The issue of corporations seizing control of government is nothing new, but I have to admit surprise at just how far back the struggle has been documented.
It”s common these days to speak about what the founding fathers stood for, as if they were a monolithic group of one mind. Of course, nothing could be more wrong as some, like Hamilton would have preferred a monarchy and favored the banking industry over the citizen, while others, like Jefferson would have gone to war all over again to stop just that. No wonder it took eight years after the British surrendered at Yorktown before the Constitution was drafted and finally ratified. Far from a singular mind set, the founders struggled all those years to find compromises on a wide-range of issues.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about the issue of citizens” rights being paramount. I think he was clear on this when he said, “I hope we shall crush … in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
A radical populist, he was a constant critic of banks monopolizing economic power and “the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.”
How do you think Jefferson would feel about the taxpayers being forced to pay for oil field security and provide $35 billion per year in direct subsidies to an industry that pays no income taxes?
It”s often said that “there isn”t a dime”s bit of difference between them,” when discussing current party politics, but that really isn”t true. After the orgy of fraud that recently precipitated a near worldwide depression, the Democrats, who can trace their party back to Jefferson, stood for finance reform, albeit meekly, on timid legs as is their way, while the Republicans did all they could to protect the banks from it. In order to coax a whopping three Republican votes to reach the number needed to avoid yet another filibuster in the Senate, the Democrats allowed the bill to be watered down and pumped full of loopholes so that the final product is bloated and weak. Yet it exists only because Democrats pushed hard for it.
The five activists of the right wing on the Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations are free to spend as much as they want to purchase election results that will result in their greatest profits, regardless of what is best for American citizens. To hear their party line, only Democrats or liberals can be guilty of activism on the bench as it couldn”t possibly work both ways.
The media is as liberal as the right wing corporations that own it. This is why during the week that finance reform was passed and signed into law the leading story was instead about how the Obama administration forced Shirley Sherrod to resign. We quickly learned that she, like ACORN before her, was the victim of a vicious smear from Andrew Breitbart that was then hyped on FOX News, but the narrative was not about their tawdry form of yellow journalism. Instead the focus was on the administration”s overreaction. I wonder if FOX will cover the trial of Breitbart as he is now being sued for his vile race baiting actions by his victim.
What I think is being proved today is that it doesn”t matter if you are on the right side of the issues, from finance reform, to forcing oil companies to be held accountable, to demanding that Sept. 11 first responders get medical coverage for the maladies they now suffer as a result of that horrible day or to whether extending the tax cuts to 98 percent of Americans is as important as preserving the tax cut for the top 2 percent, who are already wealthy. The public is for them all, the Democrats too, but the corporations stop all real progress on them. They control the dialogue on the media outlets, so Democrats get little credit for their stances. Corporate media continues to allow right-wing extremists to portray Obama as Hitler for the outrageous crime of attempting to make health care accessible to all Americans, never missing a chance to show the same doctored photos for the 10,000th time. We sure could use Jefferson today.
Lowell Grant is a weekly columnist for the Record-Bee. E-mail him at c21vintage@aol.com.
