Corporate Cancer: An insidious disease that is consuming America and the world
A hundred thousand protesters are at work in Copenhagen to attack a problem that no amount of science will cure. Only a small percentage of the crowd is American. As protesters look for morale support, they see few Americans not only because the COP15 Summit is in Europe. The US is the world’s largest consumer of the earth’s resources. We should be there in large numbers. We aren’t because our nation that so reveres democracy and power of the people has the most severe cases of Corporate Cancer in the world.
This disease has almost destroyed the democratic ideals that are driven into American consciousness since childhood. We elected a president to save us and he can’t because his office and family are located where the sufferers from the disease do their most damaging work. No other physical disease has the diseased as its most ardent supporters. Mental diseases do. Corporate Cancer is a mental disease.
If you decide to join the millions on the Internet who want to combat this disease and send combatants to Washington who have immunity, your email in box will be inundated with a myriad of information and seemingly worthwhile causes that claim to be the answer. Each cause deserves to be supported. However, those of us without the disease or in the early stages are asked to solve symptoms rather than the disease and those diseased are pleased to see this diffused effort. That’s the most insidious aspect of this disease. The more it grows, the less aware one is that you are diseased.
The most diseased trumpet the glories of unregulated capitalism and mask their disease through possessions and power. The more they have the more they want even though there is no proof that creature comforts or power over others brings true happiness. Even though the wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, has found a way to work on his disease by giving most of his fortune to the poor and suffering, his example has found only a few extremely wealthy followers. Some may just be trying to lessen their guilt. Others including Gates may have found a cure.
Cruelty, hypocrisy and outright fraud are symptoms that can’t be hidden or ignored. Yet they have not caused any significant mobilization of the masses to directly attack them and save America and the world. There is still time to act. Exactly how much time is hard to gauge.
The principles of problem solving apply. You have to first recognize the true problem, then determine potential solutions and mobilize others to implement an effective solution. You can’t attack the symptoms and expect any useful solution. You also are doomed to fail if you believe people are the main problem. Changing the people and not the system will fail. The solution must attack the system that perpetuates the problem, not the people who are responsible for running the system or it’s victims. Those who created the system or have the power to change the system will be the most resistant to change because they believe they are its biggest beneficiaries and have the most to lose. And because it’s a mental disease.
Once enough people agree that Corporate Cancer is the core of the problem, then, and only then, can sufficient people be mobilized to bring about a solution.
Americans throughout its history have stood up for social change, a mental challenge, and produced meaningful results. We have a chance to remind ourselves of the courage it has taken by watching tonight on the history channel at 8pm CT dramatization of Howard Zinn’s “The People Speak” inspired by his books “A People’s History” and “Voices of a People’s History.” Anthony Arnove, who produced and co-directed the show and co-edited the “Voices” book, says the featured voices “forged a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice” and “remind us never to take liberty for granted.”
Author, historian, teacher, activist, and now television producer Dr. Howard Zinn is a man on a mission. He wants Americans to recognize the power of protest in shaping their country’s history. Those of us who want to attack Corporate Cancer need to be inspired because the fight will be by far the most difficult in American history.
America is far from the leader on climate change. We clearly need to be a significant player. Regardless of how well we lead or follow, we must become the leader in the Corporate Cancer fight.
The diseased are determined to wipe out the middle class and make everyone slaves to everyday survival so they are suckers to propaganda, distortions and lies. David Michael Green in a Common Dreams article yesterday said about the jobless recovery and plight of the middle class that “this will be the latest and greatest click yet of what is the most massive ratcheting project of the last three decades, perhaps the most wholesale redistribution of wealth in human history.”
The masses better wake up before it is too late. Those of us who are awake, better get busy following the example of the American voices we can listen to and be inspired by tonight.
FOOTNOTE: While I recognize that there is no such thing as a mental “disease” and the proper term should be illness, somehow “illness” doesn’t describe the insidious manner this disease spreads. It infects people more rapidly than any illness could so I purposely chose “disease.”
