"Capitalism: A Love Story"

[Naturist Mark]

Originally Posted by Kouak

Haliburton is caught doing a lot of bad things. Congress decides they are bad but won't do anything about it and cancel contracts. Haliburton changes their name to KPG because, I guess, they can claim KPG has done nothing wrong...it has Haliburton. And now this.

It is interesting that Republicans state this has nothing to do with the fact that Cheney ran Haliburton. I believe them. How about you???

KBR was a subsidiary of Haliburton, which was later spun off as a separate company when Haliburton moved its HQ to the United Arab Emirates and ceased to be a US corporation (although it still maintains a "second Headquarters" in Houston). KBR is still a US company, which means it has less problems getting US government contracts - and it is one of the biggest government contractors - both before and after the Haliburton split.

By the way, KBR/Haliburton have not only been complicit in the gang rape of a female American employee, they are responsible for the killing of multiple GI's due to faulty wiring which resulted in their electrocution in the showers, and for serving GI's with contaminated water, and for multiple accounts of false billing and outright theft. Oh, did I forget to mention slavery?

Is KBR's Decade-Long Crime Spree Finally Coming to an End?
Videos: US Troops talk about Halliburton and KBR Crimes in Iraq
Court rules for victim in KBR Gang Rape Case
“Ms Sparky’s Mishaps & Misadventures” A blog documenting KBR crimes.

[Naturist Mark]

The late George Carlin is remembered as a comic, but he may ultimately be remembered as a particularly insightful political theorist, and not just for his "7 words".

How to explain our situation today?

We have an out of control healthcare system in the US that costs nearly twice as much as anywhere else, and delivers a third world result. Unless you have unlimited money.

We are watching the attempt to correct that problem turn into a program to subsidize and reward exactly those who are responsible for the problem, and the one small measure to introduce some real competition and cost containment to the system has been watered down from a small public option that would save 108 billion dollars to an even smaller one, that in an effort to keep it from "unfairly" competing will actually be more expensive than private insurance, and will only be available to 3% of the public.

We see the example of the entire financial sector being bailed out to the tune of over 12 TRILLION dollars. And the bankers are actually having their salaries increased, and get to keep their "failure" bonuses. Meanwhile Detroit's miniscule by comparison bailout came with the demand that many autoworkers be laid off, and the rest have their pay cut.

We have gone from the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation.

We used to be a country that sold more manufactured goods to the world than any other nation, now we export raw materials and import manufactured goods.

We have watched our real standard of living - once the best in the world, steadily decline. Median incomes are in a 30 year slide.

But it isn't bad for everyone! Nope. We have more millionaires than anyone else. Of course the rest of us are poorer. In 1965 the average CEO was paid 24 times as much as his average employee. Today he makes 275 times as much.

In 1955, when America had the strongest economy, biggest middle class, and highest standard of living in the world, the 400 richest Americans made an average of 12.3 million in today's dollars, and after all the loopholes they could use ended up paying 51.2% of that in federal taxes. Today the top 400 incomes average 263 million of today's dollars, and after all their loopholes pay 17.2% to federal taxes - how's that compare to your "fair share"?

When ever someone points out these facts, they are quickly accused of engaging in "class warfare", when in fact the class warfare is the creating of the situation, not the description of it.

Here is how George Carlin explains it, with a very slight edit, BSG style.

"Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t.

You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting frakked by a system that threw them overboard 30 frakkin' years ago. They don’t want that.

You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly crappier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your frakkin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this frakkin' place.

It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.

The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich assholes who don’t give a frak about you. They don’t give a frak about you . . . they don’t give a frak about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it..."
— George Carlin

And there you have it.

This is where Michael Moore's "Capitalism: a Love Story" is wrong. The problem is not Capitalism. Capitalism is what we had in 1955 when we were on top of the world. What we have today is not Capitalism. We have owners and serfs. This is Feudalism.

It is because we owe fealty to our masters that in order to improve our inexcusable medical care system we have to pay the perpetrators to extend coverage to some of those left out. And we have to just forget about reducing costs. Our masters won't even allow us to consider a system that is proven to work and will cover every one of us for less and actually reduce our national deficit - Medicare for everyone. Every congressman who stands firmly against a strong public option, is not doing it to save money - that position is costing us more - they are paying fealty to their overlords.

This is not Capitalism.

This is Feudalism.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Ardent15/55
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=114092388
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archi...pizzigati.html
http://bluehorde.blogspot.com/2007/0...dle-class.html
http://www.alternet.org/story/41305/?page=1
http://video.google.com/videosearch?...en&emb=0&aq=f#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neofeudalism
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1106-07.htm

[Fitz1980]

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

When ever someone points out these facts, they are quickly accused of engaging in "class warfare", when in fact the class warfare is the creating of the situation, not the description of it.

That is a very good point, and one that I've been saying for years. I'm sick to death of those wingnuts on Faux News and the like whining that it's CLASS WARFARE (tm) to point out that the people at the top have spent the last 30 years manipulating the system and waging a war on the middle class. That's not class warfare. Class warfare is convincing some lower-middle class person to vote against their own economic best interest by convincing them that "Obama & the Dems want to take the $25,000 that you make per year and give it to some junkie in the ghetto who refuses to work."

