about one-third of
nonunion workers; and, union members receive about 26% more vacation
time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays) than nonunion
members. Also, strong unions benefit nonunion workers according to the
nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute. They reported union influence
resulted in an 8.8% wage increase for the average nonunion high schoo
graduate. And another key fact came out of the influential Council on
Foreign Relations. They reported that the decline in union membership
"is correlated with the early and sharp widening of the US wage
gap" between the well-off and ordinary working people.
Again David goes on to list
and debunk the many myths and lies government and business try to use
to attack and destroy organized labor. Without it or in weakened form,
big corporations especially can exploit their work force, hold down
wages and benefits and increase their profits. So far their plan is
working like a charm as noted earlier in the section under wages. Ordinary
working people today earn less than 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation,
and the gap between rich and poor has widened to obscene levels and
it's getting worse. It's unlikely this trend will be reversed unless
a way is found to revive the union movement so that working people again
have a strong voice fighting for their rights. Again, David offers solid
solutions.
Chapter Ten: Legal Rights
- This Means the Right of Ordinary People to Have Their Day in Court
and Be Treated Fairly Because the Law Assures It - It's Called the Right
of "Due Process" Guaranteed Under the Fourteenth Amendment
of the Constitution
Fair treatment under the
law in a democratic society serving us all is the way things should
be, but they're not, Fourteenth Amendment notwithstanding. That's because
corporate America in collusion with their government benefactors have
stacked the legal deck to prevent it. So instead of equity and justice
we have "tort reform." That's code language meaning limiting
the legal rights of ordinary individuals including their ability to
file lawsuits against corrupt companies and be able to get fair redress
for the harm caused them.
David shows how government
has pandered to corporate wishes. In 1995, Congress passed a bill limiting
shareholders' rights to sue company officials and get proper restitution
when they cooked the books or violated the law in other ways. Then in
2005, Congress enacted legislation limiting our right to file class-action
lawsuits. And the same thing is happening at the state level, so that
power and influence is stripping ordinary people of their legal right
of protection against corporate abuse that seems to become greater as
corporations grow larger and get cozier with elected officials. The
2005 federal legislation requires most class-action suits to be filed
only in federal courts which are more heavily stacked with business-friendly
justices than the state ones. Also, many state laws are tougher and
federal courts are so overburdened many cases never get heard and those
that do must wait far longer to be placed on the court docket. When
justice is delayed under this kind of an unfair system, it's dened.
Once again David shows how
big corporations and their government lackeys have gamed the system
and rigged the legal rules so they win and ordinary people suffer for
it and are denied justice. One more time David shows us how to fight
back and win.
The Sum of It All for Ordinary
People
David sums up his thoughts
in a final chapter asking when "will this downward spiral ever
end?" He then goes on to tell us the good news and the bad. As
if we didn't know it, he stresses the bad news is both major political
parties are complicit with their corporate allies and willingly aid
them in their hostile takeover. So any time we're able to throw the
bums out, we're just likely to get new bums. David adds more bad news
explaining "the media" largely ignore what's going on. I'd
go much further than David and say the "media" are the dominant
corporate media, and they're in on the scam as they too benefit from
it. The reporters and pundits they have on air or in print have little
latitude beyond what their employers expect them to do. If they want
to keep their jobs, they'll support corporate-friendly policies because
they're good for business including the companies they work for.
But David also gives us some
good news. Americans are smart he says. They know corporations and the
rich have too much power, and government is there to serve them. We
also have new avenues to connect with each other and become better informed.
The growth of alternative media, the internet, weblogs (I have my own)
and more are attracting growing numbers and over time may weaken the
corporate media's stranglehold on us as our main source of information
- which is no information at all. It's the party line designed and intended
to "keep the rabble in line" so they can continue their wicked
ways at our expense.
I must briefly add an update
to David's reported good news on alternative media sources. It seems
when things are getting too good for consumers, corporate America mounts
an offensive to regain the offensive and grow their profits handsomely
in the process. That's what the telephone and cable companies are now
doing in Congress with their attempt to make the Web a gated community.