That is the problem, and it goes beyond left and right, since both sides encourage the disease. Corporations now have “human rights” and money is considered “free speech.” Hardly what the founders envisioned. The only beneficiaries of our two wars are corporations, some not even American, although big oil and others are now stateless global colossi, so that distinction means little anymore.
Worse, the “too big to fail” banks have only gotten bigger, and in our media world, we are relieved that a defense contractor finally unloaded NBC, only to see it purchased by a cable monopoly. Improvement? I doubt it.
What people should care about is enforcement of anti-trust laws, the repeal of corporate personhood, and the return to a progressive tax system that might at least slightly dent the influence of the very wealthy on public policy. The current administration has made none of these a priority, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor may provide a welcome (though not majority) view of corporate personhood.
True, you guys are a 24 carat example of mental illness and the first step in combatting it is recognition, but you’re still not quite to that stage yet. Corporations, the perennial bogeyman for “progressives”, can only do what they do with the acquiescence of the state, for it is the state that licenses their existence. A portion of the population enjoys enough of the fruits of corporate activity, such as employment and cheap consumer goods, to allow their continuance. Like all aspects of life, the relationship between corporations and their employees, customers, shareholders and neighbors is not always positive. For this reason, you witless ingrates should like to see society transformed to a socialist utopia where the innate motivations of human behavior are smothered by an even more powerful, faceless, irresponsible state acting in what you hope, but cannot guarantee, are the interests of society as a perceived whole, rather than the desires of the individuals that compose it. And to accomplish this, you see the expansion of the very state that enables the corporations as the vehicle. Well, that is lunacy in high heels and fish net stockings.
I can’t speak for RMP, but I’m advocating nothing of the sort. When Teddy Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil, and Carter broke up ATT, they did it because consumers were suffering from their monopolistic control. He did not turn their operations over to the state. Today we have ExxonMpbil and Comcast as replacements, to nary a peep from either party. What monopolies do is the opposite of the “free market,” crushing competitors so they can provide worse service at a higher price. Show me a contrary example, please.
When corporations become too big, only government has the power to break them up; and government is, at least nominally, controllable by us. JPMorgan Chase is not.
Further, corporate personhood is the result of misguided Supreme Court decisions made relatively recently; the original tea partiers were rebelling, after all, against the British East India Company as much as they were the crown, and the founders regulated corporations pretty sternly as a result. Money equalling speech is even more recent; Buckley v. Valeo is younger than I am.
I don’t know why you equate bloated monopolies that control governments with “freedom,” and and responsible, consumer-protecting enforcement of a real “market” with tyranny, since the reality is the opposite. You can contest your property tax bill, but not your phone bill.
American underperformance in such things as food and product safety, high-speed internet service, health care costs vs. outcomes, and on and on, relative to other democracies is the embarrassing result of a crooked political system that rewards the mediocrity of the large rather than the innovations of the small. (see Microsoft; antitrust: Europe vs. America, for starters.) The capitalist system you praise so fulsomely and reflexively looks a lot more like the Soviet Union, in its coddling of outdated and inefficient industries, overemphasis on military spending, and rampant cronyism than any free market.
“You can contest your property tax bill, but not your phone bill.”
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Sure you can. And you can switch to another phone company. But you can’t switch to another taxing entity, you’d have to change locations, which people and businesses are forced to do.
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“the embarrassing result of a crooked political system that rewards the mediocrity of the large rather than the innovations of the small. (see Microsoft; antitrust: Europe vs. America, for starters.) The capitalist system you praise so fulsomely and reflexively looks a lot more like the Soviet Union, in its coddling of outdated and inefficient industries, overemphasis on military spending, and rampant cronyism than any free market.”