[missouriboy]

Mark posted:

This is where Michael Moore's "Capitalism: a Love Story" is wrong. The problem is not Capitalism. Capitalism is what we had in 1955 when we were on top of the world. What we have today is not Capitalism. We have owners and serfs. This is Feudalism.

...and that's a very good observation. Here's some more thinking on the subject...

Lots of people realize that when huge corporations can basically buy the government, and then have it act as their pet pit bull, there will be big problems. Lots of people of different political viewpoints, including socialists like Michael Moore, can recognize that. However, for some bizarre reason (whether due to dishonesty or ignorance), Mr. Moore labels that situation "capitalism." Even more bizarrely, he goes on to pitch more government as the "solution."

...more...

Click here to read the rest. The first comment thereunder is good, too.

[Fitz1980]

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

This is where Michael Moore's "Capitalism: a Love Story" is wrong. The problem is not Capitalism. Capitalism is what we had in 1955 when we were on top of the world. What we have today is not Capitalism. We have owners and serfs. This is Feudalism.

It is because we owe fealty to our masters that in order to improve our inexcusable medical care system we have to pay the perpetrators to extend coverage to some of those left out. And we have to just forget about reducing costs. Our masters won't even allow us to consider a system that is proven to work and will cover every one of us for less and actually reduce our national deficit - Medicare for everyone. Every congressman who stands firmly against a strong public option, is not doing it to save money - that position is costing us more - they are paying fealty to their overlords.

This is not Capitalism.

This is Feudalism.

Originally Posted by missouriboy

Even more bizarrely, he goes on to pitch more government as the "solution."

In 1955 we did have MORE GOVERNMENT in many aspects. We had regulations on banks and financial institutions, rules that had been in place since The Great Depression. In 1933 The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited investment banks, a commercial banks, and insurance companies from being part of the same corporate structure, so that your commercial bank isn't gambling your money on the stock market and such. It also ensures that you don't end up with institutes that are "too big to fail." In 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed those restrictions in the name of "getting big, oppressive government regulations off our backs" and look what that lead to. But now suddenly it's SOCIALISM (tm) to want to reinstate regulations that were in place for the 66 years between 1933 & 1999?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E...0%93Bliley_Act

Also in those days (thanks or WWII, The Korean War & The Cold War) there was a large conscripted army and huge batch of discharged veterans who's education (GI Bill), healthcare (the VA) & even home loans (GI Loans) were provided by the government.

Oh and you had SOCIALIZED UTILITIES (tm) in those days too. You had one municipal water and/or power company for a given location. Deregulation of the water/power industries was billed as something that will make things better through competition, but instead it made people's utility bills go up and opened the doors to corporations like Enron bankrupting California through illegal practices.

[Naturist Mark]

Originally Posted by missouriboy

Mark posted: ...and that's a very good observation. Here's some more thinking on the subject...

Click here to read the rest. The first comment thereunder is good, too.

Larkin Rose does note the dilemma - that the only counter to the complete dominance of the "owners" is a government that has already been captured by the owners. When it comes to politics, "money talks". Literally. Our Supreme Court has already ruled that money is the equivalent of free speech, and is on the verge of ruling that corporate political money "as speech" cannot be limited.

Larkin does not offer a solution.

But of course, there is one. Government is the only conceivable balance to the overwhelming power of the "owners", so government must be returned to "We the People". The only way to take government out of the hands of the highest bidder, is to eliminate the power of money over politics. It can be done, Portland Oregon has done it, the rest of the nation needs to also.

[NudeAl]

This is the root of our political problems. Until we can cut off the need for tons of cash to run for office we will continue to have the best politicians money can BUY!! This is the sad state of affairs we are in now the revolving door between politics and big business continues as power and influence are bought and sold at our expense. Government is the only entity capable of controling the powerful however when they are working together we have no hope of a fair share in society.

[missouriboy]

Originally Posted by Naturist Mark

Larkin Rose does note the dilemma - that the only counter to the complete dominance of the "owners" is a government that has already been captured by the owners. When it comes to politics, "money talks". Literally. Our Supreme Court has already ruled that money is the equivalent of free speech, and is on the verge of ruling that corporate political money "as speech" cannot be limited.

And if that isn't blatant proof that our judiciary is in the pockets of the corporate elite, then I don't know what is...

Larkin does not offer a solution.

Larken Rose is an anarchist, but he doesn't necessarily repeat that with everything he writes. His solution is very small, limited federal government, instead of what we have now. Hey, wouldn't that be something like our constitution defines?

But of course, there is one. Government is the only conceivable balance to the overwhelming power of the "owners", so government must be returned to "We the People". The only way to take government out of the hands of the highest bidder, is to eliminate the power of money over politics. It can be done, Portland Oregon has done it, the rest of the nation needs to also.

Wow, that's good. It's real similar to what I proposed on this forum back when the McCain-Feingold monstrosity was being passed. I wrote that we only needed a simple constitutional amendment to the effect that: No entity may contribute money, or any other thing of value, toward the campaign for any seat of office, except those entities eligible to cast a ballot for that seat of office. My intent was to disallow corporate campaign money altogether, but my idea was shot down by all the liberals on here. Perhaps it would have fared better if I had labeled it with the catch-phrase "Voter Owned Elections" as is found at your link!

[Naturist Mark]

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