If there is any greater measure of the corruption and manipulation in the Bush Administrations cosy partnership with big business generally and the oil companies specifically, it all came out at this week’s testimonies of oil company CEOs before Congress. Granted access to policy formation in the early days of the Bush Administration through the good offices of Vice President Cheney, the Oil Companies have taken home vast wealth, excessive tax breaks, unprecedented access to national preserves and protected national lands, and protection from environmentalists and congressional oversight.
This has, in my opinion, been a sign of high treason against these United States. After the end of this administration, hopefully CBO investigators and the Department of Justice will look into the files of these invidious back-room political dealings and bring those office holders and political sycophants appointed to the leadership jobs in governmental offices to justice under criminal charges. It will undoubtedly take a decade to do so, with all the corruption rampant in Bush Administration dealings with business interests.
So much for the virtue of the private sector. For once and for all, this administration will prove the hypocrisy of a pro-business government and the lie in the myth of private sector efficiency, for business does best when it is able to obtain preferential treatment from government buddies. American business has its hands, feet and money deep in corrupt dealings with American government officials and with government officials throughout the world.
Unfortunately, the American public has bought into the myths of the virtue of private enterprise without seeing the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” behind the myth. But you see, the wolf is in us. We American’s have the values that create these disasters in our political system…the disasters that destroy our savings in the stock market, that lead to high levels of taxation, to unfair legislation. We are the wolves who sit in our business offices and make these decisions. We believe the myth passed down to us in our schoolbooks that private enterprise protects our freedom; what we fail to see is that we cannot protect ourselves from ourselves. The values we have are the same values that lead to our victimization. We do the things to our neighbors that our neighbors do to us, and all in the name of freedom and the right to do as we please to make ourselves better off.
The lessons have been taught many times: trust, but keep our hands in our pockets on our wallets. The purpose of business is to make profits, and there are few ethics which will prevail before that law. We have yet to learn that we can act “wolfishly” in our private lives and expect those just like us to behave any different than we.
Unfortunately, in this country, no administration has chosen the course of confronting the myth of business virtue and therefore has never had the courage or the common sense and wisdom to pursue appropriate safeguards, safeguards including close regulation, oversight of business practices, and the extension of criminal laws into the domain of business behavior.
The disasters of business corruption displayed during the 1990’s obviously didn’t take. Worldcom and its corrupt business brotherhood should never have been permitted to happen, and yet this country goes blithely on–believing in the basic goodness of private enterprise. The disaster of the sub-prime mortgage disarray in our current markets is just another example. Preventive measures are necessary. It is never sufficient to give huge business interests a bailout using tax payer monies after the fact; the damage has already been done. This is the grossest sort of mismanagement…a mismanagement that cannot disguise the corrupt values and political betrayals behind the event. It is not that private enterprise is not necessary as a means to deliver goods and services, and even as the basic mechanism for making economic decisions in this country. It is that one can never trust business motives nor take its behavior for granted. At the core of every corporation is a potential mobster, awaiting his opportunity to take special advantage of any opportunity to gain wealth. Severe legal and personal consequences are the only guide for guarding against business power–and perhaps for guarding against the corrupt within government as well. The role of the press as safeguard of the public interest has been compromised here as the international conglomerates have cemented their control of the news networks and turned the investigative function of the press into a joke.
Will this be changed in 2008 if the Democratic Party wins? No, certainly not. Business knows to butter the toast of both sides of the aisle to ensure that it has access to power and to the legislative process. Both political parties are machine politicians, understanding the hard facts of winning support from monied interests in order to fund their campaign and survive legislatively. The naivite in the Obama camp, even should it win the primary campaigns, will inevitably have to confront the harsh world of American back-room politics and its demands for wealth.
It would truly be a good thing if the actual behavior of business people were in alignment with the “assumptions” of classical and neo-Classical economists that “that government governs best which governs least” but unfortunately American business gives the lie to that myth. That government runs smoothest and those officials get rich quietly when they give business access to the policy making process and give rich favors or pork barrel support to local politicians who are already in bed with local business interests.
The name of the game is screw the people–get rich instead. The name of the game of those us in the labor force is screw business–get rich instead. We have met the enemy, and he is us. This is the darkness at the heart of the American myth.
Time for a new game.
My response to this post is . . . . . A M E N ! ! I suppose I am a conservative Democrat which can be a many “splintered” thing.
Just when I think my Democratic Party is in concert, I hear somebody out of tune. I despise the subliminal messages sent out to further confuse the already confused. We are not only two Americas, we are many parties with attitudes. The name of the game, as you have pointed out, is to win at all cost; i.e. power and profits.
We have become a country of Lies, greed, hardness of heart, theft, murder, etc., which must make Satan smile every morning. What I am about to say, coming from an 80-year-old white woman, will probably shock you. But, Reverend Wright is quoting from the Bible that I know when he says that the people whom we have put in power are wicked thus making America subject to Jehovah God’s CON DEMN ATION if we continue on the present path of things.
My mother never allowed the word ‘damn’ to be used in her house as she perceived it as a prayer for God’s action of total condemnation which we accepted as the dire action that it is. Remember Sodom & Gormorah, the great flood, the fig tree, the gourd vine under which Jonah took refuge from the broiling sun, the Jewish nation scattered to the four corners of the earth?
Must we tempt our Maker to the point of our own destruction? The sad part is the fact the innocent must suffer along with the guilty. I pray for the tender mercy of God to be with those of us who may still have mercy and kindness in our own hearts. Amen.
As for the economy, when the money winds up in the hands of the few, the masses are done. It is the flow of the money that makes our world go round. To further complicate our plight, it is now a world economy with which we must reckon. Now, it will be the country in whose hands the bulk of wealth lies that will own the rest of us.
This epistle simply proves to me again that “I’m too soon old and too late wise.” I don’t know the author of this line, but he, too, had reached a place of maturity.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you . . . .if, indeed, you have.