______________________
You’re confusing politics and government. As for Microsoft, they didn’t exist in any form until 1975 and couldn’t be considered “large” until much later. And there are plenty of alternatives for those that care to make the effort. This is being composed on a PC that’s never seen Windows. If there’s a resemblance between our own perverted economic system and that of the unlamented (except for left-wing America) soviets, it’s the government intrusion into every aspect of that system. What indication do you have that government apparatchiks will operate more altruistically, more humanely and with more intelligence than individuals in the private sector? Are they a different species, with different motivations? If so, why do they all climb into bed with the evil corporations as soon as their government retirement benefits kick in?
It’s always one extreme or the other with you, Tom. It’s always BLACK and WHITE. You blame taxes for everything – corporations/manufaturing leaving the USA in droves in the past 15-20 years; you blame labor unions for everything, you blame the government when in reality there is much blame to go around.
Right now, I don’t care about who is to blame. We need jobs, period. We need manufacturing back in the USA. We need factories, we need infrastructure, we need modernization of our transportation, we need alternate energy. We need affordable higher education. We need affordable health care.
What solutions do you have for these things?
He has none, presumably because he has his; and you don’t matter.
Exactly. I witnessed a perfect example of that yesterday when I was working at an indoor marketplace (kind of a high-end flea market) in Stark County, Ohio, a rural and conservative area south of Cleveland. I have a health insurance boot and give advice and solutions to people, seniors in particular, about what to do if their plans are not renewing or they lost their retirement benefits.
Some retiree guy stopped by and said, “I have Tri-Care.” And I congratulated him. Then he decided to go off on some right-wing tirade about government health care plans (and the irony was obviously lost on him), and I maintained my Cool Hand Luke/Ghandi composure and challenged him oh-so-politely about how we as a country were responsible and wasn’t it a good investment, really, to offer affordable health care and affordable college for the benefit of future generations?
He said it wasn’t the government’s job to do that.
Except when it came to his, of course.
If he has Tri-Care like I do that means he served at least 20 years and benefited from socialized government military medicine which is great because the doctors only worry about medicine and not making money. With Tri-Care after retirement, the government is paying his medical expenses whether he is using military or civilian doctors. For him to not give a damn about all those suffering with no insurance or inadequate insurance and badmouth government health care plans shows that he is incapable of thinking for himself as are so many other RWAs and he is trying to destroy the country he said he would fight and die for.
It’s idiots like him that keep me from hanging around military retirees because I would not keep my cool as you did.
The government gets the money to pay for this either by taxation (unlikely) or by borrowing it. It isn’t free. The government has, at some level, decided to take money from some citizens and use it to purchase medical care for other citizens. It also confiscates money or borrows it to provide free meals and housing for others. It takes your money and uses it to subsidize ethanol production on several levels so you can be forced to pump crappy fuel into your car. The NEA takes your money and gives awards to poets that you’ve never heard of. Maybe you like your government engineered health care, maybe it’s great for you, but it ain’t free. And it ain’t cheap.
Somethin’ else, isn’t it?
Funny you should mention that, Retzilian. I heard the same tirade from a TriCare recipient, who happened to be, I regret to say, my father. He’s had so many free bypasses they ought to put in a zipper, and my brother even suggested it, but danged if he can put up with that gummint healthcare, despite the fact that it’s maintained him into his 80′s. I was able to shut him up for a change, however, when I told him a few stories about how the “free market” hospitals operate, since I found out a bit about that when my mom was dying.
“The capitalist system you praise so fulsomely and reflexively looks a lot more like the Soviet Union, in its coddling of outdated and inefficient industries, overemphasis on military spending, and rampant cronyism than any free market.” nailhead tom
Tom you must have a nail in your head if the words I boldfaced is what you really think the Hag believes or is saying. Name me a system in America where the corporations are not in control and have not fixed the system entirely to their benefit.
As for state control of corporations, it started out that way when corporations were first created, but it no longer exists. I can be incorporated in my state for $50 and filling out one form. States, counties and communities make money out of taxes but the corporations pretty much do what they want especially after they have bought the politicians.