They want to destroy net neutrality by gaining the right to charge their
Web site customers based on the amount of their traffic. Their plan
is to be able to offer a new tier of broadband service to companies
using their networks to make them pay more for speedier access. There's
lots more they want as well, if they can get it, that will benefit them
but hurt consumers. There's now momentum building on Capitol Hill to
head off this intrusion to rewrite the rules and hurt our internet freedoms.
We won't know the outcome for a while, but the stakes for the public
are very high and the adversary we face is very powerful and comitted
to beat us.
Overall on all the issues
he discussed in his book, David admits we face a tough struggle and
that "for every victory.....there are many more defeats."
But he ends the book with his final prescription on how we can fight
back, and I'll list the ones he's chosen:
1. Reject the idea that we
can't bring about change. History shows we can if we're fully committed.
2. Get informed on what's
going on and how it's harming us. It's not that hard if we try, but
you won't get it on TV or in your morning paper.
3. Fight back at the grass
roots. That's how Republicans began their rise to power back when Democrats
controlled the White House for 20 years and the Congress for much longer.
It starts at the local level and goes up from there. In my city of Chicago,
it's called the city council and various boards that run the functions
of government.
4. Don't get co-opted by
the system. Instead, organize ordinary people for political action where
you live. Remember how former Democrat and House Speaker Tip O'Neill
characterized the system when he said "all politics is local."
His grammar may have been bad, but his wisdom was sound.
5. Campaign and fight for
public funding of elections. As long as private money rules, they win
and we lose.
David ends on a very upbeat
note, and I'll add my own after his from my article on the same subject.
He cites our history of an active population that in the past fought
back and won major victories - ending slavery, women's rights including
to vote, the right to organize, civil rights and lots more. We've always
fought injustice when it got bad enough and those affected wouldn't
take it anymore. David concludes he's confident our outrage will grow
enough to make us fight back again and lead us to a better future. And
I'll end this section with a quote by famed Chicago community organizer
Sol Linowitz who understood and preached that "the way to beat
organized money is with organized people." He proved it.
My Own Summation of David's
Important Book
I loved the book, especially
because I wrote about the same subject using the same title as I stated
at the outset. I also said up front and will repeat again that everyone
should read David's book as a starting point to learning what's wrong
that's harming us and getting worse and then learn how we can fight
back and win.
That said, I have some suggestions
for David in future editions of this book. I covered a few issues David
didn't in my Hostile Takeover article, the earlier companion one to
it I called Democracy in America - It's Spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-O-N and
other writing. I'll list three important ones briefly and end.
l. Obscene levels of military
spending that benefit the defense contractors and all other companies
serving the military - industrial complex have hurt the public enormously.
I wrote that the Center for Defense Information reported that since
1945 over $21 trillion dollars has been sucked out of the economy for
military spending largely to benefit US corporations even though the
country had no real enemies all through those years - and we were lied
to all that time to make us believe we did. The public paid for this
largesse through our taxes that should have been spent on essential
social services we never got.
2. The state of public education
in the country has been degraded by a combination of neglect and a deliberate
effort to produce new generations of young people only fit for low-paying
service jobs - because many of the good ones (especially in manufacturing
and high-tech) are being exported to low-wage countries. George Bush's
"no child left behind" education program is just another fraud
to enrich corporations at the expense of school children.
3. The prison population
in the country has grown to over 2.1 million with about 900 new inmates
being added each week. It's now the largest in the world, even greater
than China's with four times our population and a government that has
no compunction about locking people up. I wrote a major article on this
I called The US Gulag Prison System, and I was referring to the one
at home. This is an outrage and should be a national scandal as is the
state of what I call our criminal-injustice system. All of it is an
outgrowth of a society benefitting wealth and power and doing it at
the expense of ordinary people who naturally become more restive as
their lives become more intolerable. So we've chosen to solve the problem
by locking up as many of them as we can on any pretext instead of providing
essential services and correcting corporate abuses which is how a government
serving us would do it. This one (Republican or Democrat) doesn't and
won't unless we make it do it.
I urge David to consider
adding these topics to a future edition of his wonderful book. But I
applaud him for his important contribution. It's his first book, and
I certainly hope not his last.
Stephen Lendman lives in
Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. Also visit
his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.