Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

 The SEC has now also filed suit against the largest of those banks, Goldman Sachs, alleging that those managers knowingly packaged risky derivatives and marketed these as winners while actually believing them to be losers. Goldman then bet its own money on the losing side. Those to whom the investments were sold as winners lost billions while Goldman made billions at their expense.  Did Goldman commit intentional fraud? In all probability they did.

 Five justices of the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Citizens United in January, 2010, that corporations, as persons, have the constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns, at every level, including in state legislative and judicial races. Billions of corporate dollars will now therefore flow into TV ads, leaflets, sloganeering for the "free market" and against "socialism."  That "socialism," of course is the very government regulation that might have prevented the Massey mine disaster, the BP oil spill, and the Goldman derivatives scandals. But with the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, corporations such as Massey, BP and Goldman will be authorized to invest in elections at every level to insure the future election of representatives and judges who will protect the unregulated market, or that is, defend corporate irresponsibility in opposition to the public good.

 The drum beat against socialism and for the free market is kept up, night after night, day after day, by the loud voice of corporate media, and these in turn are prominently led by The News Corporation.  That enterprise is in turn controlled by a single one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men, Rupert Murdoch, lord over TV stations, radio channels, movie making, and magazines. Murdoch is the ruler of an empire that reaches from the US to the UK to India to Australia and exercises a substantial influence over what is determined to be politically newsworthy, or what is fair and balanced. A single oligarch therefore has capacity to reduce American politics to sloganeering and circuses equivalent to the Roman Circuses of old, to make editorial decisions, and to make his personal values those that are broadcast to the public as if they were news. Do these values reflect the suffering, economic distress, or loss of life of West Virginians, Louisianans, or defrauded global investors? In all probability they do not. But the corporate veil is not easy to penetrate and it will be a long time before anybody knows.

 The net effect of these facts is that corporations, a form of organization originally intended to facilitate the accumulation of capital and thus to fuel industry and commerce, now in the year 2010 have become something altogether different. They have morphed over the last 100 years into a means to control sovereign states. They have grown so powerful that they have the ability to choke off government by the people. Now with the Citizens United decision are poised to control federal elections and therefore also the federal government.

 The robot is controlling the robot maker. The mechanical device has taken over the lives of its inventors.

 The situation is therefore far more serious and important for the survival of the republic than simply the regulation of mine safety, or off shore drilling, or financial firms. What is going on today is a battle for American democracy.

In 2010 the revolution against this tyrant need not be by taking arms, even though this is the fury that fuels the Tea Party movement and allows them to use the metaphor of arms. Today, the revolution could come from a simple amendment to the Constitution of the United States that corporations are not people, or that corporations should not be allowed to spend sums in our elections because money is not speech.

Let real persons therefore now respond to this greatest threat to popular government since the days of monarchy. Let us now become, each of us, like a hundred, hundred Paul Reveres, and let us go forth with the cry that the corporations are coming.

Craig Barnes is the author of Democracy At The Crossroads, Princes, Peasants, Poets and Presidents in the Struggle for (and against) the Rule of Law, Fulcrum, 2009. www.craigbarnes.com.