I didn’t say that, CH did. Was he being ironic? The reality is that a free market system (capitalism is a Marxist term) doesn’t have the capability of “coddling of outdated and inefficient industries, overemphasis on military spending, and rampant cronyism”. Only a mercantilist, corporatist GOVERNMENT can do those things. Corporations have the ability to influence government just as any like-minded group of individuals does. It is our elected officials and unelected nomenklatura that succumb to that influence. For instance, none of our elected representatives in Washington has read in its entirety any of the byzantine bills proposed or passed recently, much less authored them. And the reason is because these bills are written by those with a financial interest in the legislation. Many different constituencies are involved. Any revamping of health care, for example, will be accompanied by efforts to maximize the income of everyone involved in the medical food chain. We won’t see highly paid pharmacists replaced by uneducated salesgirls at Walgreens. Keep in mind that every dime of costs in our health care system is somebody’s income. Eliminating insurance company executive bonuses isn’t even a beginning in lowering the cost of health care.
we must have typed simultaneously.
Proud of this reply of yours. Good points, nicely presented. A very civil, stimulating discussion.
Have a cookie….
Yeah. Lots of “like minded individuals” have billions to spend establishing think tanks, astroturf groups, news networks, and and bus convoys, and could easily blow News Corp or ExxonMobil out of the water with one PAC tied behind their backs. To quote Barney Frank (or “Fag,” if you prefer Dick Armey’s term, which you undoubtedly do) “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”
If only Tom could refrain from unnecessary insults, this would be a lot more rewarding of a discussion. Retzilian’s reply to Tom’s wingnut mantra emission (there should be cap and trade for those) was the beginning of a stimulating discussion. Too bad he can’t possibly throw the ball back in an intelligent way.
But to the topic of this blog – The fact that uninhibited greed is not an acceptable condition is as old as mankind. We are a social species and without this “social” component not fit for survival. For example, the gondolas in Venice are black to this day because the rulers noticed that income inequalities afforded many rich Venezians to decorate their vehicles with such a decadent display of wealth that it caused undesirable social tensions. The richest of the rich ordered laws against it – one of which required to place black drapes over gondolas. I am sure conservative circles back then were as appalled as our dear right is today, whenever their privileges are touched ever so mildly.
I don’t care if wingnuts in this country place socialism in the same league with child molestation. Fact is we need to obey to some very fundamental principles that made us who we are. The most impressive species ever to inhabit this planet. We really are great. Let’s make sure we are smart enough not to fuck it all up.
Tom, you seem to be one of the smarter, more articulate and educated representatives of the right. How can you possibly deny the fact that on some level we are programmed to help each other out? I assume you go to church. Isn’t that the quintessential christian teaching? If your Jesus existed (less evidence here than for man made global warming, btw.), he was a Socialist with a capital “S”.
Even those that nailed him to the cross for it (an early version of Reaganism, I suppose) had rules and checks and balances to keep the richest from owning the political system. At least they tried and I am sure that back then as today, rich individuals had enormous influence on political decisions. Trying to fight this fact is naive and a waste of energy.
So unless you believe in “2012″ being the end of mankind (in which case I beg you to elect Sarah – just for shits and giggles), imposing some rules to keep corporations in check and hence balancing the many useful purposes they provide with the inevitable abuse of power that would occur otherwise is very important for the continuation of the human species on a path to sustainable prosperity for all. Oops that was socialist again. I am sorry Tom.
In Augustan times all political and government decisions were made at the point of a sword by the richest and most powerful. The common man had zero input on government policy. On the other hand, the local despot was unlikely to interfere in his day to day life. The first concern of man in those days was his relationship with whoever the representative of the dominant deity might be. That priest required at least respect, if not support. Now our first concern is not God and an unlikely hereafter but our daily relationship with a multi-level government that seeks to regulate every aspect of our lives. That some of us should be aware enough of this to resent it should come as no surprise to even the most dense of socialists.
