Whose Country is it anyway? A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America
Global Research E-Newsletter
over the United States of America
By Prof. John Kozy
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14226
Global Research, July 4, 2009
A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of
America.
This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects
businesses at the expense of not only the common people but the
nation itself.
CNN interviewed a person recently who was seriously burned when his
vehicle burst into flames because a plastic brake-fluid reservoir
ruptured. Having sued Chrysler, he was now concerned that its
bankruptcy filing would enable Chrysler to avoid paying any damages.
A CNN legal expert called this highly likely, since the main goal
of reorganization in bankruptcy is preserving the company's viability
and that those creditors who could contribute most to attaining
that goal would be compensated first while those involved in civil
suits against the company would be placed lowest on the creditor
list since compensating them would lessen the chances of the company's
surviving. This rational clearly implies that the preservation of
companies is more important than the preservation of people. Of
course, similar cases have been reported before. The claims of
workers for unpaid wages have often been dismissed as have their
contracts for benefits.
But there is an essential difference between a business that lends
money or delivers products or services to another company and the
employees who work for it. Business is an activity that supposedly
involves risk. Employment is not. Neither is unknowingly buying a
defective product. Workers and consumers do not extend credit to
the companies they work for or buy products from. They are not in
any normal sense of the word creditors. Yet that distinction is
erased in bankruptcy proceedings which preserve companies at the
public's expense.
Of course, bankruptcy is not the only American practice that makes
use of this principle. The current bailout policies of both the
Federal Reserve and the Treasury make use of it. Again companies
are being saved at the expense of the American people. America's
civil courts are notorious for favoring corporate defendants when
sued by injured plaintiffs. Corporate profiteering is not only
tolerated, it is often encouraged. The sordid records of both
Halliburton and KBR are proof enough. Neither has suffered any
serious consequences for their abysmal activities in Iraq while
supplying services to the troops deployed there. Even worse, these
companies continue to get additional contracts from the Department
of State. A former Army chaplain who later worked for Halliburton's
KBR unit ... told Congress ... KBR came first, the soldiers came
second.'" [http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/deyoung.html] Again,
it's companies first, people last. But Major General Smedley Butler
made this point in 1935. [See
http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket.html] And everyone is
familiar with the influence corporate America has over the Congress
through campaign contributions and lobbying. For instance, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce has earmarked $20 million over two years to
kill [card check].
[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-card-check4-2009jun04,0
,7195326.story?track=rss] Companies expect returns on their money,
and preventing workers from unionizing offers huge returns. And on
Thursday June 4, 2009 USA Today reported that, Republicans strongly
oppose a government run [healthcare] plan saying it would put private
companies insuring millions of Americans out of business. A government
run plan would set artificially low prices that private insurers
would have no way of competing with,' Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky, said ... . (Kentucky ranks fifth highest in the
number of people with incomes below poverty. Why is he worried about
the survival of insurers?)
The profound question is how can any of it be justified?
President Calvin Coolidge did say that the business of America is
business and the American political class seems to have adopted
this view, but the Constitution cannot be used to justify it. The
word business in the sense of commercial firm occurs nowhere in it.
Nowhere does the Constitution direct the government to even promote
commerce or even defend private property. The Constitution is clear.
It was established to promote just six goals: (1) form a more perfect
union, (2) establish justice, (3) insure domestic tranquility, (4)
provide for the common defense, (5) promote the general welfare,
and (6) secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity. Of course, the Constitution does not prohibit the
government from promoting commerce or defending private property,
but what happens when doing so conflicts with one or more of its
six purposes? Shouldn't any law that does that be unconstitutional?
For instance, wouldn't it be difficult the claim that a bankruptcy
procedure that protects business and subordinates or dismisses the
claims of workers and injured plaintiffs establishes justice? How
can spending trillions of dollars to save financial institutions
and other businesses whose very own actions brought down the global
economy be construed as establishing justice or even promoting the
general welfare when people are losing their incomes, their pensions,
their health care, and even their homes? These actions clearly
conflict with the Constitution's stated goals. Shouldn't they have
been declared unconstitutional? Although the Constitution does
provide people with the right to petition the government for a
redress of grievances, it does not clearly provide that right to
organizations or corporations and it certainly does not provide to
anyone the right to petition the government for special advantages.
