Lberal Democracy ----> Corporate Oligarchy?

Through the period running from the end to WW2 until the Reagan election, Americans shared in the nation's prosperity, the civil rights movement was launched, and we saw the beginnings of protections of others -- women, the disabled, gays, and others faced with discrimination both personal and economic. The change which was not noticed by the public nor particularly reported by those who understand the workings of our legal system was in the distribution of legal powers between three agencies -- corporations, labor unions, and governmental agencies designated to play protective roles through regulation of the powers and actions of the first two.

Reagan, however, began the tipping of controls towards the corporations and weakening of unions and protective agencies responsible for enforcing antitrust standards and protecting the public from corporate abuses either by exploiting economic powers or negating protective laws, regulations, and agencies.

The upshot of this tip in the scales of power has been that our corporations may now more or less do whatever they wish short of committing manifest murders. Drug companies make out like bandits in the U.S. while promoting what turn out to be dangerous redundant medications. The energy corporations are reporting massive profits while home owners and drivers are struggling to pay bills for essentials in these domains. The military industrial complex has been making out like a bandit by staging an illegal war and profiting vastly not only by the stepping up in production of military equipment, but also the vast profits made by all sorts of corporate parasites working the Iraq deserts -- ranging from Blackwater to Bechtel, Halliburton and others directly benefiting the friends of Bush and the Vice President who has a finger in virtually all of these pies.

Worst of all the failure to enforce the antitrust laws has allowed corporate interests to take over our major media sources of information. Bloggers may rail at such, but the principal sources of information for everyman are the manipulated TV circuits run by such as Murdock who has migrated his crookery from Australia and Britain to more or less control our one time democracy in the interest of his own balance sheets.

We have become a oligarchy dominated by our corporations -- which are killing us either directly or indirectly (an instance of latter crime consists of denying medical care to those who need it -- even children -- which is provided to every other developed democracy in the world. Our life expectation is now down to something like 48th world wide and our infant mortality rate is 28th. This atrocity committed by a nation that spends its energies boasting of our wealth -- which is now held mainly by the narrow spectrum of those who control the dispensation of our resources mainly into their own pockets. Check out those CEO perks and compare them with the below the poverty level survival struggles of single mothers with children to support -- or working people who cannot earn enough to support one person, let alone a small family.

So it went in Amerika. Such is all too reminiscent of the racist regimes of the 1930s which also plotted criminal wars to fatten their bellies.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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