As for the “helping out” thing that Tarheel brings up, charity has always been part of the human experience at every level of culture. I’m not aware that when Christ advocated charity he was talking to the government. No one seems to recall that the free library phenomenon in this country was begun by the efforts of Andrew Carnegie of hated US Steel, that scores of educational institutions in this country have been founded and supported by titans of business and that Joan Kroc, wife of McDonalds founder Ray Kroc, left her entire fortune to the Salvation Army.
“Tarheel?” Well. I bet somebody got a chuckle over that.
As for Copenhagen, it might be a good thing if the protesters are disappointed, and the whole thing falls apart. Nothing official has been announced,but what’s been leaked , if true, indicates another neocon (essentialy)privatization effort, to tranfer the process from the UN to the World Bank.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/
Maybe you like your government engineered health care, maybe it’s great for you, but it ain’t free. And it ain’t cheap.
I have zip,(‘cept for what cash I can come up with) but I’d be
willing to try a single payer system, with Uncle Sam as the insurance agent. Not cheap or free, but 50-60% less (at least) than the current cost,and cover everybody. It’s our money . If we want to pool it, and cover ourselves, it won’t be the end of civilization-as-we-know-it.
I know, I know, you don’t want to pay for that ( and would rather pay double to the great patriotic insurance companies). I don’t want to pay for 764 military bases , a $527B Pentagon budget (not to mention the rest of the alphabet soup) , and a lot of other things, but that’s not the collective decision. As for the current montrosity, it probably won’t do anything except deliver new hostages to insurance companies. ( Last I knew – tom’s probably right that none of the C-Critters actually know everything that is in there.)
Anybody see Orrin Hatch on Friday? Gallingly hypocritical, but probably (mostly) correct. Don’t know why the R’s didn’t bring it up earlier ( when it might have prodded better from the D’s) , instead of the idiotic socialism crap. I wish somebody would bring up the congressionally engineered (Thanks, Billy Tauzin) Medicare non-negotiation drug ripoff, but none of them do. Redoing that would lower costs a lot .
Btw, tom, Medicare has ~2% overhead costs, while private insurance companies have ~20%.
Here’s a couple things that migh be worth a look, re the great health care “debate”:
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/11/saving-our-children-from-their-deficit/
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-“public-option”-was-sold/
Thanks for your words and links. For the supporters of those corporations and Corporation Cancer, here is clear evidence of the point and I you are making:
US business interests suspected in ‘fabricated’ climate scandal
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/business-interests-suspected-fabricated-climate-scandal/
To Tom, who wrote:
Here’s the rub, Tom. There would be more taxes to collect if there were more jobs, thus revenue, thus there would be more money to pay for these programs.
What do you think MEDICARE is??! What do you think Social Security is? What do you think the tax system is designed to do, exactly? Theoretically, people who make more money pay more taxes, and they should be privileged to do so, since they have the highest standard of living anywhere.
So what? That’s a fraction of a fraction of what is spent on stupid things like KBR and Blackwater (aka Xe), or billions spent to invade and occupy a country in the middle east. Hello? I’d much rather pay to feed children and house and give them a good education. It’s a much better investment with a greater ROI to the average citizen than war.
Oh, puhleeze. Everyone in the arts operates at a loss. Mozart died a pauper. So did many immortal composers, artists, poets, authors. I wrote and produced an off-Broadway play this past summer at a huge loss. We don’t do it for the money. We get so little support from the government in general and now corporations, the Arts are suffering and starving.
While people who produce SQUAT to improve the world (like AIG executives, Goldman Sachs investors, and bankers and credit card companies) live like kings.
I’ve got news for you, Tom. Nobody is buying houses in the Hamptons with their NEA grant.
Speaking of Medicare, if people under 65 (at 55 and up) were allowed to buy into a Medicare system, it would greatly increase the pool of healthy people who make few claims. If they all bought an Rx plan as well (like a Part D) for $26 a month with a $300 deductible, it would make the overall cost much lower. Most of the Medicare Rx plan is spent on the over 70 age group. They are the ones using the plan the most. They make the most claims, they are the sickest, they have the most expensive procedures. And they are the generation that was used to full medical coverage as workers in the 60s and 70s when health care was cheap.