Yet that is what the Congress, even after its members swear to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States, allows
special interest groups to do. Where in the Constitution is there
a justification for putting the people last?
How this situation could have arisen is a puzzle? Haven't our elected
officials, our justices, our legal scholars, our professors of
Constitutional Law, or even our political scientists read the
Constitution? Have they merely misunderstood it? Or have they simply
chosen to disregard the preamble as though it had no bearing on its
subsequent articles? Why have no astute lawyers brought actions on
behalf of the people? Why indeed?
The answer is that a political-economic oligarchy has taken over
the nation.
This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects
businesses at the expense of not only the common people but the
nation itself. Businessmen have no loyalties. The Bank of International
Settlements insures it, since it is not accountable to any national
government. (See my piece, A Banker' Economy,
http://www.jkozy.com/A_Bankers__Economy.htm.) Thomas Jefferson knew
it when he wrote, Merchants have no country. The mere spot they
stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from
which they draw their gain. Mayer Amschel Rothschild knew it when
he said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who
makes the laws." William Henry Vanderbilt knew it when he said, The
public be damned. Businesses know it when they use every possible
ruse to avoid paying taxes, they know it when they offshore jobs
and production, they know it when the engage in war profiteering,
and they know it when they take no sides in wars, caring not an
iota who emerges victorious. IBM, GM, Ford, Alcoa, Du Pont, Standard
Oil, Chase Bank, J.P.
Morgan, National City Bank, Guaranty, Bankers Trust, and American
Express all knew it when they did business as usual with Germany
during World War II.
Prescott Bush knew it when he aided and abetted the financial backers
of Adolf Hitler.
Yet somehow or other the people in our government, including the
judiciary, do not seem to know it, and they have allowed and even
abetted businesses that have no allegiance to any country to subvert
the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Constitution does not define
such action as treason.
America's youthful students are regularly taught Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address and are familiar with its peroration, we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedomand that government: of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth. If that nation ever existed, it no longer does. And when
Benjamin Franklin was asked, Well, Doctor, what have we gota Republic
or a Monarchy? he answered, A Republic, if you can keep it.
We haven't. What we have ended up with is merely an Unpublic, an
economic oligarchy that cares naught for either the nation or the
public.
To argue that the United States of America is a failed state is not
difficult.
A nation that has the highest documented prison population in the
world can hardly be described as domestically tranquil. A nation
whose top one percent of the people have 46 percent of the wealth
cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to be enjoying
general welfare (generally true means true for the most part with
a few exceptions). A nation that spends as much on defense as the
rest of the world combined and cannot control its borders, could
not avert the attack on the World Trade Center, and can not win its
recent major wars can not be described as providing for its common
defense.
How perfect the union is or whether justice usually prevails are
matters of debate, and what blessings of liberty Americans enjoy
that peoples in other advanced countries are denied is never stated.
A nation that cannot fulfill its Constitution's stated goals surely
is a failed one. How else could failure be defined? By allowing
people with no fastidious loyalty to the nation or its people to
control it, by allowing them to disregard entirely the Constitution's
preamble, the nation could not avoid this failure. The prevailing
economic system requires it.
Woody Guthrie sang, This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land,
but it isn't. It was stolen a long time ago. Although it may have
been made for you and me, people with absolutely no loyalty to this
land now own it. It needs to be taken, not bought, back! America
needs a new birth of freedom, it needs a government for the people,
it needs a government that puts people first, but it won't get one
unless Americans come to realize just how immoral and vicious our
economic system is.
John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs
on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the
U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university
professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published
a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and
a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number
of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found
on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's
homepage.
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Copyright John Kozy, Global Research, 2009
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