Adding the 55-65 year olds would be a huge benefit to the system and solve the problem for people laid off who are too young to go on Medicare now and too old to be easily re-employed (thus getting group coverage) and many of them cannot get into individual health insurance because of certain pre-existing conditions.
I know, I see these people every day.
If you want to save money, Tom, euthanize all the 70+ year olds with chronic illnesses. That would save a bundle, dude.
Let’s suppose that out of a US population of roughly 300 million, 150 million want some kind of socialized health care. Why can’t that 150 million just set it up for themselves and show the other neanderthalian half just how great it is? Why, in our free society, must some be coerced into joining a venture in which they have no confidence? And it can’t be necessary numbers, because 150 million dwarfs the population of many countries with supposedly incredibly effective health care.
By the way, for you advocates of the French health care system, rock and roll legend Johnny Hallyday has been shipped from the Gallic hospital wonderland to California to undo the effects of French back surgery.
And did he get the Britney Spears suite at Cedars Sinai? It’s supposed to be nice. As usual, you judge the quality of life of a country by the irritations or lack thereof that its celebrities suffer.
BTW, since you seem not to have noticed, no one has proposed the sort of health system you’re discussing… the kind that costs half as much as ours and covers everyone, that is. Like most righties, you’re arguing against Fig Newtons of your emancipation, rather than anything real, and using silly anecdotes rather than real data to “prove” your point. Please try harder.
Yeah, they never botch operations here in the USA.
((snort))
See: Dennis Quaid – newborn twins
BREAKING! (Literally)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/14/2770327.htm
[...] The attacker was apparently holding an object in his hand, thought to be a small statue of Milan’s cathedral [...]
Bring him to California and give him a bed in the same room with Johnny Hallyday.
His face will be fixed, er … rearranged, in half the time, compared to the inattentive, foot-dragging treatment a socialist hospital in Milan would offer.
I love the Duomo even more now… it’s so satisfyingly pointy, but with a nice mass, too.
Johnny …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUgnZ6hhyAY
… and Silvio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWjDpJmvApk
Just read today that Johnny may be tiring of being Johnny, image-wise and all; and so, in addition to the fix of his disc, maybe the LA docs will give him a charisma transplant too.
CHNN is checking with Harlan Harrington in Rome to see if Silvio would like a new, American nose at a reasonable, American rate.
More later …
Tom asks:
Why, indeed?
Why were my tax dollars wasted on Iraq? I had no confidence. In fact, I knew we were lied to in 2003. I wasn’t fooled. I don’t get a choice as to how the government wastes my money, so why should you decide that single-payer health care is a waste of money? I think it’s a good investment. I think free college education is a good investment. I think persuading corporations and entrepreneurs to build factories or retool existing factories and start making stuff here is a really, really good investment.
What say you? All you do is bitch.
I had breakfast today with a friend who lived and worked in England and he said that those who have a problem with the government health care system can buy private insurance. About ten percent do that and most hardly ever use it, but because they make enough money it gives them a sense of security in case a procedure would take to long and they could get it faster through their private insurance. Yup everyone can live their life free of health care worries and they just hate socialized medicine and not having to read about all the horror stories we have in America.
I’d like to know if Tom has had any intimacies with the government, other than paying taxes, or maybe jury duty, and whether he would agree to treatment by a government doctor in the event of an uncontrollable fit of irony.
All I do is bitch? That’s the sum total of this entire enterprise, an immense cyber-kvetch. That’s 100% of the CH mentality. And the rest of you as well. More of CH’s projection, now a communicable mental illness.
Tom, aside from monumental policy debates, many people here are writing with their tongues placed firmly in their cheeks, or elsewhere.
Too bad you don’t get the jokes.
Maybe there’s another bar or pub you’d like to visit.
Black and blue …
http://www.alternet.org/politics/144529/are_americans_a_broken_people_why_we%27ve_stopped_fighting_back_against_the_forces_of_oppression?page=1